Navani Rachumallu has been listening to WPRB 103.3 FM for most of her life. 

Princeton University’s radio station was a mainstay in her musical rotation growing up, playing it between spells of her parents’ Indian music and her older sister’s top 20 hits. 

Quickly into her time at Princeton, Rachumallu decided she had to work for WPRB. Now, as both Station Manager and a Blogging Assistant at Mudd Library, she’s supporting WPRB in more ways than one. 

Tucked away in the basement of Bloomberg Hall, Rachumallu is clearly in her zone. Sitting between a desktop, laptop, sound boards, and surrounded by vinyl, she spends an hour a week spinning tracks and hosting “Mindless Thoughts.” 

The show is just one of her responsibilities as Station Manager. “Basically, my job is to make sure everyone else is doing their job,” Rachumallu said. “To make sure that the station is functioning and that we can carry on projects throughout the year.” 

A member of the Class of 2026, she’s been in the role since the start of 2025, following stints as a production manager, audio engineer, and even briefly on the station’s news team. Now she focuses on her show, which plays a melting pot of music genres, while being something of a face of the station—tabling at concerts, and doing community outreach, such as spinning records at Princeton Record Exchange. 

“Our broadcast goes from most of New Jersey to Philly, so we have a wide range of people listening and want to support us,” Rachumallu said. “But part of that is that we have to provide something for the community other than sitting in a basement and DJing.”

As a blogging assistant at Princeton University Library’s Mudd branch, Rachumallu is also championing WPRB, albeit by uncovering the station’s history.

WPRB - Public or Private? 

Earlier this semester, Rachumallu penned an article about the station’s recurring identity crisis. As a community-run station, but managed by the University, WPRB teetered between its identities in the 1960s and 70s, with its management debating the station’s purpose. 

Rachumallu’s story illuminates one such debate. In 1972, three Black students proposed a new community program. They’d bring Black high school students from the area to WPRB to learn about the station, while helping to produce “Black Montage,” a program featuring “news and perspectives on the Black community.”

“When I started at Mudd I had no idea where to start researching because there’s just so much material there,” Rachumallu said. “So I just thought I’d start with something I cared about.” 

She found a box of material about a WPRB program called “Triad,” a sort of spiritual successor to “Black Montage” for Black listeners.  

“I asked people in the station and none of them knew about it so I thought it was important history to share for institutional memory,” Rachumallu said. 

“The whole issue about the Triad program was questioning how connected you are to our community and thinking about what we owe our community,” Rachumallu said. “Those are still questions I think about, and it was interesting to see the parallels even more.” 

Like her job of uncovering cuts for her show, unearthing the station’s history speaks to Rachumallu’s passion for education. A year out from graduation, she’s considering work in the education field. 

“I could do something in education media, that could be a good merger of my strengths,” Rachumallu said. 

“But I don’t know, I’ll do something good, hopefully. Something that helps people.”