A casual comment during a college orientation session in 2020 was the spark that led to the revival of college radio station WHRC at Haverford College. Although Haverford had one of the earliest student-led radio stations in the 1920s (WABQ, whose first broadcast was 100 years ago in 1923!) and a very active AM carrier current station starting in the early 1940s (WHAV and then WHRC); the 2000s have seen the death and rebirth of many different iterations of radio on the small liberal arts school campus just outside of Philadelphia. It seemed that WHRC had disappeared for good circa 2017, but I continued to hear rumblings every so often about renewed interest in bringing the station back. By fall, 2022, WHRC was alive and active again. Against all odds, students were able to reclaim a portion of WHRC’s long-time dining center basement home and build a new radio station. The latest version of WHRC began streaming live in September, 2022 and launched its website in February, 2023. In spring semester 2023, the station had around 80 participants and more than 50 radio shows.
Astonishingly, the new WHRC came together pretty quickly, especially during a pandemic. WHRC’s original co-heads Sarah Mastrocola and Natalie White arrived on campus as sophomore transfer students in the fall of 2020. Both had come from schools with radio stations and Mastrocola had even done college radio at her previous school. During Haverford’s orientation week (over Zoom) someone asked if the college had a radio station and Sarah and Natalie immediately said to each other “maybe we can start it.” Although there was this initial kernel of an idea in 2020, it was another year until the two began the work to create a new radio station.
A strange coincidence happened in spring 2021, when the HBO series Mare of Easttown debuted. Taking place in the Philadelphia area, a few episodes featured a fictionalized student radio station at Haverford College. Mastrocola said, “The timing was pretty comical…it definitely inspired us to sort of live up to that standard of, well, on television it says we have a radio station.” She joked about her reaction at the time, recalling her thought that, “I guess the universe is telling us, it’s time to bring this radio station back.” Although the remarks about the fake radio station on the show were more of a “funny thing that people would say,” those comments “sparked conversation.” White added that even though the show wasn’t the reason that they relaunched WHRC, it did still generate interest in radio amongst Haverford and Bryn Mawr students.
By Fall of 2021, Natalie approached Sarah about realizing their collective radio dream. They went into full research mode, talking to students, faculty, and administrators. They secured funding to start the radio station and obtained approval to form a student club. Additionally, they reached out to nearby college radio station WXVU at Villanova to get advice about radio station operations. Mastrocola and White then held an preliminary interest meeting in spring semester of 2022 to let students know about their plans and get others involved. A huge accomplishment that spring was WHRC being granted access to a space in the dining center basement that had most recently been used as a recording studio by students.
WHRC activities ramped up in fall 2022. The club started an Instagram account and began promoting the idea of the station. More than 120 students signed up to join during Haverford’s Club Fair. The station officially launched and starting streaming in September, 2022 and had around 30 shows that semester. The first program on the air was a mid-day show devoted to music from the television show Glee.
When I spoke to Mastrocola and White in spring 2023, they reported that the schedule had expanded to 53 shows, with around 80 members of the radio club. Students from Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College (and some faculty) did shows live from the studio, streaming to listeners on campus and all over the world. At the time, the schedule was a mix of talk (including a sports show and three shows about relationships) and music shows (heavy metal, indie, and more), with participants playing music from digital sources. One show was done entirely in Spanish too. Shows were 30 or 60 minutes long and were scheduled from around noon to 10pm, depending on the day.
Last semester was especially active at WHRC. In addition to the debut of the website, WHRC presented a live music session, broadcasting a modular synthesizer performance by visiting professor Matt O’Hare. And, Mastrocola and White taught a P.E. class focused on radio! Mastrocola explained that they helped students become radio journalists and create podcasts for P.E. credit. Students wrote scripts, compiled audio, and conducted interviews, with the resulting audio airing over WHRC. One cohort covered the HaverFarm and ecological topics on the Haverford campus.
Although the WHRC of the past was outfitted with equipment to play vinyl records and CDs, the current station does not have a physical music library (or turntables, CD players, or tape decks). The collection of LPs and CDs from WHRC’s earlier incarnations has dwindled away. While the 2023 studio occupies a portion of the old WHRC space (originally built in the early 1970s) in the dining center basement, the rooms have been reconfigured. The studio now borders a band practice room. That can be tricky when the station is on the air and I was told that WHRC is hoping to get a soundproof door to help dampen outside noises. This challenge came into focus from me while tuning in to a recent show, as music could be heard drifting in from a Jazz Club gathering.
A big goal of the new radio club and revamped WHRC space at Haverford is for it to be “chill” and “accessible,” as well as a “fun communal space to hang out,” according to Mastrocola. With such a huge number of participants joining the station this past spring, it’s clear that radio is alluring to students. She cited a number of reasons, including, on the surface, radio’s “retro aesthetic.” But perhaps more importantly, she talked about the power of sharing ideas and sounds with one’s community. Mastrocola explained that radio is a “medium of performance that excludes all of the nerve-wracking elements of performance,” adding that, “You can share your music with the community. And yet you’re kind of the star of your own show, but there’s no stakes to it…It’s all for fun.”
Along with that, White noted that the station’s revival coincided with the increasing popularity of podcasts and audio-based content. She was working on her senior thesis on podcasting when we spoke in the spring and remarked that the surge of podcast listening in the pandemic likely led students to radio at Haverford, pointing out that some of WHRC’s shows are very podcast-like.
Although co-heads Mastrocola and White graduated in the spring, they passed the leadership of WHRC to other enthusiastic participants who just finalized the fall schedule. Filled with nearly 50 shows, some highlights include “Locals Only,” “Loud Music,” “Anatolian Hour,” “Anna’s Book Nook,” “Adolescent Phases,” and “Politics and Policy.”
While launching a station is no small task, I’m very pleased that Mastrocola and White were also very keyed in to the history of radio at Haverford. The website is full of vintage photos of their predecessors at WHRC, WHAV and WABQ; and they’ve re-adopted a WHRC dinosaur logo created by Diane Davison, WHRC’s general manager in the late 1980s. White was excited to find the old logo, saying, “it was so cool getting the back story.” She spent a lot of time digging into the college’s WHRC/WHAV/WABQ archives and posted many history tidbits on the station’s Instagram in appreciation of Haverford’s long radio story.
Another dream of White’s was to develop a WHRC alumni directory for the website, to further connect WHRC participants, past and present. Similarly amazed by the station’s history and archives, Mastrocola told me that she was encouraged after “seeing this history of student leadership inspired by passion for radio.” She added, “It’s really cool to continue that legacy” of radio at Haverford and “having it be…one more bookmark in the WHRC history book is pretty wild.” When I asked if it was bittersweet to be graduating so soon after re-launching the station, both were philosophical, with Natalie pointing out, “you can always tune in to radio…there’s always that trace there.” Sarah struck an optimistic tone, especially since the “archives have survived,” and then surmised, “”even if the radio does die out again after 10 years or so, it will probably get resurrected by someone else and the history will always be there.”
Note: I talk about the early history of Haverford College radio on our latest podcast episode: Podcast #334 – College Radio’s Hidden Early History.
