Celebrate College Radio Day With ESU

By Melissa Valentovic

 

Tomorrow between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., ESU’s campus radio station WESS will be hosting a celebration open to ESU students as well as the community in honor of the fourth annual College Radio Day.

The event is internationally referred to as World College Radio Day.

WESS’s College Radio day celebration will be taking place on the Shawnee Quad, where the event goers can have food, play games and win prizes, including a dunk tank with students and faculty advisor to WESS and the Communications Studies department chair Dr. Rob McKenzie in it.

The radio station was awarded the MTV University Woodie award for “Best College Radio Station” in the spring of 2014.

WESS hosted a celebration last year as well, where the radio station members DJ’d the event outside of the University Center, as they handed out College Radio Day and WESS merchandise to passers-by.

What makes this year’s College Radio Day different, however, is that the music is live with performances from artists who have performed at other WESS live music events, most recently at their Spring Jam event in March.

These acts will include rock group The Paper Jets, hip-hop and spoken word artist Shaka Ptah, rapper Substance, grunge group Gape, and others.

The United States’ College Radio Day was held for the first time in 2011, and was created by fellow 2014 Woodie Award nominated William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J.

World College Radio Day was inspired by the USA College Radio Day.

The event’s popularity increased and other countries wanted to showcase their college radio stations as well, leading to the worldwide celebration initially created by Rob Quicke, Tiziana Cavallo and Guillermo Gaviria in 2012. .

According to World College Radio Day’s website, as of 2013 700 college and university radio stations from across 43 countries united to participate and, “to celebrate the importance of student radio.”

WESS Music Director and junior communications studies major Connor Scovil is excited for the event to showcase the station all day.

Scovil said what he is looking forward to about the event most is, “being able to show the best that 90.3 WESS has to offer the community as well as the university to which we belong.”

An added bonus of the event for Scovil will also being able to, “dunk his peers” in the dunk tank. “The opportunity to be able to soak my fellow WESS members is too good of an opportunity for me to pass up!”

 

Email Melissa at:

mvalentovi@live.esu.edu