830 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0c82de19c8d91bdfee23c4aa4ed82139.jpg b6523286f6ca5d7cab3693bdaa074e8c 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 GVSU Theatre Photos Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Theatre Department Description An account of the resource Photographs of Grand Valley theater productions from the 1980s to the 2010s. Photos include shots of performances, backstage, casts and crewmembers. Included in the collection are Shakespeare Festival productions and small acts such as Bard to Go and the Greenshow. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Grand Valley State University Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV058-01 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-2017 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Theatre Department photographs (GV058-01) Subject The topic of the resource Theater Performances Plays Musicals College Students Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives. Allendale, MI 49401 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 GV058-01_2012F-Richard-III_037 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Theatre Department Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Title A name given to the resource Richard III (theater production), 2012 Description An account of the resource Color photograph of Grand Valley's 2012 production of "Richard III." In this image a young woman in black is comforted by an older woman kneeling beside her. The set mimics an old factory, with tall iron beams and graffitied walls. Subject The topic of the resource Theater College students Plays Performances Acting Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/754">Theatre Department photographs (GV058-01)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 2012s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ce44a39f7162aa079b24c5663de89806.jpg 4fe27fd21fadc19036bb688edbcf0d54 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 GVSU Theatre Photos Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Theatre Department Description An account of the resource Photographs of Grand Valley theater productions from the 1980s to the 2010s. Photos include shots of performances, backstage, casts and crewmembers. Included in the collection are Shakespeare Festival productions and small acts such as Bard to Go and the Greenshow. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Grand Valley State University Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV058-01 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-2017 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Theatre Department photographs (GV058-01) Subject The topic of the resource Theater Performances Plays Musicals College Students Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives. Allendale, MI 49401 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 GV058-01_2012F-Richard-III_046 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Theatre Department Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Title A name given to the resource Richard III (theater production), 2012 Description An account of the resource Color photograph of Grand Valley's 2012 production of "Richard III." In this image a young man and old man in a crown are locked in combat. Both wear padded armor and are dueling with short swords. The old man thrusts his blade upwards in the shoulder of the young man, who screams in pain. A banner ,bearing a red dragon on a split field of green with white roses and white with red roses, hangs from an iron beam in the background. Subject The topic of the resource Theater College students Plays Performances Acting Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/754">Theatre Department photographs (GV058-01)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 2012s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4cd5bd4076e4a7cdd00f512497d2a524.jpg d09f029e3a20d52f245eba46fc130790 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 GVSU Theatre Photos Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Theatre Department Description An account of the resource Photographs of Grand Valley theater productions from the 1980s to the 2010s. Photos include shots of performances, backstage, casts and crewmembers. Included in the collection are Shakespeare Festival productions and small acts such as Bard to Go and the Greenshow. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Grand Valley State University Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV058-01 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-2017 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Theatre Department photographs (GV058-01) Subject The topic of the resource Theater Performances Plays Musicals College Students Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives. Allendale, MI 49401 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 GV058-01_2012F-Richard-III_050 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Theatre Department Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Title A name given to the resource Richard III (theater production), 2012 Description An account of the resource Color photograph of Grand Valley's 2012 production of "Richard III." Promotional image of the full cast and crew. Subject The topic of the resource Theater College students Plays Performances Acting Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/754">Theatre Department photographs (GV058-01)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 2012s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8ca9213f210cde644dcf36f80960278b.mp4 4eefa220177af47f1b46f38372f55826 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8c89a64aaf9ce37b914ffcdcce412fc7.pdf f36420e1d4f9c6090acb8509733155a7 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Richard Joanisse Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 2 [Barbara] So, I don't know if this is something someone can answer off the top of their head. If you were trying to prioritize what was the most… the most valuable thing that James was? If you are prioritizing… is there a way you can prioritize or was it such a unity one could not draw out? [Joanisse] Well, I think maybe there were two or three things… I may end up only saying one or two. I think the commitment to teaching… and you know everybody says they're committed to teaching, but I mean teaching is a way of life at the expense of everything else. And I guess at that point it would be if you did research, if you were interested in furthering your career, you really were going to put that on the side. I remember my adviser telling me when I came from Chicago, he said: "Richard, they'll eat you up there and you'll never be big league." And I think, you know, it took me a couple years to understand what he meant, but I think that in the first three or four years I was here, I certainly was working fifteen hours a day and loving every minute of it. And it's like you immersed yourself in it and I think after a while when you didn't have to work as hard… when you weren't building the institution, the commitment to teaching, it seems to me, was still there. But it wasn't a commitment at the individual level alone, and that's the real distinction we have to keep bringing up. You can only create that kind of commitment by institutionalizing it. You do that by having colleagues who are equally committed and motivated, by rewarding them for that and for creating those conditions that we talked about before that allow people to participate and to help to evolve what a college is all about and commit themselves to a particular kind of philosophies. All of that meshed together, allows commitment to keep on going. If you go to the institution I'm in now, they say: "You always have good teachers." And what they're saying is there's always individual people. Like cream rises to the top who will always be there, and the rest of the people are sort of like, you know, they're mediocre or they won't do it. And I think at William James we just said that's baloney. We can bring people in who might, in some sense be individually motivated, who might have the kind of characteristics that were looking for. But it was a gamble with most people we hired. But if we got them in William James, we believed that what we were doing at William James would transform the person. [Barbara] That sounds religious! �[Joanisse] Well, there was a religious kind of experience at William James, I think. In the sense that, especially in the notion, it seems to me, of community. But I think that when you come to the place where I'm at now, it's always back to individuals. It’s always back to some people are motivated, some more highly motivated, and you rewarded that person for being motivated. [Joanisse] You don't create a kind of sense that maybe what you ought to be doing, you ought to be doing together. In fact, what you do in this institution is you created just the adverse. What you create here is the condition for the separation of individuals, who begin to see themselves as in a deeply atomized situation where whatever they're going to do, they're going to do solely for themselves. And they'll be paid for that either through money, or prestige, power, or influence, whatever it is. And they have no connection to anyone else. And I think that implicitly or explicitly the institution has, in some sense, agreed to that. I think it's more a kind of implicit contract. Where at William James we invited people in and said: "Look what we want from you is openness, a receptivity or something, to what we're trying to do. If you don't like it then you certainly are free to leave, but what we do here we do together. And, you know, we do try to create committees, and we can try to create organization, and we do try to structure the college in a certain way. But you are in the person, it seems to me, through a lengthy conversation that we've had over the years in which continually evolves and change. You are part of that." And I think for most people, an example of someone coming in later would be like Deanna Morris or somebody like that. That's real… that was a really important experience and those people were able to change, and accept what we were trying to do, and accept, it seems to me, willingly. It wasn't, I don't think, coercion on people. There's a coerced notion of community. What we used to call, remember, jokingly people would say: "Did you want to do this?" And we would say: "This is called voluntary coercion," or something. And I think that at some point… that happens a lot in what you might call religious communities. People are constantly being coerced. I don't think that was true, necessarily, at William James. I think that we actually could see that worked. And worked hard to create those kind of conditions that would continue to make it work. And I think that we did end up producing something, we did have a student who is intelligent… we did have students, as some people have said to us on the outside, who are inquisitive and creative. Our students seemed, at least as teachers, to be good. And I think I always measured my students from what they came to me as and what they left us as. And I always thought that they left us better persons and better students. [Barbara] Who was this adviser and how could he sense this was going to happen to you? I don't understand. Remember you had this adviser that said they were going to eat you alive? [Joanisse] Well my adviser was at a research institute, University of Chicago, and at that �time when I was at Chicago it was rated number one, I think. He just thought that if you go to a small school, and you just spend so much time teaching, that you really can't produce the research that would be essential for you to make your name. And that in a very hard, highly competitive academic situation like that, you would start falling further and further behind. Of course, that wasn't a concern of ours then and it wasn't a concern of the college. And that's what I mean by the college never produced any pressure on us. And never saw us as trying; in some sense, in this case we were very