Members and listeners of WRCM gathered in the Leo Basement to support student bands for last
spring’s WRCM bash.
@WRCM.ROCKS / COURTESY
By Mary Haley, Asst. Features Editor/Social Media Editor
WRCM (We Are College Music) is excited to welcome back DJs, old and new, for a semester full of music and events.
With success from events like the WRCM Bash and other live music shows that feature student bands from Manhattan College, WRCM has been able to collect enough funds to pay for a semester’s worth of spotify premium. The club is excited to do more events and get back to their regular scheduled programming of many different radio shows operated in the college’s Research and Learning Center (RLC).
The welcome back meeting consisted of a quick review of how to sign up for a show and an introduction from the executive board of the group. They also announced the dates of tech training which all DJs must attend in order to get equipped with the RLC studio.
“Training is basically going in and learning what everything means, like the computer and the little board and the [sound] board…really, it’s not hard,” Annie Brennan, WRCM’s general manager said. “The whole point of WRCM is that it’s really not that hard, it’s very laid back.”
Brennan, and two other executive board members, Gavin Dryden and Ian Pruiksma, all spoke with The Quadrangle about how the club’s main fundraising goal is to get Spotify premium, a tool necessary for WRCM operations. Through their WRCM Bash events hosted once a semester, the club has been able to get enough funding to stay up and running with Spotify, while simultaneously hosting one of the most highly anticipated events for WRCM DJs and listeners.
Amidst the school-wide budget cuts for clubs, WRCM feels prepared to navigate the cuts for the rest of the spring semester with new ideas to see more success in their turnout and donations.
“The way we do it is that bash is free pizza and free live music, and then we’re going to do a merch table this year,” Dryden said. “So it’s like, ‘free food, free music, free stuff, please give us money so we can have spotify premium.’”
The voices of “Strange Women Playing Even Stranger Music,” Ella Richmond and Danica Mason, spoke with The Quadrangle about the opportunities WRCM gave them in their first semester this past fall, and what they plan to do with their radio show for the spring.
“We try to do a broad theme that doesn’t really have a genre,” Mason said. “Sometimes it will have a genre and that will be the theme, like sometimes we will do all girl bands, or all female artists.”
In the fall, their show aired from 10 pm to 11 pm on Thursdays. This semester, they hope they can get an earlier time in the day so they can host guests and acquire more listeners.
Richmond and Mason have found the physical space of the WRCM studio and the club community to be a relaxed place to go to to hang out with friends and get involved with the school without being overwhelmed with responsibilities that other clubs on campus often have.
“The [studio] we do the show in makes me feel like I am actually on a radio show, it’s pretty awesome,” Richmond said. “It’s just a fun way to hang out with your friends while still contributing to the school. If you’re someone on campus that feels like you’re not doing enough extracurriculars, it’s a really easy way to get involved.”