my interview with Donna Halper today

[Cohasset / Hippisley]

On Jan 7, 2013, at 5:17 PM, Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com> wrote:

> Many of us were interested, but we were told we could not be on the air. 

That may well have been the case at other colleges in the area, but as someone who was extremely active in WTBS from 1958 to 1965 or '66, I can assure you that virtually all of us would have warmly welcomed ANY interest and participation by the opposite sex.  You have to remember -- probably no more than 5% of my entering class was female, so the raw likelihood wasn't great to start with.  But I can assure you there was absolutely no bias against women in broadcasting at WTBS.  In fact, if I may quote from the 1959 edition of "Technique", the MIT yearbook:

"Many of the announcers are Tech men, but there are a number of Tech coeds and Wellesley students whose pleasant personalities frequently radiate over WTBS.  Since last fall the Wellesley students who are members of WBS, the Wellesley radio station, have had a weekly program, "Wellesley Night Out", on WTBS...."  One of the accompanying photographs shows two Wellesley coeds during their weekly program, and another photograph in the WTBS write-up identifies Linda Greiner as Popular Music Director.

Also -- the year I entered MIT, Atlantic Monthly had just voted MIT students as the worst-dressed students in the country.  With that information in hand, I suspect many of our coeds chose to seek out "classier" people from other Boston-area colleges to spend their spare time with....:-) 

Bud Hippisley