1
12
1
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6638ffc26438322b5d45e2ca2060ce85.mp4
14ea8094cc1c0910aeb6928e771b29b7
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/06f0f3f20324cb56f1ffa58893f8335a.pdf
5af404cafd60d7feac958bb77b36298a
PDF Text
Text
William James College Interviews
GV016-16
Interviewer: Barbara Roos
Interviewee: Sanford Fried
Date: 1984
Part: 1 of 2
[Barbara]
The question is: a lot of people I talk with – students – did not have anything to
do with Council, or anything to do with governance, or were not involved in the
college. And you and Sheila [?] were, and I would like your evaluation of how
really important that was to the education.
[Fried]
Boy, I was just thinking about that whole thing. I was running through the Castro
question, and that whole statement, and in that phrase, you know, that you
weren't a part of the college. And I thought, wait a minute, there was a whole part
of this college that happened… was happening in Council and it was happening
in the committees. I try to remember all the committees that I was on…
everything from the Community Life committee that probably isn’t even around
anymore that died a long time ago, Academic Life and Faculty Review and all
that faculty hiring. And, you know, the leadership quality and the building
leadership quality in our students – it was never really discussed as an upfront
thing of what the college was about, but it was, and it was underlying, I mean, it
was obvious because there were what fifteen seats for students on the council,
right? And so, it was intentional that people were going to get involved but there
wasn't much of a dialogue of how that really integrates into your education and
how that really helps you when you get out. And I've done various things since
I’ve graduated that I’ve thought right back to my Council experiences, where
when I sat in that room, I tended to listen more than talk because it was the first
time I had ever been in that sort of a setting. But from going out from there, I've
been able to put those experiences into my head and into use and think about
how we did things at James and, in fact, I got a real concrete example of that,
too. At my current job, my yearly job evaluation off my Board of Directors, they do
a shitty job. They’ve just done such bad evaluations on me; I mean, you know,
I've gotten really upset with it and I think back on how we did evaluations the one
year that I was on Faculty Review and how we did some good evaluations then,
so that was one specific thing that really…
[Barbara]
How were their evaluations bad?
[Fried]
Oh, well, for one thing they were unfair. I don’t want to get into personal gripes
about the, you know, things about the job, but they were unfair and that it was an
unbalanced evaluation. Any good evaluation stresses positive and negative
aspects of your job performance. Okay. There wasn't enough information for the
�board to make statements on various things and they weren't able to go around
and collect the information. They chose not to go around and collect the
information in the way when we were reviewing if a faculty member… of course,
we look at all those crazy course evaluations that were done and then there was
a general sweep of data from the community at large. And so, it was a very
serious attempt made to get as much information from people and as much
opinion and fact from people because jobs were at stake; because raises were at
stake; it was an important thing to do. And in this last evaluation, I was so
disgusted I just I blasted the board for it, and it didn't endear me to them in any
way; it added to me wanting to get out of the job sooner and I’ve got two weeks
to go. [Laughter]
[Barbara]
Okay, okay. Because its curious how many people I’ve interviewed that have
said, of course, I didn’t have anything to do with Council, I just went on the bus
and came back home. And Council, to the ethos of the school from the faculty
point of view, was real important.
[Fried]
I think Council was real critical because, first of all, there's probably only a
handful of schools in the whole country, undergrad and graduate, where you can
actually… where you could have any access to any of that decision making,
okay. And so, in James it was just… it was part of the daily routine or the
biweekly routine, I think it was, and sure the committees got crazy, and they got
out of hand. But how many of us got into jobs that we are going to be having
committee time with? Surely almost everybody in Social Relations and almost
everybody in Arts and Media. Anybody who's doing any producing work, you’re
always on committees; you’re always doing meetings. So, you know, meetings
aren’t just a couple people sitting around – you’ve got to learn how to read those
meetings; you got to learn how those politics work. And they were working! They
were working the Skylight Room and plus I learned about good facilitating
watching Kenny Zapp and watching Pat [?]. They were some of the best, they
were very good facilitators. I tried to draft Kenny to do facilitating for the Co-op
while he was still in town here. It only worked once – too busy.
[Barbara]
Okay good, solid answer. I’m going to try going wide here [camera zooms out].
[Fried]
I’m glad you asked that because I was going to work it in anyway.
[Barbara]
Okay, then I want to go back to a question we didn’t talk about which is, oh yes,
you said James was half of your education. You’ve been out of school
approximately as long as you were in James, so tell me about how it was half
and what wasn’t there and all that.
[Fried]
Okay, should I do a little background on that now?
�[Barbara]
Sure.
[Fried]
Okay, let’s see. So, I attended James for approximately three years (seventyseven to eighty). Full-time, more than full-time in a lot of ways in Arts and Media.
