By August Kissel & Megan Dreher, Staff Writers

Over 20 students gathered together last week, eagerly planning and promoting the revival of an integral part of Manhattan College history. After a hiatus, WRCM, the Manhattan College radio station, will be making it’s return to campus in the coming months.

“The station was just around campus. Before we built the Kelly Commons, for instance, it was in the cafeterias in Thomas Hall” Dr. Thom Gencarelli, head of the Communications Department and advisor of WRCM, said. “One day, the signal within the cafeterias just stopped, and no one knows the full story as to why, but that was really the end of the station as a station for the students at the college.”

Now, after a bout of silence, a group of students are set on creating an artistic outlet for anyone willing to join them as they are in the process of bringing the station back.

“A lot of my friends at home are artists and we started working on a lot of projects together. People are starting to gain exposure and I wanted to use this as a platform for my own personal self promotion in terms of artists that I know and also artists here at MC, and try to build an artistic community here,” Ryan Shah, one of the many students spearheading this comeback, said.

The club will not be returning under Student Engagement as an official MC club until they feel that they have gained their footing. The station will be participating in a “soft launch” in order to gain a foundation to only grow from. This soft launch will be similar to a preview of what the station hopes to provide in the future.

“We have some time to gear up this year and next year. And then, if we see student involvement with students who want to be involved in WRCM, as well as student involvement in respect to people who want to listen and are interested in what the club is doing, then maybe not next year, but the following year, we could apply for official club status and be the WRCM we used to be,” Gencarelli said.

Christian Bennett, another student spearheading the project, decided to post a Facebook poll in order to get feedback as to how students would respond to the station’s return. “I wanted to see where kids were at in regards to having the radio show come back” he said.

“96% of people wanted to see the show come back and 52% of people said that they would actually want to participate and be a part of the staff and work for the station,” Bennett said.

In the past WRCM has been referred to as a labor of love and the new group is hoping to find another team who is as equally committed as the first. “Getting it off the ground is going to be difficult and I want people who are going to be committed,” Shah said.

Prior generations of MC students have had the opportunity to enjoy tuning into WRCM and with its return, there is hope for future success of the station.

Dr. Gencarelli foresees this success: “The thought that the radio business is dead is premature. I don’t think it will be something that will disappear anytime soon.”