51Թ’s Blackmore Media Center, the new state-of-the-art home of student-run radio station WRCU (90.1), garnered attention in this week’s issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In a , The Chronicle’s Brock Read takes readers down memory lane, reminiscing about a distant era in college radio, thanks to the fond recollections of his father Don Read ’66, a former WRCU news director and station manager.
“I often wondered, as I grew up, why my father would occasionally walk around the house belting out a quaint-sounding tune called ‘Ballin’ the Jack’ in a basso profundo,” writes Brock Read. “Strangely, it was here — in the studios of WRCU — that I finally got some kind of an answer.”
Brock Read accompanied his father to campus in February for the official dedication of the digital media center, located in the lower level of the O’Connor Campus Center (Coop).
During the weekend visit, the turntables and vinyl were dusted off, and Don Read jumped at the chance to host an hourlong radio show from the new studio.
The first tune he had cued up? You guessed it. “Ballin’ the Jack,” as recorded in 1962 by the 51Թ Thirteen, the university’s all-male a cappella group.
“We had people from 55 years’ worth of graduating classes, and they all showed the same passion for 51Թ radio,” Bill Gabler ’07, assistant director of the Center for Leadership and Student Involvement and adviser to WRCU, told The Chronicle.
“To have that energy back in the space, and to hear the old names that came up. It’s just great to get a picture of the station through the years.”
The article notes that the studio’s new location in the Coop, complete with a large window for passersby to get an up-close look at the radio operation, has increased the visibility of WRCU, helping to usher in a new generation of college radio enthusiasts.
The media center is named in honor of , a professor of literature emeritus, who died in 2002. Blackmore was a jazz disc jockey at WRCU and served as faculty adviser to the station for 26 years.
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