And now I’ve been out from eighty to eighty-five, so it’s been like five years that
I've been a graduate and what I've done mostly in that time has been retail
management… had very little to do with Arts and Media. I’ve been doing
photography semiprofessionally and just to keep, you know, the skills sharp, but
the… oh, God, I just lost my train of thought.
[Barbara]
Don’t worry about it.
[Fried]
Okay.
[Barbara]
Okay, so that’s what you did in terms of your history. Now, how do you
characterize your education as having contributed to what you did after school?
After you got out of school?
[Fried]
Okay, the way the education I received and the experiences I received there
contributed towards what happened from nineteen eighty to eighty-five for me is
that, for one thing, there was a social ethics value that I came out with. Working
for a food cooperative was important to me because how food makes it way
around from farmer to plate is an important issue for me and I was involved with
co-ops before I came to William James, but I saw a greater opportunity to do
things that were important to me and my life and to be able to affect my
community a little bit. So, I took the steps of getting on the Board of Directors and
wound up being able to get a hired position through there, and it was at the time
that I thought, “Now I can try and put some of this stuff to work. I can try and put
some of these management principles that I heard of and read of and put them
into play.” And it was real gratifying for me when I could hire William James
people, too, of which I was able to hire a couple and it was always fun. And more
than that, it was also reminiscent of there’s now two experiences happening
here, and we can talk about the Jamesian way in which we would, you know, try
and sell bananas. Or try to do something in real specific context that was not
talked about in James. You know, retail was just not talked about in James; that
was not one of our areas. At least, it wasn't one of my areas. But, okay, so it
helped me to do… to work that side of my… kind of my life commitment of
service. You know, everyone has their way of service – if it’s a service to their
dollar or service to some community or other or some population and visually I
tried to make things happen there, too. I knew that the more exciting you can
make things be visually that it would draw people in. It would be… the
psychology is wonderful; it just keeps them in and then they don't know why. Of
course, that can be used the way it’s used in the grocery industry is really kind of
schlocky. I just tried to use it in the food co-op to make things exciting, to make
�them dynamic. And, of course, the idea of using video was gone through many
times, but for lots of reasons that just couldn’t happen, so I just let that one go.
But the other half of the education that I didn't receive was the management and
how to run a business. And I know those things were taught at James, but I
never would have taken them. That was not in my head when I was there; I was
learning to be a creative person in visual arts. That’s what I wanted to do, that’s
why I came there. And for me to be studying management principles would have
required a great leap for me and one that I was unable to do at that time. And,
also, one that was not impressed upon me as being an important one to do by
my peers, by my faculty and that. So, it came later. And I’m glad for the way it
came because I'm the kind of person I need application for that stuff. I can’t, you
know, learn about profit margins in a college context; it wouldn’t have done
anything for me. But when I sit there and look how much money we lost this last
month because the profit margin dropped all of a sudden it becomes more real.
So being able to apply the information really was important to me. And what I
maintained all through my education at James, once I really saw what was
happening there, the essence of it was that I was learning to be a learner. I was
learning to be a lifelong student and I think lots of other people had that same
thing. Those of us who really tried to get the most out of James got that… got the
ability to learn. And I taught myself just an incredible amount of things and gave
my… engendered the confidence in me to know that I don’t need a college to
keep on going with my education. It helps to have a community, you know, and
that community aspect of James I miss. I miss that sorely. And I wish that was
still around. And for me it is, in some ways; I still have a couple of friends that are
still around, and we talk but it's just so great to… I’ll just drift off, there’s a cut
right there anyway.
[Barbara]
Okay, okay. This is almost one, I’m not sure… I’m just trying to make sure I hear
you. In other words, the way you answered that, it was not that we were elitist,
it’s that, why didn’t you do business in school? In other words, you were
encouraged to, but it was available. Why didn't you do it?
[Fried]
Okay. Well, there was some, I think there was some elitism about doing business
in school. There was certainly for the art students, for the musicians, the media
people, the dancers, and that. You were there to learn your craft, and hopefully
you learned it enough - with enough of your own soul – that it could become art.
To study something like business seemed to be hypocritical but it really wasn’t
because it really does employ some of the same kinds of things in your mind and
in your creative person. There are…since I’ve done both now, I see the overlaps
and the overlaps are more than not. They are quite a bit. But we were better than
that, right? We didn’t have to spend that time studying business because we
were learning how to make statements about, you know, what was important to
us. But for the most part I felt a lot of people didn’t know what was important to
them. They were learning the craft, but they weren’t learning, they weren’t
�developing their own voice and what to say through it. So, being articulate isn’t
enough unless you have some ideas, right? And business skills were only
another way of looking at your ideas, it was just another perspective and I think
we suffered a bit, suffered quite a bit by ruling it out, by not saying that this was
an important thing for us to be doing because it’s just another way at looking at it.
