The Underground

She asked if I had ever been to the radio station before. I thought, UMass has a radio station? For all the times I have walked through the campus center to snag a bite at the Blue Wall, stock up on supplies from the Campus Store, or usher guest speakers down the escalators to the large conference rooms on the bottom floor, I had never found myself trekking in the direction Sarah was leading me now. I followed obediently as she led me down the elevators, past the familiar conference rooms and rows of unsanitary red-cushioned bench-couches, and towards a doorway tucked away in a far corner.
Still following Sarah’s lead, upon passing through the doorway I found myself in a small labyrinth of passages. To the right, an expansive, open room littered by a maze of desks drowning in heaps of papers and folders: the offices of the Collegian. To the left, an odd-looking niche with some unrecognizable electronic equipment and a single turntable. But we began walking straight, stopping in the doorway of another room, at which point Sarah pointed out the mailbox shelves nailed to the wall, one mailbox labeled for each of the station’s radio shows. A few steps further and we peaked around the corner into the offices of the radio station, allowing me a brief moment to glance around as two older individuals, who had uncomfortably paused in their conversation, watched.
Directing me back the way we had come, Sarah explained to me that she had worked here, at the radio station, up until her junior year, when she took a semester off from school to take advantage of an internship opportunity. She described for me what seemed to be the radio station equivalent of an initiation ritual; as a newcomer, I was informed, one has to come to the station in the “wee hours of the morning” in order to test-run their first show. The odd hours, Sarah noted, were so that no one would hear the mistakes.
Ducking back into the room I had glimpsed on my left before, we passed the lone turntable and I realized that the small room was no niche but that it led to a short, busy hallway with four doorways branching off it. One, Sarah explained, was the production room where student groups and organizations could record commercials, or those working at the radio station could create their own internal advertising. I was then directed to turn around and found myself staring into a room lined floor to ceiling with shelves upon shelves crammed with CDs.
Sarah poked her head around one of the shelves and then motioned for me to follow. Hidden by the shelf was the real deal—an entire broadcasting setup, complete with seven various forms of CD players, a soundboard, and old-school phones which, Sarah noted enthusiastically, would “light up and flash like crazy” whenever the station got call-ins.
Leading me out, Sarah joked, “I miss my own show so much, and since I have a friend who has a show now, and I keep meaning to drop in.” I could see why.