WXOU hosted its first record swap event on Wednesday, Sept. 9 with the help of Found Sound Records.

Music director for WXOU Anthony Spak came up with the idea in a staff meeting over the summer semester, and from his thought came an event filling Fireside Lounge.

“My dad participates in a lot of car swap meets and is a regular vendor at Dixieland Flea Market in Waterford,” Spak said. “I also like collecting vinyl. I thought that pairing those two elements together would make for a cool Welcome Week event that students and faculty would get a kick out of.”

Instead of the typical DJ setup that WXOU brings to events, Spak specifically pulled out old equipment just to play some of the various types of music they found on vinyl records.

“Everything you hear at the event is vinyl,” Spak said, “[DJ] Jake [Reading] and DJ Kobe have actual skill, the rest of us just winged it.”

Throughout the event, the records encountered various problems, such as being hard to hear and having lots of static interference. But Spak and the other WXOU DJs worked to get problems that arose settled quickly and efficiently.

Later in the evening two students, Kaylee Kean and Sam Boyharti, performed. WXOU gave away records donated by Found Sound Records, as well as WXOU shirts and mugs. In a raffle, students won packs of concert tickets and record packs, including one record by Queen.

Spak explained that typically, WXOU advertises by participating in other organizations’ Welcome Week events and usually doesn’t host an event of their own.

“People usually don’t stumble onto WXOU while flipping stations,” Spak said. “But we’re hosting WXOU’s 50th Birthday Bash this year and hopefully we’ll be teaming up with bigger entities to make the event bigger than ever.”

Brittney Diesbourg, one of the attendees, carried around multiple records she got from the event. “It was fun. [The] WXOU staff was engaging and wanted to talk to the attendees, and I got this really cool polka vinyl.”

WXOU airs at 88.3 FM twenty 24/7. Applications for volunteers can be found outside of the WXOU office downstairs in the Oakland Center.