After stepping down from his position as general manager at WKDI last semester, Tukoi Jarrett watched silently from the sidelines as his radio empire crumbled.

The Student Association asked Jarrett to resign from his position after he used student funds to bring his wife Lisa Jarrett along with him and other WKDI employees to a conference in New York last year. Tukoi Jarrett paid back the money over the summer.

He expected things to brighten for the station soon after, but he was wrong.

“WKDI has for all intensive purposes been shut down,” Jarrett said.

That’s a fact he blames partly on the SA’s refusal to allow another student to take up the position of general manager once it was left open.

“It’s really odd that we had one SA president who wanted to fix up the station, now [SA President Kevin Miller] seems to want to tear it down and start one himself,” Jarrett said.

Miller responded to the claims made by Jarrett by saying that they are looking into getting an FM license right now, but denied any plans on forming a senator-headed committee.

“I don’t know where that information comes from,” Miller said. “I am in no way qualified to run a station, and would not get any personal gain from it.”

Tim Emmons, former WKDI faculty adviser, has not heard any word of a senator’s involvement in a new NIU station either.

“Jaime Salgado [SA director of student life] did ask me for contact information for a consulting engineer to find frequencies, but they didn’t tell me what for,” Emmons said.

Emmons went on to say that it is his understanding that the SA could be at work putting together a report on the situation, to either document what happened in the past, or what may happen in the future.

Jarrett, who said he has been bombarded with questions on a daily basis from students curious about the status of the station, is troubled by a recent rumor that the SA has chosen a specific, un-named senator to head a committee in search of an FM license for a new NIU radio station.

“If they had done background checking, they would have realized that it is almost downright impossible to get a license,” Jarrett said.

Curious as to why the new committee has not yet approached any former WKDI employees for tips or insight on how to go ahead with a new station, Jarrett warned that the acquisition of a license for an FM frequency would cost more than $1 million.

Delving into other, more controversial money matters, Jarrett addressed WKDI’s financial problems by saying that the situation ultimately was taken out of employee hands.

The SA kept the station’s funds frozen up to the end, Jarrett said. The station never had a chance to pay what it owed, he said.

“We had all of maybe one week to have the ability to cut checks,” Jarrett said. “What are you going to do when your organization is frozen?”

Although his relationship with college radio has ended for the time being, Jarrett would like to help anyone who has an interest in bringing music back to the campus airwaves.

“I want the students to know that we have always been on campus to serve them,” Jarrett said. “What’s been going on as of late is serving no one.”