Keene State’s radio station WKNH received the Campus Compact for New Hampshire’s 2023 President’s Leadership Award.
According to the Campus Compact for New Hampshire website, the award honors “an individual student or student organization that has made outstanding contributions to community service, service learning, and/or civic engagement efforts on their campus.”
WKNH was the only organization to win the award and senior Benjamin Kelly said that the e-board was honored to be recognized for the hard work they put in for the Keene State community.
“It was just a really nice experience, especially to have such a close relationship with the president [Treadwell],” Kelly said.
Similarly, WKNH General Manager Christopher Perfetto said, “I’m honored we won the award… I hope we continue our growth.”
Perfetto said that the award encompases WKNH’s hard work and dedication towards keeping the art of radio alive.
“People say radio’s a dying art form… the normal radio I’d say yes, but college radio has a lot of specific strengths to it,” Perfetto said. “The fact is it’s very individual and we’re very prominent on campus… it’s just a lot of fun for me.”
The student-run radio station has been working tirelessly to deliver positive energy back to campus since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s really been quite an interesting thing because it’s sort of like building back from a ghost town,”Kelly said. “It’s like all of a sudden everything’s torn down and then you have this changeover of the e-board and it’s almost like trying to discover this lost civilization.”
Perfetto said that WKNH has made a huge improvement with re-building itself and expanding.
“We’ve had to build up… we’ve been having trouble bringing our numbers back, “ Perfetto said. “… We have had a really large growth in shows on air… that’s something really important to us, especially this upcoming year and that is why we won the leadership award; we’ve actually doubled our shows from 2021 to 2022.”
Perfetto added that the radio-station has also opened its doors to non-student members of the Keene State community such as faculty and staff and even President Dr. Melinda Treadwell herself.
“We were always open but they didn’t know that, so now that we have faculty and staff on air, it feels more rewarding and I think that was a big reason why we were accepted [for the award],” Perfetto said.
Perfetto said that members of the Keene State community should tune in or become involved with WKNH because, “It’s just a way to listen to music… but beyond that, it’s a way to branch out and talk about music which I feel like is something that people don’t always do.”
Perfetto added, “I think music is like the universal language; If I can’t say how I’m feeling, music will get the point across for me.”
Nicole Dumont can be contacted at
ndumont@kscequinox.com
