The Eclectic and Eccentric WRCT fm

Pop City, November 19, 2008
http://popcitymedia.com/features/wrct1112.aspx

Tune into WRCT 88.3 FM on a Saturday morning this fall and you'll hear Saturday Light Brigade, an acclaimed radio program for families that features acoustic music and interactive puzzles and games for children. Listen to the same station later that night and you'll hear Too Evil to Have a Human Name, three hours of metal- growling vocalists, squealing guitars, and pounding bass drums in bands with names like Obituary and Cattle Decapitation.

In between there’s Radio 9, throwback to the radio shows of the 50's and 60's, followed by indie rock on Something Fell. Oh, and Radio Free Radio, an experimental music program hosted by Steve Boyle, which one caller described this way: "I tune in on a Saturday night as I'm driving down to the bar, and all I hear is noise. It wasn't a song, there wasn't even a beat, just all kinds of weird feedback and voices clipped out of movies and stuff, and it went on for like 20 minutes. What the hell is that?"

Clearly, not everyone will be a fan of every show. If you turn on the radio and you know you want to hear just jazz, or just R&B, or classical there are plenty of other stations. But, if you want to hear something, well... different? Turn on WRCT.

Underground Radio
WRCT, Carnegie Mellon's student radio station (the "RCT" stands for "Radio Carnegie Tech"), began as the project of a group of engineering students in 1949. At first they used the electrical wiring in a few academic buildings to broadcast a weak AM signal. They switched to FM at 88.3 in the mid-70's, but it still didn't reach much further than the edge of CMU’s campus. The station has grown quite a bit since then. With a new transmitter, the station is as powerful as it's ever been- covering the entire city and well into Allegheny County in most directions. Or, thanks to the Internet, it's now possible to hear WRCT anywhere in the world via streaming audio on the station's web site.

As the station expanded to serve the larger community, it opened its doors to participation from outside the university. "Community members are at least as valuable to the station as students," says Sal Farina, the current General Manager and a PhD student at CMU. Every position is volunteer ("Even at the top," he laments) and he estimates that about half of the station's DJ's, producers, engineers, and staff are not connected to the school. To get involved, simply call the station or e-mail the training director (Alex Smith at training@wrct.org).

Which means that in addition to awkward freshmen DJ's who are just learning the ropes, WRCT's programming includes veteran DJ's with years of experience on the air. Like Kevin Amos, host of African American issues and music shows Ebony Spectrum and One to One, who recently celebrated his 30th year in local radio. Or Zombo, who,now in his eighth year at the station, hosts his show with a fake Hungarian accent and plenty of energy (picture the Count from Sesame Street after say, nine cups of coffee). Zombo's Record Party, like many shows on WRCT doesn't really fit into any one genre- the playlist for a recent show included Groucho Marx, Devo, Johnny Cash, experimental music collective Negativland, a polka, a dozen other songs that have probably never been on the radio before, and an interview with a nervous Pop City writer who had wandered into the studio.

Studios Underground Too
The studios are located in the basement of Carnegie Mellon's University Center, where band stickers, album covers, and posters of concerts sponsored by the station in years past cover nearly every inch of wall. It's a comfortable space, and at any given time someone is probably sleeping on the couch in the front room. There are two soundproof recording booths- a smaller one for the DJ's and a larger one for recording live local bands on shows like Advanced Calculus and (the somewhat less creatively named) Live Band Show.

But the station's real treasure is in a room off to the side- nearly 70,000 records and CD's known as the record library. Most were donated by individuals or sent by independent record companies, and each one has a card taped to the front with a brief review written by a WRCT DJ and a list of suggested tracks. "So many stations have purged their vinyl," says Larry Berger, host of Saturday Light Brigade, who points out that many of the records were never released on CD and aren't available in electronic formats. "WRCT has been protective, and shown a lot of foresight." Berger knows about longevity and foresight in radio. Saturday Light Brigade, which he has hosted since 1978, is one of the longest running public radio programs in the United States. In 2003, the show, which is broadcast from a studio in the Children's Museum to somewhere between 40 and 60 thousand local families, switched stations from to WRCT after nearly 25 years on WYEP.

