Walk down the stairs to the bottom floor of the Barone Campus Center. Immediately to the left, there’s WVOF. Past that, there is The Manor yearbook and The Mirror. However, there is one glaring omission in the lineup of campus media in the Campus Center: The Ham Channel.
“I thought having the Ham Channel in the Campus Center was a great idea. I hoped for it, and I still hope for it,” said Father James Mayzik, S.J., director of the Media Center. “Would the Ham Channel benefit from the exposure of the campus center? Absolutely.”
Casey Timmeny, the student broadcast coordinator at the Media Center, agrees. “Being in Xavier limits us from having the kind of campus presence we are looking for,” he said. “If we were in the Campus Center, we could have much more interaction We could do a TRL-type show, get more student participation, and so on.”
“We’ve always been in Xavier and, for better or worse, I think Xavier will always be home base for the Ham Channel,” Timmeny said. “But we are looking to moving at least part of the channel into the campus center.”
The original design for the renovation was to make the BCC the nucleus of Fairfield University. “Our wish list was to have everything there. Admissions, the Ham Channel, everything,” said James Fitzpatrick, assistant vice president of operations. “When we met with the construction company, they laughed at us. It just wasn’t possible.”
There were several reasons for not bringing the Ham Channel to the BCC, according to Fitzpatrick. First, the Ham Channel had recently moved into their current home in Xavier Hall. Additionally, there was a space issue. To give the Ham Channel the room it needs would not be possible with the space made available with the renovation.
While there may not be room for the entire Ham Channel to be housed in the BCC, there are plans for having at least a limited Ham Channel presence in the Campus Center, according to Mayzik. The Ham Channel has hopes of using space in the WVOF studios.
“There are several plans being discussed between myself and Jim Fitzpatrick,” said Mayzik. “I’m hopeful that in the future we can share space with WVOF and with The Manor. We want to develop our relationship with WVOF.”
This relationship with WVOF will be coming sooner rather than later, according to Timmeny. The Ham Channel broadcast a simulcast of the weekly radio show Cornerstone on April 23, said Timmeny.
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