Diversity On A College Campus

Harry: Not to sugarcoat it cause I think most people wanna hear “Oh, it was very anti-Semitic and blah blah blah” you know. It was the exact opposite.

Isabelle: Right.

Harry: I will say I always wear a Star of David around my neck or what’s called a Mezuzah, which is a prayer scroll around my neck. And I am not a religious person in the least bit. I wear it out of tradition. Strictly out of tradition. And I wear the star now to give you an idea, my wife is not Jewish. I wear the star now because it’s the first thing my wife gave me and I’ve never taken it off. So most people think it’s a police star [laughs] cause it looks like a police star, but I never, but I wore it back then I always had one on. I have a brother who always wears a Chai, which is a Hebrew letter, and I always wore a star or a Mezuzah. I got to school, the very first thing I did when I unpacked was I put my stuff out of my trunk and I took my star off. I can’t remember if it was a star or a Mezuzah, but I think it was a glass star at the time, and I took it off and I put it in my drawer because I wasn’t gonna tell anybody that I was Jewish. My name is actually, we learned recently more Scandinavian than it is Jewish or Eastern European. So, I didn’t say anything to anybody. And I figure it’s just better not said. I had a few anti-Semitic incidents in my life, and I thought eh I don’t need that you know. And not anything horrible. but probably–I don’t know the timeline probably the couple first weeks of school, I walk through the lounge and there’s a group of kids there and this is now the late eighties, we’re in the farm crisis, that’s when farming became really big, and I’m sure, do you know who John Cougar Mellencamp is?

Isabelle: I don’t, unfortunately, I’m sorry.

Harry: I listened to him all the way up here. So there was an album. There was a rockstar named John Cougar, at the time he changed his name, and the album was called Scarecrow, and it was a huge hit. And, at that time we were in a farm crisis and the farms were getting foreclosed left and right. The country was in a recession, and I had a friend Dale, or Gale, I’m sorry Gale, who came from Plum Grove and had twelve brothers and sisters that lived on a dairy farm and he got subsidized cheese. I remember him bringing giant bricks of cheese to school, cause his parents couldn’t afford to buy food yet, they were making cheese. It was crazy, things were a mess. But anyways I’m walking through the lounge and it’s the first few weeks of school, and these farm kids are sitting there talking and all of a sudden I hear, “Well you know it’s the Jews, it’s the goddamn Jews, they have, they–they control all the media and they control the–,” They didn’t know the work commodity but they were saying, “–they control the food prices, and that’s why my parents are losing their farms. It’s all the Jews.” Well at that point I had said that’s it, I cannot walk past this. I’m gonna get the crap beat out of me in a minute, but I’m gonna stand up and say, and I turned around and I say something I won’t say on the tape, and I said, “By the way, I’m Jewish.” And I said, “And you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” And that was the only negative and those–those three morons were gone by first semester, so I didn’t really care. But that was the only negative incident I had the entire four years I was here. Now what was said behind my back, I have no idea. Gale’s parents, Gale never took us home to his house, everybody went to everybody’s house, it was a thing because his mother wouldn’t let me in the door. His mother did not want me in their house, which is fine. He and I got along fine, I could care less. He and I were very good friends. But yeah his mother would not let me, she did not want a Jew in her house. It was whatever. But on campus, I never had an anti-Semitic incident. I never heard anything, the people that I lived with in the dorm at Coate [Hall] became more inquisitive. I was the first Jew, ninety percent of ‘em ever met, so they became inquisitive, they asked me questions, they were interested. I–my mother would send care packages and some of this–some of the crap that–that we eat you think about it now you know? But I shared my Jewish food with my friends. I don’t know how they ate it, but at that time you couldn’t get a bagel in every grocery store, it was still in the Jewish community. My mother–and we lived by one of the best bagel factories in the country and my mother would ship bagels from New York Bagel Bialy to me and cream cheese and gefilte fish, and all kinds of Jewish food, and I would share it with my friends. And it was, it was just–it became what we did and who we were and –I think I mentioned this before but they used to put, I don’t know if they still put signs up in the lobby down in the dorms and stuff, kids would make posters. And at Christmas, they would make big Christmas posters and they would say, “Merry Christmas, Coate Hall.” And blah blah blah and there was a Christmas tree and I never cared, I didn’t you know. And then one year Tall Terry, we called him Tall Terry, he used to make the signs, Tall Terry wrote on the bottom in big letters it said, “Merry Christmas to everyone,” and something like that, “and Happy Hanukkah, Harry.” So it never, I never had a negative experience.

