WESU, Youth Radio and the Engaged University

Most folks in the Wesleyan world know about the deep roots that radio station WESU has in the community. WESU has been an important part of our engaged university for decades. I recently heard about a very cool project in our Middletown Youth Radio program led by students Harry Bartle ‘12, Maddie Neufeld ‘12, Aditi Shivaramakrishnan ‘12, and Ben Fitzelle ‘12,

Here is a synopsis based on a message from Harry Bartle sent before the break: “We submitted a pitch to Generation PRX about working with our kids to create a sort of sound profile about bullying in Traverse Square, the community adjacent to Hi Rise/Lo Rise. A few of our kids, Anthony (DJ Funny Bones) Jordan (DJ Skullkid) and Nyala (DJ Youngster) who are 13, 12, and 7 respectively, all residents of T-Square, will be working together to conduct interviews and gather material in the field that we’ll be editing together for a five minute piece due January 20th. Generation PRX has generously given us state of the art professional audio equipment to help us put this together, and we’ve just had our first “webinar” online meeting session. We’re all very excited (!) and we’re hoping to get as much material as we can in the coming weeks. And as a quick side note, we’re all seniors so we are looking for recruits who might be interested in keeping MYRP alive after we graduate, so anyone interested in helping out should email hbartle@wesleyan.edu or Maddie Neufeld at mneufeld@wesleyan.edu to get in touch.”

The Wesleyan connection to the children of Traverse Square is longstanding, and the connection through Middletown Youth Radio is powerful (and fun). I know these seniors would like to see even more students get involved!