WCSB Sues Cleveland State, Alleging it Had 'Secret Plan' To Shut Station Down

Monday morning, supporters and ex-DJs of the axed college radio station WCSB filed a lawsuit against their former host, Cleveland State University, in county court.

In a 14-page complaint filed in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, WCSB DJs claim that CSU President Laura Bloomberg covertly schemed to quiet the station’s criticism by transferring the antenna to Ideastream.

And then, they allege, making it seem like a win-win situation: Ideastream gets a new terrestrial signal; CSU students get a swath of new internship opportunities.

Bloomberg “grew weary of the independent voices at WCSB, their nonconformist attitudes, their complaints about university operations and their protests against university policy,” the court document reads.

“At some unknown point as those protests were ramping up,” it states, CSU “began secret deliberations and discussions to sandbag WCSB with a plan to shut it down.”

The suit comes roughly three months after Bloomberg announced, on October 3, that WCSB’s offices off Chester Ave. would be vacated, after nearly five decades of broadcasting. And three months after former station manager Alison Bomgardner, who is one of the plaintiffs, was barred from the studio.

Well-attended protests, like the one that took place outside the City Club in mid-October, followed. Former DJs banded together around XCSB, a guerrilla recreation of the station — vowing to keep its programming alive, be it online or at weekly shows at the Happy Dog in Gordan Square.

But Monday’s filing marks the first serious legal involvement between the two entities. Bomgardner and crew are asking not only for transparency surrounding Bloomberg’s so-called plan—via the release of public records—but also for CSU to “invalidate” the operating agreement between them and Ideastream. (And return it to WCBS DJs.)

Their claim is that Bloomberg and Cleveland State knowingly violated civil rights law when it held supposed private talks, with and without Ideastream, to figure out how it could do away with WCSB. A “discriminatory” practice, the suit alleges, that targeted WCSB DJs “because of the content of their speech.”

If the suit progresses, Cleveland State could reach an agreement, or proceed to a trial by jury later this year or in 2027. Both CSU and Bomgardner refused to comment at length to Scene about the case.

If the DJs are successful, its possible that the thousands of items still locked on the fourth floor of the Campus International building—from Hungarian records to vintage comic books—would be returned to the students and volunteers that once had access to them.