close to Marx. In some ways both in Rousseau, and Hegel, and Marx there's a notion that there's no distinction between the state and the individual. We came as close, in some points in the college, to really believe that we were William James College. And therefore, the decisions we made were not being made by somebody else and I think that was very important for us. And certainly, some people can think that we fooled ourselves and I think I can be critical… I can come back and say “wait a minute.” But I think for certain moments in the college, I think that we really didn't only believe that – I think it was true. And I think that makes an incredible difference in what you're doing. There's no separation then from what was administrative and what was teaching. They were both, in some sense, they were as close as you could possibly get them. That doesn't mean to say there weren't tense situations or disagreements and it certainly wasn't true the council ran smoothly all the time. But I think, on the whole, I think that the feeling that this was a college that was whole in some sense, at least that's what we’ve just been talking about. I think for some of us that there was a real strong feeling that that was the case. [Barbara] [Clapping] Beautiful sound… that was good. [Joanisse] I didn't think of that until just now, but I was thinking – Marx tries to make this point and so does Rousseau - that when you're talking about… how can you have a state have power and you know what Marx says, “Well, the state is you,” you know, I mean there is no alienation. If the state were to represent the working class, blah blah blah, all that stuff like that. Then you figure at some moments at William James, if you move away from individuals and make the connection between the institutional processes, like committee work, and governance documents, and the collective kind of representation that we had. You put all of that together… you come as close as you possibly can but there wasn't any separation. And you get into the unit that we’re in now and that's all you feel is separation. It's very difficult then to turn to somebody and say: "What kind of experience did you have?" Because the experience, you see, was not existential alone. It was both a socially produced phenomenon and an existential kind of commitment brought together. �[Joanisse] That was the real thing about William James… that it created through structural arrangements, through its committees, through its working with the Dean, through its understanding of what it was trying to be – I mean its pedagogical statements, it's philosophical purposes – and through the council a set of relationships that solidified the motivational and existential commitments that were perhaps already there. And if they weren't there, this certainly brought them out. And it’s that connection, it seems to me, that we always have to understand at William James. I think – and I'm trying to reflect back – I think that's an important thing. You know it's one thing to say you have good people, it's another thing to say that, you know, that you don't need… there's no place for that to be collectively representative. We did have a collective place that things could be represented. And we have damn near committees for everything; I mean we weren't left off. And I think, in the end, that thing we talked about before – that the belief that what we did in these committees and in this council were actually what we were. I mean, there was a product produced. And the product, in some sense, it's a product of a set of ideas, or a matter of policy, or changing understanding of the relationships between students and faculty. That was it! It wasn't going to be something going to somebody else. This is very important because if it did, it wasn't our fault. And this is a very important point to understand about why, perhaps, William James, was so close. Once we had made these decisions collectively, if the central administration decided not to accept them, then fuck them, you see! They weren't us anyhow. So, we had this enormous protection, it was wonderful. I mean, if you think of it in those terms there was an internal dialectic but also an external dialectic in away. So, we could really come up feeling wonderful even when we were defeated. And sometimes I've always wondered – when I'm in very pessimistic moods – whether our success was not condition on the fact that this outside world outside Grand Valley and that they were always sort of out there and they were different than us; they were our enemy and “they just didn't understand us.” And that certainly - it seemed to me in some sense, just in structural terms – helped us to be what we were. But I don't think it's what we… I don't want to get creative as well, but it certainly lend, you know, a little push for us to keep that kind of closeness in. But my point was that when we collectively agree upon something, and decision was made, it went out. And then the Central Administration could say: "We don't accept this." But see, what we had done is… we had made a decision as a college… had agreed on it. So, we could come back and mourn, collectively, as a college for their stupidity, for misunderstanding, or the fact that they were conservative, or whatever. And it's a wonderful situation because we could never lose. [Barbara] Until we lost. �[Joanisse] Until we lost! Lost almost everything. I didn't like William James the last two or three years, though. [Barbara] I was going to ask you about that because Rose said you were talking about that. [Joanisse] I didn't think that… I lost my spirit really. You think back to the old days, you know, Bob Carow's office down the corner. Man would come and went by like a bird, you know. You'd say: "Hey Bob! Want to talk for a minute?" He'd say: "Oh sure." You'd start talking, he'd say: "Oooohhhh too heavy, Joanisse, too heavy. I'm not into that. See you later!" But the real distinction, I think, was when some of us started to see that the Dean was a dean, in the sort of a classic sense of the word, and whose interest we're certainly not the same as ours. And his interests on very few occasions even overlap with ours. Then it became apparent, I think to substantial numbers in the college, that we had lost everything. And at that point, just began to see it really as a kind of a job. And I really had mixed feelings about the closing then because I didn't think it was going to be able to stay the same; I don't think we could've gotten anybody in after having this person. And I'm not suggesting he's a bad dean or anything. I'm just say his understanding – with the Central Administration – as to what to college should be, was no longer the understanding of what the college was. And at that point it seemed to me the last two- or three-years William James was not the college that it used to be. And that may seem like a minor point, but if the point we were talking about before has any meaning at all… that in a sense wemost of us believed that we were collectively doing something. The minute that was there was that cleavage… the minute there was that separation and that distance, then I think there was an enormous amount of distrust. And that was the first time we began to see real factualism in William James. People, for instance, who began to do things on their own, or who wanted to leave William James, or who wanted to go into the College of Arts and Sciences, or people who saw that the Dean's decisions were more important or more pragmatic, or in the long run were better than the decisions of other people. And so, you begin to feel some real open animosity and… [Barbara] [Inaudible] [Joanisse] But I think once that it happened, I was… [Radio turns on from off screen] [Barbara] This will not do. [Joanisse] We should be close to finished though. [Barbara] Yeah, we are. This is not reasonable. This is not reasonable! [Speaking off �screen to another person] [Unknown] Where did that radio come from? [Barbara] But you're right, we are almost done. That was just brilliant. If, see… if you have an answer to this, and if we don't – we’ll stop. If you were going to do it all over again, one of those stupid questions… not the last few years, the good ten years… [Joanisse] You mean at my age, right now? [Barbara] Nay. I don't mean it literally. Is there something that you can see that was like a critical lack or critical imbalance? Something, with hindsight, that should have been in James that wasn't? [Joanisse] Jeez, that's a hard question. In William James… no, I think we did very well. I don't think we were perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. I could go, you know, do an hour of criticism and stuff like that. But I think, given the kind of students we had, given the kind of location that we were at… [Barbara] What kind of student…? [Joanisse] We had, basically, lower middle class and working-class students. We do not have students who go to Grinnell or to Oberland. We don't have schools like at the new School for Social Research, which is very much like what we are, but who students are perhaps, score-wise and that, hundreds of points beyond ours, who don't have problems in writing and conceptualization who are, you know… and who have the support state-wise of the institution. I don't think from the very beginning of this college… � 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_37_Joanisse Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Joanisse, Richard 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 Richard Joanisse interview (1 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Richard Joanisse 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. Richard Joanisse was one of the founding faculty of William James College and an associate professor of Sociology. In this interview, Richard discusses his experience being immersed in William James College and its transformative power within the WJC community, in addition to his impression of the college's final years. This interview is part 1 of 2 for Richard Joanisse. 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 Interdisciplinary approach in education 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> 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b85e0e93fa57554afc0dd956d7e4784b.mp4 226d6e3dc82a57ccf93a72d912f22b88 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2a98ed2bf41924851efb2814cd89a29f.pdf 440278631a4925a5e6ac299bd15ea24a PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Richard Joanisse Date: 1984 Part: 2 of 2 [Barbara] We have everything. Don't you think Gerb? [Unknown] Yeah. We're pretty sure. [Barbara] When I say, "Don't you think Gerb," you know what that means? [Joanisse] Check the damn thing over. [Barbara] Make sure it doesn't screw up. [Joanisse] You are what is called the sous chef. That means he's just, what, a little guy in this thing right? [Barbara] No, no, no. He is wonderful. [Unknown] Alright now we're not talking about me. [Joanisse] We're not talking about him, were talking about his position. Don't confuse Gerb and his position. [Barbara] Anyway, Richard, we're going to start talking. What is the differences in teaching in the current system and teaching at James? [Joanisse] Well, I think that when I first came to the new college I was sort of, I think, catered to a little bit. I was made the chairperson of the senate and put on a lot of committees and things. And I said, "Well if I'm in the new system, what I should really try to do is to get acquainted with everyone and to try to involve people in the governance of the college." And at the Dean 's request, I went and met most of the faculty and I sent them a memo and I had him send a memo out – a threatening memo – the second time around. Because the first time nobody showed up for any meetings. The most we ever had of a faculty of something between seventy and eighty was fifteen people who turned out. So, I went around and I started to talk to people and asked them why. And most people feel in the division, I think, that you shouldn't really involve yourself in any of those kind of things. They're not seen as a chance to involve yourself