LCCC Students, Alumni Will Rally to Save Radio Station

Editor's Note: At WXLV's invitation, The Lehigh Valley Patch sites began working with the station's students and the station director in April. Patch and WXLV produce a weekly radio show called "The Patch Report."

Afraid that the sale of their campus radio station may be imminent, some students and alumni from Lehigh Carbon Community College have organized a rally to show support for WXLV, 90.3 FM, Wednesday in front of the college’s administration building.

There, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., they will solicit signatures to a petition to save the radio station and take video statements from participants on their experiences with WXLV and their reasons for wanting to see it preserved as a campus resource, said Vince DeJesus, an LCCC student/part-time employee of the station.

Copies of a DVD from those interviews will be given to LCCC President Donald Snyder and every member of the college’s Board of Trustees, according to a Facebook page promoting the event.

No decision has been made on the fate of the station, according to Heather L. Kuhns, LCCC’s associate dean for institutional advancement, though it is something under consideration. The college has had an appraisal done to determine the station’s sale value, Kuhns said. She would not say what the appraisal value was, however.

“We are evaluating all of our assets to best allocate our resources with the mission of the college,” Kuhns said.

The college is in a mode of belt-tightening, given a 10 percent cut in the state budget for community colleges currently on the table. That would translate to a $1.3 million reduction in LCCC’s annual budget, Kuhns said. And that would come after three years during which the state’s allocation to community colleges had been frozen in place.

The decision whether to sell or keep the radio station will have to come from the trustees, Kuhns said. If they do make that decision, the process of determining the buyer and sale price would be a public one, Kuhns said.

If WXLV is sold, it would almost have to be to a non-profit entity, DeJesus said. He said Christian radio broadcasters and WLVT-TV, PBS-39, which does not have a radio affiliate, have already expressed an interest in buying the station.

It is unclear to him, however, whether the college would intend to sell just the frequency or all of the radio station’s assets, which include a recording studio in the cinderblock radio station building on campus. That studio is currently used as part of classroom instruction for those who study musical sound production and television production.

There are at least 150 station volunteers, some who actually work in production or as on-air personalities, some who help out with events or in a support role, who would be opposed to the station’s sale, said DeJesus.