You know we all had to do some science, we all had to do some math. And that’s
just another perspective of looking at the world; business is just another one of
those ways. And I know a lot of people in the media world who have gone out
and started studios here in town have mentioned that same sort of thing to me.
You know the business college came later, I had to go to JC, I had to go to
Davenport, or I just picked it up myself. Or I just lost a lot of money and I learned
how to do it right. That’s a tough way to do it, but you pay your tuition one way or
the other way, I guess.
[Barbara]
Good line. [Laughter]
[Fried]
That’s right. [Laughter]
[Barbara]
Sheila [?] just came, do you want to talk to her for a minute?
[Fried]
Okay.
[Barbara]
Alright, that was very good.
[Fried]
I left the college in a rage. And I was raging from actually one of my most
memorable experiences in that one – I won’t mention the faculty’s name – one
person, we’ll identify him as male, who I was talking to in the later part of my
senior year. I had even asked him to serve on my committee as far as seeing the
rest of my paperwork through and kind of giving me his blessings and just in the
course of conversation he said, “Well, what courses did you take with Stephen,
Stephen Rowe?” And I said, “I think I sat in on one of his courses, I don’t think I
took anything for credit though,” and he kind of knitted his brow and said, “Well,
let’s see you’re a media student. Did you take anything with Mayberry? With
Robert?” I said, “No, I never took any of Robert’s courses, but you know I
listened to him a lot in Council.” You couldn’t help that, you know, you did a lot of
listening. What about Richard Joanisse? Well, no, I didn’t take anything with
Richard either. And he just got this awful expression on his face and looked at
me with disgust and said, “You never attended this college!” And I’m not… I don’t
have violent tendencies but I could have at that moment because I was just so
mortally insulted after being such an involved student and I thought a very
responsible student for three years. And going through lots of stages of anger
after that and coming back to him and confronting him and saying you’re just
really unfair, really unfair, and you really angered me a lot by saying that and I’m
taking back my invitation to be on my graduation committee, I will get out of here
�without you. And then I thought about later on, I think years later, that comment
has haunted me for a long time, I can still feel anger. But since then, I thought
about them, the other experiences of being on Council, for example, being in the
student governance that James wasn’t strictly about anything but encompassing
the academic inquiry, the scholarly pursuits of the social issues which this faculty
was heavily invested into. And I thought, no way, you can’t do everything there,
you just can’t do it all. It would take you five years, six years, and I just didn’t
have that kind of time. But I learned my craft well, and I learned about leadership
in Council and I learned about working through committee process and that was
one of the strong things about what the college was about. So those experiences
I realized are very valuable to me and valuable, I think, to anyone else who was
in on them. That guy was just off base, he was just seeing things from his own
angle, his own perspective. And I think that that created a real split, too, among
the students and faculty. Because there were “us” and “them,” there were the
camera heads and the chemical fingers and those of us who spent our times in
the basements and over in the TV studios and there were those people who
spent most of times in the libraries and other places. Our libraries were just
different, you know, there’s lots of ways to do that. And I think that we were… it
was a real unstated… in some ways unstated division within the college. In some
ways it was antagonistic, I think the comment that I shared was “majorly
antagonistic.”
[Barbara]
Okay. I’m going to stop because I’m going to put a new tape in because I have
another question to ask you, one more, and I hate to have you start it.
[Fried]
Okay.
[Barbara]
You know?
[Fried]
Yeah. Do you want to set up another angle?
[Barbara]
I’m going to, yeah, I actually have dominated this tripod so I should be able to
change the shots slightly.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
William James College Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Videotaped interviews of William James College faculty, students and administrators by Barbara Roos. William James College opened in 1971 as the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. Curriculum was organized around three concentrations that were meant to be interdisciplinary career preparation offerings: Social Relations, Administration and Information Management, and Environmental Studies. The college was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Interdisciplinary approach in education
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GV016-16
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
GV016-16_GVSU_48_Fried
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fried, Sanford
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1984
Title
A name given to the resource
Sanford Fried interview (1 of 2, video and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
Interview with Sanford Fried by Barbara Roos, documenting the history of Grand Valley State's William James College. William James College was the third baccalaureate degree granting college for Grand Valley. It was originally designed to be an interdisciplinary, non-departmentalized college consisting of concentration programs, rather than majors. The college opened in 1971 and was discontinued in 1983 during a reorganization of Grand Valley State. Sanford Fried was an Arts and Media student of William James College who was active on the WJC Council and various committees during the years 1977-1980. In this interview, Sanford discusses his involvement on council and his committee work, and how his involvement was critical to his educational success at William James College. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Sanford Fried.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Roos, Barbara (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Grand Valley State University
Michigan
Universities and colleges
Oral histories
Alternative education
Student councils
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/69">William James College faculty and student interviews (GV016-16)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng