This week marked the dedication of WRFH, Hillsdale College’s new radio station. Soon, rather than playing patriotic tunes on loop through the student union, Radio Free Hillsdale will put students on air to practice broadcasting.
This development for the Dow Journalism Program ought to excite all of campus: It means we have a new opportunity to explore media and it means Dolly Parton’s “God Bless America” will finally stop playing.
At the dedication luncheon Monday, President Larry Arnn and Director of the Dow Journalism Program John Miller both emphasized the college’s desire to provide future Hugh Hewitts and Mark Levins the chance to get their start in school.
Radio is about rhetoric and this station is the chance for all students interested to try it out, not just speech majors or journalism minors. A Hillsdale liberal arts education seeks to shape the whole person, but our ability to communicate our ideas is limited not only by our writing skills, but even more critically by our speaking skills.
Radio provides practice for conversation that is both prepared and spontaneous, while academic writing, the Collegian, and public speeches are composed. While news television is composed of soundbites, radio allows real dialogue and sustained soliloquy. It doesn’t care if you’re ugly, and microphones only add 10 pounds if you eat them. More than formal forensics, radio is about personalities: people talking to people.
As Hillsdale seeks to win hearts and minds for truth and liberty, personality, that human connection, will prove as persuasive as well-crafted arguments. Logos is only one piece of rhetoric, and pathos and ethos play the greater part in mass communication. Just as the Collegian allows writers to develop their prose voice, the campus radio station will allow students to warm up their real voices and develop an on-air identity.
Calling all wanna-be disc jockeys, aspiring talk radio hosts, prospective sports casters, and chatter boxes. The Collegian is excited for Radio Free Hillsdale, and we hope you are, too.
