After a full year of planning, KWCW began broadcasting for the first time in the first week of Interim, a period in which students could take classes during Winter Break, in preparation for regular programming at the start of spring semester, January, 1971. The station had gone on the air in the weeks prior for testing. Funded by an ASWC grant, KWCW was able to build a state of the art station as one of only a few student run stations in the country. It has been an educational non-profit station since that point. In its first years, programming from the station involved music and local news to greater Whitman students, and Walla Walla and Washington State Penitentiary residents. KWCW also fought for more funding and support for additional coverage, including sporting and live events. At that time, programming was seven days a week from mid-morning to 3 or 4AM with around one-hundred students involved. In 1982, KWCW was able to improve its broadcasting power from 10 to 100 watts. The station was first housed at the Student Union Building, where Maxey Hall now stands, and can now be found upstairs in Reid Campus Center.
The KWCW Records contains materials from Whitman College's student-run radio station, KWCW 90.5 FM. This collection has records dating from approximately 1970 to 2014 2024, including media clippings, Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) records, Federal Communication Commission records, as well as correspondence with Congress members, alumni correspondences, posters, and advertising ephemera, former KWCW schedules and program logs, budgets, radio tower planning and schematics, and KWCW's newsletter, 5 Mile Radius. This collection also includes programs and materials belonging to other radio stations, including KGTS 91.3 (Walla Walla University), KCMU 90.3 (now KEXP, an independent station in Seattle), KUOI 89.5 (University of Idaho), KKFI 90.1 (Kansas City Community Radio), KVMR 89.5 (Community Radio of Nevada City, CA), and KCAT 91.5 (Central Washington University).
Initial donation to the Whitman College and Northwest Archives by Jack Quire, General Manager of KWCW and class of 2022, on October 29, 2021. The accession number associated with this donation is 2021-012. Later accruals donated by Lucky Eden on 2023-12-12, and Max Browning on 2024-01-31. The accession number associated with these donations are 2023-072 and 2024-010.
The records arrived from the KWCW office loose and unorganized in a large box. From there, they were organized into acid-free folders by subject or material.
Collection is open for research.