On a chilly early March night, WMHC General Manager Valentina Rubio Lopez greeted me outside the Mount Holyoke College campus in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Bursting with love for radio, Rubio Lopez explained that an important part of their college selection criteria was that the school have a functioning radio station. The specific inspiration came from […]
In a 1947 letter to WPRU at Princeton University, Smith College student Betty Specht asks for advice about the feasibility of setting up a college radio station, writing that there is a feeling that they are, “very much out of the fashion by lacking this modern convenience.” Ensuing correspondence with other radio stations provides further […]
“This semester is our last semester in our current radio station, so we would love the opportunity to show off our wacky and wonderful space,” emailed WAMH-FM station manager Finley Liu in response to my request for a tour. With the clock ticking before the planned move, I was especially eager to visit the longtime […]
During lunchtime on a Thursday in early March, University of Massachusetts Amherst’s college radio station WMUA was buzzing with activity. Tables in the lobby were full of students working on laptops, eating and socializing, while the station’s two main studios (one for the 91.1 FM signal and another for streaming station WMUAx) were occupied by […]
“We desperately need this station! With every other campus on the air, it is a crying shame…After all, with a name like WNEC, what would seem more natural!” (The Westerner, 11/5/1969) In 1969, a columnist for the Western New England College student newspaper, The Westerner, noted the irony of the college not having a radio […]
Every college campus is an adventure, requiring advance planning on my part so that I am able to navigate as quickly as possible to radio stations that are often in hidden-away locations. Before my visit to Hampshire College radio station Yurt Radio, its staff advocate John Bruner emailed specific directions. In light of the recent […]
The Massachusetts legislature is considering a bill to make unlicensed broadcasting illegal, joining New York, New Jersey and Florida with state laws prohibiting pirate radio on the books. As John Anderson reports, the Massachusetts bill would not make it a crime, but rather permit the Attorney General to take legal action that may result in […]
