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We’ll get back to the music on 120 Minutes in just a moment, but first, it’s 12:30 and it’s time to check the news, for this week, October 11th.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on Wednesday that WCSB, which was the student-run radio station at Cleveland State University for the past 50 years, was abruptly pulled off the air last Friday when CSU’s board of trustees transferred the ownership of WCSB’s frequency in Northeast Ohio to a company called Ideastream Media, which immediately replaced the human-curated programming of the station with an automated loop of jazz music. Ideastream had made a deal with CSU to offer internships, and in exchange, CSU handed over control of the FM station, ending 50 years of local music history in an instant with no warning.

The students at WCSB who operated the station were blindsided by the news, with Cleveland State only informing them of the shutdown in a brief Zoom call that happened after they had already pulled WCSB’s programming off the air. The sudden cancellation sparked outrage in the community at CSU and around Cleveland, with multiple protests and events mourning the loss of WCSB being held this week. For its part, the CSU administration seemed not to care, with CSU president Laura Bloomberg issuing a statement that said the Ideastream deal is part of CSU’s strategic plan.

At a time when many other organizations have begun to capitulate to increasing political pressure, WCSB was known for standing strong in its beliefs. The former station’s Instagram account, now known as XCSB Cleveland, showed that the organization valued giving back to the community, specifically making a point of offering local music events at no cost to attendees, and members of the organization were outspoken about political issues.

WCSB’s general manager was an out trans woman, and the station appears to have prided itself on publicly standing up for the rights of minorities, often using its platform to directly challenge anti-diversity actions taken by CSU as a result of recent legislation in Ohio, as well as holding advocacy events around campus for various social causes. At this time, it’s unclear whether the public disconnect between WCSB and Cleveland State’s administration had anything to do with it getting abruptly pulled off the air.

WRUW, another radio station in Cleveland run by Case Western Reserve University, has vowed to help fill the void left behind by the loss of WCSB, offering to share available time slots with its former members.

In other news, Kentucky’s House Bill 4, passed earlier this year, continues to rear its head in new and interesting ways as the University of Kentucky sent out a government-mandated voluntary survey to all staff members on Thursday about “Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity”. However, the survey only contains 4 multiple-choice questions about the level of exposure to and freedom to express ideological and political viewpoints, with no delineation between what kind of viewpoints those might be, and no opportunity for respondents to elaborate. According to the trade publication Insight into Academia, a professor at the University of Louisville said “poorly constructed surveys can lead to misleading data and policy decisions based on unreliable findings.”

Finally tonight, the New York Times reported on Wednesday that Donald Trump once again renewed his attacks on free speech this week, bragging in extraordinary and false remarks that he “took the freedom of speech away”, at the same time that his ICE and Border Patrol agents continue to terrorize people in Chicago and arrest journalists for reporting on the scene. He claimed that he signed an executive order making it a crime punishable by a year in prison to set fire to an American flag. “But the actual order he signed, prepared by his legal staff, said nothing of the sort. Instead, it acknowledges a 1989 Supreme Court ruling that protesting government policies, even if onlookers may find that conduct offensive, is political expression protected by the First Amendment.”

And that’s… the news.