Butch: You know, it was in the ‘60s, but I can’t remember if that was when I was in college or right after, but certainly we were aware of the disturbances, but it was happening more in the South, so we were pretty much removed from that, you know. Back at that time, I don’t even remember seeing a black student on campus. Now there might have been, and probably was, but I don’t remember having a black student in any of my classes. So La Crosse was pretty, I know at the time there was a black family that lived there, he was a barber. I think the name was Moss or Moses or something like that. He had a barber shop on the North Side, and that was about the only black family that we were aware of, and really, as far as the Hispanic population, La Crosse was pretty isolated from minorities back in those days. That didn’t occur probably even until the, I would bet it was almost into the ‘80s before a lot of the minorities tended to be a part of our communities.

Gavin: So, La Crosse was a predominantly white campus during this time?

Butch: Very much so. Very much so. Even, I can’t recall even any staff member that was a minority. Now, when I was, when I first started Choral Union, Dr. Malina was a Filipino, so they did have, by that time, there were probably having maybe some minority staff members. But when I was an undergraduate, if they were there, I don’t remember any of ‘em or ever recall seeing a minority. It was pretty white.

Gavin: Why do you think that was?

Butch: Well, I think basically Midwest in what we would call La Crosse would have been considered a smaller town. And I’m sure, you know, certainly [UW-]Milwaukee and perhaps even UW-Madison would have been more involved with minorities, but La Crosse was pretty rural and in the rural areas, even like it was probably, lets see when Norwalk built the meat plant. That brought in our first Hispanic people, and that was kind of a slow process. It wasn’t really the families back in those as such, it was like single men that would come and work at the factory, then eventually the factory or the families started becoming a part of the community. And, of course, now, today that’s very engrained in our community.

Darlene: Yeah, at the time I think I defined it as certainly race, class, ethnicity. I guess class wasn’t really on my mind, but certainly what we can see on people’s skin, the shape of their skull, the age, the gender, that sort of thing was how we understood diversity back then. So in all fairness, that's where that understanding of diversity came from. But now as a predominantly white institution and teaching at a predominantly white institution, which Portland State was not, I see different challenges when thinking about diversity in my classroom especially because we don’t see the uniqueness on the surface of the skin, right? Or, we don’t see the uniqueness in the gender norms. So what we-what I’m trying to do now is think about it as, yeah class and rural versus urban kind of environment, or how big your high school class was growing up. Over six hundred kids, we were white. I think we might have had two or three students of color. Certainly didn't have anybody outside of the christian religion. Maybe some Judaism was practiced but we did not have Synagogues in our town. And I never understood-I never even heard of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam. Those were things I’d never heard of until moving to Portland, Oregon, so that sort of homogeneity growing up with it and than being someone who did like to travel and learn about other people, that now that I’m back here, I kind of took all that exploration and learning for granted and now I’m trying to integrate that into uniqueness of values, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. In the way that I think about diversity more broadly and certainly each individual as a unique human who has their own ways of moving through the world and doing what they can to understand their place in it.

Tiffany: Awesome. Were there any people or any experiences you remember as a college student that now looking back on it you see at UWL like some of the first places where you started to be aware of diversity or thinking about it or?

Darlene: Yeah. Well it would be in theater, because not only did we have-again we had hands-on sort of tangible reality, that when reading scripts and dialogues clicked for me around interaction because I could see it on stage happening, I could read it. I was never on stage, I was always backstage and support. So that made literature, so to speak, all of a sudden sing. And when I could, sort of, read a script or when I could, in a costume making class I could see costumes that might be designed for that particular performance. So the people in theatre too were more diverse in my mind. I remember sitting on a couch with one of the actors and he was very close to me sitting on the couch and he would touch my leg or touch my arm and it wasn’t sexual and I knew it wasn’t sexual. I just knew that it was a level of immediacy that I had not experienced or that much more expressive way of emoting that I didn’t experience growing up because it was very German, sort of stoic, you know, you don’t express your feelings or your thoughts or your dissatisfaction in ways that can potentially make you look bad or harm another. So that more of a high-context culture relationships do share more immediacy with each other and touch is much more acceptable. Yeah so I think the ways in which I experience diversity was with the behaviors of communication, during interactions. Which is probably why it’s of interest to me, still as an academic. So I think yeah, that’s the way diversity kind of first hit me. This person looks like me, this person might share a similar accent, but this person grew up differently and has different expectations around space and touch and eye contact and immediacy. And my family was a touching family so we were probably on the farther end of what a traditional German family might have experienced around touch, expressions of self, and emotions.

