Benefits of CAS proposal outweigh concerns

Benefits of CAS proposal outweigh concerns

This is in response to the April 9 article regarding CAS proposals and to the editorial.

Last year there was an ad hoc committee formed to make a report to the academic dean regarding a merger between WCAL, CVN and the CAS department. I was the chair of that committee which also included the station managers of WCAL and CVN and Randy Bytwerk of the CAS department.

Numerous times in the past there has been a desire on the part of the college to do a better job of making WCAL and CVN a more educational experience for the students. Different ways of doing that have been proposed, but it is always concluded that the CAS department should take the responsibility. Due to a lack of resources, none of the past proposals (including last year’s ad hoc committee) have become reality.

There have been good years and bad years for WCAL and CVN. During the bad years the programming would be embarrassing at best, and at the worst the facilities would shut down all together. Students complained that they were learning nothing and asked for support. The college would like the quality of those two facilities to be more consistent and to provide students with solid academic, management and technical support.

In the current proposal students would receive academic credit and intensive training for their work. Part of the broadcast time for the two facilities would become a real world laboratory for students enrolled in CAS courses.

The tradeoff would be that some student autonomy would be lost, but there would still be a student manager and students not enrolled in a CAS course could still so some work in the studios. Even currently WCAL and CVN (and Chimes for that matter) do not have unlimited freedom. After all, they are owned by the college and are accountable to the Student Life Committee. All of the Calvin media groups have limited freedom, and with this change WCAL and CVN would have somewhat more limits on their freedom. This is a legitimate concern, but it seems to me that the benefits outweigh the concerns.