or to have a say in how colleges ought to be governed. They're always seen as obstacles to your �freedom, in some ways. They're a pain in the ass to do them, they don't bring anything back, it's all a farce anyhow, nothing really happens, it's a waste of energy. [Joanisse] The key, I think, to understanding how they feel is that in some sense they’re never really included. There is an invitation for them to attend things, but the decisions that are made are never their decisions. And that was so true when I went over there. The Social Thought and Public Affairs, which I'm a part of, picked a particular person to represent them, overwhelmingly, and then submitted first and second name. The second person I believe got three votes, the first person, I think, got twelve. The Dean overturned the decision, and when someone asked him why he said: "I didn't say that these proceedings meant anything." And so, somebody who was leaving turned to me and said: "You think I'm going to go to one of your stupid meetings? This is the way things work over here." I think the real difference there is I think that William James, for the very first year that I arrived and we were building up the college, we made it clear to everyone, as well as to ourselves, that the college would be governed by us. I think we created the structural conditions for participation of everyone. And so that everyone had a voice and everyone was listening. And I think that's what is embodied in the council itself. And the Dean certainly, as the head of the college, can always overturn the decision. But if you remember that we had a particular way of making the Dean… if a Dean wanted to overturn a decision, remember what we would do is say to her… she had to say that it was… a what? A great event or something or other. And, I don't know, it was forcing her again to say that something that happened was extraordinaire and therefore she was going to intervene. I can only think maybe two or three times in at least the first ten years of the college where such an occurrence to place. [Barbara] Do you remember any? [Joanisse] I think the decision of Burt Brower was sort of a bad decision and the Dean used her power there in appointing people, I think more than anything else. And some policy decisions… Adrian felt that she knew more information and she would work on people on a very intimate level. Which is, I think, the way that William James worked. And I'm not suggesting William James wasn't coercive at that level either. You couldn't, you know, use people intimately as well as you can use them sometimes bureaucratically. But I think that what William James did have, and something which this place lacks, is that people got used to the notion that they actually have an input and that they, in some sense, were not required to participate, but that participating was, in effect, one of the responsibilities that we had. And it was a responsibility that most people and William James accepted. And that most of the major decisions of the college took place in the council, openly, where people could say anything they wanted to say. I've been in this �unit a year and a half and nobody says anything in public. So, there is no public discourse whatsoever here. There are private statements made about people behind their backs, but people will not say in front of anyone. So, when we have had meetings, the meetings have come to naught. I never felt that kind of cynicism at William James. And I never felt that in William James, even at the end when William James was changing drastically, it seems to me, and the council wasn't as representative as it was in the past, it was nothing compared to the situation that I'm in now. [Barbara] So what can you as an individual really do when you're put in a structure that doesn't give you any opportunity to be responsible? What do you do? [Joanisse] Well, very little. I think that I've tried to have an effect on this college. I mean, my metric at William James is to bring people together. And I'm now with the Dean on a book club and… [Barbara] What's that? [Joanisse] A book club is where people come together who are interested in reading something. I'm also the person who invites guests so we have a committee for intellectual ideas and I invite various faculty people to give speeches. But the sense of the community is not there. These are all individual endeavors. At some institutional level, we're trying to create a sense of community, but the experience isn't there. What we're trying to do is to create an experience, but I'm very skeptical of what's happening here. [Barbara] Teaching, how is teaching different? [Joanisse] Well, there are grades. I mean, you have more students and the students are no better or worse. I think that the students are not in there because they want to be. Let’s start there. The caliber of the students are not that different, but students in William James took a course because they wanted to take it. Very seldom did they feel coerced, in some ways, to have to take a course. Most of the things that I teach now almost, without exception, are to meet general education requirements. Out of a hundred students I taught in social problems last year, not one of those students is a student majoring in sociology. Not one. So that means that in effect I'm teaching students because they have been told they have to take something. And I think that makes an enormous difference. I never have a student come to my office unless there's a question about a grade. My office has never been used; I've never been used by a student. [Barbara] Never? [Joanisse] No, not in the general education. I'm not talking about students who might be in �sociological theory or something like that. But of these students, I can't name any student who's come to me and simply said: "I'd like to talk to you about sociology." I think part of the problem there is that general education courses are considered, by most students, to be irrelevant anyhow. But that experience you would've gotten at William James… you would have gotten the curious student who might've been interested in what you were talking about, or in ideas, and that you don't get. I'm not suggesting that these students are interested in that in their own field, but by the time, you know, when we get them, they're not interested in those things. [Barbara] You said that you were thinking of writing a paper but didn't tell me what about. [Joanisse] Well, the one thing that I find impossible to explain to anybody is what William James was. And I always had this sort of paper on the phenomenology of William James. In other words, phenomenology is always after the question of meaning. And I was trying to say to people: "What does it mean to be in William James? And what was William James?" But I was asking the question from the fact that nobody I've ever talked to who is not a member of William James ever understood what William James is. Now that's terrifying because that's almost like being in a cult and trying to tell people who don't understand what a cult is experiencing. And I don't think we were a cult. I don't think there was anything hidden or mysterious about what we did and therefore it's scary to me. I can understand why people who are on communes, who want to hide from the outside world, and whose experience it seems to me and the kind of beliefs they have may be, in some sense, different from the outside world. But we were offering a traditional state institution in the same environment, no more than ten feet from anybody else; we publicized what we were doing and yet I have never met an outsider… let me give you an example. Jock Bliss and I were in a meeting – Jock Bliss is the director of public relations Grand Valley. When the demise of William James was imminent, he said to me: "I don't understand why you're so upset Richard, if you are such a good teacher you should be able to be a good teacher any place. Isn't William James just really a matter of style." And now, I wasn't offended. I just… something clicked again. I said: "My God here it is again." I mean we were a school about, in some sense, communication; a substantial part of what we do and nobody understands what it is that we're doing. So, it was at that point I said I should write a paper really titled something like "The Phenomenology of William James; or Distortions of Communication" and try and see what is it about what we were doing that was distorted? Why did people perceive… I'll give you a second example. Carl [inaudible]… don't ever use these names… [?] said to me one day: "I never could understand why you people work so damn hard, but now I figured it out." He said, "you had,"… "because, Christ, if you didn't you weren't going to survive." And I says: "That’s what it was all about, Carl." I said: "I mean we really… we had to do it." He said: "Yep, I just had to do it." You know, so everybody had some kind of sense of it. �And even Chris, one time, said to me: "You people really couldn't do all the things you claimed. You really didn't teach all the stuff and know that stuff, did you?" And I said: "You know, if you do one thing for ten years, you can be the best at it." But I said: "For ten years, what your reward is, is to do things with other people and to learn what other people are doing." I said: "You can be very good at that." And I said that… so I stood back: There's another miss… but these are… this person's my friend. This person taught at a school that was, presumably, in some sense, alternative too. But the bottom line of coming for Chris was: "I just don't really believe you people were about what you claimed you were about." And so, it was from that misunderstanding… and I'm not saying in effect that we were what we said we were, in the sense of what we were publicly to people print. But the point is – in some sense – whatever we thought we were, and what we are to each other when we speak to each other about what we were, no outsiders have ever understood. And so, there’s something wrong someplace. And I thought it would be marvelous to write a paper about what it was. [Barbara] What do you think it was? [Joanisse] Well, I think in part – if I start with the negatives from our own side – I think in some sense in order to be successful, we had to isolate ourselves in some ways. To immerse ourselves in our own interpersonal relation, we have no friends outside of William James… most of us. As a good example, all of our intimate relationships were with people [?]