Troy: In some ways it felt like you were straddling two worlds. The education world, and the history world ‘cause the upper-level history classes had a lot of the History majors, History minors, and I was a full History major, but I was in the College of Education. So, I had to balance my semesters with a certain number of Education courses and then a certain number of History and Social Studies courses because I was also getting certified in Sociology, and we had to have some other Social Studies classes. Lucky for me, like when I was a Business major, my Econ[omics] classes counted as Social Studies, so I was actually farther along than what I thought. And the History major at the time, it was so cool. Again, like it is now, there are so many different areas that we had to cover. Back when I was a freshman and sophomore, U.S History was the required course for every student, U.S History 1, and U.S History 2. When I came back, the History Department and General Education was switching to a World History requirement. So then, I got permission to also include History 101 and 102 which were you know, World History before this date, World History after that. But then we had other areas of U.S History, Latin American History, Asian History… and then Contemporary History. So, we had the full gamut that we had to cover. And obviously as a History major, you start gravitating towards some professors that you really like. I had Alan Beechler for several courses, James Potts. Jim Parker was really my mentor, and I tried to take as many courses as I could with him. Let’s see, I had Chuck Lee for when Public History first started at UWL… I think for students in this oral history class, I mean it was something brand new back in the [19]80s, so it was kind of fun. And I remember doing public history where I had to go look at different houses in La Crosse and like try to find different architecture…One experience that I had that I think was really cool was Dr. Parker was also teaching a graduate course on the Civil Rights Movement. And the [19]60s and [19]70s were like one era that I just remember partly… I grew up in the [19]70s, but I wasn’t in that adult stage, but I was always fascinated about the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement. And so I had asked Dr. Parker—he was teaching in the summertime—and I was working in the Upward Bound program at the time so I could not attend class. But I asked him if there was a way that I could audit the course or take it for credit, because I needed credits. It was already taking me five years plus three summers to get through [it] all, cause again, with the Education credits and the Social Studies credits, it was a massive amount, I think I graduated with like 170 some credits. Which again, I don’t think my parents appreciated all the extra time in school. But most semesters, I was taking 18 credits. Some semesters I asked for an overload to take 19. And that was also trying to do the field experiences where you’re going out into the schools. But anyways, getting back to the Civil Rights class, Dr. Parker, and he was so good. He wanted people to understand, at that time it was called “Minorities History in the U.S.” And very much how women, people of color, were so heavily discriminated against and that the cards were so stacked. He wanted to teach a lot about that. Anyway, so he let me enroll in this class as an audit so I could get credit for it, but not attend. And then he said that he wanted me, because I was going into teacher education, instead of writing a paper, he wanted me to create a lesson plan. So, I used the Eyes on the Prize PBS series as a whole unit plan that I could take and use in my classroom. So, again, just it’s cool those connections that you make with professors. And, I had several of the History professors serve as references when I was applying for teaching jobs. I’m still in contact with Dr. Parker today. And, this is you know you think, 1984 was when I first met him as a very conservative, [laughs] Republican, like white boy from pretty affluent Rochester, Minnesota to someone who, well, who changed political parties, changed political ideologies, and understands the importance of diversity and inclusion. And those are some impactful things that maybe you don’t understand when you are going through it, but when you look back at those culmination of activities and involvement you really see the transformation happening.

Karolyn: Well, there wasn’t much [both laugh]. I came from a community that had none so, coming here seemed like, “wow” to such a small-town kid. But, there was very little. But within student government, you mean like Donney Moroney was—I don’t know if she was the first female student body president? But like Donney was one of those people, and she's now a Dean I think at Cardinal Stritch [University], was it Cardinal Stritch? Somewhere in the Milwaukee area. When I started to make friends with people from different cultures, and different identities, that’s—it was like those individual connections that helped you to start to see it. Because it was really easy not to see it, if you didn’t want to—keep your eyes closed. I’m not sure I was as great of an ally as I—just cause like I didn’t even know what an ally was. But it was seen through some of my friends’ eyes. And you know, Thomas [Harris] was always very instrumental, and he eventually ended up in the Office of Multicultural Student Services [OMSS]. So, it was like, I was part of some like conversations with friends but I don’t still remember it being—it was so big to me because it was new to me. But I don’t, now looking back and having worked on campus as long as I have that we had so much further to go and we still do. But it gave me as an individual perspective to have those relationships and especially at student government level. There was, representation from OMSS [Office of Multicultural Student Services] that I think helped us all kind of have a better idea of what they were experiencing.

