At the Topper TV info session, Sept. 12, there was a sense of excitement and ambitious energy. Chinwe Okorie, president and founder of Topper TV, walked around the room and chatted with prospective Topper TV staff about why they were interested and how they heard about the up-and-coming organization.

Topper TV was created when Okorie sought to reignite SEU TV, but found such a route to be a dead end. Okorie, a Digital Media Managment major, wanted the idea of TV media to have a fresh start in the minds of students and faculty.

“I saw that there was a need for a television medium to connect to students,” Okorie said.

Okorie enlisted the help of Adrian Tapia, who is in charge of the media center in the library. Tapia was one of the original members of SEU TV when he was an undergraduate student. Though SEU TV faded after he graduated, he agreed to come on board as a faculty advisor for Topper TV.

“Our mission is to build community here at St. Edward’s. There’s not really school spirit. We want people to get excited to see what other people are doing, and see what they’ve done,” Okorie said.

The organization is seeking to be more than just a news station. At the meeting, there was discussion of future goals for the club. They hope to eventually have sports programs and live broadcasts of school games, an SNL-like show, and even a show focusing on pop culture.

Community is a large focus for the group, as is getting the word out there about under-the-radar clubs. They are also looking to showcase student talent, requesting submissions for student-made films and documentaries.

“Topper TV is a good way for all the clubs to be known on campus. It’s a great way to get everyone involved,” Krystal Joseph, general manager of Topper TV, said.

Currently, officers on board are focusing on recruitment and putting people into pre-production positions not held by founding members, such as content producer, public relations, executive producer, and lead writers. They are also looking to fundraise to upgrade equipment, but in the meantime are working on a low budget and using equipment from the media center. However, they do have access to a production center and a green screen.

“In November, we are going to start getting people for production positions, and we should be up and running in Spring 2014,” Okorie said.

Topper TV will be available to watch on channel 10, the closed circuit television station for SEU. Okorie even has hopes to discover what happened to the mysterious channel 17, which is just a desktop screen with an error message on it.

“I asked what that station was, and I was told somebody had bought it and just disappeared and never used it,” Okorie said.

Mysterious stations aside, Topper TV is starting interviews for the the pre-production crew and will begin recruiting for production in November.