Vanessa Boyd '99
As an entering freshman I attended an event with a title I don't remember in the SUB that consisted of campus organizations and sign-up lists. Scanning the crowd I went straight for the table where it looked like people that spoke a language I knew. There was a young woman with cropped don't-you-dare-not-notice-me dyed red hair, the first long-haired guy I'd seen, and another guy with the only facial piercing I had yet to see. It was not hard to find this table amongst the excess of conservatively dressed meandering folks.
I signed up to be a dj and somehow was accepted. I had yet to learn that there was little or no discrimination since getting people to do a show, let alone people who felt priviledged to do so, was a feat to accomplish on a regular basis.
I kept hearing about some boss-lady named Squirt. I imagined her to be a tall intimidating woman who skirted about doing really important things. This turned out to be Allison Eddy, a friend of mine now, who is actually a four-foot-something woman of a snuggly nature. She was the redhead I remembered seeing in the beginning.
Between her and Stump, the pierced fellow from above, I began working for what I called the Stump and Squirt regime. They were wildly and fanatically concerned with keeping all commercial music off the air at kscl. The first semester or so that I worked, including my training, there were no headphones that worked in the booth, so there were a few times that in making a mistake with either two songs playing at once or dead-air instead, I was paralyzed with fear as Stump rushed into the booth in a blaze of motion, pushing buttons in deliberate furry, only to leave with the same gusto without ever saying a word.
(I also acquired a station nickname - Spunky, or Spunky Parts if you had the time - which would take too long to explain the origin of.)
In the fall of 1997 I began working with Tommy Welch as program director of kscl. I had no knowledge or experience on the administrative side of things, but I was willing to learn and that's what I did. What I learned was the nature of a love-hate relationship. I spent more hours than I would have liked filling in for dj's at the last possible minute. Although this experience made me angry and frustrated, I am more than thankful that I went to a college where I was able to do what I did with kscl. It was the radio station that made up for many of the disadvantages that attending a small school has. As far as stories go, I did go to the CMJ festival in NYC that year with Stump and Tommy. Aside from asking Marilyn Manson a few philisophical questions I also had the opportunity to drag the two of my companions through Central Park at one in the morning, much to their chagrin, but also none to their harm.
Vanessa Boyd
assenav@imaginemail.com