Claire Montgomery
Senior News Writer
If you ask the WOO91 management team what resource they would like the most, the answer would be time. In an email sent to the campus community over the summer, Dean of Students Scott Brown announced that the College’s student-run radio station WCWS/WOO91 would be taken off the air, transitioning to a webcast-only operation. This decision was made with input from both administration and the Board of Trustees. At the beginning of the semester, the student management team was disappointed with the decision but looking to the future in order to better WOO91 as it moved to an online-only broadcast.
Now, the management team will not accept the changes without their input to the administration, asking for more time and transparency, as they have published a petition, conducted a survey, held a panel and have had several meetings with different members of the administration about the future of WOO91. Sam Royer ’19, general manager of WOO91, said, “After several conversations with our team as well as faculty and community members, we decided to ask the administration to put the sale of our license on hold indefinitely.”
A panel was hosted by the management team of WOO91 on Oct. 2. It began with each member of the student management team introducing themselves and explaining how they became involved in WOO91. It was then opened up to community members for their comments and thoughts. A common theme explored throughout the night was the personal commitment several participants had in their connection to radio. The stories included childhood dreams of becoming a radio host and hopes of following in their parent’s footsteps to become a radio DJ. Carter Rogers ’21, assistant sports manager, grew up listening to baseball. “Coming to a school where I have the opportunity to broadcast baseball games … means the world to me … and it’s not something you would find at a larger school. That’s the dream for me,” he said at the panel. Teagan Robinson ’19, a DJ on WOO91 followed that comment by saying, “I didn’t expect radio to be such a big part of my life in college.”
Before the panel was hosted, the WOO91 student management team began to circulate a petition called “Save the Wave.” The petition read, “While we [the WOO91 student management] have many concerns with how the station has been managed and how the Board of Trustees has handled its imminent termination, there are a few which must be addressed immediately.” Among the demands is the hold of the sale of WOO91’s FM license indefinitely as students and staff can explore alternatives. As of Oct. 5, the petition has amassed 1175 signatures.
In Royer’s opening statement at the panel, he first talked about the meeting that the WOO91 management team had with Brown before the end of last spring semester. “During our meeting with Dean Brown, we were informed that the Board of Trustees would be voting on our fate that June, meaning none of us would be able to [be] involved in discussions regarding the future the station we had worked so hard for. Returning to campus this semester, having lost four senior managers and our advisor, we began to discuss the future of our station as we saw it. After several conversations with our team as well as faculty and community members, we decided to ask the administration to put the sale of our license on hold indefinitely.”
Brown also spoke at the panel, acknowledging the amount of thought and care that students have put into their efforts into raising awareness about the future of WOO91. He continued that the question about the sale of the license was not new for the institution, saying that for the past 10 years there has been nothing but work done to try to keep WOO91 on air. “I want you to know that you’ve been heard,” said Brown, reiterating that the sale of WOO91 is not an “us vs. them” situation between administration and students.
That 10 years of discussions about the future of WOO91 have taken place was commented upon by Royer. “My question in response is: If these conversations have been going on for at least the past 10 years, why were the students who run the station themselves not informed of this discussion until a month before the decision to sell the license was made? For years, students have been the ones putting hard work into the station. Our automation system was built entirely by students and remains a student job to keep it updated. We have been running this station ourselves for those same 10 years, but somehow none of the former student general managers that I have spoken to have known anything about these discussions.”
When later following up with Brown for comments about the panel and any further steps that have been taken, Brown said, “I was very appreciative of all the thought and care that went into the panel and the efforts of the students. We know that this is a very meaningful aspect of the students who participate in the radio station and also the connections they make. All the personal stories underscored that very much. We met with the management team before break and will meet with them again this week, detailing some of the background information they requested, and [we are] working together to find the best ways to move forward into this next chapter.”
“I would say that these were the most productive meetings we have had so far,” said Royer. “During these meetings, we presented President [Sarah] Bolton and Dean Brown with binders containing a cover letter describing our work, the 1175 signatures we were able to get on our petition in a week’s time, an analysis of our survey results and letters from notable WOO91 alumni and current student DJs.”
Royer continued with an outline of the future steps student management will be taking in conjunction with administration. “We will be having more conversations with members of administration in the next few weeks to learn about the school’s efforts to keep WOO91 FCC compliant and on the airwaves. We are also asking for transparency regarding the finances behind our station … Ultimately, we hope to convince the Board of Trustees and administration that WOO91 is a valuable asset to this institution and that their decision to take it off the airwaves should be reversed. If our FM license ultimately does get sold, we are still asking them for time while we work on a properly functioning streaming platform.”
(Photo courtesy Sam Royer)