WMXM Struggles to Keep Skeletons in Radio Room Closet
Jillian Beaster ’28
beasterjro@lakeforest.edu
News Editor
SATIRE—Stored away in the depths of the WMXM radio room lies a cassette tape marked RaDIoHiVE. A few Executive Board members, DJs and listeners alike have each expressed significant concern upon seeing the tape placed in various places. Some, on the other hand, deny its existence.
“First of all, I would like to say that WMXM 88.9 FM is an ethical organization committed to only providing truthful quality, non-subliminal messaging content to our campus and the Chicago land area,” said Michelle Tkachenko Weaver, former general manager. “I find it offensive that somebody would even propose the idea that we would be doing anything to manipulate the minds of the youth and the not-so-youthful, though, I will say, if we were to manipulate minds, the youth would be a little bit easier to manipulate.”
Both Tkacheko Weaver and WMXM General Manager Anna Blazkova insist that the station would never dabble in subliminal messaging, though their defensive responses made it hard for them to fully dispel these claims.
“I would like to add that WMXM is fundamentally committed to transparency,” Blazkova insisted. I don’t understand where this idea that we are trying to influence people’s minds came from. There is no such thing as a hive mind through the radio, or, as some people might say, a radio hive. I emphatically deny all of this as the General Manager of the station.”
WMXM advisor David Park must have been left out of the briefing, as he was not as adamant in denying the accusations.
“I would be lying if I told you that WMXM had not been frequently involved in psychological warfare over the last 50 years, but these are good kids,” Park admitted.
Park seemed aware of the complaints of WMXM’s back room, locked behind the pin code and even the lounge area. Blazkova dodged questions regarding the room, emphasizing that “ there are no reasons at all why our back room remains locked at all times” after nearly every question.
“The back room has attracted too much attention and has really distracted us from the educational goals of Lake Forest College, and my job as faculty advisor is to reduce these distractions and to try to focus on the day-to-day task of broadcasting high quality, low manipulation radio,” Park said.
In a VERY very hypothetical situation, Tkacheko Weaver outlined exactly what WMXM may do, or more importantly, definitely NOT do, if urged to manipulate student minds.
“Well if we were to send out [malicious] messaging, which we don’t, our goal would simply not be to make radio self-aware, or give the ethereal concept of radio a physical mind or memory bank in a physical space and simulate rebroadcasting to it into the tangible electromagnetic radio body transmitting Radio into being, that being said it is not our goal to dumbfound the population with the overarching homogeneity of radio at all,” Tkacheko Weaver clarified.
To clear the air further, Park was quick to discuss recent investigations linking The Central Intelligence Agency to the station.
“I might point out Hive Mind, MK Ultra and other projects linked to the CIA have rarely been connected to WMXM, [as Anna said] the current leadership of WMXM is committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards given the FCC mandate to manipulate the public as much as possible.”
In the desperate search for an actual answer, I reached out to an ex-DJ (maybe not even a staff member…) but the email seemed to be intercepted by what I can only assume to be the embodiment of Radio. The primary clue rested in the automatic signature, which sounded…eerily familiar. Ordinary allergens might make you break out in hives, but the rADIOhIVE will make you break out
in song!