A biology teacher once told me that major changes in biological theory could only occur periodically when the dominant people in the field died, which was to say that as long as the old-timers were around, they would suppress, through their control of the academic journals and so forth, new and challenging ideas.

The same thing is true in individual college radio stations. Major changes in a college radio station's philosophy and operation can only occur when the dominant figures of the radio station either graduate or move, making room for newer agents of change to usher in their new agendas.

From the perspective of being an agent of change in your college radio station, obviously you want the old-timers to step aside so that you can have your chance at bat.

And thus it should be with a college radio station. I do believe that college radio stations should remain at all times under the control of the current students participating at the radio station. In other words I think that alumni and community folks should not be those steering the course of the radio station, however I will stress in another essay how very important the presence of alumni and community folks are to a college radio station.

So the plan here is quite simple. You, as a motivated DJ, would like to rise in the ranks of your college radio station to promote creativity in music and programming; ideally, when the upperclassmen graduate, you should have a chance to do so.

This begs the question, then of what is to stop another upstart younger than you from wrecking everything you worked for and destroying the creativity ethic of your college radio station? There are two very good answers to this question:

1) The simple superiority of the creativity ethic. If you succeed in getting your college radio station to function on the idea of creativity of music and programming, your station will be so much better that what preceded it that there won't be anything for a younger change agent to do, and if there is, it really will be for the better. This is to say that it would be difficult for a person to get a station and all its personnel to change from something great (what you did) to something lame.

2) DJ training, DJ training, DJ training! It will not be hard to convince trainees the superiority of the creativity ethic in college radio. A thorough training course should introduce and sufficiently 'wow' trainees in to loving what your station is doing and simultaneously enlighten or filter out those always present who want to turn your station into a quasi-commercial format station.