Charles Gray | Listening to students' needs

Say you're a DJ for Penn's student-run radio station, WQHS. Your show airs at 8:00 p.m. every Wednesday, which is a great time - most of your friends can listen as they do homework. But right now you're not worrying about listenership, it's getting to the Hollenbeck Center, a good 30-minute walk to the no man's land of Penn's campus. And it's raining.

You finally arrive and take a minute to sit on one of the two IKEA office chairs that the Student Activities Council reluctantly agreed to reimburse.

You have your show's playlist planned out on your iPod, but you need an RCA cable to connect it to the motherboard. You use the one that the tech director constructed himself because it was becoming so difficult to be reimbursed by SAC.

This is the ordeal that leaders and broadcasters of Penn's online student-radio station WQHS have had since the beginning of their troubles in the 1970s.

After two decades of gradual decline, however, WQHS has the leadership and the initiative to become a strong force in Penn's culture. The current leadership is willing to battle the nonconformist stereotypes of the past and work with student and University leaders alike.

But there is still no real support from student government for an organization that has the student backing and growth potential to be a force on campus. Right now, one of the group's main problems is its lack of recognition and need for additional funding. More support from Penn student government could greatly alleviate many of its woes.

"This is the most full our schedule's been for 10 years," former WQHS manager Mike Murphy said. "Last semester and this semester have been the most legitimate amount of enthusiasm I've seen since coming to college."

The origins of student radio's struggle began in the 1970s when WQHS and WXPN were both student-run stations, according to Murphy. But a shock DJ show called The Vegetable Report caused the Federal Communications Commission to intervene and tell the University that it needed to be regulated by professionals. The FM station WXPN gradually became the domain of adults, while the University stopped supporting WQHS. WQHS's AM signal met its demise when the tower fell from a high rise during a wind storm. WQHS now streams online only from the station's Web site.

This history leaves no excuse for a meaningful student program to be left on its own. But the University is reluctant to change WQHS's status.

"It's this annoying paradox or catch-22 as the University tells us to become more professional," former program director Ben Miller said. "But to become more professional, we need more money. We've been stuck in this quandary and there is only so much you can do."

And with University support not on the horizon, student government needs to step in on behalf of the students, specifically in two ways, to help the station. The first is in finding a more visible place for the station to be housed. If students could be on Locust Walk and see people inside a building conducting a show, WQHS would no longer have a problem with student outreach.

The second way that student organizations should help WQHS is by actively helping the station revive its radio frequency. Although the FCC is not offering any licenses for stations right now, lower power FM licenses could be placed on the market at any time. While many students listen to music almost exclusively online, drive-time radio still holds an important place in the radio business.

The bottom line is that Penn's student government needs to focus on projects that affect students in their everyday college experience. WQHS shows that the needs of student organizations are not being met, and it's not surprising when one thinks about some of the places where the UA's budget is going.

The best example of this waste remains the $12,400 per year the UA spends to help subsidize The New York Times on campus. But this newspaper, which isn't part of Penn's self-sustaining community, can be read online.

Every time we pass a Times newspaper rack, we should think about those student groups who are trying to actively promote the holistic educations of Penn students and who are being ignored by their representatives.

Charles Gray is a Wharton freshman from La Crescenta, Calif. The Gray Area appears on alternating Tuesdays. His email address is gray@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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