Most radio shows on our campus’s radio station Radio Universidad have been produced and developed by professors for years… until now. For the past six months, a new project for a radio show has been in the works: Pulso Estudiantil which operates under the motto “an open space for students by students”.
With its recent press conference and presentation of the new program last Tuesday, March 18th and premiere on Wednesday, there’s much speculation about what the program offers. Pulso Estudiantil, as defined by its creators, ensures a necessary space for students to propose different ideas and generate content from a variety of perspectives. Currently, there are five segments:
-
Lo que está pasando en la IUPI: this segment brings, in a short lapse of time, what has been going around campus.
-
Organizaciones estudiantiles: an inside look of the many student organizations that exist on campus.
-
La Gallera: an area for opposed perspectives to generate an understandable debate about local and international issues.
-
Talento estudiantil: An exposition of students with multiple, varied talents across the student body.
-
Tu Consejo: news of what the General Student Government is currently working on and developing throughout the semester.
Pulso Estudiantil was created as a response to a lack of space for students to express themselves, as well a workshop for the students in the School of Communication. “Not just lawyers on the main radio stations can comment on the country’s current issues, students have the ability to comment on those issues as well. Additionally, we demonstrate we do much more than ‘blocking gates’”, expressed the General Student Government president, María de los Milagros Colón Cruz. At the beginning of Pulso Estudiantil, not many of the students involved had prior experience in radio. However, this didn’t prove to be an obstacle, because they’ve received undivided support from the School’s director Jimmy Torres as well many technicians in Radio Universidad. The program’s team include the following students:
-
Roberto Nava Alsina – Major: Political Science
-
Jesús Flores – Major: Human Resources and Marketing
-
María de los Milagros Colón Cruz – Major: Journalism and Sociology
-
Alyssa Méndez Batista – recently graduated from Journalism and French
-
Shalomir Gierbolini – Major: Audiovisual Communications and Drama
-
Karla Sanabria Véaz – Major: Secondary Spanish Education
-
Legnna Cruz – Major: Journalism
-
Karlo L. Martínez Martos – Major: Computer Science.
They answered quite a few questions about Pulso Estudiantil:
Her Campus: How difficult was learning to produce an entirely new radio program from the beginning?
AMB: Lo que está pasando en la IUPI was hard for me. Every person who studies Communications knows that all news have a close expiration date, and in contrast to the other segments, it’s harder to present news in their actual time limit, especially in the radio.
JF: Also, we thought producing and making a radio show would be just sit there and talk and say “Oh, how cool is this!”, but no: this is complicated. You have to work with timing, and people are doing signals across the room for you to stop because you took too much time. Now, I think we managed to control it but it’s hard for students who are new in communications and have nothing to do with this world. (laughs).
MCC: We wanted to cover so many things but it’s only 28 minutes. We wanted to include so much content that in the end it was catastrophic. We cleaned up the table a bit, but giving structure to the program and its first production was very tough.
Her Campus: How did you become involved in this project?
MCC: The idea started from the Student General Government. Then, Karla, Jesús, Roberto, and I started out from there.
LC: I came along thanks to a Facebook promotion where students were needed for a new program. I took it as the perfect opportunity to practice journalism.
SG: I was in the publicity committee of the Student General Government when I found about the project. I’ve been working in Hoy en las noticias, so I had a brief experience with radio. But it was still a big challenge because we have to make the program as if it were live, breaking the formalities as a student program. It’s been hard to manage.
AMB: I found out about the project 3 months before my graduation and I was still interested because it was a perfect idea.
KMM: My integration came out differently: thanks to a shout out from Pirulo y la Tribu. And I was like: “wow that seems cool”. Being a Computer Science student, I knew they would need someone to work with the technical stuff and from what started as a simple reunion, meant I would keep on working with the team ever since.
Her Campus: Every one of you has a background that varies greatly from the others. How do you believe that can compliment the program?
JF: We have different ideologies and perspectives but we have achieved the convergence of doing something new and bringing a different touch.
SG: One of the program’s goal is to bring out different people of the faculties in campus to work together, and we have provided a program that displays this.
KSV: Having this background makes way for a variety of journalistic angles, maintaining all the topics we want to cover.
Her Campus: After the show’s premiere, what’s next for you guys?
JF: When I started along, I found out we had the option of making a one hour program. Right now, I’m asking myself why didn’t we let the show go for one hour? I want to the show to have enough success to be able to extend it to one hour. But most importantly: we’re looking to appeal to our audience which are our fellow students.
AMB: Having more collaborations not only with students but also with professors, administrative personnel, etc.
MCC: One of the goals most definitely is for the show to have a continuity as students graduate and others come along to the project. Within a year, we hope to have the program running a full hour.
Her Campus: What was the worst moment during the production process, based on your experience?
LC: There was moment in December when we’re recording programs without planning and order, and we were planning to go live in January. I entered a big crisis, we learned we just couldn’t. Trying to keep alive the proposal was kind of impossible at the time.
KSV: The reunions. We were making decisions 4 or 5 times, the reunions didn’t seem to have an end and all I could think of was: “when are we going to finish up to go out afterwards?”. Later on, we managed the differences and worked it out.
SG: Working with the segments and deciding which ones are going to go and what content to generate. It’s a problem that will be always present. At the end of the day we are a team who achieves what we set out to do.
Want to check out for yourself? Tune in on 89.7 FM San Juan or 88.3 FM Mayagüez every Wednesday at 5:00 PM.