As a pair of second-year students launch a rejuvenated campus radio station, we examine the past and future of the medium at the University.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon at Raven Hub learning space, second-year students Corinn Mabry and Sofia Corcoran sat amid a group of 15 students to discuss the lofty challenge they’ve set before themselves.
Last year, the pair sat inside a Mott Hall dorm room, hit record on Mabry’s laptop and started bantering.
“We thought it was funny,” recalls Mabry, a pre-nursing major from Phoenixville.
“So we decided to reach out to the head of student activities and asked who runs the (campus) radio station,” says Corcoran, a health-sciences major from West Chester.
The Battle of the Bands competition is scheduled for the Gutman Quad in East Falls from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24.
The rest—as the saying goes—is history. As things currently stand, the duo is at the helm of a new student club dedicated to bringing a radio station (call letters: WPHU) back to Thomas Jefferson University.
Their big welcome-back-to-campus event is a Battle of the Bands competition, scheduled for the Gutman Quad in East Falls from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24 (doors open at 3 p.m.). That comes less than two weeks before the official launch party which will mark the start of WPHU’s online return to the proverbial airwaves.
In this episode of the Nexus Podcast, we speak with Mabry and Corcoran and their club’s advisor about the lofty goal of bringing campus radio back to Jefferson. We also dive into the history of campus radio dating back decades to Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science’s WTEX.