Students sue Cleveland State over Ideastream deal to program station

Students involved with Cleveland State University radio station WCSB filed a civil lawsuit Monday aiming to reverse the university’s decision to replace the station’s student-run programming with a 24/7 jazz stream programmed by Cleveland’s Ideastream Public Media.

The lawsuit filed in a Cuyahoga County court alleges that CSU violated state law and the students’ free speech rights when it made the programming switch in October. The suit’s listed plaintiffs are WCSB, station GM Alison Bomgardner and Friends of XCSB, a nonprofit created to “promote and protect independent broadcasting in Cleveland,” the lawsuit states. Its listed defendants are CSU, university President Laura Bloomberg and the school’s board of trustees. 

The lawsuit claims the defendants knowingly deprived the plaintiffs of their constitutional First Amendment rights by forcibly removing them from the airwaves, shutting down WCSB’s website and confiscating their property, including thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, supplies, music and other media paid for by station members. 

It also claims CSU’s board of trustees broke Ohio’s Open Meetings Act by not deliberating about the partnership in open meetings. Additionally, it claims the university violated the state’s public records act by refusing the plaintiffs’ request for access to public records detailing the nature of CSU’s partnership with Ideastream. 

CSU representatives have yet to respond to a request for comment. 

The lawsuit states that relations between the student-run station and the university had grown strained in recent years, as CSU withheld WCSB’s allotted funds through the university’s Center for Campus Engagement, cut communications with the WCSB student organization and ended payments for WCSB employees. 

The plaintiffs allege that Bloomberg and CSU “grew weary” of independent student voices as they protested the university’s actions and policies on campus and spoke out against CSU on WCSB’s airwaves. It states that Bloomberg secretly began plans to transfer the station to another broadcaster. 

Cleveland.com reported in November that talks between Ideastream and CSU began over six months before the university unveiled the partnership and that students involved with WCSB were excluded due to a nondisclosure agreement. Ideastream CEO Kevin Martin previously told Current that NDAs are standard for negotiations regarding proprietary information of terrestrial radio operations. 

Ideastream and the university’s board of trustees authorized the partnership Oct. 3. The agreement gave Bloomberg a seat on Ideastream’s board of trustees and promised to create student internships with Ideastream. 

The plaintiffs allege that Bloomberg abruptly informed Bomgardner and other students in two meetings on the same day. After the meetings concluded, the university revoked student access to the airwaves and shut down the WCSB website, which Bomgardner had paid for, the lawsuit states.  

The complaint also alleges that Bloomberg called campus police on students at WCSB shortly after the meetings, who “forced the students out of their space, banned them from returning and threatened them with arrest if they did not comply.” CSU has since barred the plaintiffs from collecting their belongings from the space, according to the lawsuit.

In addition to invalidating the partnership between CSU and Ideastream, the lawsuit seeks to require the defendants to make all requested public records available to the public and to pay for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees, damages and other costs. The plaintiffs are demanding a trial by jury.