An Oasis on Barnard’s Airwaves

Illustration by Erica Lee

Each Friday, I wake up before 10 a.m. to host my radio show on WBAR. It is, in many ways, a self-indulgent exercise. We play songs that we like, talk about whatever we deem relevant, and have as good of a time as one can have that early in the morning. We do it all for an audience of about nine people.

Lest our listenership sound pitiable or measly, it is worth mentioning that they are, if nothing else, loyal. There is a boy at Princeton who responds enthusiastically via instant message to nearly every song we play, a random assortment of friends and acquaintances suckered into listening, and the occasional listener who just stumbled upon the WBAR Web site by chance. They are a small but mighty group. They are what transforms the show from personal listening party into full-blown radio program. They are precisely what college radio is about.

With our small fan base behind us, we are able to use WBAR as a completely free space to play and say practically whatever we want, with the exception of seven forbidden words written boldly on a poster in the station. We play songs that would have absolutely no place on any other station. We play songs our friends have written, songs from commercials we like, songs far too long for any traditional radio format, and we get away with it. College radio is a bit rebellious in this way. Sure, we forego thousands of listeners, but we do it all for our freedom. We are courageous pioneers daring to go where Ryan Seacrest never would.

For us, as three ragamuffin college freshman radio DJs, WBAR has been a learning experience. The small listenership and online-only broadcast takes a great deal of pressure off of us to be perfect. We are not required to pass FCC tests or to intern with an older DJ prior to being on the air. We are, essentially, thrown into the lion’s den that is the radio station in the basement of Barnard’s Brooks Hall and told to fend for ourselves. Things were rocky at first. Unable to make transitions between songs, listeners would IM wondering what that loud crackling sound was. We frequently cut songs off before they were finished, talked over each other, and gave ludicrously long shout-outs to friends at home. Luckily for us, college radio was made for amateurs. Our fumblings were not cause for penalization, but rather demonstration of the brave amateur spirit that is college radio.

At a school full of the pressures of perfection, grade inflation, competition, and relentless obligation, WBAR is a tiny oasis. It is not, admittedly, flawless. Not many people listen to the station, and most DJs have no formal training. It is the complete opposite of Columbia’s academic environment. WBAR is a place for exploration, innovation, and huge, messy, stupid mistakes. It is not boisterous or flashy, but humble and inquisitive. Students who may compete in class come together on the radio, supporting one another and waking up at all hours to hear a friend’s show. While doing my show at WBAR, I am free for two hours to not worry about getting the right answer or saying the right thing. My only job is to please my nine listeners, who are difficult to disappoint.

So, the office is small and messy, the CDs are almost always out of order, the listener graphs rarely reflect more than 10 people tuned in at a time, and my co-DJs and I have rambled for over five minutes about whether or not the John Jay Black History Month dinner was, in fact, racist or not—but nonetheless, WBAR remains proud. We get on the air and do our best. We DJ like the entire world is listening. We gaze around the room, proud of the CD collection, though it is chaotic. We have technical difficulties time and again, but we learn and we escape, for once, from, as the Notorious B.I.G. would put it, the “everyday struggle” that is Columbia.

The author is a Barnard College first-year.