Students caught in the middle of conflict at CKLN 88.1 FM

After over a year of fighting over jurisdiction, students have been hired to take over time slots. Many  of them know that there’s a conflict, but prefer to stay out of it

Ronak Ghorbani
Editorial Assistant

When Ashley Stanhope walked into CKLN’s office for the last time, she wasn’t expecting a confrontation with police. 

After attempting to start her weekly one-hour show Wired for Sound, a woman barged into the studio, yelling erupted between other
volunteers, two people barricaded themselves in a room and police were brought in to break up the debacle.  

“It seems bizarre when you think of it,” Stanhope said. “This would never happen at CHUM FM, it would never reach that point. It seems people are on this power trip when it comes to college radio.”

For nearly two years, CKLN has been embroiled in fierce internal fighting with two groups of people claiming power over the station. 

While one side was fighting to keep CKLN to its social justice roots, another side was attempting to make the station more mainstream. Dozens of hosts were fired and shows were cancelled, resulting in new student shows filling the gaps. 

CKLN was shut down in the last week of March.

After a unanimous vote at a Student Centre Board meeting, it was decided that the station remain closed until the divided CKLN sides meet and negotiate on how the station should be run. For two weeks re-runs were broadcasted. Currently, there is on-and-off dead air and sporadic broadcasts being played. 

Stanhope, a second-year journalism student, got involved with CKLN in first semester this year to get broadcast experience. She loved recording bands and had arranged for George Stroumboulopoulos to appear on the show. For most of her time at CKLN, she was treated with respect and oblivious to the escalating conflict.

“I knew for a while there was bad politics going on but basically, we wanted to keep our noses clean. We didn’t want to get involved with it. We had an hour show (every) week. We didn’t ask questions,” said Stanhope referring to how she and co-host Barb Deck felt.

Many of the students the Ryerson Free Press spoke to consciously decided to stay out of the station’s politics. 

Although 60 percent of CKLN’s budget comes from Ryerson student fees, there was minimum student programming representation until this year. Many of the students were happy for the opportunity to host a show and tried to keep their slates clean. 

However, bringing students in wasn’t necessarily done to pump up student-made content.

Rob Heydari, a second-year Radio and Television Arts (RTA) student, has written extensively about the CKLN conflict for the Ryerson Free Press. After months of observation and speaking to various board members and ex-volunteers, he believes the newly recruited students are being used for political purposes.  

“From my interview with Mike Phillips (the former station engineer) in August, he was quite clear that he was putting students on the air because that was the right thing to do,” Heydari said. “(But) you can’t ignore the political benefits that came from ejecting programmers with students. It’s not that it would give more power…you can only maintain control as long as you have the community behind you.”

Old programmers that were forcibly taken off the air have formed the group Take Back Our Radio. Actively resisting current CKLN management, the group hosted an independent broadcast on March 11 for International Women’s Day. 

They believe they were taken off the air because of the politically progressive nature of their shows. Some of the cancelled programs include Anti-Psychiatry Radio, Honour the Earth, which focused on First Nations issues, and Radio Cliteracy, a feminist show.  

Heydari believes students are being used to keep these old programmers out of CKLN.

“By replacing displaced programmers with students it’s very hard to argue against that. Who wants to be the person (that says) ‘no you shouldn’t have more students on the air?’” Heydari asked. 

Chi-Lihn Dihn, a third-year RTA student, who hosted Anime Brigade, feels horrible at the thought of being recruited by CKLN for political purposes. 

“Before, students never had the chance (to host shows) and now they do,” she said. “Who do you think they’ll back? The people who give them a chance - or people who want their shows back? The sad part is I understand both sides.”

Dihn views the situation as two sides trying to avenge personal vendettas while the students “feel like a cog in a machine to keep it afloat.”

Getting involved with CKLN meant Dihn could reach a broad audience and have student input on the airwaves. Up until she started the show five months ago, Dihn wasn’t even aware CKLN existed.

