FITCHBURG YOUR STORY: From Chaos to Community - Mike Sauvageau

Although college radio broadcasts may only reach a limited signal range, their influence on university campuses across the world is immeasurable.  Perhaps no greater example can be found than Fitchburg State University's student-run radio station WXPL (91.3 FM and streamable online).  

In this episode, Michael Sauvageau playfully discusses how WXPL has helped promote diversity and cultural awareness for multiple decades. Through the dedication of staff and students, Fitchburg State's radio station brings a more eclectic mix of music to the students at FSU and the community of greater Fitchburg, Massachusetts.  This is how they do it! 

Mike is a senior English Studies major, with a concentration in Literature.  This essay won the "2025 You FIT Here! Fitchburg Your Story Best Delivery Podcast Prize."  

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Episodes in this series were produced and edited by the Fitchburg State University students in Professor Kisha Tracy's Storytelling and the Oral Tradition course (ENGL 2890) in the Spring 2025 semester.  

"Saxifrage"  is the Fitchburg Your Story theme music.  Music by Prof. Robin Dinda, Text by Prof. DeMisty Bellinger-Delfeld.  Performed by Fitchburg State University Choirs with Alanna Rantala (piano) and Prof. Jonathan Harvey (conductor).

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Episode transcript here.

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Additional mixing and mastering by members of the Perseverantia staff.

Click here to learn more about Perseverantia. Join us for programming updates on Instagram. Or reach out with ideas or suggestions at podcasts@fitchburgstate.edu.

Transcript

[ “Saxifrage” choral music plays, performed by the Fitchburg State University Choirs ] 

Prof. Kisha Tracy (intro): Welcome to the Fitchburg State University Perseverantia Podcast network. This is the Fitchburg Your Story series in which Fitchburg State students tell the stories that make our city and university unique.

[ “Saxifrage” fades out ] 

[ radio static fades in and plays under the transition ] 

Mike Sauvageau:  Have you ever been driving in your car, flipping through the radio stations, when suddenly, from out of the static creeps through a song you've never heard, but would love to get to know more of? If only it would stay in signal, then maybe you could Shazam or Google the lyrics and figure out what song it was. It sounds like Yo La Tengo, but it has some shades of bands like the Pixies and the Replacements too. You think it might be your new favorite. And just as you get your phone out to record, boom, Leslie Gore starts whining about some birthday party.

[ radio static fades in, voice sounds transistor radio tinny with reverb ] 

“It's my party and I'll cry if I want to…”

Your almost favorite song is gone forever. 

[ radio static fades out ] 

I'm your host, Michael Sauvageau, and the next time this musical mystery occurs, don't rush to your phone and subject yourself to a potential fender bender. My best advice would be safely to pull your car over, then look up where the nearest campus university is. Because odds are, you were just listening to college radio. And trust me, I should know.

Growing up in Lunenberg, Massachusetts, which is just a small town over from where Fitchburg State University is located, I would find myself endlessly driving around and painstakingly trying to pinpoint the exact location of where their station, 91.3 WXPL, fell into signal range. That's because college radio stations often transmit from a low-power broadcasting system, which, yes, has its pitfalls when it comes to reaching the earshot of neighboring towns, but I assure you, the benefits of college radio extend far beyond its broadcasting capabilities. 

In fact, one of the best examples of how a community has been directly influenced by college radio is Fitchburg State University, where 91.3 FM WXPL has been giving a voice to the students at FSU since 1984. Can you believe it? 1984. I hate to say it, folks, but I think the general consensus is that the 80s are thought of as the new 50s. I mean,is it just me or does anyone else feel like the 90s were only 10 years ago? Get real, Mike! The 90s were 30 years ago, which means, pfft, the 80s? That's even further down the line. The times there are a-changin', people. 

And that's exactly one of the things I was fortunate enough to speak with WXPL's advisor, Joel Rodriguez, about. And before you say, Mike, I thought you said the station has been giving a voice to the students. Why are you talking about an advisor? Listen, I wasn't lying to you.