… that's still true for most of us even now after two years. If we had a party, most of us would’ve invited people from that college. So, it was very difficult for us to know, in some sense, what was going on outside. I think at an institutional level, we were very open about what we were doing. I think that at an interpersonal level, we were very close and we liked each other a lot and we had no energy leftover for anybody else. At an institutional level, we were just willing to please anyone about what we were doing and publicize anything. I think what we thought is that people would actually be concerned and read about it and understand it. And I don't think most people read it and I don't think most people perceived exactly what we were doing. And I don't think the problem, necessarily, was the way we were saying it. [Barbara] Do you think that part of it could be so much of the thing was experience – experiential – and then we put an intellectual, verbal gloss on it for other people. But what James was really about… which is why we would throw students into it, and they would flounder for a while, and then they would start experiencing and being active, and then they would understand. But it was an experience that they had to go through. So, when you just write the stuff down or verbalize it to other people, that experiment component is missing and they're never going to understand it. �[Joanisse] These are people who don't hold much to these kinds of experiences. And certainly, these are people who have not had the kind of experience that you're trying to articulate. [Barbara] I know… that's what I'm saying. They can't understand. It's interesting, the Jacque Barzun book on James that I'm reading now says there was a certain group of people, always, you could count on year after year that just didn't understand James. Could not understand the English words that he was writing down. Did not know what he was talking about. [Joanisse] I also, I just didn't want to leave this out. I do think that in the first ten years of the college… I want to make some distinctions: certainly, all the time Adrian Tinsley was the Dean, I think, most of us had an incredible commitment to teaching. And lots of the evidence indicates that schools are different. The thing that makes him different is the kind of commitment and motivation you have in your faculty. The real keys is to try and figure out how that commitment and motivation was tied to structural variables. What did the college do, in some sense, to enhance that commitment, to reward people for being highly motivated? And it seems to me that goes back to what we started with and most people felt it was their institution. And that the experiences that they had had, in the institution, had some kind of effect on the outcome of what they were doing. So, one was talking about pedagogical interest or one's philosophical concerns. One could go to one's colleagues and talk about these kind of things, and raise them as an issue in the council. And we did that, it seems to me, constantly. And realized that what one was talking about was not bullshit; that it would have an effect. That some decision would come out of this. That some policy, it seems to me, would be initiated. That's not true at a place where we're at now and think only a fool would think it is. [Barbara] It's not true for us and it's not true for the students. [Joanisse] No. [Barbara] Similarly, yeah, I asked you this before. I phrased it badly but were we responsible for the closing of James or how were we responsible? [Joanisse] No, I don't think we were responsible. If you look across the country, there are no alternative schools that are still open. Evergreen would be an exception, but you know Santa Cruz is no longer an alternative. None of the other schools that were alternative when we started exist. I think that in some ways we are as much a victim of the changing economic situation and the changing historical understanding of education. And as a broader thing, at a more local level, I think Grand Valley simply got to the point where it no longer felt that it could deal with the confusion that the alternative colleges produced. So, you're looking here �more, it seems to me, at public… an attempt to develop a public image where people would no longer be confused about Grand Valley. I never met anybody who ever understood at the administration or in admissions what Grand Valley was about. So I think that there had been enormous pressure in the last four or five years before the closing of the colleges to get one college. Both from the faculty in a large unit and from the administration. And with the closing of Thomas Jefferson, I just think that it was inevitable that William James would close. So, whether or not William James was successful or not I think is irrelevant. The only way that it could've been… there was no way I think it could have remained open, regardless of how successful it was. If it had more students, if its students had been successful outside. I don't think it was any criteria that one could use to point to and say: "Oh it's a successful institution, let's keep it." That's why I said before, I don't think it was failing. It wasn't on the basis of its failure that it was closed. It was on the basis, it seems to me, of outside forces. And certain kinds of the inside forces that felt this is an excellent opportunity to get rid of this cluster that seemed to drive everybody mad. And the minute it closed everyone came up to me who worked in admissions – because I was a Representative of Admissions at William James – and said: "Boy! Now it's going to be easy to explain what this is all about." So, I think there were a lot of people who wanted the colleges closed, who had no animosity towards the colleges. And lots of people who wanted the colleges closed because they never understood with the colleges were about. [Barbara] Interesting. Interesting. Why don't we stop and check, okay? That's also interesting when you're talking about the whole notion of pluralism. � 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_38_Joanisse Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Joanisse, Richard 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 Richard Joanisse interview (2 of 2, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Richard Joanisse 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. Richard Joanisse was one of the founding faculty of William James College and an associate professor of Sociology. In this interview, Richard discusses the differences in teaching at William James College and the phenomenology of William James, in addition to the college's eventual closing. This interview is part 2 of 2 for Richard Joanisse. 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 Interdisciplinary approach in education 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> 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/df6667e6c91abb2dceff509083acf77c.jpg f81bea5237361c924d6bf6b59d967fa7 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 Grand Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection 2000s Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">University photographs, GV012-01</a> 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 GV012-01_UAPhotos_000451 Title A name given to the resource Richard M. DeVos Center Description An account of the resource Richard M. DeVos Center Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Universities and colleges Facilities Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives color photo https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ef7fbfe0b9779c9fc2a36ef89888f2c7.mp4 58d4ffa3216b069047733e0fc2960793 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/02866acb1ce9c1da7dc5f827b8623ca3.pdf b7310fae9324fd3e901b037d81eb6b83 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Richard Paschke Date: 1984 Part: 1 of 3 [Barbara] You’re right at the beginning because you need to hold that in front of your face. It's called white balancing; it gets the camera to read whites correctly. Okay, you’re done. Yeah, that looks nice. If we could begin where we began before. You were at James at the beginning, and how did we manage to not just use the name William James like someone would use, you know, Woodrow Wilson High School, but really to become Jamesian? [Paschke] Well, I think there were a number of things involved. One was that we had already planned for us a synoptic lecture series with people that were so various that all of us had to scuffle around, and read, and learn about these people, and then we had to interact with these people. And it forced us outside of our training. It really pushed us in all kinds of ways. So, I think in that way, by “Jamesian” it means to have a hunger for knowledge and a non-departmentalized kind of a style of thinking that just the synoptic lecture series forced us to do that. That's how we started that first fall, with almost every other week having speakers come in and talking to people from all over the country that we never would have talked to before, I think. There were lots of incentives to break categories, to look at things in a broad way, since we were given, what we thought, was a blank check to create a college and do the best thing we could for a liberal arts, and sciences, and liberal education. Again, I think that pushed people beyond themselves, to broader perspectives. I don't know that everyone read William James, but certainly a lot of us did. A lot of us reread William James, and went off and found things to read, and were sharing articles and whatnot even about William James, so that kind of feeling was in the air for a lot of people. Thinking about community, I think back to the very first meetings that we had in the college which we spent, I don't know, six to eight hours a day for several weeks, every day, meeting [firetruck sirens] to work out everything. [Barbara] Why don't you start again? [Paschke] Thinking about community and the history of the development of the community of William James, I think back to the original meetings when, I can't remember when exactly, during a two- or three-week period, before the beginning of the fall semester, the original faculty sat in a room, or various rooms, pretty much all day. Six, eight hours a day, sometimes at evening meetings, working out everything that had to be worked out for the college. We had to decide on �grading policies, we had to decide on all that administrative stuff that people usually have in place when they start teaching at a college. But we also had to decide on how to implement a philosophy, which meant a lot of talks with one another about how we saw things. Sort of at a less than… a higher level than a paperwork level, but personally, philosophies of things. We literally, maybe this is an incorrect recollection, but I think we didn't pay as much attention to the original planning documents that were around as we should or we could have. I guess a lot of things had been worked out in task forces and whatnot before we got there. We pretty much redid all that stuff. Sat down and figured it all out and in that process worked out a really close sense of community. And again, it may not be an accurate recollection, but I think we got… by the time the classes started, we started meeting with students, there was already a sense of community. We were living, literally, in one another's hip pockets during that whole time. Working out ways to talk to one another was very strange, you know. I had never talked to a person who was as close to a Buddhist monk, I think, as Ken Hunter was. As anyone I had ever seen, you know. To talk to a person who knew about all that stuff and then try to figure out how to negotiate decisions with a person like that. And someone like Robert Mayberry, who was so careful and so, you know, articulate in the way he thought about things and spoke about things was a really intense kind of experience. A sort of trial by fire for that…those first meetings were sort of a rite of passage in the community. After that I think we insisted on it. Our hiring included a lot of times where people would sit around and talk. I think that's where the real interviewing went… not interviewing, but the real screening went on to see how people handled themselves in answering questions, and how they thought on their feet, and what they were like when they had a few beers in them, and those kinds of things were real important. There was a real sense of operating, intuitively, from something that was a sense of community. At level though I think there really was a real community. At another level there wasn't because some people lived in Grand Rapids and some people live in Grand Haven and it was always a joke from the beginning that there was the Grand Haven group and the other group. And the sense of community was really obvious when, I think, people from either the Grand Haven group or the other group would wonder why they weren't invited to a particular event or I mean it was a sense of being left out after the first year. You lived together so intensively so you had a sense of loss, almost. So, I'm not…how did it happen… the original meetings, past the administrative meetings, started including students. We would meet in Lake Huron Hall, with one hundred and thirty, or forty, or however many students there were in the student body, and there were these big town meetings, or whatever. And no one really seemed to be really self-conscious about that. Everybody seemed to sense it was an opportunity to speak up, to become known in the community, to have your voice heard, to work things out, to be in on the ground floor. And so, it was a really big community by the time September rolled around, I think, of a hundred and forty or a