“You can’t get passed the fact it’s funded by student money, it’s in the middle of the university and no one’s heard of the station (within) the student body, and only this year student shows are popping up,” she said. “I feel really bittersweet. We got the chance and now we’re getting steamrolled for something we didn’t do, it’s not fair.”

One student that did get involved with the current CKLN board of directors is Alex Narvaez. His hip-hop oriented show Off Da Tracks, went-primetime on CKLN in August, 2008. Narvaez wanted more input on the station’s functions so he joined the board and recruited more student programmers. 

“It was a great experience for students to get on actual FM frequency and experience broadcast from a professional atmosphere and setting,” he said. “It was nice to make that transition from a hobby like online radio and pushing it to making a passion and possibly a career…These last couple of weeks (CKLN) has been closed it’s basically de-motivated everybody from taking it to the next level…I also really think it sucks out of all the times for the station to close down it was when the students got involved.”

Although he does miss doing his show, Joe Yachimenic who co-hosted the Eyeopener show every Wednesday morning is glad some action is being done to resolve the CKLN issue. 

“We decried the situation (on air). Said it was silly. It was foolish that a campus radio station would not serve the campus. Especially if students are paying for it to have a bunch of old guys going in there to run an independent radio station to provide content students never listen to. And (we) said so many times.”

The decision to close CKLN temporarily was triggered by several incidences where police were called to remove people from the station. 

“Multiple people are claiming they should have access to the station and the Student Centre Board of Directors is put in an awkward situation,” said Toby Whitfield, Ryerson Students’ Union vice-president of finance and services. “This is the way that the student centre has chosen to deal with it - no one will have access.” 

Ryerson president Sheldon Levy believes that, “Students are funding (CKLN) students should have a say in the product under which they’re funding. And they should take whatever actions they think to ensure they are satisfied with the radio station and where their money is going to.”

Currently, lawyers are attempting to mediate between the two rivaling CKLN boards. 

“We’re trying to bring people together and have a discussion and solve it,” Whitfield said. “There’s a lot of people here and hopefully they have the best interest of CKLN and that’s the focus…People should be able to come together and have a civil discussion.”

But for Bhairavi Thanki, she doesn’t see this as plausible. The third-year journalism student spent her summer volunteering at the station and grew to see it as a second home. She also hosted the morning show Rude Awakenings on Thursdays. 

“You’d think things would resolve itself and reach a mutual understanding and the new board and the old board would just work together but it’s such a utopian idea,” Thanki said. 

“I think CKLN could’ve gone in a much better direction than now. I think that involving more students, we were finally getting more students actually listening to CKLN,” she said. “Now people only think about it as a negative space…Anytime I mention CKLN they say ‘oh my goodness look at the politics. I hate that now everyone thinks about it so negatively.”

CKLN: It’s time to take back our radio

By: Carmelle Wolfson

It’s hard to believe that a resolution has still not been reached at CKLN. A year has passed since the CKLN special meeting where membership voted overwhelmingly (over 90 per cent) to impeach non-student members on the Board of Directors and to dismiss the appointed Station Manager and appointed Program Director. Two boards still remain in place: the board that was voted out on February 23, 2008 (some directors refuse to resign to this day), and the new board that was legitimately elected by membership following the impeachment. 

At least 60 volunteer programmers have been locked out of the station, their shows taken off the air, and all the workers who unionized last fall have lost their jobs—all acts of reprisal since the special meeting. 

However, some promising developments at CKLN may lead to this battle’s conclusion. Three people who played key roles in maintaining the autocratic rule over CKLN have been booted out of the station, and the locks to the station have been changed. Now, for the first time since the board was legitimately elected by membership following the February 2008 meeting, the powers controlling CKLN have agreed to meet with the other board to develop parameters for an upcoming membership meeting and elections. 