Tiffany: And it sounds like thinking back to something you said as you were sort of describing your conversations with your first roommate that she was a “big city” girl, right? It also sounds like you know, as a first-generation student from a smaller town and being on campus with, in a situation where not everybody is first-generation and then we’ve got folks coming to UWL from all kinds of different sized hometowns that...

Karolyn: Yeah, my first roommate—I mean her high school class was like 1,000 people and my high school was like 90, my class. I mean I went to a high school where three towns had to come together to make one school. So it was pretty rural compared to—you know the thing is, she was this “big city” girl but I don’t know if she was really cultured or “big city.” But to me she seemed like she was until I started to experience life and to travel and I realized “well maybe not”—just because you are from the big city doesn’t necessarily mean you’re cultured.

Harry: Being accepting, I grew up in a very tight closed, you know, we weren’t closed off, I don’t wanna say that. But we were–you knew Jews, and you knew Jews. And my wife tells it that my mom shopped in this Jewish store, but she didn’t go to this bakery cause it’s owned by that German lady, but she went to this supermarket. And that’s how I grew up, but it made me more tolerant like it made me more tolerant like–we’re city people. City people look down on farming. They look down on what they don’t know, and–but it made me open my eyes that there’s a whole other world, so I think coming to UWL, the experience of learning and meeting new people, which I don’t think I would have gotten had I gone to University of Illinois and lived in the same dorm with all the other Jewish kids and everybody I went to high school with. I went out of the–I went out. I mean I–my friends were like they couldn’t believe you know–they–they were–they’re all–they lived in Illini tower which they used to call the Israeli towers, they lived in Illini towers, they went to the same fraternities and the same sororities and the same parties and they’re still friends with the same high school people. I on the other hand, one of my closest friends lives here in town. Last night I had dinner with my college roommate. None of these people are from my base, they’re not from my community. So I think the–the thing I took–the thing I appreciate the most about going to school here is the experiences of learning new people, new cultures, even though were all Americans it was still a different culture, and just not–I always tolerated but just appreciating, that’s the word I’m looking for, appreciating the way other people live.

Ashlyn: Right. Yeah. So my elementary and middle school years were just, it was everybody in my kind of town. Once I got to high school it was a couple of middle schools that all fed into my high school, but at least for my elementary and middle school years, it was a very, you know, diverse group of students. I still, you know, I've made friends from elementary and middle school that I still have. But again, just, you know, growing up, I'd say, at a very diverse, and you know, somewhat liberal, you know, town, and being around so many different people, I think really positively impacted, you know, my life, gave me a better understanding of a lot of things. And then high school, too, was a little bit of an adjustment and a struggle for me. Everybody, well, most students from my middle school obviously went to that high school, but then there were two other middle schools that fed into my high school, and most of those students were from a richer part of the city, I will say. So, high school for me, too, was an adjustment. You know I'm very fortunate to have what I have, and be given everything that I've been given. And, but still it was, you know, my parents didn't have the most money. I didn't have a brand new car for my sixteenth birthday. All that stuff was an adjustment of it, and going to school with a lot of students who never had to have a job. You know, I worked all through high school, and it was, you know, I wouldn't trade anything for the world. Again, I'm very fortunate, but I think that was a very just kind of challenge for me. And then going from Milwaukee, still, you know, a very diverse high school and city. Obviously, there's a lot of festivals that value diversity. There's a lot of opportunities for people. There's a lot of volunteer opportunities for, you know, ways to get involved and help people. And then coming to La Crosse, it was just very, it was challenging at first. You know, not many minority students. And those that, you know, were from a minority group, I felt were very, kind of like sectioned off from everybody else at La Crosse. You know it's great that we have so many resources for people we have, you know, like BSU [Black Student Unity.] We have, you know, the Asian, I think it's ASO [Asian Student Organization], LASO [Latin American Student Organization.] All those groups are great, and they're great resources, and the Multicultural Office, I can't remember the exact name. Those are all great resources, and I'm glad that La Crosse has a lot of those, but in my opinion, and a lot of my, you know, friends that are minorities have shared the same thing that feels almost like they are kind of pushed and sectioned off into those specific offices. And I think, you know, La Crosse can do a little bit of a better job at kind of intermingling their students if that makes sense. So that was definitely a challenge for me. And again being and growing up with most of, you know, my friends, I had friends that were Mexican, friends that were Black, and I always was one who had a very diverse friend group, and my dad's the same way. That's just how we were raised. But then, you know, coming to La Crosse, everybody, not everybody, but a lot of students, especially in the dorm that I was in, they came in with like these nice cars, and had all this nice stuff, and like again like had their parents probably doing their laundry for them all, you know, before college, and it was just kind of weird to experience that. Especially, you know, being someone too who was raised primarily by just their dad. My mom wasn't necessarily around that much. So I didn't get to have you know that strong, motherly connection, and I think that definitely impacted my experience in La Crosse too. And students who would have, like their parents, come up and visit, and they would hang out with like their mom. And later on, too, when we got older, like students would have their moms come up and like, go out to the bars with their moms and hang out with their friends, and it's like that's never anything I got to really experience. So there's certain things I feel like I miss out on. But for the most part I'd say, I think, just being part, being a smaller city that La Crosse is, it's bound to happen. But I think there's just definitely some things that we could all do better to be more inclusive. But yeah, if that makes sense. [Chuckles]