"The station is really delighting people, and taking risks, which I believe are appropriate," says Berger. "Sometimes listeners will tune in and be delighted in a way they didn't even know radio could delight them."

Hidden Jewel
WRCT broadcasts not just music, but also ideas that might not get on the radio anywhere else. For example, every weekday morning at 8 a.m., WRCT broadcasts Democracy Now, a nationally syndicated news program hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales. The station is also home to Rustbelt Radio, a weekly show produced by a grassroots collective of volunteers who report on issues overlooked by the local mainstream media.

"As far as I know, we're the only major station in Pittsburgh to broadcast shows not in English," says Alex Smith, a former GM and current training director at WRCT. Wednesday evenings the station features Barrio Latino, which covers topics of interest to Pittsburgh's growing Latin American community in Spanish, and Thursdays there's the Brazil Hour, which alternates between English and Portuguese.

"WRCT has really emerged as a champion of diverse and eclectic local radio," says Berger. He says there are only a handful of stations around the country that are "so eclectic and broadly serving the wider community... I think that WRCT is a hidden jewel in Pittsburgh. I really do."

Da Vinci Award

Carnegie Mellon Today, Winter 2008

In his 41 years as a history professor at Carnegie Mellon, Joel Tarr has never had a parking permit. He lives a short ten-minute walk from campus (“Eight minutes if I walk fast”), just off of Forbes Ave. Walking home one night in 1991, a car ran through the intersection in front of Margaret Morrison while he was crossing. Tarr woke up in an emergency room, but luckily without serious injuries. Fifteen years later, when a student was struck by a car and killed at an intersection just up the street from where he was hit, he wondered if there was a way to make crossings safer.

Every semester Tarr teaches two classes in which students research a policy problem for a government or non-profit client. Following the fatal accident, he had both classes focus on pedestrian safety in Pittsburgh. They pored through historical records, surveyed students and faculty, and worked with doctors at UMPC's Children's Hospital to produce a report identifying hazardous intersections. Tarr later testified before Pittsburgh city council in support of a Safe Streets Initiative, which included many of the report's recommendations, such as walk signals that show when a light will change.

The project was typical of the work he has done throughout his career- applying history to a technological issue and working with experts in a broad range of fields. It seems appropriate then that Tarr, who holds appointments in the Heinz School, the History department, and the Engineering and Public Policy department, recently received an award named after history's most famous renaissance man- the Leonardo da Vinci award, given by the Society for the History of Technology. The Society has 1500 members in 35 countries, and the da Vinci award is its highest honor.

Watershed Moment

Carnegie Mellon Today, Winter, 2008

Julia Schwarz, Chris Harrison, and Bryan Pendleton were getting ready to eat the first meal of a three-day vacation paddling down the Allegheny River. Lounging on their homemade wooden raft, the three of them, all students in the Human Computer Interaction program, had just unpacked their tuna sandwiches, when the sky opened, unleashing a torrential downpour. As they dove for shelter under the tarp, the lightning started.

“It was right next to us,” says Schwarz. “Sometimes it felt as if the sound came before the lightning- it was ear-splitting.” Meanwhile, the raft, a platform of wooden planks supported by four plastic barrels, had been pushed into a faster section of river, near the shore, and was hurtling towards an overhanging tree- backwards. If the tree snagged the raft, there was good chance the current would push the raft over, knocking them into the river during a lightning storm. As Harrison and Pendleton paddled furiously, Schwarz managed to maneuver to the front and push the tree over them. Throughout the ordeal Harrison was joking and smiling. “I had to laugh to ease the tension,” he says.