In the past, the impeached board repeatedly refused the National Campus and Community Radio Association’s offers for mediation between to the two boards. These developments have not happened in isolation. This has been part of a long and sometimes emotionally draining struggle to restore democracy at CKLN 88.1 FM. 

I’ve been meeting with the Take Back Our Radio (TBOR) organizing committee in cafés in downtown Toronto weekly for over a year now. Dismissed volunteers and community supporters have been tirelessly picketing outside the Student Centre every Sunday since the lockout began last May. We have issued media releases and conducted interviews with community radio stations in Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal, Kingston and elsewhere. Articles have now been published in campus, independent and mainstream media: the Ryerson Free Press, the Ryersonian, the Eyeopener, Xtra!, Eye Weekly, NOW Magazine, Exclaim!, Shameless Magazine, CP24, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Street News, Basics Community Newsletter, Toronto Social Justice Magazine, Mostly Water, Pitchfork Media, the Varsity and the Voice have all written about CKLN. 

We have spoken out about repression and censorship at CKLN at various public forums. Most recently, Hood 2 Hood organized a musical event dedicated to laid-off assistant news director Norman “Otis” Richmond. Norman has been a part of CKLN in one way or another for over two decades. He was let go in advance of February’s Afrikan Liberation Month, an event for which he has coordinated programming for many years. Last month, a motion was passed at the Ontario General Meeting of the Canadian Federation of Students in support of this grassroots organizing. 

TBOR has so far collected over 500 signatures petitioning law firm Iler and Campbell (who has many clients in the non-profit sector) to stop representing the current regime at CKLN. Additionally, former Anti-psychiatry radio host Don Weitz took CKLN to small claims court in February for wrongful dismissal. He has been awarded $100 to cover legal costs, but a settlement has yet to be reached, because those named in the statement of claim did not show up to the last court date. These events have forced Iler and Campbell to drop the illegitimate management and board of CKLN as clients. 

In the past, CKLN showed leadership by providing comprehensive, inclusive and cutting- edge programming and coverage of community actions and events. International Women’s Day (IWD) programming was an important highlight during the month of March, including the live-to-air broadcast of the IWD rally. Wimmin techs, programmers, hosts and volunteers at CKLN would volunteer their time and effort to infuse the airwaves with innovative and meaningful content for and by wimmin. 

Pride Day has also traditionally been a programming highlight at CKLN. However, the lack of special programming at CKLN from last year’s Pride proved that the current management in control of the station is not committed to its social justice mandate. When CKLN followed its social justice mandate, it produced high quality alternative coverage of events like IWD, Pride, Afrikan Liberation Month and Prisoner’s Justice Day.

Although the locked out wimmin programmers and techs of CKLN have been barred from the physical premises of the station, we continue to fight to reclaim our community radio space. On March 11, we will take the airwaves once again for a five-hour national broadcast. Marking IWD, the Take Back Our Radio organizing committee—including the hosts of CKLN’s only two feminist programs, Frequency Feminisms and Radio Cliteracy—will air programming that features voices otherwise silenced in the mainstream. It will also focus on community grassroots media across this country, its significance and its importance.

While recent developments at CKLN are heartening, we cannot assume that everything will work itself out and that all the hard work is over. The future of CKLN is now particularly precarious. The quality of programming at CKLN has deteriorated as a consequence of the volunteer lock-outs and lack of paid staff, while the annual fundraising drive (usually accounting for 40 per cent of the station’s operational finances) had abysmally low numbers. There are allegations of fraud and mismanagement of funds at the station. Finally, it remains unclear if CKLN will follow through with its lawsuit against the RSU and Ryerson at this point. 

The next Board of Directors at CKLN will have all these issues to contend with, on top of having to decide what to do with the 60-plus volunteers and staff who were driven out of the station. We cannot make the same mistake that many members made upon walking out of the special meeting last February. Members thought that by dropping their vote into a ballot box the problems at CKLN would immediately be fixed. 

