WRVU

WRVU is a student-run college radio station associated with, but not operated by, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. It broadcasts via streaming radio, and from 1973 to 2014, it was also broadcast on licensed radio stations in Nashville. The station is operated as a division of Vanderbilt Student Communications (VSC), History Early stations A clandestine station at Vanderbilt University was set up by student Ken Berryhill around 1951 under the name "the Voice of the Commodore", but was shut down soon after, when the university administration discovered the antenna wire draped around Cole Hall. Berryhill then worked to convince the administration to form a committee for a formal station. After Berryhill was drafted into the Korean War in 1952, the committee gained the support of the university and of commercial station WSM, which donated equipment. The officially-sanctioned student station went on the air on March 30, 1953. As a very low powered carrier current station, it did not require a license from the Federal Communications Commission FCC) or qualify for official call letters, however it did adopt the self-assigned identifier of "WVU". The FCC told the station that using the campus high-voltage electrical grid as an antenna was causing it to exceed the legal range of an unlicensed station, so it had to re-wire through the campus steam tunnels to multiple buildings and use the low-voltage grid in those buildings to stay legal.