my interview with Donna Halper today

[Cohasset / Hippisley]

On Jan 8, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Shawn Mamros <mamros@MIT.EDU> wrote:

> Linda Greiner (later Sprague) was the one I met at the 50th anniversary
> party.  Didn't she later become station manager (or was it assistant
> station manager?)?

I sorta remember that, but can't immediately confirm it.  There was always a timing problem between the annual "Technique" data-gathering / picture-taking schedule and the timing of the election and seating of a new Managing Board.  As a result, even though I was Technical Manager and a member of the Board during the year we were procuring the transmitter, feedline, and antenna, and building new studio equipment for our debut on 88.1, I never appear in any of the "Technique" summaries.  Similarly, in the four consecutive issues of "Technique", the only reference to Linda that I see is as Popular Music Director -- in a photograph labeled "Junior Board".

If, as someone else wrote here, there was a hidden policy at the Institute level to keep female enrollments low, it was something we never knew about or heard about at the student level.  And I can assure you that, to a man, we who were at WTBS at the time would have eagerly welcomed any increase in participation by women!

It certainly wasn't a matter of "great announcing voices" or lack thereof.  When I joined WTBS, we had one model for diction and vocal resonance:  Buck Rogers (News Director at the time, later Program Manager).  Subsequently, I remember Tom Perrone as having a great classical announcer's voice.  And Dan Murphy and others brought a whole new "bright, up-beat" sound to our announcing staff.  But many of the rest of us, myself included, could hardly be accused of sounding like top-notch professional on-air personalities.  

Bud