The voyage was his idea- to have an adventure like the rafters who shipped timber down rivers centuries ago. He convinced Pendleton, another PhD student, to join him early on, but recruiting a third person was trickier. Harrison says he asked a half dozen people before Julia Schwarz- an undergrad from Washington studying at CMU over the summer- overheard him talking about the trip in the HCI lab. She heard, “rafting, trip, multi-day, building” and was hooked. They spent the next two and a half weeks constructing the raft in Pendleton's garage. The finished vessel was named in honor of his wife, Joy, and her decision to let him participate- The Joy Willing. After borrowing life-jackets, tents, and oars from the CMU Explorers club, they were ready to go.

Apart from the early storm, most of the trip was peaceful, but hardly boring. They constantly had to navigate around islands, rocks, and other obstacles. During quieter moments they saw turtles, otters, and bald eagles. When it got hot, they would swim in the river, checking the underside of the raft for damage. At night they camped on the shores of islands, eating smores and staring up at the Milky Way.

On the third day, the crew, and The Joy Willing, landed safely, thirty-five miles from their launch. They created a Web site, www.alleghenyrafters.com, hoping to inspire others to use the river. Maybe, says Schwarz, the trip could become a popular spring break for students. “Rafters gone wild!” Harrison jokes.

Orchid Blooms

Carnegie Mellon Today, Fall 2008

When Ralph Ashworth first tried pitching his mystery novel, The Killer of Orchids, to agents and editors 15 years ago, he didn’t have much luck. Sure, they liked the writing and they were intrigued by the plot, in which Jeff Redwing, a gay computer genius, investigates the murder of a Carnegie Mellon alumnus. But at the time Ashworth didn’t think readers would be ready for a gay detective, so when he submitted the manuscript he removed any reference to the hero’s romantic life.

“Editors would tell me, ‘We like the story, but something is missing,’” says Ashworth. “And I would think, ‘Well, you’re right…’” So he put the novel aside, took a job as a supervisor at a Borders bookstore, and concentrated on other writing projects.

Last year, he decided it was time to rewrite The Killer of Orchids, with Redwing as a gay man once again. Coincidentally, at around the same time, Borders announced a fiction-writing contest open to all 30,000 employees. The winning book would be published, sold in over 1,000 bookstores, and featured in the Borders newsletter, which is sent to 28 million people.

“Normally it’s a struggle to get one copy in bookstores,” says Ashworth. “This would have the full brunt of Borders’ promotional powers behind it.”

The deadline was six months sooner than he planned to have the book finished, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. Even though it was the holiday season and he was working at Borders six days a week, sometimes 10 hours or more each day, he pushed himself to keep writing, whenever he had time to spare. Exhausted, he managed to submit the book by the deadline.

A few months later he got the call. Out of over 200 submissions that Borders received, The Killer of Orchids was chosen as the winner.

Darmen Sadvakasov

Carnegie Mellon Today, Fall 2008

http://www.carnegiemellontoday.com/article.asp?aid=616

Sixteen people sit behind chessboards along the orange and yellow walls of Amani International coffeehouse, in Pittsburgh’s North Side. They are all different ages- a boy in grade school is at a board between a goateed college student and an older man with thinning gray hair. Most of them just play regularly at local chess clubs; a few of them are highly ranked experts. Probably the only thing they all have in common is their opponent. Moving from board to board, stopping at each for only a few seconds to watch his opponent’s move and then quickly make his own, Darmen Sadvakasov, an international grandmaster takes on all sixteen of them- at once.

The term Grandmaster is a title awarded by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, to the best chess players in the world (the only rank higher than Grandmaster is the World Champion) and there are only 60 in the United States. Sadvakasov, a native of Kazakhstan who is currently working towards a Masters of Public Management in the Heinz school, was awarded the title after winning the World Junior Championships in 1998. Since then he’s competed as a chess professional in tournaments in over 40 countries. At one of his first international tournaments in 2001, he played Gary Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all time, to two draws. In 2004, he defeated Kasparov’s longtime rival, former World Champion Anatoly Karpov.

