KUT Relocates Festival as UT Points Fingers

The surprise decision to relocate this weekend’s inaugural KUT Festival out of its long-planned home on the University of Texas campus and to two venues in East Austin has left the Austin NPR affiliate struggling on two fronts: first, in trying to rebuild their entire event with almost no notice, and secondly, in a war of words with the UT administration.

The event, combining music, community, and conversations with public figures about issues facing Central Texas, was first announced last November. The initial plan was for two days of events at both indoor and outdoor venues around the college campus. Instead, the schedule has been largely reduced to one full day, May 2, at the Eastside Ballroom and Central Machine Works. The only event happening on the UT campus will be an opening evening event on May 1 at the LBJ Presidential Library featuring U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, Morning Edition co-host Leila Fadel, and Latino USA host Maria Hinojosa. While the library is located on the UT campus, it is not actually part of UT, but is instead a federal museum run by the National Archives and Records Administration.

So what happened? On April 28, Anita L. Vangelisti, interim dean of the Moody College of Communication, wrote to festival speakers that “our analysis has identified key areas where KUT provided insufficient planning for safety measures, including security, health, fire, and emergency services.” She added that, with the agreement of KUT and the UT administration, the community elements were being moved off-campus.

KUT Director and General Manager Debbie Hiott sent her own follow-up email that stressed that the station had worked closely with UT on all issues since the beginning of planning, and had only been told of the university’s concerns on April 22. Moreover, they said they had not been provided the list of supposed deficiencies, nor been allowed to meet with the relevant administrators to discuss if the issue was fixable. Instead, Hiott wrote that UT “ordered KUT to cancel the outdoor portions of the events” on April 24, before agreeing to the relocation.

Hiott’s letter clearly rattled some cages on the highest floors of the UT Tower, as Amanda Cochran-McCall, UT’s vice-president for legal affairs and general counsel, fired back with an angry missive saying, “Contrary to your public statements, it was false to assert that you and your staff agreed to every health, security, and safety request made of KUT.” (If that name seems familiar, it’s because Cochran-McCall, a former senior staffer to Attorney General Ken Paxton, was named last year in a discrimination lawsuit filed by former UTPD Chief of Police Eve Stephens.)

Cochran-McCall claimed that KUT had either rejected, ignored, or made insufficient efforts to redress multiple concerns raised by the university. Those claims were quickly and firmly rejected by KUT leadership. In an interview with KUT news staff, Hiott actually noted that on April 22, the day that UT started claiming major insufficiencies, Sgt. Brian Schlather of UTPD had conducted a walk-through with festival staff and told them that “all the university’s recommendations had been met.” So what could have possibly changed between Schlather’s thumbs up and the administration’s thumbs down?

That change has caused a huge amount of work for the news outlet’s staff as well as for their production partners at award-winning event planners, the Panacea Collective. It’s also meant they’ve had to refund paid badges, instead allowing attendees to apply for a free pass.

The tension between the station and the university is unprecedented. KUT actually started in the 1920s as a project of members of the university’s physics department that ran for a few years before the cost of running the station became too much. The name was resurrected in 1958 when the university gained an FM broadcast license and launched KUT-FM. Throughout that second era, KUT and its sister station, KUTX, have been based on the UT campus. KUT was a core partner in the construction of the Dealey Center for New Media, which also houses UT’s School of Journalism and Media, and its purpose-built studios are located there. Onlookers are now wondering whether the administration’s current attitude toward the station is just temporary static or signals another offensive in the right-wing culture war against public and local media. 

For now, the KUT Festival will continue as an off-campus experience. Info and free community events pass registration can be found at cvent.utexas.edu.

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