Lack of communication plagues school radio station for second time this year
Dominic Baez
Editor in chief
KSLC says it didn’t receive the proper stipends for its staff members. ASLC says it wasn’t aware there was a problem.
So, who’s right?
According to senior Alex Maxson, the outgoing general manager of KSLC 90.3 FM, the college’s student-run radio station, KSLC requested a stipend increase this year to match the stipends of other media groups on campus, such as The Linfield Review.
“We work about the same hours as editors for the Review do,” she said. “We put in just as much work.”
However, when ASLC distributed stipends last week, KSLC staff members noticed a discrepancy. The stipends were the same as in the past instead of the amount staff members were supposedly promised this year.
Maxson said she learned of the problem before stipends were released and brought the issue up several times to senior Wesley Mitchell, former ASLC vice president of business and finance, but no action was taken.
By the time stipends came out, she said there was nothing that could be done.
“[The stipends] are important to the staff,” Maxson said. “This is a real job, and some people can’t work second jobs because of it or don’t work as much at the second job. If I knew what I was going to be paid, I could have worked more at the second job and not so much here.”
Other KSLC staff members agreed with Maxson’s sentiment.
Junior Stacey Van Blom and sophomore Tracey Major said it was a regrettable issue and that they were upset by what happened.
“I mean, if this were the real world, if there were a corporation, this would be a huge legal issue,” Major said. “It’s illegal.”
Mitchell, however, said a lack of communication between ASLC and KSLC was the culprit.
“The first I heard of the issue was when Alex brought it up to me at a social event,” Mitchell said. “I had no idea what she was talking about, so I said I would look into it and get back to her.”
When Mitchell investigated the matter, he said he found nothing stating that KSLC should have gotten stipend increases this year. He said he asked Dan Fergueson, director of college activities, to help find out what happened.
Mitchell said Fergueson was unable to find anything about a request for a stipend increase within the last five years, much less this year. This was in sync with what he said at the Communication Board’s budget hearing May 19.
When asked about previous conversations about the stipends, Mitchell said he was contacted once via e-mail after Maxson and Mitchell’s first encounter, and he told her he still didn’t know what she was talking about.
“[ASLC] needs to know about these kinds of things,” Mitchell said. “We never OK’d the stipend increases.”
All proposed stipend increases, which are paid for out of the general management budget, go through a consideration process, Mitchell said. He said that, as a rule last year, proposed stipend increases were denied.
“When you work in a position such as editor in chief of The Linfield Review or for KSLC, it’s an experience,” Mitchell said. “It shouldn’t be about the money. The college is providing you with an amazing opportunity to learn. But if they feel that they need bigger stipends, ASLC considers it, just like everything else.”
Maxson said Nancy Cornwell, former Linfield mass communication professor, worked to get KSLC’s
stipends increased from their original value.
However, Mitchell said ASLC was never informed of this effort.
“It seems as though Nancy and Alex had a conversation, but they didn’t tell me, they didn’t tell Dan, and the Senate is the only one who can approve an increase,” Mitchell said.
“There was a miscommunication across the board.”
This isn’t the only issue KSLC has had with ASLC this year, Maxson said. She said when it came to requesting checks for events and bills, she had multiple problems, including being delinquent on mandatory bills for maintaining a FCC-sanctioned radio station and having to cancel a pizza party when she didn’t receive the check to pay for the pizzas in time, despite having put in the check request two weeks earlier.
Mitchell said that if this happened, it’s news to him.
“One of my priorities for this year as vice president of business and finance was to be more efficient getting checks to the students who needed them,” he said. “For the Review, for example, I went out of my way and had checks cut and ready to go in 10 minutes. I don’t know why they would say that.”
Mitchell said he remembered the pizza party incident, though, but in a different light. He said he did not receive a check request until the day before the event, after the ASLC offices had closed.
Check requests normally take two to three days to process.
Mitchell said that even if KSLC didn’t receive the check in time, it could have paid for the pizza out of the staff members’ pockets, and then ASLC would have reimbursed them.
“I guarantee that I would have reimbursed them if they had asked me to,” he said. “But if the students couldn’t afford to pay for it, they should have put in the check request earlier. I can guarantee that they didn’t put it in two weeks early.”
The whole point may be moot now, however. KSLC staff members have already received their stipends, and last year’s budget cannot be altered.
As for next year, Maxson requested and received an increase in stipends at the May 19 Communication Board meeting, in essence remedying the situation. She said she is happy about the increase but wishes it wouldn’t have worked out the way it did.
Students or campus club leaders who experience this type of problem are urged to speak to ASLC as soon as they find out about it.
“If an organization has issues with ALSC, I’ say 99 percent of those problems could be resolved by talking to the cabinet person,” Chris McIsaac, the current vice president of business and finance, said. “We applied and were appointed for the positions on Cabinet to serve the students of Linfield College. The new Cabinet is very capable and wants to do the best we can to serve the student body. If there are issues that we need to work out, please stop by the office or set up a meeting with Ashlee, Chris [Norman] or myself, and I’m sure at the end of the day we will have a solution.”