hundred and fifty people. And again, that whole group of a hundred and fifty people meeting every �two weeks for a synoptic lecture series, meeting with the speakers, meeting in small groups exchanging ideas. There was just a lot of interaction. It would be, I guess I've used that example before, but it would be like the kinds of survival courses that they do for inner-city kids during the summer when they send them out to the wilderness, and they have to learn how to live together and talk to one another. And in some ways the rest of the campus was a wilderness. Not many of us went out and explored very much and talk to other people very much to think there was more than enough to do in trying to get to know those hundred and forty, or so, people that were right around you. [Barbara] Okay, that's at the beginning, that's a good [Inaudible] answer, but when I came in or when the students who had been interviewing came in, that was much after the beginning, and the community was still so very strong. What were some of the mechanisms for that intensity? [Paschke] Well, I think the way council meetings went on were a mechanism. People could still, not a hundred and forty anymore, but anyone could come and could either contribute to or tie up a whole group of people for hours and hours in discussion. That kind of continuing discussion was almost an addiction to discussion. I think in the hiring that went on, everyone had their eye on one another. Again, a sense that the people who are being hired could talk. I think the word of mouth spread quickly among students. There were students all over Grand Rapids are who were looking for a place like that to emerge and then when they found out about it would come in. And they were sort of prepped already for that kind of community life and expectations of interacting and contributing. We drew very heavily on students, I think, from the Grand Rapids area who had been around, who had been in other kinds of school, who were just ready for something like that to happen. [Barbara] Let me change that shot. Nice. When we were doing hiring, it was, indeed, an interesting experience where you really pushed people, to pushed all of ourselves, but it seemed as though we all understood what the criteria were for somebody we would hire and somebody who wasn't right. What the hell were those criteria because we never talked about them explicitly. We never drew up a list. [Paschke] Well, when I think about it now, the closest experience I have today is when I'm talking to someone that's seventeen or eighteen and I can understand what they're saying, with the part of me that hasn't gotten to be forty yet, I guess. A part the of me that wants to break the rules, that doesn't want things to go on forever in a really conventional way, to have people tell me what I have to do. There's a part of me that resonates, even now, with, you know, seventeen-year/ sixteen-year-olds. People who are going through searches for self-identity, going through, sort of, a personal crisis, trying to figure out who they are and what their �voice means. I think everyone that came here, students and faculty, felt that way. It partly had to do with coming off of the sixties, and where people were, and that kind of stuff was in the air. And you didn't want to go sit in at the U of M, but you wanted to be given a little peace that you can call your own; make something out of it that really counted, that really made a difference. Idealism, I guess. And I think we looked at people, and people who are sort of dreamers, and idealists who weren't afraid to have dreams… weren't so worried that they might not be practical dreams. That's a weird mix. That's a weird mix to have people… well on the one hand, we're all very pragmatic, I think, too. People could all do things that were very practical but were dreamers and idealists, in a way, I guess. And I think you could… we thought we could recognize that in other people. People came in… I remember one person… people we would interview, we would look at their style of writing, and their letters, or other applications, that was one thing. But when they came in, when we talked to them, if they seemed to have scripts that they were running out, that didn't seem to work. If they weren't really listening to us. If they didn't seem excited by what we were doing, it was sort of a self-centered approach. This a really neat thing we have going on here and if you're not excited about it you probably are not going to work out very well here. I think age has something to do with it because I can think of one person in particular who when we interviewed, we felt was quite a bit older than the other people and felt would not have the same kind of vision. I can remember going through something with that person. When I look back on it now I realize that we put one another on the spot in ways that people probably would be mortified by if they were interviewing at Old Kent Bank or some other corporation. I mean, we asked some very personal kinds of things. I don't mean like: "What kind of pillow do you use when you sleep?" About like: "What do you really think about whatever religion?" Those kinds of questions. The kinds of questions that, you know, when you're seventeen and eighteen you might spend all night, sitting someplace, you know, smoking, and having intense discussions about… those kinds of things usually drop off when people get into their twenties and thirties. And they didn't drop off for the people that were around James, it seemed like. [Barbara] Do you… when you check that tape, would you go on…I think, to me, the follow up to that has something to do with: we recruited the kinds of students we were. Is there any way to get to that from what we've just been talking about. The misfit thing that you said. We were recruiting in our own image, not only faculty but students, we were talking about before. [Paschke] But the image didn't have anything to do with how we looked, I guess, but had to do with how we felt, maybe, or how we thought. And I do think the people that came to William James saw it was sort of like California, you know, in the eighteen-hundreds or something. You would come to William James, thinking that you would have an impact on it. Somehow your voice would be heard. Something about a whole bunch of individuals, together. The similarity had to do �with this idealism, or hopefulness, whatever words you want to use there, I think. Kind of a youthful idealism. I don't think that we saw sought it… because we didn't screen students the same way we screened faculty. Students would apply, and they did write letters and things, and people did read those letters, but I don't think everyone knew each student came in so well when they were first coming in as they knew the other faculty. But there was something just about the same thinking that would draw students who are a lot like the people who were doing the thinking. We were, in many ways, if you think about the teaching style. People who had gone through educations in which they were one of two hundred people sitting in a lecture hall we're now sitting in a circle on the floor with a bunch of people. And if an administrative person were to walk by, they might not be able to single out who the faculty person was in the group, because the age differences weren't really that great. They seemed big to me then, but I realize now the difference between a seventeen-year-old, or an eighteen-year-old, and a twenty-five-year, or a twenty-six-year-old, were really not that great. And so, we looked a lot like the students, I think, and dressed a lot like the students. We didn't have uniforms. And certainly, talked and taught like the students, in lots of ways. So, it was a kind of a situation in which there was a community with faculty and among faculty and students. [Barbara] Would we then, even if they hadn't closed us, would the mere fact that we all got older have diminished the community? [Paschke] I think it could of. I think maybe it did, in some ways. You know, I think maybe you can't go back to that kind of thing as an older person. But I don't know. We did bring in older people. We brought in Leo Hurwitz, who obviously had a big age difference. And people understood him, and he seemed to understand the students. They're talking on the same wavelength. Like there has to be a part of you that didn't grow up as far as, you know, totally buying into a really narrow vision. You had to be curious and want to explore, you know. And you would sense that in other people. A person could come in who was thirty years older, I think, and you could understand within a short time, within a paragraph, that they knew what you were talking about. They have been there themselves, maybe never gotten out of it, in some ways. [Barbara] We're running out of tape. � 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_60_Paschke Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Paschke, Richard 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 Richard Paschke interview (1 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Richard Paschke 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. Richard Paschke was a faculty member of William James College and longtime Grand Valley professor who retired as Professor Emeritus of Psychology. In this interview, Richard discusses the "hunger for knowledge" that unified the William James College community, how searching for self-identity bonded the faculty and students, and the youthful idealism of that place and time. This interview is part 1 of 3 for Richard Paschke. 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 Interdisciplinary approach in education Identity 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> 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f6a0aaa812667b4a163b47dbcfa9364b.mp4 3bea9c7be7f2f4c41d7e7b53dac310d4 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/66d9b1e4b0e895437a3943fc27bd5be5.pdf 782feff71eba389772e2f041b08c3df9 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Richard Paschke Date: 1984 Part: 2 of 3 [Barbara] Cameras warmed up yet, so you don't have to stand in an odd position while it warms up. [Paschke] Okay. [Barbara] Okay. Check my focus. I like head shots, which gets risky because you can't cut as well. Do you have one last comment on, like, our core that has to with pedigrees? [Paschke] I don't know if it has to do with the sort of the sense of community and communal thinking that was worked out in the first few years or if it has to do with the people, but something that was at the core James, I think from the faculty point of view, was the sense that you didn't have to be pedigreed in an area. The idea that you could be curious if you want to learn. That if you were a professional reader, if you ready for a living, you could read books, and you could talk to people, and you could learn things, and teach about things that you hadn't had a master’s degree in. That's sort of a unique notion that's not like that in many other places in the world, I think. And somehow, we transcend the usual way in which people get on one another's case about whether they're really prepared, or whether they really ought to have a right to teach certain things, or talk about certain things, from the front of classroom. And I think that's too bad. I think that when I talked before about community or how the students and faculty fit or what they had in common, I think the kind of curiosity the students have and the kind of hunger for new material was a hunger that was promoted. That was allowed and it was even promoted in the first five, six years of the college. People would go off and you didn't have to talk about faculty development. People would go off and prepare new courses on their own. You didn't have to set aside special time to do it. If you look at the numbers of courses… the numbers of different things that people taught, new preparations, it's incredible. It's a burnout kind of pace. But it didn't feel like that to people. I think, certainly, not in the first five or six years. Because it felt like they were doing what they wanted to do. The lid had been