There are only so many outlets for students to articulate their thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Student organizations like The Chronicle, Q30 television, and WQAQ, the student radio station, have provided students a necessary voice to speak to other students and members of the community.
The recent decision to take down the radio tower has crippled, if not destroyed, WQAQ which has for years been one of the predominant student-run operations on this campus.
With more and more animosity between students and the administration it is both curious and disappointing that those in charge would choose to deprive the students of one of their only means to communicate with areas existing beyond the borders of this campus.
If we silently accept their actions, they can just as easily take away anything from student government, to Q30, to this very newspaper and know that they will not have to worry about student resistance.
To throw salt in an open wound, the people who decided to tear down the radio tower do not even have the common courtesy to give a reason for their actions other then that the tower was unsightly. Their arrogant assumption that students won’t demand a better explanation for this unnecessary and egregious abuse of student rights must be proven false.
Now the only way for students or anyone else to hear the content WQAQ offers is over the Internet and if the tower is not rebuilt in one year Quinnipiac loses 98.1 FM for good.
WQAQ recently redid its entire studio and has been constantly improving their programming. Those who decided to tear down the tower have in effect told them that all of their efforts were worthless.
Taking the tower down has the same effect on the radio station that taking away the scoreboard would have on the basketball team, they could still play but it wouldn’t mean as much.
Do not forget that the people who chose to do this are not affected or hurt by their decision, only the students are suffering from what they have done. For this very reason it is the students’ responsibility to demand answers when the school blatantly and pointlessly removes one if, not our only way, to speak to the Hamden community.
The superficiality of their so-called reason to tear down the tower is overwhelming. The message sent by these actions is that as long as the campus looks better who cares if the students who have worked long and hard to make the radio station what it is have to suffer.
The only purpose of the radio station is to provide students a voice both on campus and into the community. The mere fact that the school would destroy that and provide us an asinine excuse like they don’t like the way it looks, should make every student in this school think long and hard about how much the administration really cares about students at all.
