Although Jess Jones ’08 spends a good chunk of her time these days helping Traverse Square kids put together their own weekly radio show, you should still stop her and ask why her study abroad experience was that much cooler than yours. Maybe because it involved interviewing a teacher on hunger strike, brick-walling himself into a room? She’ll also come right out and say it: the coolest dorks at Wesleyan can be found in the WESU offices.
Elyssa: I guess the first thing I wanted to ask was how did you come up with the idea of doing youth radio?
Jess: I did it in high school. I was a journalist – a youth media reporter for WDIY 88.1 FM in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, near where I’m from. But I started when I was fourteen, so I was a lot older than these kids.
E: So you actually do lesson plans with these kids, showing them how to use the sound boards?
J: We started – we had a million worksheets, and documents, and evaluation sheets and stuff, and we never used them. It’s very play-it-by-ear at this point…We’re learning a lot about how each of them have different ways of learning. Some people need to have it written out, some people just need to just do it a million times over, some people need no one else in the room and absolute quiet.
E: What else do you do for WESU exactly?
J: I’m also a Public Relations Director. I have lots of little jobs. I’m also a DJ – I DJ for a show, “Musica Pa’ Gozar.” I’m the World Music Director…I do the press releases for Struttin’, our dance party events, or when our new season comes out, [I] send it to radio stations and newspapers and stuff like that. You know, try to hype us ’cause WESU’s free form until we die.
E: Would you say generally WESU is one of the student groups that is one of the best ways of really working with Middletown and connecting with the local communities?
J: Yeah… WESU’s been around since ’39, and in certain periods of its history there were practically no students involved, it was just loosely affiliated with the University. There is such a strong community presence that is completely independent of the students. Obviously since because it’s affiliated with Wesleyan, we’ve had a lot of restructuring and the board has always been students, but yeah, I mean, just now I was over there playing with one of the DJ’s five-year-old and seven-year-old kids who were just running around. There’s so many unique programs we have that attract different sectors of the community. And also the student community at WESU is cool, I think we’re the coolest dorks at this school.
E: Sounds like the Argus. Maybe we’re a little less fun. So you studied abroad in Cochabamba, in Bolivia?
J: That was in Fall ’06…the study abroad office kind of screwed me over to be honest, with what I wanted to do. They just weren’t approving the programs that I wanted for credit, so I said, oh well, I’m going to take a semester off and graduate faster. So I found a volunteer placement program that kind of connects you to internship volunteer stuff, and I found this radio station called Radio del Valle, it’s in Cochabamba, which is the third biggest city there. So, my first week I walked around and followed someone, and you know, my Spanish was still kind of rusty, so I walked around the city with this other reporter from the station four times, and then they were like, “All right, go out, report the news! You remember where the Department of Health is?” It was really hectic, but really fascinating to try and immerse yourself and accurately report on things from a culture that you are just becoming familiar with.
E: You were working with a radio station down there?
J: Yeah, so I worked from nine to one. So I’d go out – sometimes there’d be promotional events with the mayor, who’d be like ‘look how great I am, I’m opening a new playground for children,’ while there’s people protesting ‘we have no water! We have no water!’…So you do that kind of stuff and then run back and write up a story and the broadcast went out at 12:50. It was really kind of shoddy sound recording stuff, we didn’t have batteries. I guess this looks a little haphazard [gestures at Argus office] but really there it was so much worse.
E: That’s good to know. Generally, just ’cause I’m interested in this kind of stuff, but what was the political climate like? Just because I’m from Colombia –
J: I didn’t know that! I really wanted to go to Colombia.
E: It’s getting safer.
J: My parents were like, ‘do not go,’ and just ’cause I was already traveling alone a lot, and doing all this stuff – I got robbed three times, once at gunpoint, in Bolivia…but that was me taking an unmarked taxi at five in the morning. Duh, you’re going to get robbed at gunpoint…So the coca growers and the lower classes mostly really like [Evo Morales]. Obviously the rich people don’t. So when I was there it was really fascinating, there’re hunger strikes all the time…it’s one of the really popular forms of protest there. There’s like steps – first you protest, then five people from your protest sit in front of the mayor’s office and go on hunger strike, like ‘we want to be able to grow more coaca.’ So we’d be out there interviewing them and they’d be chewing coca and sometimes there’d be pregnant mothers, so then Health Services would come and be like, don’t do this, but it’s this whole, ‘I’m gonna stand for my coca leaves’ thing. The teacher’s union went on strike near the end of the year, and this one teacher literally went on hunger strike and brick-walled himself into a room, so I was interviewing him as people were putting the paste down and they were about to close it up. I think they eventually conceded and he came out after three days, but still. I feel like here we think, oh, they’re on a hunger strike, what extremists, that’s sickening, that is not the democratic channel, [they should] petition or something.
E: That sounds like a much more interesting study abroad experience than mine. So I wanted to ask, isn’t your name a superhero’s name from Marvel Comics?
J: [laughs] Yes! I’m the girl that inspired ‘Alias’…I think I was doing that really vain self-centered thing where you’re like, I’m gonna google my name, so it turns out I’m this really famous saxophonist in this jazz band in Atlanta, but also I’m the Marvel Comics girl. Actually www.jessicajones.com is a porn site, but if you wikipedia Jessica Jones, you get this girl. I forget what secret powers she has – I should know what secret powers I have, huh?
Leave a Reply