taken off, somehow. They were able to explore and expand. And that was really neat. And you don't find that in traditional departments. I'm going to meetings now in which people are talking about how to do trans-disciplinary teaching and whatnot. And you can't just get together a group of three people to team teach a course and have that same sense of wanting to read, and the other �person's part of the library, and wanting to have something to say about the things that they teach, and you're wanting to learn about, and teach about. [Barbara] That's fine for us, but what did it do for the students? [Paschke] What it did for some students is provide a really rich culture in which to find things out about themselves. Other students it blew away. Other students ran away and went to more traditional forms of schooling that had more structure. Identifiable traditional structure and expectations. And so, it didn't do the same thing for everyone. [Barbara] Changing the shot. Nice shot. You had a career before you came to James. [Paschke] Right. [Barbara] And you still have a career today. James came and went, and we devoted enormous amounts of time to it. How did that work in your whole life pattern? [Paschke] You mean how did I keep the same career? [Barbara] Yeah, if you did. [Paschke] Well, I don't think I did. I think I really changed careers pretty drastically. And several times while I was here, although people probably didn't know about it. One thing that's important is, I think, is that I think I am a pack rat. I really carry around too much stuff with me because I'm afraid to lose some sense of history and some place. I want to make sure I've got something in the drawer that connects me to other parts of my life. I don't let go of things very easily. In one sense, I think I like to explore a lot of and be curious a lot, but I need a really solid base, like some sense of continuity, someplace in my life. And I guess my identity as a psychologist was important to me and that way. That I maintain some connection with the literature at the national and international level; that I go to a few meetings now and then and be in touch with what people were doing. That was probably driven by the sense of not wanting to be seen as a sham either. The sense of how important it was to let other people know that we were professional, that we did know what we were doing, we weren't just dabbling. So, I did stay in touch with the literature, but I had a whole career in music. I didn't really know what I was going to, you know, do. Where I would end up. I guess I still don't. And that I made several readjustments in my career from a research psychologist to sort of an applied psychologist, to a sort of environmental psychologist. And then we hired people who really did that in a more pedigreed way, certainly. And so, I sort of… I moved around. And as we hired different faculty, I think what I did changed in response to where they were. And I still don't feel finished yet. But I guess there is some sense in which I'm still a psychologist. �[Barbara] You were in or you interviewed in the CAS Psychology and then you went to James for fourteen years. Come back to CAS… [Paschke] Psychology. [Barbara] …psychology, essentially, how did that work? How did it feel? [Paschke] Well, it was hard because after the first few months at William James I tended to ignore my colleagues who were psychologists on the campus. Felt like they had a very narrow visions because they were just being psychologists. And I didn't really feel that I had a lot in common with them, a lot to talk about. It sounds really egotistical to say, but it felt to me like I knew what they knew, plus I knew some other things. I had been outside of psychology and so where it fitted into other things. Coming back was hard because some of the same people are still there that were in the first department. And I had to deal with being, sort of, a snobbish kid, you know. Back fourteen years ago. But it's gone relatively well, I think. Staying low-key, not trying to act like I know everything. And not bringing my William James experience into what I'm doing now. Eventually, you know, the dust has settled. Plus, I wasn't the only person that came into the Psychology department now. There were three of us who came in from other units and we sort of deluded, you know, the going medium there. It felt like a relief for a while, to teach only a few courses, predictably the same courses every year. The same courses every fall, same courses every spring. I've already started to get itchy though. And I feel sort of constrained by the fact that in order to do a new course, I would have to go through so much rigmarole. Not just think it out, not just know what books I wanted, not just know what concept should be in the course, not just be able to defend the course, but all the paper stuff that goes with it. The ego stuff to goes with it. Making sure I'm not touching on someone's personal area of expertise. That I've decided not to do that, I guess. And I've changed my reading, my personal reading, still runs pretty freely around a lot of areas, and it just doesn't show up in preparation for classes anymore. The adjustment wasn't impossible. I do feel like I have to stay low-key in order to fit. Because in some sense it feels… this is a terrible thing to say… in some sense, it feels like I've been to, you know, to Jerusalem or something and come back and other people haven't been, and I know some things that they don't know, but I can't tell. [Barbara] But isn't part of that being older than some of the colleagues? Or isn't it? I don't know the department. [Paschke] No, the department is generally about my age. [Barbara] I have personally been accused by a student just this summer of having sold out. "Where did James go? You guys were teaching us about being future-oriented �and then the future came, and it wasn't any [inaudible] and went, “Hey! I'll take my paycheck!'" Have you had that kind of experience or do you recognize it, or do you think we sold out? [Paschke] No, I don't think we sold out. I think people tried really hard and they fought with everything that they had. We were not people who had lived through corporate mergers and things like that before. We didn't know how to do that. But I think everyone tried to handle that in the best way that they knew how. I think it was inevitable that James would be re-assimilated, you know, into the large college. I think that started right from the beginning of the college. It's like the death of James began as soon as the college was in place and people realized various things. That they would like to have been in the thing that they created, but they weren't. That the thing that they had created was sort of a thankless child that almost immediately after its birth turned its back on its parents. Even stuck its nose up in the air, I suppose, in some ways at the parents. That it was scary. It broke traditional kinds of boundaries. That it did things that sort of like having a rebellious teenager, I suppose, around. Sometimes the things that James did embarrassed the parent, you know, entities. Sometimes they got to places first. The parents: "Gee I wish I thought of that. Should've been doing that." But it was a competition almost right away. And the fact that the college didn't do exactly what its planners hoped it would do, made a kind of a chaffing kind of effect. You can see if you looked, I think, back five, six years before the college change, the reorganization changed everything. You could see a kind of inevitability. There was a kind of, a natural progress leading toward the end. Actually, surprised me that it lasted as long as it did with people fighting as hard as they and being as clever as they were about, you know, dancing and getting out the way or whatever because it was inevitable. It had to go down, I think, for the whole college to live. [Barbara] You mean Grand Valley? [Paschke] Grand Valley as a whole, yeah. [Barbara] Why? [Paschke] Well, I guess for the reasons that I said. If it's true that people who were there were there because they weren't quite finished, that they were always becoming something and trying to figure out what they were going to be when they got big and grew up and sort of finished up. They're always pushing the limits, testing limits, asking questions, being provocative, being gadflies, whatever. Their job, their sense of self, lead to keeping things in suspension. Sort of up in the air, sort of thing going… people might go out in and they might march in Grand Rapids with the placards or something, and embarrass people, write articles in the newspaper, or do things that, you know, didn't quite fit. Their job wasn't to �maintain complacency, and when you are the gadfly there's always the flyswatter there, right. Eventually going to get that damn fly. [Barbara] Surely then, we did do a bad job of preparing our students for this inevitable end. [Paschke] Well, I think student cycling through, although some of ours were on longer cycles than four years, certainly. The normal cycle for the student was shorter than the faculty cycle, certainly, by the end. Faculty that have been there for fourteen years or twelve years. I think there were, in the lifespan of the student, there would be a time in which they would really discover what William James, you know, was or what it was supposed to be. They couldn't really get it, always, right at the beginning. But they would start to appreciate that by the time they were in their junior year, I'd say, in a lot of cases. And they didn't want that to go away. And I think some of the students who were so negative and feeling that the faculty had been irresponsible about keeping the college alive, were, in a way, being idealistic. In a way being selfish. Saying: "Keep this around for me at all costs!" And in a way, it was contrary to the whole thing that James had, which was to change. In some ways, for its whole period of time, we added people, we added programs, we change programs around. We were responsive and it just kept changing. There was a way in which there was a mystical golden era in which that students didn't want to change, I think. That's part of it. But I think we weren't very good. We didn't build the kinds of bridges that you would normally build and to make sure that you come out with your piece of the pie in a mergerin a corporate merger. We didn't really know how to do that. But I think in the sense of inevitability was obvious to a lot of people. There were people that left. Everyone who came to William James on the faculty didn't stay the whole time. People came and went. Some people would see the frustration, would see the inevitability, I think, of the end. Even some people on the faculty would see that you couldn't keep doing what we did during the time when everything in the country got more conservative. Students were more serious about: "I, you know, I want a job. I want a certain kind of paying job. I want certain kinds of courses." There was a more of a rigid kind of feeling that wasn't there at the beginning. That students wanted some different things. They wanted a kind of a tightening up. And the more we went from being what we were toward being like what the rest of the campus was like, I think the more threatening it was for the rest of the campus some ways, too. I don't know, there's a lot of levels to that, I think, to try to understand. I don't think I understand all of it myself. But I knew that I had the feeling that the end was inevitable, and it was only because there were people who were literally willing to throw themselves in front of the train at the eleventh hour, like Robert Mayberry, that kept it going as long it did. [Barbara] Okay. Tape out. � 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_61_Paschke Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Paschke, Richard 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 Richard Paschke interview (2 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Richard Paschke 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. Richard Paschke was a faculty member of William James College and longtime Grand Valley professor who retired as Professor Emeritus of Psychology. In this interview, Richard discusses the communal thinking that was at the core of William James College, the rich culture provided to the students, and how he transitioned to working in the College of Arts and Sciences. This interview is part 2 of 3 for Richard Paschke. 