wcallogotnFrom the outset, the long-running legal dispute over the radio station now known as Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current featured intimacies and conflicts that verged on the familial. Some of the people upset by St. Olaf College’s sale of the former WCAL-FM to MPR are St. Olaf alums (also known as Oles), and some of the decision-makers at MPR and St. Olaf were kissing cousins of a sort. Now SaveWCAL’s case is headed to the state Court of Appeals and a panel that includes Judge David Minge, a former congressman … and an Ole.

Will Minge recuse himself from a case shot through with St. Olaf associations? “It’s academic,” Minge told the Minnesota Independent, after consulting his calendar: He’ll be on vacation that day (really a work-related trip to speak at another educational institution), so a fill-in judge will have to be found.

Before checking his schedule and thereby sparing all concerned more Ole angst, Minge told MnIndy he hadn’t yet heard that his panel had been assigned the case. But the college connection would likely make him think about recusing, he said: “I’d look at that very seriously.”

Minge’s assignment to the Current/WCAL case was dumb luck. Court of appeals judges aren’t vetted for possible conflicts before they are randomly assigned cases on panels determined by drawing names from a hat, said court spokesman Kyle Christopherson.

SaveWCAL contends that WCAL, the nation’s first listener-supported station and one not affiliated with MPR, was a charitable trust under law, obligating the station’s owner, St. Olaf, to get a court’s okay before selling it. Oral arguments in the SaveWCAL’s appeal are set for Oct. 27, with a ruling due by early next year.

Minge, a DFLer who left the U.S. House after losing his race for a fifth term in 2001, was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Gov. Jesse Ventura in 2002. He is the second Ole with congressional credentials to largely sidestep college-related controversy this year. In May, St. Olaf students planning to protest the views of commencement speaker U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen (Class of 1987) opted for a silent demonstration.