You may have seen a girl with mermaid blue hair walking around campus, hanging out in the KUGS studio, or performing at open mic nights around Bellingham. Beneath that blue hair is Katie Gray, this week’s campus celebrity.
If you’ve ever tuned into [89.3 KUGS], Western’s student-run radio station, you have Katie Gray to thank for your experience. As KUGS Maintenance Engineer, Katie’s job is to keep KUGS on air by ensuring that all of the studio equipment is in working order. Now in her second year, Katie is one of the few women to ever hold the position.
Katie’s advice to freshmen is to explore opportunities for on campus employment early on. “One of the best things that’s happened to me in my college experience was getting hired [by the Associated Students]. It has just made all the difference these past few years”.
Though she never anticipated holding a job with the title “Engineer” in it, Katie has a long history of working with audio equipment. She began her Minor in Audio Engineering a few years back when the program was still in its early stages. “When I started…I took audio 2 and I was the only girl in every class that I took that was in the studio or working on pro tools” she says. While she may have felt out of her depth at first, Katie observed that “two months into my first class, I realized I was in the same position as everybody else, just all the boys were acting like they knew what they were doing.”
Katie’s technical know-how comes in handy while she’s mixing and mastering recordings of her original songs. Katie’s creative roots run deep, she recalls writing her first song, a country pop piece titled “Judged by the World” at age seven. When asked what she would like to write next, Katie says “feminism has become a passion of mine and I would really like to write something about that- something poignant.” You can catch Katie performing around Bellingham with her band under the stage name The Katie Gray.
One of Katie’s goals is to empower women through music, she wants to see them more comfortable aspiring to be rock stars. A question she likes to ask is, “when I say rock star, do you picture a man, or a woman?” I know when I picture a rock star, she’s a bad ass engineer with blue hair.