Mosaic

Issue date: 2/3/10 Section: News

Media Credit: wsruradio.net

Newport R.I.-It's almost 10 p.m. on a Thursday night in the basement of Salve Regina University's Wakehurst Student Center. Students are grazing through their study materials on comfy couches, the community TV sets are blaring, and students Justin Wood and Nicole Baldassari have just come through the back door and are headed toward the small, soundproof studio behind the basement's indoor glass window. It's time for their weekly radio show, "Awesomesauce with Minerva and the Boss."

Baldassari and Wood are just two DJs who are part of WSRU, Salve Regina's student-run radio station. The station is home to about twenty five student DJs who produce and broadcast their own shows, sometimes for pleasure and in other cases, to help them become DJs for major radio stations in the future.

According to station manager and Salve Regina senior Joe Errico, any student can have a radio show if he or she wants one. Errico and senior Frank Gaspar, assistant manager, do no formal recruiting for the station. According to Errico most students hear about WSRU by word of mouth.

"I don't think of it like a job," said Errico on his position as station manager. He goes on to say how the effort of students makes his job easier, making WSRU truly a radio station by the students, for the students, as was the intention upon the station's creation.

Errico only has to open the door to the studio in the morning, and then he will occasionally drop in on a broadcast with Gaspar. The DJs know what they are doing, Errico says. He says that the DJs are eager to approach him in passing about possible ideas for their show, or for the station as a whole. They are more like a family than a group, not just nodding when they run into each other in between classes but actually engaging in conversation.

While every show is different, the DJs have a common goal: they want WSRU to be known throughout campus. Many students are not even aware that Salve has a radio station. They would like to expand on the promotions that were incorporated into all of the shows this semester, and have more contests.

The shows to which WSRU is home come in a wide variety of genres.

"Awesomesauce," according to its DJs Baldassari and Wood, focuses on heavy metal. Another radio show, "Phil and Steve Do America," the title a spin-off on "Bevis and Butt-Head Do America," is made up of mostly 80s and 90s rock, says the one of the show's DJs sophomore Phil Cervelli, who DJs and produces the show with his former roommate.

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