When former student broadcasters came flooding back into Happy Valley last March to celebrate "Fifty Years of Student Radio at Penn State," there was something in the air beside nostalgia and high frequency waves: a very real sense of anxiety about the future.

Their fears were fully realized at the end of last spring, when the Office of Student Affairs cut its funding to Penn State's lone voice in student radio, WKPS-FM (90.7), The Lion.

Some involved with the station cried censorship, citing the Radio Free Penn State talk show, which frequently criticizes both town and university, as the real target.

"Student Affairs would have to approve content of what goes out over the air on a student radio station," alleged Andy Nagypal, host of Radio Free Penn State, in an April 23 broadcast.

A dispute also remains unresolved over the actual time frame of the Student Affairs funding; specifically, whether the deal was supposed to be for three or five years.

The deal for administrative funding was brokered in 2000 under Bill Asbury, former vice president for Student Affairs. Station officers said the deal was for five years.

But when Asbury announced his retirement at the end of the 2003-04 academic year, the administration said those funds were only guar-anteed until that time period.

Former station general manager Dan Hausmann said Vicky Triponey, Asbury's replacement, informed him in an April 7 meeting that Student Affairs would no longer be supporting the station financially. University officials would not say why they chose not to renew the deal.

Director of Union and Student Activities Stan Latta, who provided The Lion with its current space in the HUB, denied the allegations of censorship. Latta was also involved in the discussions with Asbury and The Lion's representatives.

"I offered to meet in the spring to help them prepare their proposal to UPAC [University Park Allocation Committee]. No one came to me," he said. "I'm trying to help the station as much as I can, but I can't run it myself. If that's not support and appreciation for what they're doing, then someone needs to tell me what I'm doing wrong, because I can't figure that out."

The station is trying to fill the funding gap by applying to UPAC for support, working toward establishing an endowment fund and launching an aggressive campaign to solicit advertising from local businesses.

The latter was led by alumni John Raynar and Mike Walsh, both members of The Lion's Alumni Interest Group (AIG), which functions essentially as a lobbying group.

As the liaison between students and alumni of Penn State student radio, Walsh said it disturbs him to see the hoops that current students have to jump through just to get on the air, especially considering the equipment and upkeep costs that make student radio a far more expensive proposition than most other student organizations.

"I have no problem putting up a fight, but the kids who come after me have day-to-day issues of running the station that take up all their time and they're not getting any compensation for that," he said.

As for the real world experience working in student radio offers, Walsh said there is no equal. Raynar works as an account executive for Clear Channel Communications in Pittsburgh, and has such a good relationship with students here that he actually made a few sales for the station personally.

Bob Zimmerman, a former student broadcaster and current president of The Lion's AIG, added that he is grateful for the learning experience student radio gave him. For students planning a career in that field after graduation, it is a priceless opportunity, he said.

"When it came time to get a job, the person that hired me didn't care what degree I had; he asked how much experience I had," he said. "They never asked for my transcript."

Hausmann said Triponey also told him that The Lion would have to abandon programming the administration found unappealing if it were to be funded by Student Affairs.

Sometimes labeled as a conservative program, Radio Free Penn State ran with this as the motive behind the funding cuts in an April 23 broadcast, saying that no group is immune to or should be protected from criticism. One of the hosts even compared Triponey's alleged statement about content control to a scene in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam, in which Army spin doctors pick and choose which news stories can be published.

When contacted, Triponey deferred to Latta to respond to this allegation.

"Some of their shows are controversial, but that's part of being in a college environment," Latta said. "Their funding was cut not because of content but because the agreement, in [Triponey's] mind, was over."

Clay Calvert, a professor in the College of Communications, concurred that the university is in no way violating The Lion's rights to free speech with its decision, assuming the cuts were not, in fact, because of content.

"The First Amendment doesn't provide you with a radio station; the government, in this case the university, is under no obligation to provide you with that," he said. "In terms of free speech issues, the university's under no obligation to provide funding to any group. If it were based on content, that would be a problem."

Calvert added that the dispute would probably never be resolved conclusively.

"It's almost like a divorce situation where one party says this and one party says that," he said. "Who wants to speculate where the truth is?"

