"COMPETING AGAINST DISCRIMINATION"
Broadcast debut:
6 p.m. Sept. 27, WILL AM-580
A Uni High/WILL Radio Production

Multimedia note: To listen to the Uni High/WILL documentary described in this article, click here.

URBANA — The latest radio documentary by Uni students received its broadcast premiere at 6 p.m. today on WILL AM-580.

The hourlong program is titled "Competing Against Discrimination: Achieving Equality in Athletics at the University of Illinois" and will soon be available on both CD and WILL's Web site.

Senior Annie Machesky and junior Maria Gao produced the documentary in conjunction with WILL's Dave Dickey; they also narrated the program.

Other students who served on the editing team were junior Katherine Allen and sophomores Katherine Floess, Sheela Gogula, Youyang Gu (who has since moved), and Adam Joseph.

The show is based on 16 interviews with former U of I athletes and other members of the local community conducted by the Uni High Class of 2011. The students did the research as part of their subfreshman oral history project under the direction of social studies executive teacher Janet Morford.

"We talked to some amazing people who accomplished a lot at the U of I," Gao told WILL in an article published on the station's Web site earlier this month.

"Things are so different today than they were when some of these people were involved in sports at the U of I. … I learned about Tim Nugent, who after World War II was the first person to make the college campus accessible to students with disabilities. He made everything accessible with curb cuts and ramps. Now when I see the curb cuts, I know it all started here at the U of I."

According to WILL, the documentary includes interviews with former All-America football player J.C. Caroline (No. 26 in the photo above), former Olympic track athlete Willie Williams, record-holding track and field athlete Gia Lewis, and wheelchair athlete Jean Driscoll, winner of eight Boston Marathon titles.

At 4 p.m. today, students and teachers, WILL staff members, interviewees, families, and friends celebrated the completion of the project with a reception in the main lobby of Campbell Hall, 300 N. Goodwin Ave., Urbana. The group then listened to the program before the official premiere.

According to Dickey, some 50 to 60 CDs containing the program will be made. Early next week the CD cover design will be selected from entries in a student contest, he said.

The documentary is another in the long line of cooperative projects between Uni High and WILL. Dating back to the 1990s, the station has worked with student volunteers to transform subfreshman oral history interviews into tightly edited hourlong programs. Many of these have gone on to win major communications awards.

Last fall, WILL aired “Widgets and Digits: Technological History, Research and Invention at the University of Illinois,” executive-produced by 2008 alum Ruthie Welch and co-produced and narrated by Gao and classmate Maritza Mestre. That program evolved out of the Class of 2010's subfreshman project.

Another documentary, about the impact of the women's movement on the C-U community, is scheduled to be completed later this fall. Mestre and classmate Linda Ly are co-producing the project, which is based on the Class of 2012's oral history interviews.

Working with them are juniors Alexx Engles, Rachel Harmon, Hadley Hauser, and sophomores Jenny Cooke, Amanda Hwu, Zach Korol-Gold, and Revathi Maturi.

In addition, several new interns, all current freshmen, have worked since May on the gender equity project — "for example, by writing summaries of background research that the older interns were not involved in but which was crucial material for the script," according to Morford.

These eight students will be given credit as part of that team: Amalia Dolan, Aishwarya Gautam, Christina Harden, Sarah Heffley, Anna Rubakhina, Marina Shah, Shruti Vaidya, and Sarah Joy Yockey.