By EMMA LAUS
Within the past two years, the music scene at Beloit has taken a hit. At the beginning of the 2024 fall semester, the music department was merged into an all-encompassing performing arts major (PART). A semester later, C Haus, the campus bar and music venue, closed after the manager quit, leaving the position open for the entirety of spring semester. Additionally, in a recent letter to trustees, the administration mentioned the possibility of moving the campus radio station, WBCR, downtown to make more room for the School of Business. With budget cuts and staffing shortages across the board, the future of the music scene is uncertain.
The sentiment that “campus culture is dying” has been echoed across campus in light of these recent changes. However, this isn’t a new claim. Lev Anderson’98 remembers seniors expressing nostalgia for campus life before kegs were banned. According to Archivist Emeritus Fred Burwell‘86, “Throughout the 70s and 80s and probably even later, there was something called “‘Old Beloit, New Beloit,’ where older students felt that those coming in were much more conservative and tame … older students tend to forget that to some extent they were like that as first year students themselves.”
Burwell adds, “Campus culture is always changing and/or evolving…student organizations and campus events last awhile and then fade away or evolve with the times. Older students tend to lament the losses and the changes, unless they helped make them.”
Despite these changes, certain traditions and spaces have stood the test of time. C Haus opened in the early 1970s and consistently hosted bands throughout the decades. Samir Sugathan’94, who served as the C Haus manager after graduating, found that regularly hosting bands there helped keep the community together. “(It allowed) people to participate in the community itself on campus. It allowed people to come together and not go their own separate ways on the weekends,” he says. Under Sugathan’s management, C Haus hosted up and coming indie rock bands like Built To Spill and Pinback. Until its final semester, visiting bands would play there almost every weekend. Students spent the weekends there listening to music or playing pool and socializing.
The Fieldhouse and Eaton Chapel have also served as venues throughout the college’s history, hosting a variety of musicians across genres — klezmer, rock, reggae and blues, to name a few. Although it is now closed, the Fieldhouse was an early campus venue that hosted prominent jazz acts, including Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. When rock became a dominant genre by the 1960s, acts like Frank Zappa, Cream and Jefferson Airplane all performed there.
The longest ongoing campus music events are Folk ‘n’ Blues and Spring Day. The first Folk ‘n’ Blues was held in the early 1970s; originally a multi day festival, the event was hosted outdoors on the academic side of campus. Early guest artists included blues icons Hound Dog Taylor, Son House and Junior Wells.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the college hosted artists such as Uncle Tupelo, Will Oldham and the Indigo Girls. According to a Beloit Magazine article from 1996, the Indigo Girls didn’t request compensation from their performance, believing the event’s exposure to be reward enough. “You’d have a smattering of people for the daytime folk artists and then there was usually an open mic for student folk artists or blues artists,” remembers Burwell. “The headliners were at night, and those drew not only students, but people from all over. It was kind of a big deal, it was a well known festival, and there was a lot of beer flowing… all kinds of stuff.” Spring Day’s exact origins are less known, but it seems to have started sometime in the mid to late 1970s. Popular bands such as Soul Asylum and Yo La Tengo performed during this festive day.
Historically, students have also been able to connect through music clubs and organizations. In the late 1800s, mandolin and banjo clubs were open for interested students. While those no longer exist, there was an overarching Music Club and corresponding Music House which fell apart in 2023 due to a lack of leadership.
WBCR has been a prominent music-centered organization on campus since 1907, serving as a bridge between students and the larger Beloit community. According to Burwell, during his time as a student in the 1980s, there were around 20 staff members and close competition for slots. “People wanted to do shows and there was competition for them. So if somebody screwed up and didn’t show up a few times, they’d just get kicked off because there was somebody waiting for their time slot,” he says.
While engagement in WBCR has gone down over the years, a community still exists around it, with students bringing friends on their shows and passing time in the studio and podcast room. Finn Waterman’26 became station manager his freshman year and aimed to increase engagement by putting up signs around campus. “When I came into the position, nobody really knew that we had a radio station. It was a, ‘you have to know to know,’ kind of thing. I credit that mostly to lack of advertising,” he says. “I was really proud of the fact that I was able to get people from all across campus involved in the radio… we have all these different variety shows.”