91.3 has, in fact, been giving a voice to students on campus since 1984. And just last year in 2024, they celebrated 40 years of being entirely student run and operated. 

But after I did some digging, I found out that the history of the station isn't so squeaky clean. In a February 7th, 2013 interview with Fitchburg State's campus newspaper, The Point, former secretary and current station manager John Gerhardt spoke a bit about the, let's just say, turbulent past. Mr. Gerhardt said, “The staff running the station throughout the 1990’s kept it in abysmal shape. Vinyl records were smashed into pieces, thrown into the ceiling, and some other unfortunate fates. This unacceptable behavior, plus lackluster broadcasting, led to WXPL  being permanently shut down.”

Well, sounds to me like they were taking their call letters, WXPL, a little too seriously, huh? X-P-L. E-xplosive, get it? 

And I'm not making that up either. The station was actually assigned those unique call letters by the FCC the year they started broadcasting, which subsequently helped coin their slogan, 91.3 FM, your explosive alternative. Fortunately, after a decent hiatus, the station returned to broadcasting once again in 2007 and has been consistently on the air since. 

All right, now look. That historical diatribe further proves my point of why the station needs an advisor like Joel Rodriguez. Without him, the place is liable to get chaotic again and let unfocused people like me start babbling on the air. I mean, who would actually sit and listen to me talk? 

[ whisper voice, with some reverb – like narrator’s inner thoughts ]

If I had a cricket sound effect, this is where it'd go.

[ cricket sound effect ] 

So back to my conversation with Joel, who has been helping WXPL weed out the riff-raff and keep up with modernity so all those at FSU can enjoy the radio. When I asked him about how the station manages to succeed in going about this, Joel spoke about the importance of WXPL's efforts to promote more diversity to the students at FSU and to the community of Fitchburg and surrounding areas as well. 

He said, and I won't do the voice again, “Since Fitchburg State University is emerging as a Hispanic-serving institution, I wanted the campus radio station to reflect that. So we removed all the old music from the station and inserted all new music with a new format. The music now on WXPL includes 80s, 90s, 2000s, and today's top hits with genres from hip hop, rock, dance, pop, salsa, dembow, reggaeton, and Spanish pop. The format can now rotate between a Spanish song then an English song to keep the crowd engaged. I've also been targeting members of LASO, Casa, and BSU to join WXPL and help diversify the station programming to either play music or to have talk shows on what's going on in their community or in their culture.” 

Thanks, Joel.

And see, that's where the student voice comes in. Although Joel oversees the operations at the station, it's truly up to the FSU students to bring the content, the culture, and the diversity to the ears of campus residents. That's why earlier this month, that's May 2025, for you future listeners. WXPL chose to bring celebrated hip hop recording artist, educator and business entrepreneur Red Shaydez on to their program to discuss her rise in the music industry as a female of color.

Oh, and did I mention that Red Shaydez is also a Fitchburg State class of 2014 alumnus? 

Since graduating from FSU, Red Shaydez has gone on to drop several self-produced albums, become a Boston Music Award-winning artist, and this spring she'll be launching her first ever artist development bootcamp called Music Jumpstart, where she will be coaching aspiring artists on how to follow in her footsteps and learn the business side of the music industry. To learn more about this bootcamp, you can visit www.musicjumpstart.org.

I had the chance to speak with Ms. Shaydez the morning before her appearance on WXPL where she commented on the impact that college radio has had on her formative years, as well as its continuing influence on students beyond Fitchburg State.

[ radio static fades in and plays under narrator doing an awful impression of Red Shaydz ] 

“Umm, hi, I’m Rad Shaydez, and I want to talk to you about….”

[ radio static fades out ] 

All right, in reality, folks, and this is no joke. I’m just as bad as those WXPL students in the 1990s’ who didn’t take proper care of their records. While I did have a chance to personally record an interview with Red Shaydez where she discussed the importance of college radio as a whole, how it helps unite campus listeners through the promotion of diverse,  undiscovered, and culturally- representative songs, chosen not for their chart status, but for the sake of each individual’s expression. 