However, University of Minnesota student station KOUM receives more than $100,000 in funding from the university each year, KOUM general manager Andy Marlow said. He said that students match this amount through their activity fees.

Marlow said the station usually collects about $100,000 a year through on-air fundraising and listener support, and $80,000 a year from underwriting.

This kind of funding is necessary because the station employs 23 students and five full-time professionals, the latter of which guarantee another grant from the non-profit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, he said.

Should their university decide to cut off its funding, Marlow said at least one full-timer would have to be cut, which in turn would result in the station losing that grant. From there, he said he doesn't think the station could survive.

"It'd be pretty drastic," he said. "Even though our budget is fairly big, we live pretty close to the edge financially. It would be catastrophic."

With regard to the state of The Lion, Marlow said it seems like a pretty tough situation.

"I think one thing that does help is to have listeners and groups you can have relationships with on the campus to yell as loud as they possibly can about what kind of damage not having the radio station is going to do to them," he said.

Zimmerman said he thinks it would be a great idea to employ a professional staff at The Lion to handle day-to-day affairs that students have neither the time nor experience to manage themselves.

"Students don't understand raising money; I didn't either when I was a student," he said. "None of this will work unless they have a professional adviser who will oversee them, even if for nothing more than continuity. Students are here for four years and then they're gone. Someone has to be the interweaving person."

Like Marlow, Zimmerman realizes that employing a professional staff isn't possible without some help. Latta has said repeatedly that the deal with The Lion is expired and will not be renewed. And the only reason he would offer was simply that.

"The bottom line is they're not going to get any additional funding from the vice president's office this year," Latta said, adding that he would do anything else he could to help the station.

Walsh attempted to clear up the dispute over the funding deal on the May 6 Radio Free Penn State show in which Latta participated. He called in to the station claiming to have e-mail documentation between Lion officers at the time that indicated the funding deal was in fact for five years.

Walsh said that because he also forwarded the e-mail messages to people in Student Affairs and was never rebuked or corrected, he had no reason to believe that he was mistaken.

"If I'm Stan Latta or Bill Asbury and someone thinks I'm giving them an extra five grand, I would try to correct him," he said. "I think it would be important to try to set that person straight. At the very least, they're incompetent."

Walsh said his skepticism of the administration's bias-free stance grew when he approached Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon about added exposure for the station.

Mahon denied Walsh's request to add The Lion to the Penn State Live Web site, which provides links to live streams from both the WPSU and ComRadio stations.

Walsh claims the station was denied the spot because of ads it ran for the End Zone strip club -- which he said were FCC legal -- and he pointed out that similar ads have run in other mediums in the area.

However, Mahon denied the allegation that his decision was swayed by The Lion's content.

"I certainly don't care for some of the station's advertising and content but it's not the deciding factor," he said. "I don't understand his argument. We took the two largest of the many Penn State radio stations and those are the two that we're using. You can already listen to [The Lion] anywhere in the world on the Web. We think two radio stations is fine for our subscribers."

But Walsh is convinced that the administration's stranglehold on both funding and exposure is nothing more than an attempt at containment.

"As far as I know, all we've ever done is be critical of the administration and we're not alone in that," he said. "Since we don't play ball with them the way they want us to, they're not going to give us funding anymore."

Zimmerman said he doesn't believe that the administration is doing all it could.

"That's the standard bureaucratic answer," he said. "The deal expired, so renew it!"

Aaron Wright (sophomore-secondary English education), a Jam 91 DJ and The Lion's program director, pointed out that in making programs like Radio Free Penn State lightning rods for controversy and tools for placing blame, people are forgetting that if the station were to shut down, a host of music programming would be lost.

Michael Broadbent (junior-English), The Lion's general manager, added that college radio is on the forefront of music, so it would be a great loss for students if they didn't have the opportunity to be exposed to such diversity.

"If you look at who the officers are this year, the diversity is in not just skin color but there's real ideological diversity at the station," Walsh said. "To me, that's real diversity."

"All I wanted to do was work for a radio station," said Terenia Thomas (senior-marketing), head of promotions for The Lion and also a Jam 91 DJ. "But to find out the relationship with the administration and to see that they're treating it like this is sad. Basically, they're trying to tell us our radio station means nothing."