It was the summer before 8th grade (2003), a couple months before I turned 13. We were on a family vacation in my hometown of Albany, New York. After golfing with my grandfather, a familiar voice emanated from the car radio – familiar not because I really knew who Rush Limbaugh was, but because Grandpa had long been a “Dittohead.” The show lit my curiosity and sparked a vigorous, lengthy conversation.

I can’t pinpoint what about Rush, or his show, struck me most – but consider me smitten. Back in Colorado, I couldn’t not listen each day. Even when Mom took us to the grocery store, I brought along my portable radio. It grew from there: Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt. I never turned back. Now it’s my career.

In 8th grade, I started recording mock radio shows on cassette. While this mostly consisted of monologues on prominent issues, I occasionally persuaded my younger siblings or a friend to “call-in.” My first four AM guest appearances were as a high school senior to promote a Constitution Day conference I organized (September 2007).

As a Regis University freshman in September 2008, I learned about The Highlander campus newspaper – and KRCX 93.9 “The Real Deal.” KRCX was almost entirely music-oriented. Despite my huge passion for music – especially blues – I wanted to do something political. The Seng Center Radio Show – “Blues and Politics, Seng Style!” – was born in mid-September 2008 as a talk show with hand-picked musical “breaks.”

Recall September 2008: Lehman Brothers ignited a financial crisis, the impending Great Recession clouded students’ post-graduation prospects – and presidential candidate Barack Obama took campuses by storm. Regis was likewise engulfed in “Obamamania.”

And this conservative student wasn’t sitting by.

Seng Center ran Thursday nights for two hours, broadcasting across the campus Quad, over a weak FM signal and via the internet. Most listeners tuned in online. Someone informed me that state legislators and Capitol staffers were among them.

I interviewed students, professors, Colorado political figures – 2010 candidates Ken Buck, Dan Maes, Tom Tancredo, Andrew Romanoff, Mike Coffman – and some national personalities. I challenged Regis’s central edicts on diversity and social justice on air (and in print).

By September 2010 I’d already filled in on Greeley’s KFKA. When I graduated, I was gearing up to substitute on Denver’s KNUS. I’ve hosted my Saturday Jimmy Sengenberger Show on KNUS for five years this Saturday. In January 2017, I launched Business for Breakfast weekdays on sister station KDMT.

In my final Highlander op-ed before graduation, I acknowledged who helped butter my bread:

“[While] I’ve hosted The Seng Center Radio Show I have never once been censored, told who I could or could not have on the program as a guest or dictated topics that were or were not off limits…

“…Here at Regis, you have the freedom to stir the pot. And I’ve done just that…

“…Despite my own efforts that made [AM radio opportunities] possible, I feel compelled to attribute these extraordinary opportunities not to myself but to one establishment.

“That institution is Regis University, a college which encourages students to think for themselves, to challenge the status quo, to take advantage of opportunities and make a difference in the world and to work toward an answer to one of the most thought-provoking questions one can ask: how ought we to live?

“Far too many colleges and universities throughout the country do not afford such expansive opportunities for students to express their views freely and without equivocation on campus…

“…By now my frequent political disagreements with certain staple perspectives here at Regis are no secret. But in spite of these core disputations, my rights to speech and to press have been upheld with remarkable fortitude.”

That was 2011. This is 2018. Before political correctness transformed college campuses into asylums for the triggered and microaggressed, the battle of ideas really mattered. Sadly, based on conversations with current students and faculty at Regis, I genuinely don’t think someone could replicate what I did then.

I can’t imagine life without Seng Center. Without the freedom to “stir the pot” and develop a show from scratch, I wouldn’t be celebrating 10 years of radio, 8 years of AM and 5 years of my own shows. I owe my career to campus free speech. Who knows who else might – if given the opportunity?