WECX 99.9 hosted an open house on Sept. 21 to show off its new equipment and recruit DJs. Photos by Carly Harshbarger ’26
On any weeknight stroll past Eckerd College’s Brown Hall, you might catch amplified sounds from a small studio playing punk anthems, indie tracks or even a nighttime talk show. That’s WECX 99.9 Eckerd’s oldest and largest club, where students take the mic each week to share their playlists and voices.
For Co-General Manager Taj Sorensen, a junior marine science and music student from Salt Lake City, Utah, the station was her first community on campus.
“I knew nobody at Eckerd, except for the people at WECX and my roommates,” Taj says.
Her love of college radio traces back to her favorite film.
Open house attendees were invited to decorate old records for display on the radio station walls.
“My favorite movie ever is Pump Up the Volume—he’s a radio host. So I went super into it and told Jordan [Mallis ’25, the previous manager and a recent environmental studies graduate from Connecticut], ‘I need a show,’” Taj recalls.
Maddie Merrick, co-general manager and a senior animal studies student from Somerset, Kentucky, describes herself as a “huge concert person” who’s been to more than 100 shows. After running into Jordan her sophomore year, she knew she had to join the club.
Today, she hosts Maddie on the Mic, while Taj runs Taj’s Punk Happy Hour.
Until recently, the station hadn’t been updated since the early ’90s. “All the equipment was RadioShack branded. It was so old and decrepit,” Taj explains.
She and Maddie, over the summer, took on this large project to renovate the studio. The club raised $3,000 in a fundraising campaign.
WECX 99.9 touts itself at Eckerd College’s oldest and largest club.
“We wanted the studio to be vibey, accessible and a place where students could just hang out and be themselves,” Taj says.
“We spent hours ripping out carpet, alphabetizing the catalogs and getting partnerships for new equipment. Everything’s redone.”
The results speak for themselves. WECX now boasts more DJs than ever before—a total of 84 members—making it the largest club on campus and with even more student engagement since its revamp.
“We’ve never had a completely full schedule. This year, we have 84 DJ slots filled. We even added Saturdays. That’s how much demand there is now,” Taj exclaims.
“Now people say, ‘I feel comfortable here. I feel like this is my space,’” Maddie says.
Outside of the studio, WECX is known for some of Eckerd’s biggest events.
A student favorite is WECXAPALOOZA, a daylong music festival on campus.
“Wecxapalooza is our own Lollapalooza,” Maddie says. “And we have a lot coming up this semester that we’re really excited for, and even more coming up next semester that will be even bigger and better than ever before.”
Best of all, it’s free.
“It’s literally a free concert,” she adds. “Like, hello? Why would you not go?”
Recruitment has been so successful this semester that WECX 99.9 managers have filled all 84 available DJ slots.
Another event they host is Sex with WECX, which Maddie describes as “like a queer sex event that we do that’s usually hosted by a drag queen, and we talk about safe sex in college.”
With streaming services dominating the way people listen to music, Taj and Maddie obviously believe college radio still matters.
“College radio is a dying art form. Our job is to keep people free to talk on the airwaves, make noise and stay loud,” Taj says.
You can listen from anywhere in the world.
Sam Atkinson, a sophomore anthropology student from Montclair, New Jersey, is the historian of WECX. He says, “What I love most about WECX is it’s truly whatever you want it to be. Whether it’s queuing up whatever music feels right in the moment, chatting with your friends, or crafting intricate and unique shows, WECX gives you the freedom to choose how you want to spend that hour each week in the studio and broadcasts it worldwide for friends and family to listen.”
August Lambrecht, a sophomore visual arts student from San Antonio, Texas, is the social media coordinator at WECX.
“It’s very much … one of the only places in this campus where people are truly, like, free to express themselves,” he says. “[W]hen I first came to college, lost, I feel like I didn’t make that many friends. But when I went in there, I was like, ‘[O]h, this is the place for me.’ I think it just brings people together.”
“If you go to our website, wecx.org, you can stream,” Maddie says. “And now we are also on EC Experience [for Eckerd community members]; hit the Community tab—we’re at the very bottom. It’s super easy to access. We also have a link on our Instagram and all of our social media.”
On the future of the club, Maddie says she hopes “[e]veryone at WECX stays unapologetically themselves.
“Whoever’s running WECX in the next five years should keep things the same—but make it louder.”