As a former volunteer and student, I also wonder who will be allowed to participate in the upcoming membership meeting and therefore determine the direction the station will go from here. Will community members whose donations were refused or who did not want to donate to the current regime be allowed entrance? 

There are other unanswered questions as well. For instance, why have I heard that security forces will be called upon once again to survey this upcoming meeting? And finally, who will even want to run for a board position when the station is in such a mess? 

Carmelle Wolfson is a former Radio Cliteracy volunteer, a show that aired on CKLN every Sunday morning for a year before members were locked out of the station. She is also a Ryerson Journalism alumna. 

The IWD broadcast and community event will take place at the Imperial Pub on March 11 from 5pm to 10pm. Please join us in taking back our radio! The program will air on numerous community radio stations across the country

For more information, please visit www.takebackourradio.blogspot.com

The open veins of Ryerson’s CKLN

 

By: Rob Heydari

November 2008 Issues

Ryerson’s student-funded campus community radio station, CKLN 88.1 FM, continues to simmer with conflict. The ongoing dispute over control of the station and controversies over the terminations of popular programmers, volunteers and staff show no sign of resolution.

Points of contention  include concerns over the ongoing secrecy of the station’s board of directors and controversy over the hiring of interim station manager Mike Phillips and program director Tony Barnes. It is alleged that the jobs were not posted and advertised correctly and tensions surrounding the unionization of several station employees persist.

These problems led a large group of CKLN volunteers and community members to impeach the board of directors and elect replacements. They also voted for the termination of Phillips and Barnes.

The impeached board, as well as Phillips and Barnes, denied that these meetings held any legitimacy and have continued to retain control of the station. This has led to the divisive presence of two concurrent boards, both claiming to be the legal operators of CKLN Radio Inc.

Phillips, in a late August interview, denied that the alternative board of directors has any legitimacy whatsoever. When questioned as to whether the two boards could find any common ground to come together, he stated that “the other so-called board of directors are not directors; they have never been directors, and essentially they don’t qualify as directors. The process by which they elected themselves was incorrect. The meetings were not held properly.” 

Phillips is adamant that the previous board continues to hold all authority to operate CKLN. In addition, Phillips labels the allegations that he and Barnes were hired inappropriately as “total bullcrap.”

Over the summer, long-time volunteers and programmers supportive  of the breakaway board of directors were terminated through letters signed by Phillips advising them that their “volunteer services were no longer required.”

In response to complaints that terminated programmers were not warned of any inappropriate behaviour before being ejected from CKLN, Phillips replied, “If they will not respond to dealing with things the correct way and insist on going on air and spouting pure and utter bullshit, then how long do you expect that any management is going to sit there and permit it?”

Phillips also said that “there are a significant number of people who were warned and asked not to do certain things and they said okay and they are still here.” 

However, the over-thirty terminated programmers claim that they were never approached or warned in any way and have never been provided with any direct information as to why they were terminated. During an interview, Phillips refused to advise who comprised the “significant number of people” that were asked to not “do certain things.”

Many supporting the alternative board accuse the previous board and CKLN management of desiring a more commercial, right-wing style.

Mike Phillips has previously labelled accusations that he is moving the station towards a more commercial style as “total bullcrap” but has been quoted in other publications as desiring advertisements from corporations like Canadian Tire.

Paid staff members have also been terminated from CKLN.
Upon returning from maternity leave, former news director Kristin Schwartz was fired. Schwartz said, “I was shocked that they thought they could fire me with no reason… since I came back, the communications between us [CKLN management] were very little.” 

Schwartz suspects that the termination is because her position was included in the recent unionization, against the will of management.
Rather than dealing with a unionized news director, Schwartz suspects that “they don’t want a news director to exist” and said that Phillips advised her of this. 