To increase awareness around the station, he has also pushed for it to be played in common spaces around campus. “I think it would be the coolest thing ever to wake up, you’re going to your 8 a.m, you go into DKs and you get a coffee… and someone’s up there talking. And it’s someone that you know and they’re playing music to wake you up in the morning,” he says. However, the college shut down this idea, saying it would be too much noise.
In addition to his work with WBCR, Waterman is a student musician. With Music Club’s absence, he finds that there is a lack of sufficient opportunities to connect with other musicians on campus. The potential move of WBCR to Hendricks would be yet another loss of an on-campus space for music lovers to connect. “(It) would kill the station,” Waterman says.
Waterman also believes the college’s support for C Haus could be stronger. The C Haus manager plays an essential role in booking bands, and since the former manager left, the college has been slow to replace him. “There are a lot of people on this campus that have experience specifically with booking and hosting bands and putting out events basically. So there should be no shortage of people (interested in the job),” he says. “There’s definitely no lack of student interest. Everyone wants C-Haus to be open again.” As of April 2025, the venue is open for individual events, but they are not able to sell alcohol or other drinks.
Although student musicians currently face a lack of spaces to connect with one another in terms of extracurriculars, Director of the School of Media and the Arts Cullyn Murphy believes the new PART major could be an avenue for collaboration. “The arts should be talking to each other, and we should be under the same roof in some way,” he says.
Waterman and Sam Gomoll’25 both cited Murphy’s class “MULTI Ensemble,” which brings artists across disciplines together, as a way to connect. “It was really great being able to meet people in different disciplines, and providing a space for that makes it a lot easier to actually connect people together,” says Waterman. However, he worries that lumping the performing arts together will make it easier to further cut the arts budget, saying, “If you have four massive and also very expensive disciplines all smashed together into one, you can justify lowering their budget bit by bit, which is disheartening.”
According to Murphy, a lack of communication between students may also contribute to a sense of inactivity. “I think there’s some synergy to be had. I think there are bits and bobs of things going on that aren’t talking to each other…I hear that this student is trying to start an open mic thing, and then these students over here are starting a marching band thing and people are recording stuff in Maple Tree recording studio,” he says. “I think there are some ways that they can share resources and share space.”
Additionally, Burwell believes that the accessibility of entertainment and music through streaming services may contribute to a sense of demotivation in attending and spearheading music events. “There’s so much entertainment available in other ways these days. Not too many years ago, we had stereos and record players and radios and you could go to a concert or something, but we didn’t have the constant availability that you just just go online and it’s like streaming everywhere. There might be less motivation in a way,” he says.
However, the outpouring of attendance and engagement at recent music events and MULTI show a continuing passion for live music. “The turnout for (Peet Fest and Gaz Fest) was insane. I mean, for Peet Fest, I swear, there were over 100 people there. So it’s definitely not for lack of motivation. It’s just a lack of fun things to do,” says Waterman.
Gomoll, who performed at Peet Fest with his band, including Waterman, says, “(Peet Fest) was insane. It was such a great experience. The sunlight was bright, the weather was great, and there were like a ton of people out there, people were happy and interested. So overall, just having it all come together was a really cool experience, and we all got to experience it together.”
Continued support of peer’s involvement in live music and the arts can help show the administration that these events matter — they create community and hold it together. “(Live music) shows us that music is a living, breathing thing and it is about community and sharing space as much as it is about the notes and rhythms,” Murphy says.
Beloit’s creative spirit is not dying. Yet, there may be a sense of disconnectivity on campus and lack of interest on the part of the administration to uplift the organizations that have made Beloit a memorable and special place for students. “Music can be a real bond, and it can continue to be a bond for the rest of your life… the college has had its issues so it’s a little more bare bones as far as its faculty and staff,” says Burwell. “They might see some of the music stuff as a little bit of an extra, but I just feel like it’s an extra that can matter a lot to the community.”
Featured image: Emma Laus
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