Introduction | ||||||
When you undertake a senior thesis, you start with a main idea. This was Christy Grier's: that Radio Marti-the United States-funded radio station that broadcasts from Miami to Cuba-was a worthwhile venture that deserved even more government backing. Grier '97 thought her thesis would be a relatively straightforward matter of collecting information about an enterprise with which she was sympathetic-her mother is Cuban-American, and many of Grier's relatives live in Miami. But as she dug into her research, she found out that the workings of Radio Marti, like those of any political organization, are anything but straightforward. Where she ended up was a long way from where she began. In the summer after her junior year, Grier held a job at the CIA, where her father is employed. It was then, while she used agency databases to research the station, that she first realized the complexity of the project "Radio Marti was created by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to combat communism," she says, "but over the years, the Cuban community [in Miami] influenced the broadcasting material, and the U.S. government felt their influence was too great." Nevertheless, during the election year of 1996, when both Republicans and Democrats were courting Cuban-American voters, Radio Marti was moved from Washington, D.C., to Miami. This concession to the Cuban-American community "was a huge issue," says Grier. You can't research Radio Marti long before the name of Jorge Mas Canosa comes up. Mas Canosa [who died more than a year after this was written] was the Cuban-American who urged Reagan to create the station. He is chair of the Marti Advisory Board, which oversees broadcasts to Cuba via Radio and TV Marti. He is also head of the powerful Cuban-American National Foundation, a lobbying group founded in 1981 to raise money and political support for the group's fight against communism and Fidel Castro. In addition to using college and CIA libraries to do her research, Grier conducted a survey of 200 Cuban-Americans in Miami, which she segmented into age groups. "I asked them if they supported Jorge, and if they supported Radio Marti. Should the radio station be continued? Should it be privatized? And if so, what would they donate to it?" One of Grier's research advisors, Associate Professor of Political Science Ed Lynch, said Hollins professors directing theses encourage students to "get at the truth." They do this by urging students to poll various sources, weigh the value of evidence, bring skepticism to the reading of sources, and draw their own conclusions. "It's a lot like reading a mystery," he says. This story, written by Sarah Cox M.A. '87, appeared in the fall 1997 issue of HOLLINS magazine. |