Letter to the Editor: Beware of Student Senate!

To the Editor:

It’s interesting to follow your coverage of the imbroglio that’s developing over the Student Senate’s recently announced budget cuts to student activities, including The Brown & White.

This alumnus wonders why similar questions weren’t also asked when the Senate cut off all funding to WLVR, the campus radio station, back in 2022.  

That move was based on the false assumption that the university was going to make up for those funding cuts with money from its lucrative deal with WLVT, channel 39 (also known as PBS39), which in effect “leased” the radio station from Lehigh University in 2019.

But that hoped-for money from WLVT never materialized. The student-run radio station, WLVR-HD2, limped along without funding and no general manager. The university never monitored its contract with WLVT (which was facing its own losses) and never made up for the Student Senate’s funding cuts. 

And the Student Senate never followed up to see if its decision was the correct one.

In the last couple of years, the student-run station lost its student and community DJ staff. The Lehigh administration declared it effectively dead and recently sold the FCC license to Lehigh Valley Public Media in June.

So beware, student activities! What seems like funding cuts today can lead to your demise at the hands of a university that just doesn’t seem to care.