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 Interdisciplinary approach in education 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> 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8e22232efcabe3929759797f054049eb.mp4 47b7df9f5ca4d0691fb04e364c3907ec https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/53ea654a5e96c36a514e912f28315dd0.pdf a7f705d10a5a6e720fca27df0a537511 PDF Text Text William James College Interviews GV016-16 Interviewer: Barbara Roos Interviewee: Richard Paschke Date: 1984 Part: 3 of 3 [Barbara] Final question that we have here is… oh, I don't like the wide shot. We don’t need the palm tree in the way. That's better. You were talking about James is over, but you read in the newspaper stuff that suggests that James [inaudible]. Can you comment on that for a while? [Paschke] Well, it makes me angry. It’s always that saying, "You can't be a prophet in your own lens," has always upset me. It just seems like you should be able to. It makes me angry to see those articles now. I don't know quite why. Maybe to think that I, you know, should have fought harder to keep it. I still have this sense that if we had continued it right to the present moment, they'd kill it off and redo it again from the beginning somehow. Just couldn't work. That it could be like it was and then suddenly come into its own and be right. I don't have a sense of that being able to happen. In some ways what we did at James, I think, is what the good teachers all over in other kinds of schools have always done. Sort of, maybe they might be thought to be eccentric in their department or sort of an interesting person to have around, but there has always been people, I think, who did the kinds of things that we did at James, they just didn't have whole colleges to do it in. Whole department in colleges to do it in. I think it's right. I mean part of me claps and says: "Well, I'm glad that people are finally realizing in the national committees and task forces what's important." I'm glad that we did it. [Barbara] What are some of those things that are going to be reinvented? [Paschke] The idea of transdisciplinary approaches to, you know, take a problem, make a course focus on a problem area rather than on a topic or a content area. And then bring to bear whatever you need to bring to bear to solve the problem and cross disciplinary lines in that way. I think people are reinventing those kind of things. I just attended a meeting where they were trying to talk about how all the behavioral sciences together could teach certain class courses and certain problem issues. And I think that's important. The importance of critical thinking, learning critical thinking, which is I think one thing that our students learned, a lot of them. The better ones learned. Probably because you had to develop critical thinking to figure out what was going on, sometimes, at the college. So, it was already the real world in terms of problem solving a complicated organization. But also, because people asked a lot of questions. There was a lot of the Socratic, you know, method was used a lot in teaching. Asking questions, not �having answers always. That kind of an approach to a liberal education, I think, was important. [Barbara] To pick up something, I would appreciate it if you would say again what you said in our pre-interview, just a sentence. You said something about that the founding of the college, it was your impression, that what it was… [inaudible] a lot of us were sixties people and we took that energy and directed it. I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but could I please put words in your mouth, and would you say something around those lines because no one else has? [Paschke] Well, when all of the faculty were in college, it was the sixties, largely. And there was a kind of an energy then, I think, that had to do with the questioning, andand reacting, revolting, if you will, or whatever. A kind of an energy which was still there in the seventies, for the faculty. And, you know, I think that they brought that energy to bear on what they were doing, you know, in a different way than they would have in the sixties, in a lot of cases. In some ways and sometimes not so differently than they would have done in sixties. We had some sort of sit-ins and protests, too. We would bring things to the central administration and what not. I think the energy had to do with not accepting things as being finished and in inevitable categories. Saying: "Hey, I'm a person. I'm just getting myself together. I don't want to have a whole structure laid on me without having anything to say about it." And so, the idea about equality, the emerging idea that was I think was there already in the sixties, and certainly in the seventies, and the feminist movement. Ideas in general about equality. The student should be voting members of this committee, the student should have things to say, they're people, too. A lot of our students were older than we were, coming back to school. And there was that kind of a feeling of… it’s romanticizing it too much… I think of Martin Luther King, and I think of Selma, and people holding hands, and being passively aggressive, you know, and their protests and their certainty, and being sort of a cloistered community that we were, and, you know, going against the outside world, and being, sort of, flower children. Somebody went to a wedding recently, I heard, of a William James student and described it as being like the old days. And what the old days meant was the part of the sixties that carried over into the seventies. Where they went out and picked wildflowers for the bouquet, where people were into organic foods, and, you know, all that kind of sort of natural, you know, corduroy, and whatever, flannel. I mean a lot of that was a carryover from the sixties. And we looked a lot, I think, like people going to college in the sixties and were now teaching and didn't change a lot. But I think what the sixties tapped was a kind of a thing that's there in recent United States during adolescence for everyone, at some point. They’re starting to say: "Who am I, what can I be, what's out there?" You start reacting against established institutions, you start trying to find a voice. And to find a whole faculty that, in some ways, was going through its adolescence right in front of your very eyes over a period of ten or fifteen years was unusual. And again, maybe it couldn't �happen again today. You can't take a group of people in the eighties that went to college in the seventies and have that same magic or charisma, a kind of a… remind me, what is that mythological creature that has a lot of heads? [Barbara] Medusa, no. Hydra? A Hydra? [Paschke] Gorgon? Was that it? I don't know. Anyway, in some sense, it was always a problem for our administrators, at least within the college for our dean, to really feel like things were under control. Because it was like a group of people, again, emerging from this equal, everyone should have a say, kind of mentality of the sixties moving into the seventies. It was sort of a structure that went like this, it wasn't hierarchical. It was more people at the same level trying to make decisions, wanting to have something to say, thinking they had a right to have something say to say. Made a heck of a time for somebody trying to administer that. It was more like a band of people who were moving along, more or less, you know, in the same direction. That seemed like a sixties kind of a thing to me. I mean we had crowd mentalities and that kind of thing. [Barbara] So what you really see is some of the things that we were doing that are valuable coming up in completely different contexts in different forms? [Paschke] Uh huh. [Barbara] There's a question that I ask everybody, I think you already answered it but I'm going to ask you anyway. A one sentence answer, two sentences max, to you, personally, the one key thing that was William James, that characterized William James. In a word, in a sentence, two maximum. [Paschke] The man or the college? [Barbara] The college. [Paschke] Oh, personal freedom, whatever that means. [Barbara] Good. � 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_62_Paschke Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Paschke, Richard 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 Richard Paschke interview (3 of 3, video and transcript) Description An account of the resource Interview with Richard Paschke 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. Richard Paschke was a faculty member of William James College and longtime Grand Valley professor who retired as Professor Emeritus of Psychology. In this interview, Richard discusses the interdisciplinary nature of William James College, the Socratic method approach to liberal education, how the spirit of the nineteen sixties inspired the teachings of the William James faculty. This interview is part 3 of 3 for Richard Paschke. 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 Interdisciplinary approach in education 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> 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/549c5df124bc6cf7dcdc7b0bdc927b88.pdf 75a407b1116eb73b20a42e430a6b3c45 PDF Text Text Speaking Out Western Michigan’s Civil Rights Histories Grand Valley State University Special Collections Interviewee: Richard Robinson InterviewerCARBAJAL: Samantha Carbajal, Arianne Espiritu and Laura Wilusz Supervising Faculty: Melanie Shell-Weiss Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 10/26/2011 Biography and Description Richard Robinson is a 26 year old homosexual who grew up in Clarkston, MI. He attended Oakland Community College from 2003-2005 and GVSU as an undergrad from 2005-2008. His undergrad was in Philosophy and anthropology. He is now a grad student studying public administration. He discusses his activesim with the LGBT community. Transcript CARBAJAL: Okay, my name is Samantha Carbajal and I’m here today, October 26th around 1pm with Richard Robinson... at Allendale, Michgan in Kirkhof and we’re here today to talk about Richard’s life here in Michigan.and then.. if you could just tell me about ..yourself? ROBINSON: Okay, do you want the general.. .. coming out “schpeil? “or to you want the the.. the the early details? later details? CARBAJAL: You can just start out with your name– ROBINSON: Just go for it? CARBAJAL: Birth.. parents.. ROBINSON: Sure! my name is Richard Robinson and I my parents are Kathleen Certell (sp?) and Brian Robinson.. ... I have 3 siblings.. a half older sister named Christina, whose 30, my younger brother– first younger brother is Robert, hes twenty.. four, and then my YOUNGER younger brother is 7.. had another kid after the divorce.. and I’m 26 and hopefully I got through there ... (to Samantha) again, just going through the schpeil? CARBAJAL: Yeah! ROBINSON:Does that work okay? CARBAJAL: However you feel comfortable ROBINSON: I knew.. for certain, that I was gay and that I knew what that was, when I was thirteen. But, when I was 5 years old, I remember I, I kissed a boy’s hand, like I had seen in all those Disney movies.. Page 1 �[pause] and when I.. finally found out what that was–what that meant–it was a 2 step process to me understanding what my life was gonna be.. It was, first, it was... ‘wow.. I’m gay’ and then immediately after that it was, “ohhh shit. I’m GAY.” So now I understood I was a part of this ‘group’ of people.. that would .. that face.. being ostricized.. and every time someone says that’s ‘bad’ or that’s ‘db’, they immediately say that’s ‘gay’ or ‘your a faggot’ and immediately that.. affected me.. like now I knew I was that thing that everyone was using to degrade other things... and between the ages of 13 to 17, when I finally came out, officially, I