Civil Rights Radio Hour

The popular NPR show This American Life served as the model for a semester-long radio project created by the students in Professor Patrick Schmidt’s political science class “U.S. Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.”

The 25 students were asked to produce a project that would raise public awareness of constitutional law, be original, and be ambitious and well done.

With that charge, they decided to produce a radio show called “Get up, Stand Up, PROTEST!” because “We liked the idea of producing something we could get to the public,” says sophomore economics major Jessica Baier (Seeley Lake, Montana), a member of the production team.

The 25 students were asked to produce a project that would raise public awareness of constitutional law, be original, and be ambitious and well done.

Minnesota Public Radio turned them down, but MPR reporter Sasha Aslanian suggested the students put their show up on prx.org, a public radio exchange for amateur radio pieces. Aslanian, the daughter of Macalester economics professor Paul Aslanian, also gave them advice on how to produce a more professional sounding radio program.

The nearly hour-long show is divided among three segments: the seminal Supreme Court cases over flag burning; freedom of speech in the schools, featuring an interview with the now middle-aged woman who as a Des Moines high school student took her Vietnam armband protest all the way to the Supreme Court; and the Republican National Convention 8 protesters, whose trial is set for this spring.

The radio program, like the civil rights and liberties class it was produced for, represents a wide variety of opinions on the issues. Says Baier, “Professor Schmidt is passionate about us developing our own constitutional interpretations. You wouldn’t believe how intense our discussions get.”