The signal at KBOO-FM, Portland's community radio station,
comes through loud and clear. But the closer you listen,
the more static you hear.
Last month community activist Sean Cruz resigned from
the station's board of directors, lambasting an "inbred,
all-white, arrogant little clique" that dominates the
board and creates "impossible working conditions" for
the station's dedicated staff.
"The worst of these working conditions is the direct
result of the actions of individual members of the board
and its committees, who harass staff members and destroy
morale as routinely as if it were part of the job description,"
Cruz fumed in a letter to station manager Alan Baily.
In his letter, Cruz says he's frustrated that the station's
power structure has ignored Latino issues. In an interview
with WW, however, it became clear that Cruz's
complaints are more far-reaching.
Cruz's frustration with the board had been bubbling
ever since he attended his first meeting in 1997, when
a board member plunked down a couple of six-packs on
the conference table, sparking a protracted dispute
about whether board members had a right to drink beer
while they discussed the station's business.
A Latino Christian dedicated to drug and alcohol issues,
Cruz never quite felt at home at KBOO, the kind of place
where crystals outnumber crucifixes and "conservative"
is a four-letter word. But the last straw was a dispute
between development director Kay Bridge, one of KBOO's
nine paid staff members, and two board members during
the station's American Indian Word & Music Festival
and Annual Book & Record Sale, held last month.
By most accounts, the outdoor event, which featured
live performances and speeches, was a great success
except for one small glitch: there was no food provided
for the four Native American elders present. According
to Cruz, board members Ani Haines and Melodie Silverwolf
upbraided Bridge in public for her cultural insensitivity
in failing to feed the elders, even though Bridge had
no budget for refreshments.
To Cruz, the incident highlighted the staff's impossible
working conditions and the board's imperious attitude.
When the board refused to order an investigation into
the event, he resigned.
Station manager Baily says Cruz's resignation is "extremely
unfortunate," but thinks he's overreacting. "There are
always tensions between the board of directors and staff
in any nonprofit organization, and KBOO is not exempt
from that," Baily says. "Kay put on a wonderful event.
She was under incredible pressure. Some other people
intervened to deal with the situation. It was not an
attack on Kay. They just got the people their food and
that was it. I think it's a pretty minor issue, frankly."
It may have been minor, but Cruz's resignation seems
to have hit a nerve at KBOO, an institution so fractious
it makes the Oregon Legislature look like a Mormon choir.
In the past week, WW has received several unsolicited
calls from KBOO volunteers eager to tell their side
of the story, including one caller who insisted on anonymity
and then asked a series of questions about WW's
sources for the article while taping the conversation.
During the past two years, the fractious atmosphere
has led several staff members to quit in frustration.
"I was treated worse than I have ever been treated in
my life," says Suzanne White, who was station manager
for 18 months until she resigned in 1997. "The board
makes it very difficult to do your job."
White, like others, says the real problem is not individual
board members, but the board structure. "It's set up
like a hippie co-op," she says. "You can't get anything
done."
Radio engineer Robert Rogers, who has volunteered at
KBOO since 1969, describes current board members as
"control freaks" and "paranoid."
But board member Alan Graf says the dispute is simply
an example of "the pain of democracy at KBOO."
"We're not going downhill," he told WW. "We
argue a lot. If that's newsworthy, great. But things
are actually going pretty good."
For her part, Bridge says she wants to stay with the
station, describing KBOO as a "challenging place to
work" because of its "creative, highly polarized environment."
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Willamette Week | originally
published October 6,
1999
