WESU records

What would come to be called WESU began in 1939 when two students living in Clark Hall connected a transmitter to a phonograph and began broadcasting short transmissions down their hall. As time progressed, the pair extended their broadcast range by illicitly attaching their transmitter to the network of water pipes beneath Wesleyan, slowly expanding until most of the campus had become an antenna. From these mischievous beginnings, the station quickly became a legitimate campus fixture, broadcasting throughout the Middletown area in the early 1940's on an AM signal under the call letters "WES". In 1950, updated Federal Communications Commission law granted the station its four-letter moniker "WESU." In 1967, WESU underwent two crucial changes-the station switched over to FM broadcasting, and its broadcasting license was transferred to the Wesleyan Broadcast Association, a non-profit corporation founded by the WESU Board of Directors as an entity independent from Wesleyan University. The years that followed saw an increase in non-Wesleyan involvement in the station, as members of the surrounding community came to serve as DJs and, by the mid 1990's, hold positions on the Board of Directors. In 1980, WESU precipitated a nation-wide college boycott of Arista Records regarding what the WESU board saw to be the unfair treatment of college radio stations. In 1990, however, the Wesleyan Broadcast Association forfeited its incorporated status. In 2003, Wesleyan University entered into negotiations to acquire the license back from WESU, and it succeeded. The years that followed saw the University's addition of NPR programming to the WESU broadcast day, and the University's reconfiguration of the WESU Board, removing non-Wesleyan community members from voting positions.