While I did have that interview, upon post-production of this podcast the audio file was corrupted. Although this resulted in a flood of frustrated tears from yours truly, I can’t say I’m surprised. In fact, when I first started working on this podcast as an assignment for Dr. Kisha Tracy’s Storytelling and Oral Tradition class – great class, by the way – I highly recommend any FSU student listening now to go and take it – but, when I first started my project my topic was completely different. 

I was going to do one on the Fitchburg State Civic Center and the concerts that were performed there in the early 1990’s by such bands like Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Pearl Jam. However, due to a lack of proper documentation of that historical narrative, my research yielded lackluster results. Aside from a few article in The Point and a Wikipedia page that left me thinking, “Geez, they’ll let anyone write one of these,” I couldn’t find enough information to necessitate an entire podcast. And so I was left to scrape together a new story in the final two weeks of class. Yay!!!

But you want to know something? And I mean this sincerely because, as you can see, I’m about to go off script so it’s a little more sincere, I don’t regret anything about that failed project idea because it changed the trajectory of how I approached my research and led me to start talking more to Fitchburg faculty and staff, students new and old, and just people who listen to WXPL in general. 

And it was through that talking that I was able to hear some really incredible stories, truly moving ones, from people I knew really wanted to share how important college radio was to them. Yeah, it just…it made me realize that’s truly what this assignment was about. And kind of no grade system in the world can take that experience away from me. Because I’ll be leaving this class with an honest understanding of the value of talking to one another and sharing stories, which is ultimately what I think keeps things alive for future generations. 

Maybe someone will eventually record a proper interview with Red Shaydez about WXPL or any artist who is inspired by college radio for that matter. And that documentation is just as important, don’t get me wrong, but at the end of the day I think the greatest thing we can do is just keep talking to each other and sharing our stories, especially in a digital world where it’s easy to let a keyboard and screen do the work. I suppose this transition will seem a little jarring for what’s next in the editing, but I just wanted to say that because it was a really cool experience. Thanks, guys!

[ radio static fades in and plays under the transition ] 

Well, you heard it from her own words. Red Shaydez's passing of the mic to new generation owes a great deal of gratitude to the influence that college radio and WXPL has had on her continuous community outreach. Still don't believe me when I say the power of college radio can do more than just play diverse and interesting music? 

Well, I'd like to end this podcast by reading an excerpt from the book, Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio, which some might consider the holy bible of college radio. Oh, and did I mention this book too has an especially strong relationship to Fitchburg State and WXPL? That's because it was written by campus's very own professor of history, Dr. Katherine Jewell. Dr. Jewell writes, and I certainly won't be doing the voice:

"Identity crises for college radio stations remain, however, because myriad expectations persist for both radio and higher education while public support declines. Many collegiate signals continue to program as they have for decades while others innovate. College radio still symbolizes college students' ability to express themselves. Stations might challenge dominant campus culture and stir debate among students, a function in line with college radio's history since the 1970s, or operate in concert with university goals of public service and representation, or provide students with professional experience among its many divergent roles."

Well put, Dr. Jewell, and I would highly recommend checking out her book for yourself, as it goes far beyond just your standard history and deals with the politics, financial struggles, and societal impact that college radio has had on campuses across America.

So yes, while campus radio stations can help students find their new favorite song or learn the professional side of broadcasting, I would be willing to bet that the Fitchburg State community would agree with me when I say that WXPL ranks high on the list of stations that choose innovation and cultural representation over top 40 hits. 

After all, without change, don't things start to get, I don't know, static?

[ radio static fades in and plays under the transition ] 

This is your host, Michael Sauvageau, signing off. Thank you!

[ radio static continues, voice sounds transistor radio tinny with reverb ] 

“It's my party and I'll cry if I want to…”

[ Perseverantia Network theme fades in ] 

Tori Kiolbasa: You’re listening to Perseverantia, the Fitchburg State Podcast Network.

[ Perseverantia Network theme fades out ]