“On any given day, Darmen could potentially beat one of the world’s top twenty players,” says Clyde Kapinos, a board member of the Pittsburgh Chess Club.

It’s unlikely to see Sadvakasov playing a serious game around campus- the games he plays in international tournaments last six hours, and he’ll spend another three hours preparing beforehand. Occasionally, when he’s not too busy with classes, he’ll play games for fun, usually on the Internet. And at least once a week he trains with Alex Shabalov, a former CMU student who is the current U.S. Champion, analyzing positions and poring over moves from past games.

Sadvakasov says that the skills he’s developed playing chess- memory, concentration, logic- have been extremely helpful in his coursework at CMU. Which is a good thing too- although most of Sadvakasov’s professors know he’s an accomplished chess player, “They don’t play with me for grades,” he jokes.

Always eager to get other people interested in chess, especially kids, Sadvakasov has held simultaneous games before. This match at Amani is actually relatively small for him- he’s played against as many as 50 people at once. So it’s little surprise when, 70 minutes after the first move, only one of his opponents has managed a draw. The kings on the other 15 boards lie peacefully on their sides, defeated by the grandmaster.

Referee

Unpublished, February 14, 2001

About once a week, Jason Currie has a nightmare that terrifies him. He is the field referee of a soccer game and sees a foul committed. He blows his whistle several times but no noise comes out. As he fumbles to get the backup whistle out of his pocket, the scuffle between the players turns into a bench-clearing brawl. Desperately, he blows harder and harder into the backup whistle, but still nothing. Standing helpless in the middle of the free for all, one of his biggest fears as an official is coming true. He has lost control.

The twenty-year old Currie has spent six years officiating everything from Pony league baseball games, to varsity basketball games, to college intramural flag football, and he takes his job very seriously. He's a full-time student at Carnegie Mellon and when he's not in class, it's a pretty sure bet he's on the field.

When he gets home at night, he heads to the computer to check the online referee bulletin boards where officials across the country swap stories and argue over the finest nuances of rule interpretation. He subscribes to magazines and newsletters for officials, including Referee magazine, which is full of articles with titles like "Technical Fouls are Not Created Equal", "Exercising Safe Bat Removal", "All About Your Plate Brush", and "Mechanics Illustrated: Counting Players Before the Ready Signal." There are quizzes for referees to hone their skills further, which Jason memorizes. Not only can he recite the correct answer verbatim, he can also give slightly different scenarios where the ref would make a different call. While most people are routing for their favorite team, Currie is routing for the umpire.

He started officiating in high school, refereeing soccer games in New Castle, PA, his hometown, as a way to earn some extra money. “It seemed like an interesting challenge," he says. "Plus that’s back when I was into running and I noticed that they [referees] ran a lot and thought, ‘Hey, I can do that.’” A few months after he started officiating soccer games, a substitute teacher was looking for umpires to work local little league games and Currie needed a summer job. He worked his way up to become an officer in the local umpires club, and later became certified to referee Pennsylvania high school baseball, basketball, and soccer games. When he moved to Pittsburgh to go college at Carnegie Mellon University, he continued officiating to help pay his way through school, working local high school games, adult recreation leagues, and even CMU intramural games.

In his years of officiating Currie has learned that not everything is black and white, and that there is more to being a referee than blowing the whistle at the right time. “The art of officiating is keeping your head while however many other people are losing theirs,” says Currie. “You’re really a diplomat while you’re out there.”

Just like a talented player can alter their playing style against certain teams, Currie will change his officiating style depending on the situation and the environment. When he’s refereeing a grade school soccer game he's almost more like a big brother than a referee. He'll give kids second chances, patiently explain why he made a certain call, even give kids suggestions to help improve their game. In these games his job is mainly to make sure the kids are having fun, that no one gets hurt, and to keep overzealous parents and coaches from getting too out of control. Although he wants kids to enjoy themselves, safety is definitely his most important priority. "If a kid sweeps the legs out from under another kid, it's still a foul no matter how much fun he had doing it," Currie says.

When the players are older, Currie’s job gets more complex. He starts to be more concerned with the competitive aspects of the game, like advantages and disadvantages. “You can fudge around with some of the rules for the sake of game management,” says Currie. This doesn’t mean making up rules or not calling blatant fouls, but in the rulebooks much of what is considered a foul is left to the referee’s discretion. A skillful referee can enforce the rules in a way to ensure that the game runs smoothly, and to eliminate conflicts before they get out of hand. But, in sports, when emotions are running high confrontations are unavoidable and referees are usually the first targets of the frustration of the players, coaches, and fans.

“Everybody and their mother thinks it’s the goddamn Superbowl,” says Currie. In the past year he has been physically attacked twice during games, both during Carnegie Mellon intramural games. The first time, earlier in the school year, he wasn’t actually the referee- he was the scorekeeper for a three-on-three basketball tournament with no referees. After one of the games he noticed that players on the losing team were being disruptive, and asked them to leave. One of them grabbed Currie by the neck, and started shaking him. The second time he was attacked was again at a CMU intramural basketball game, when a player Currie had ejected earlier came back and started pushing and hitting him.

Despite confrontations like these and just the day to day bruises from baseballs and pulled muscles that are a natural part of the work, Currie still loves his job and has even considered becoming a professional umpire. Becoming a professional umpire is similar to becoming a professional ball player. They go to a professional umpire school for about 5 weeks, where they are scouted, and then if they’re good, they can try and work their way up through the minor leagues and possibly into the major leagues. However, it's extremely competitive. For the 200 people that go to the school every year, there are only on average twelve openings in the minor leagues.

But for right now Currie is happy officiating local high school games. The basketball season is winding down, and Currie is looking forward to the change of sports that comes with spring. “I can’t wait until baseball starts,” he says, practicing the umpire’s trademark strike three hand gestures.

Post-er Positions

Pittsburgh City Paper, September 16, 2004

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A27975

Matt Toups, a Carnegie Mellon student, planned to drive from Pittsburgh to New York City to attend the protests leading up to the Republican National Convention. He was going up a few days early to help out with the NYC Indymedia Center, and their website, NYC Indymedia. NYC Indymedia is part of a network of Indymedia chapters around the world, which allow anyone to publish news and commentary of events going on in their area. NYC Indymedia planned to have breaking news coverage from the convention protests. The day he was supposed to leave, he got distracted.

“I’m not sure when we’re going to leave now,” he said, holding the telephone. “Apparently I’m being investigated by the Secret Service...”

The anonymous post on NYC Indymedia that started the Secret Service investigation came on August 18, and provided a list of the names and addresses of delegates to the Republican National Convention, along with what hotel each would be staying in during the convention in New York City. The post contained no threats or calls for actions. The objectives stated by the person posting the information were simply to “Supply anti-RNC groups with data on the delegates to use in whatever way they see fit” and to “facilitate making local connections. Many of these delegates are involved in politics and business on a town or county level.” Also, the information on the delegates, who were elected in their home states’ primaries, is publicly available on many Republican websites. One issue of the New York Times before the convention even included a map showing what hotels the delegates were staying at.

The next day, according to the American Civil Liberties Union’s spokesperson, Emily Whitfield, the United States Secret Service phoned Nicholas Merrill, president of Calyx Internet Access, the internet service provider for NYC Indymedia. The Secret Service (which, to the ACLU’s knowledge, has not yet investigated the Republican websites or the New York Times for providing this information on public figures) asked Merrill to give them the names, any contact information, and any billing records he had for the people running the site, as well as any web logs for the post with the delegates’ information. He told them that he wouldn’t give them any information without a subpoena.

On August 20, Merrill received a subpoena commanding him to appear before a Grand Jury to testify about an alleged violation of laws against voter intimidation. The subpoena also contained a request from the U.S. Attorney. It stated, “The Government hereby requests that you voluntarily refrain from disclosing the existence of the subpoena to any third party” and “if you intend to disclose the existence of this subpoena to a third party, please let me know before making any such disclosure.” It was too late though, after the first phone call from the Secret Service, Merrill had phoned the American Civil Liberties Union and emailed the four NYC Indymedia system administrators he had contact information for.

Although Matt Toups lives in Pittsburgh, he is one of the system administrators for the NYC site. Not every Indymedia chapter has a tech expert, so there is a global tech group, made up of technologically inclined Indymedia members from around the world who divvy up responsibilities for maintaining the sites among themselves. Toups also works on the Pittsburgh Indymedia site (which this reporter used to help out with).

Because Toups was the only one of the NYC Indymedia system administrators who would be in New York, before Merrill’s scheduled grand jury appearance, working with the ACLU he served as Indymedia’s umm… media spokesperson.

Calyx was hosting the NYC Indymedia site for free, so of the information the Secret Service asked for the only information Merrill had was four email addresses. The ACLU, with the permission of the four men, sent the U.S. Attorney’s office a letter with the email addresses. Then they went to the press. The New York Times was the first to run the story last Monday and the following day Toups did interviews with The Washington Post and CNN. Wired ran an article interviewing Merrill.

“They had nothing to hide,” says Whitfield about the Indymedia activists. “The post to Indymedia was clearly political speech, clearly not threatening, and clearly not inciting violence.”

And they literally did have nothing to hide. NYC Indymedia has a policy of not logging the Internet addresses of contributors to the site and so had no way of knowing who posted the information on the delegates.

According to Toups, “We’re trying to create a space that’s safe for dissent and to do that we protect people’s anonymity. We do have standards about illegal content and threats and we have policies to deal with that.” Toups compares Indymedia’s anonymity policy with that of professional journalists who protect the identity of their confidential sources.

In The New York Times, a senior Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was quoted as saying, “When you're confronted with something like this, you can't just ignore it. I think people would expect us to look into it and find out whether there is anything going on here that goes beyond the bounds of free speech.” Shortly after the national press generated by this story had made it clear that many people did not expect the Justice Department “to look into it” and were actually somewhat surprised that it was, the government responded to the ACLU’s letter by saying that Merrill no longer had to appear before the Grand Jury, although technically the investigation still underway.

Recently it seems that the Justice Department and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force have spent a lot of time “looking into” what appear to be people who are legally expressing their first amendment right to criticize the government. Last February, the New York Times, published a classified FBI memo, which gave police detailed instructions on how to target and monitor lawful political demonstrations. Before, the Democratic National Convention, the FBI visited at least five people in Missouri and Colorado, asking if they were planning criminal activities during the conventions. One of them was a 21 year-old intern for the American Friends Service Committee, a Nobel Peace Prize winning group dedicated to pacifism. That group, according to a Colorado newspaper, was found to be categorized in police files as a “criminal extremist” organization.

Whitfield says that the ACLU believes that the real purpose of these investigations is to intimidate and harass peaceful protesters. That would help explain why the Secret Service, instead of contacting NYC Indymedia directly, contacted their Internet Service Provider. According to Whitfield, there have been many cases government agencies, instead of going straight to the people who are the subjects of these kinds of investigations, will question employers, business partners, parents, and school officials, asking for information that was easily available elsewhere, like current addresses or information on their political activities.

“They probably expected that Calyx would not allow us to keep the site up,” says Toups. “If it were just some random ISP that we didn’t have a good relationship with, and the Secret Service comes to the president of the company, that’s pretty intimidating. Someone else might have just decided not to host the site anymore.”

He says that the Secret Service investigation validates the open publishing model of Indymedia, which so far, still has the information on the RNC delegates up on the site. “Unfortunately, the United States is becoming an increasingly repressive and chilling environment for free speech. This safe space for dissent needs to be there.”