KMNR 89.7 FMKMNR 89.7 FM

It started around 1961 as KMFA, an unsanctioned station wired together in the basements of four Missouri S&T dormitories — Kelly, McAnerney, Farrar and Altman — whose initials gave it a name. The university made it official as KMSM in 1964, and in 1972 it took the call letters KMNR after Joe Miner, the school mascot. The license has sat with the Board of Curators ever since, but students have always run the place, and in 2005 the studio moved into Altman Hall, back inside one of the buildings it was named for.

Nothing is off-limits. A seven-member board elected by the DJs each year tells nobody what to play, so one recent evening ran a soul hour built on Funkadelic, Al Green and the Average White Band, then an hour of Japanese guitar rock, then Deftones and My Chemical Romance. Around seventy-eight students fill the week across 1,850 watts over Rolla and Phelps County.