Hello everyone! I’m Louise, a senior here at Scripps, and today I want to tell you all about why I so passionately believe that you – yes, YOU – should join your college radio station. Since sophomore year, I have been a DJ on KSPC 88.7FM, the Claremont Colleges radio station. Through radio, I have had the chance to meet so many members of the Claremont Colleges community, as well as the larger Claremont area community.
First, a bit about our station. KSPC is an FM radio station, which if you aren’t a frequent radio listener, means that we play on your standard car radio if you’re within our relative area. This means that KSPC is public radio – not only does it serve the Claremont Colleges community, it is also listened to by the larger Claremont and Inland Empire population. We also have online streaming, and you can listen to all our shows online at KSPC.org. We’re worldwide!
We focus our programming on underrepresented artists in the music world. We want the listening experience to be more personal than an AI generated Spotify playlist – we want to introduce our listeners to musicians who aren’t listened to enough. This means you’re not getting top 50s hits on KSPC, and instead niche music from new and old artists. Hopefully, our programming can introduce people to artists traditionally underrepresented in music.
Getting involved with KSPC can look like many things. You can work on our social media team, promoting our great roster of shows and events. Many people work on our music reviews, which help us add new music to the library, and introduce our DJs and listeners to new artists. KSPC also has a Zine, where students submit poetry and other pieces to theme around topics we talk about on shows, or music we’ve been inspired by. And just the other night I went to a great event at the Motley, the Scripps coffee shop, where KSPC brought bands and live DJs to perform a show. This wasn’t possible without KSPC volunteers to set up the equipment and make the event run smoothly.
Of course, you can train to become a volunteer DJ too! The training process usually takes a few sessions you can do over a month or two, you record a mock show and get feedback, take a test, and boom! You’re ready to go on air. I’ve had a show since sophomore year, and I learn more and more with each show. We play music from the KSPC music library on air, which includes thousands of CDs, hundreds of vinyl records, and thousands of online tracks. Coming up with an exciting two hour set of music each week never gets old – I have found some of my favorite artists of all time through our library. Being a DJ is a more serious time commitment than some other clubs – you are responsible for your show each week, and cannot miss it without planning in advance. I’ve done my shows during fun weeks on campus, and during some of my hardest weeks of college. But, it’s all worth it for the moments of connection you get with the larger Claremont community of listeners, the KSPC volunteers, your friends and family when they tune into your show. Through my show, I’ve grown more confident in curating a representation of music that feels cohesive and communicates the mood I’m in that week. And also, I just have tons of fun. Who wouldn’t?
This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the millions of ways that students make college radio their own. I’d highly recommend checking out KSPC on social media, as well as online at KSPC.org. I’m pretty sure I’m part of the coolest club on campus, but I’ll let our programming speak for itself.
Please email me if you’re interested in college radio at all! If you can’t tell, I love to talk about it, and I’d love to get you involved in this incredible world of music.