Phillips did not respond to repeated requests for an interview from the Ryerson Free Press to comment on these specific allegations, but has previously refused to comment on issues related to Schwartz, stating “that is subject to negotiations with the union.”

Through these tensions, CKLN held its annual fundraising drive. ‘FundFest’ is typically held later in the year but was moved up to October by station management. 

Those supporting the alternative board say the fundraising drive was a huge bust both due to this rescheduling and a lack of support from the community stemming from the ongoing station conflict. 

However, station management including Phillips and Barnes have ignored interview requests from the Ryerson Free Press to confirm or deny any of these claims. 

In addition to these fundraising shortfalls, the Ryerson Students’ Union continues to withhold the student levy accounting for approximately 60 per cent of CKLN’s budget.

RSU vice-president of finance and services Toby Whitfield said the RSU will continue to hold these funds for CKLN until control of the station is settled or they are required to disperse the funds legally.

As well, the alternative board is accepting contributions towards their effort to control CKLN.
Many terminated programmers have requested that supporters donate to the alternative board.

Joeita Gupta, who was formerly involved with ‘Frequency Feminisms’ said, “Please put your dollars towards the right cause.”

When asked if the alternative board would prefer that listeners and supporters withhold their donations from CKLN until the issue is settled, chair of the alternative board, Arnold Minor, advises that “as a board, we cannot support decisions to not send money to CKLN.”

In the midst of the drama, members hoping to participate in the democratic process at CKLN 88.1 FM were out of luck when the station’s Annual General Meeting was suddenly cancelled hours after it was supposed to begin on  Oct. 29.  

This followed a volunteer meeting the week prior, which was held behind closed doors due to protestors outside the front door decrying the termination of programmers. 

Toronto police were called into the AGM by CKLN’s former management as the AGM  was set to begin with already tense groups of people on both sides.

The notices advertising the AGM stated it would be held at Oakham House. However, signs posted at the entrances to Oakham said that the meeting would be held in Room G and that only community members who had contributed $50 or more prior to 5 p.m. on Oct. 27 would be admitted to the AGM. 

This $50 requirement was just hiked from the traditional $10  minimum donation required to be a community member of the station. 

The meeting was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., but by 8 p.m. the doors remained closed and locked with no one inside. Upon moving to a larger meeting room within the Student Centre, approximately 20 CKLN volunteers and members participated in an unclassified meeting with both Barnes and Phillips present.

Once all those waiting by Room G had entered the room, Barnes advised the audience that the CKLN board would be holding an emergency meeting and members of the previous board exited through a back entrance.

Approximately forty-five minutes later, Barnes re-emerged and said the AGM had been cancelled at the request of “the buildings’ stakeholders.” At this point, two Metro police officers were spotted outside the room. 

Barnes refused to state if or when the meeting would be rescheduled and ignored a motion made by Andrew Lehrer, former CKLN volunteer with Word of Mouth to continue the meeting.
The politically charged debate over control of the station continues to escalate. 

Even as AGM participants left, heated arguments broke out between CKLN members from different sides of the conflict despite the presence of police. 

After the additional drama stemming from the aborted meeting, there is likely to be even more anger and contention surrounding the broadcast booth at 88.1 FM. 

Station remains under lock-down as two boards battle for control

By Robert Heydari 

Students returning to campus as may be surprised to find that the familiar voices of 88.1 FM aren’t so familiar anymore. 

CKLN, the campus community radio station based in the Student Centre, has spent the summer in a battle over control of the station.

Read more

Turmoil continues at CKLN

It was announced yesterday that Kristin Schwartz and at least five other volunteers have been released from CKLN. Kristin has been a long-time staff person there.

This is the latest attack on a shrinking cohort at CKLN who are fighting the corporatisation agenda of the former Board of Directors.

While the situation there is too complicated for a small blurb, there is a good blog that can catch you up to speed on the situation there.

Visit Take Back Our Radio to get a glance at the struggle that has been unfolding there for months.