“They refer to themselves as the old geezers,” WCFM General Manager Sasha Tucker ’25 said. “Or just the geezers.”
On Saturday, April 22, a group of erstwhile college radio-heads descended on WCFM’s studio in the basement of Prospect for the annual WCFM Throwback Weekend. After a quick refresher on new broadcasting equipment, the alums hopped back on air to program two-hour shows of their own arrangement.
Beginning with a small crew of only five alums, Throwback Weekend was originally conceived by Chris Gondek ’90 in 2019. After its first occurrance, the event was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic before reappearing in 2022. This year, Tucker and another WCFM general manager, Julian Spiro ’25 spent the first weekend of spring break on campus to help run the event.
Throwback Weekend is an annual highlight for both the alums who participate and the student organizers. “They take the shows really seriously,” Tucker said of the alums. “They program months in advance, and they all have very interesting themes, connections, and things to say.”
The first group of alums to come back for Throwback Weekend were all from the Class of 1990, but, in the past few years, former DJs from a range of class years have made their way back to the College for another broadcast. “When I heard this was happening, I got really excited,” former WCFM Programming Director and General Manager Beth Lewin ’93 said. “I felt like this was a part of my life that I was missing. I have always loved music, and getting the chance to play music with and for other people is something that I really missed.” After attending her first Throwback Weekend last year, Lewin picked up her old hobby again, DJing with her husband and friends for social events.
The process of creating a show has changed with the advent of digital music repositories that provide much more access to material, Gondek explained. During his time at the College, the station was required to feature new music from industry partners. “Even though my show might not necessarily play that genre, I knew that [new music] had to be played simply in order to have the station maintain the relationship with labels,” he said.
“One of the things that I really love about college radio [now] is that people can explore and play whatever they want without having to think about formats or what’s popular,” Lewin said. “You know, ‘Oh, gee, can I play hip hop on the rock station,’ or things like that.”
Because most of the returning alums did not continue on to careers in the broadcasting field, many of Tucker and Spiro’s duties involved helping acclimate participants to the updated equipment, Tucker explained. “It’s a bunch of people for whom college radio was very important, who then went off into careers that had shockingly little to do with radio,” she said.
Gondek was in the minority of participants who pursued broadcasting after graduating from the College. His experience hosting shows for WCFM led to a unique career producing podcasts for university presses. “I can program a show on a lot of different things, but compared to the encyclopedias of musical knowledge that I hang out with, I am nowhere in their league,” he said. “However, what I can do is you put me on a microphone and just have me start talking. It was that ability to think on my feet that led me into doing the podcast.”
Gondeck explained that Throwback Weekend’s impetus lies in the strength of alums’ friendships, both new and old. “We [alums]text constantly,” he said. “I’m not joking. I talk to these guys, and now Beth, just about every day.”
That connection has fostered a strong bond among the alums. “It was just really cool to connect with all these people that have the same love for music and for radio that I have,” Lewin said.
For Gondek, the Throwback Weekend is an unstructured reprieve from other kinds of programs for alums. “When you do a reunion, it’s very stylized, and there are set pieces to do,” he said. “This was a time to come back to Williams.”
Throwback Weekend gave the group a chance to celebrate the longevity of the station. “In an age where college radio is increasingly outmoded… or is serving a different purpose than it once was, it’s been nice to have these guys around to weigh in on what they think we should be doing,” Spiro said.
“[After we graduate] we won’t be thinking about [WCFM] until we’re alums and we want to come back and organize our own throwback weekend,” Tucker added. “But I just love my show, and I love being on air, even when I know I’m talking to absolutely no one.”
“It’s important for Williams to have a radio station and for it to be a place where students can be in an unstructured environment … and express themselves and play the music that they love and share that with each other,” Lewin said.
Editor’s note: Phoebe Pallesen, a programming director at WCFM and a managing editor at the Record was not involved with the writing or editing of this article.
