Name: Mason Kilpatrick
Position: Station Manager
Hometown: Hutchinson, Kansas
Major: Film and Media Studies and Communications Studies
Minor: Sociology
Year: 5th year senior
In his own 3 words: Deep, affectionate, and understanding. Pretty much like your mom, if you have a loving mom.
Song that describes me: “Bigmouth Strikes Again” by The Smiths
Jake Janeiro: What are your hobbies outside of KJHK?
Mason Kilpatrick: I love watching films with friends, but honestly I prefer going to theaters and watching them alone. Which sometimes looks awkward and weird. There is a negative connotation towards people who go see movies alone.
JJ: Oh, I did that when “Hacksaw Ridge” came out. I was going to see that with or without my friends.
MK: Yeah, I am fighting that negative perception! But also, if you think about it, the best feeling in the world is when you go into a movie theater, it starts, and nobody is in the theater with you. It is like your own living room! You could do whatever you want! I don’t do anything but its nice to not have to worry about other people’s presence and just consume the story.
I also like to write, I have really been getting into writing poems more, especially with the recent social climate. A lot of people I find are tense. Writing helps me express the feelings I might be too afraid to tell others in person. I also love professional wrestling actually, I consider it to be an art form. I watch wrestling based in America but also Japanese wrestling, which is pretty interesting.
I also love going on walks and hikes. Being able to just walk or hike with someone, in a nice area, for a long period of time is one of my favorite things to do. Because not only are you taking in the different stimuli and experiences around you, you are building your own experiences with the person you’re walking with. I really love that.
JJ: What do you consider to be your best/favorite KJHK
contribution?
MK: It’s hard to find a single contribution to the station because there’s such a rapid turnover and there’s so many people that come through here. Ideally, I like to think that if you do your job right and KJHK continues to be as creative and free flowing as it is, I don’t think you should really be remembered after your time. Because if you are remembered after KJHK for doing something, that means that nobody else did it better than you, and that is not good in my opinion. That is just stagnation. I don’t want the station to be stagnant.
But, the one contribution that I think of are my station IDs because I know those will not change. People will make better ones but mine will always be mine. And they are weird. Oh man, some of my station IDs are really weird, I am not gonna lie. A lot of the ideas come from me and my friend, Jake Waters, who was a former Programming Director here. He would always come up with ideas, but never do them. So I would do them.
JJ: What is your favorite color?
MK: Dude, you just opened a whole world. I love teal. Any darker shades of teal, lighter shades of teal…I am into it. I love teal on everything.
I love teal on my clothes. I literally have teal bed sheets. One of my favorite sports teams has teal color, the Charlotte Hornets, its teal and purple. And I love how teal looks on other people. I love the complexion of teal with people who have brunette or red hair. I think that is a really cool combination.
There is just something really soothing about it. When I look at the color, it does not carry the same kind of dread as blue, like a heavy blue, but it does not have the calm of green. To me, teal kind of expresses how I feel on a daily basis where it is like: “Man, I know I am a little off and I am not always gonna be 100%,but I am keeping it together. I am composed.” And I feel like that is teal in an nutshell.
JJ: Are you involved in any other organizations here at KU?
MK: Yeah, I am. I am a student representative for KU Willow Branch which is a student group that represents the Willow Domestic Violence center, on campus. Our main goal is to raise awareness about domestic violence and dating violence, which is something I take pretty seriously. I do it with some of my best friends and I have fun.
JJ: How did you get involved in that?
MK: A former DJ here just posted on Facebook one day and was like “Hey, I am starting this group, who wants to join?” I didn’t really know her but I thought she was pretty cool. I wanted to do more in my life and make more of a positive change. I think raising awareness for this type of stuff is cool, so that is why I did it.
JJ: What is your spirit animal?
MK: I am gonna have to say it is a penguin. And here is why, hear me out. When I was a young kid, I loved stuffed animals. I had A LOT of stuffed animals as a kid. But my favorite stuffed animal was a penguin, a bigger penguin. I loved this penguin. His name was Penguin. And this dude was awesome. I played poker with him, I would sleep with him, I would take him to a lot of places. He was cool. Penguin was a cool dude. Now that I think about it, I mean, what do I think of when I think of penguins? They are seen as cute and small. They are not taken seriously because of their physical appearance. But have you seen inside their mouths?
I am gonna show you something (Mason proceeds to show Jake a picture of a penguin’s mouth). Is that not frightening or what? That is scary! What I am trying to say is penguins could be warriors if they wanted to. Penguins are vicious, they are dope and they are strong. But I feel like they are not really associated with that. And, in a way, I feel like that is me. I am a loud mouth, short, flamboyant and not as masculine.
JJ: How did your major/minor combination come about?
MK: When I was a kid I watched a lot of movies and at first I had a dream and a fascination with being an actor. Then I realized that is actually not me. I wanted to make stories. I wanted to write, direct, produce films, stuff like that. But now I apply that to everything. I want to create stories to help people escape reality. I want to create stories to help people understand whats going on around them and I also want to create stories to help people understand each other. That is why I went into film. I think change, in any sense, can come through story telling. And I am someone whose afraid of death. So what is gonna exist past me? My stories.
I went into communications, honestly, to better combine what I was learning at KJHK with my education. People would also say I am a good communicator. So I was like, “Man, I should probably study it.” So I did and I really enjoyed it. I learned how rhetoric can be used to turn people against each other and for each other. For someone like me, who is a loudmouth, its important for me to understand that tool. It is important to know the thin line that you are walking every time you talk to someone. Every interaction is an experience they are taking in and it is going to affect and persuade them.
Photo Credit: Jake Janeiro