Tiffany: Well, it does, and it's really thoughtful and helpful. I appreciate it, and it makes me wonder, because I think about this, this is your interview, so I'll say this really quick, but I think about the same challenges when I'm teaching that I wonder how we normalize diverse conversations and people from different backgrounds, including class, including different configurations of what a family is right, as you're indicating, like normalize people from different backgrounds hanging out together right? And did you have, so it sounds like that your experience, and in particularly people from different backgrounds that you're interacting with, it sort of La Crosse, it feels like in some ways La Crosse might have created situations where people from the same backgrounds have hung out together. Did you have any experiences where people were sort of crossing or breaking out of those like?

Ashlyn: Yeah. So I'd say by, at least by my Senior year, I think I had formed a pretty good group of friends, and I'll just share this, too, because I think it is important. So there was, you know, about eight of us. Four of us were white, three of the girls were Black, and one girl was Asian. So we had, I'd say, a very diverse friend group. And we also had another kind of friend group that sometimes, you know, if it was someone's birthday, or like that more bigger things that we kind of merge together at times. But every one from that other friend group was white, and there were times that I think our friend group felt left out from their group, you know, not being so inclusive to us. And again we weren't that close, but at least for me, I'm always one to be inclusive and invite people to things, and just like I'd rather have fun like altogether than just being kind of smaller, like groups. So I definitely think that, you know, certain girls in my friend group struggled more than others, but definitely I think it impacted that. And too, you know, I find it kind of intriguing that every, not every, but most of my friends that I met in La Crosse were also from the Milwaukee area. So, you know, my current roommate now, who I didn't know her until we got to college, but, you know, she is from West Dallas, which is just outside of Milwaukee. So, and there's one girl who was from Madison. But most of my friends, yeah, I had no idea who these girls were before college, but you know you learn that, oh, they're from the Milwaukee area. So I think that's really cool, too, and some of the people, too, that I've kind of not really stayed in contact with since college are not from Milwaukee. I know, you know, for obvious reasons it's harder to stay close with people that are in your area. But some of the other people that I met along the way that were from maybe Madison, or from wherever else I didn't really, you know, stay close with them. So I think, you know, that's something, you know, interesting to think about, too, just the people you meet and gravitate towards are often from a similar background as you. And I think that, too, can be a struggle for college students, especially those that, you know, live on the other end like such small towns and a lot of students, you know, that I'm working with now at MSOE, are having somewhat of like an opposite experience. You know, like there's this girl from Wausau [Wisconsin], for example, who's now in Milwaukee, and it's like, Wow. There's all these people, and I don't know what to do in such a big city. So I think it's kind of interesting, too, to look at students who are, struggle with a culture shock in the opposite way as I did.