don’t remember much.. there’s.. just this blur of depression and everything that sucked... I remember the.. the really bad times. I don’t remember really any good times. unless they happened frequently, and then, they, they really didnt. I was going to come out at 16 years old. but that was the year my parents were going through with the divorce.. and.. when I heard that that was going to happen, I decided to stay in the closet another year.. pause.. and I told my mom after that was finalized the next ser.. about three days before my 17th birthday.. pause.. and just before my senior year of high school.. [clears throat] I got lucky in that in that senior year I didn’t LOSE any friends necessarily.. people started to look at me funny.. and .. but largely I was avoided.. and people didn’t mess with me anymore. I don’t know why, but they didn’t. I was severely bullied all through school before that year, then that last year when I came out and suddenly things got better somehow and i really don’t understand why. I– after high school Clarkston High School, [cough] I went to Oakland Community College in Auburn Hills where my GPA immediately jumped 1.4 points, from a 2.1 to a 3.5.... and in two years there, got my Associates of the Arts.. took anthropology and philosophy classes, computer programming everything I could grab.. to just.. fulfil the macro agreement and get my.. my gen. eds waved wherever I went to school.. and I heard about Grand Valley through a friend.. it looked like a calm, nice campus.. whereas I saw my sister go to MSU where I saw nothing but couch burnings.. riots.. and .. late night drunk calls from her attending keggers.. it wasn’t exactly the environment I was looking for for higher education... So I applied to Grand Valley, got in, I did a major here in undergrad for philosophy and anthropology.. in 3 years.. with an associates degree, so 5 years total for undergrad.. after that I–after that graduation I .. I was an archeologist for the forest service.. in Stanislows (sp?) National Forest.. which is.. a surrounding Groveland, California.. just ohh.. about 100, 200 miles in, not very far in from Nevada. Really close to the border.. right next to Yosemite.. and then I lived in San Francisco for a while! working in a publisher, then that fell through, and I moved to North Carolina where I worked as a bartender at various bars, restaurants, and strip clubs.. in North Carolina... that was fun.. af.. after that I.. found my way back to Michigan on on very little.. I had a car, that was falling to pieces.. it was duct taped together in 3 places.. .. by end.. I stayed with friends.. bounced around.. used tax return to pay rent for 2 months til i found a job at a milk factory.. lost that after a few months tried coming back to school.. didn’t work out.. got a job door to door and then 3 days before grad school started, my first semester of grad school, I got my letter of acceptance. that i was in. that that was wednesday.. on thursday i signed up for cla–I got financial aid. On Friday I signed up for classes and on monday night I was in class. my life has been by the seat of my pants, many times, but nothing says it more than 3 to 4 grad schools when I got in.. and I’m studying public administration, with an emphasis in non profit management and leadership.. so thats the general timeline of my life and education so far.. and the education really sticks out because I’m still in school! I’m 26 years old but I’ve been in school for 6 or 7 times as long as I’ve been out of school but going back.. a couple of things really stick out about being in the closet.. couple of things. One was when I was 15, about to turn 16.. [pause] same ser my parents- I think if was the Page 2 �same ser my parents decided to get the divorce, might have been the year before. So that might- would have been when I was.. about to turn 15, I was probably 14 years old, about to turn 15, I was at a Certell (sp?) family reunion. From my mom’s side, and I was .. a snot-nosed nerd at the time, and I had just gotten a new *cough+ video game.. a new thing.. and I brought the, the ‘game manual’ with me to the, to the.. reunion. I just wanted something to do with it, I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to be at home, playing. And so I brought the, the manual along. And its this.. dungeon crawling, demon slaying, thing.. so the, the pictures are pretty.. demonic.. in their art work, its pretty.. the classic, evil sense of Dante’s Inferno kind of thing, in the imagery. my great uncle Val, my mom’s uncle, comes over.. and he sees me in a black shirt, long-ish hair, reading this thing and he asks me if he, you know, if he could see that.. and he does, he takes it, and he looks ,WHAT- And then he goes ‘okay’ and he walks off, and apparently what he did was he went over to my mother, and he started describing this time how he and his church friends got together and got this kid who dressed in all black from the local high school. He might have been a relative or he might have been someone they knew, I don’t know. And they performed an exorcism on him.. sort of an ‘ad hoc’ exorcism.. and he offered my mother the same service. And at the time it was hilarious. Cause you know its just so ridiculous to me that he would do this. But later, upon reflection, I realized that that could have been so much worse had people known at that reunion that I was homosexual. and that scared me. And I suppose those are the things that keep people in the closet.. is that if you were out, and people knew, how much worse could it be? you know like, how lucky you are at times to be hiding. Cause otherwise you could’ve- I could’ve been in some bad situations, in high school and other times, even around family.. it could’ve been bad.As for Grand Valley, I never really had any bad experiences here.. except to say that I’ve been sneered at by Christian groups on campus sometimes.. kind of after well one I confronted the 7th Day Adventist group, so that was.. [laughs] that was fun.. but also, while walking between the blue arch, and the and in front of the arboret I was walking by one day with my silver bag that I had a pride thing on, and it was a- there were people around a table so I went over to see what was going on and I was like “oh, Christian group.. oooh don’t want anything to do with that!” Then the guy was like “nooo come on over!” and I was like “oh well alright” and I turned and I.. like the badge.. showed at him and the look he gave me was that of utter disgust was like alright yeah, made the right decision, I won’t go talk to those people. I’ll stay away from them, they don’t like me. I’ve gotten off quite lucky.. in my coming out experience. I didn’t lose anybody, I’ve never been the subject of violence, I’ve never been.. confronted, or torn down for it, not really anyway. There’s a couple of vague instances I almost remember but they’re not REALLY clear about what was going on anymore. .. and so I think one time I was I was having an argument with my sister, and I think there response to me, was something just to just shut me up was “Well at least I’m going to heaven.” and I believe that was a response to me being .. gay at the time. I think that’s what it was.. I couldn’t be certain.. but I didn’t spend the night at my house that night. I went to a friends house and stayed there. my good friend Tony. So, those kinds of things sort of stick out but I don’t really know if she, if she was saying that. I can’t say for sure, I believe she was, because I don’t know anything else that, within her strange theology, that that would cause her to say that to me. She’s since grown up a little bit, but... its still painful... So thatsCARBAJAL: So how did your parents react? Page 3 �ROBINSON: I told my mother after the divorce. I told her, and [recalls quickly something unintelligible] ..yeah because I told her, and then she told my dad during the divorce. That was kind of manipulative, I don’t know exactly why she did that.. other than she’s just a blabbermouth and told EVERYBODY. You know, once I told her then *snaps+ “oh off to the family!” Everybody knew. Her brothers, sisters, grandmy grandparents... everybody. and ... I sort of function the same way.. I, I don’t know how to react to things sometimes, so I tell the story to other people and see how they react. Just like to be sure I’ve gotten it correctly. [laughs] I get that trait from her.. But I di-didn’t talk to my dad about it for.. about 5 years... 5-6 years.. cause I didn’t talk to him about it til before I, until just before I went to California which was about 4 years ago.. yeah so about 6 years between telling my mom and talking to my dad about it, even though he knew.. and what I what I’m angry about still and what I haven’t really forgiven her for is that she took away my ability to talk to him about it. If I had gotten to break the ice with it and tell him, I could’ve done it. But it hanging over us now, being held over us, by like the .. it was something neither of us wanted to bring up. And so we were both sort of waiting for the other one to. So we had a.. a.. an okay relationship.. as much as you can.. being a kid, going through a divor- go, going through a parent’s divorce and blaming the one for it. Everybody in my family blamed my dad.. and I don’t really care anymore, but at the time it still was difficult to talk to them. Its not easy. and .. and if I could have, could’ve pressured myself into bringing it up and saying it so it just took telling and it would’ve, it would’ve happened like that, but I couldn’t do that because it was taken away from me. So it wasn’t a bad reaction.. it was unfortunate, and .. it wasn’t as good as it could’ve been. And a few things when wrong, but not so wrong that I was kicked out of my home. or so wrong that I lost family, or that I don’t talk to anybody anymore, but nope I still have everybody. Generally it took them a while to get over it. It takes them a while to get over the black thought that this one of their children isn’t going to provide them grand kids. There’s that. CARBAJAL: And you said you were.. bullied? ROBINSON: YeahCARBAJAL: Like throughout school? ROBINSON: Very badly, terribly, .. in middle school one day, ... people were handing out dollar bills for everybody who punched me.. they were PAYING others to hit me in the arm, through the halls of the school. And I never saw oh- and the only reason I knew that was happening was because, someone told me. So I don’t know how much money changed hands or exactly what happened, I just remember I got punched a lot in the arm in that hallway that day. CARBAJAL: And that was just becauseROBINSON: Just because! *claps+ just because I don’t know, they got a reaction outta me.. cause I cried.. I don’t really know. But .. my right arm specifically got punched a lot.. through middle school. And when I found out- that was spurred on the, when I found out that I was ge- that this needs to be not talked about. It just needs to be hidden as much as possible. .. and to never.. never ever mention it.. and it was actually kind of easy because I was a, I’m a.. a.. a bit of a nerd I hung out with people who were already ostracized.. were already not part of any ‘in’ group.. who were al- who were connected by the Page 4 �commonality of being out of other cliques and out of other groups of people. And so that made it easier to hide.. cause then I could just be seen as awkward. If I was just seen as awkward, people wouldn’t think, “Oh he’s not straight.” They would just think, “Oh he’s an awkward nerd..” And they did! And it worked. It wasn’t on purpose, that was just a fortunate thing.. and once I was surrounded by other people, the.. bullying kind of let up in high school, but not really.. Anytime where I could be isolated was a chance for me to get something, from somebody.. whether it was being jumped on.. in gym, people were jumping on my back and trying to... essentially ride my back. That happened a couple of times, in gym class. Or we were just looking for a way to be the funny guy at my expense. sss- looking at it from now it probably the character of most of it- someone looking to be the funny guy on my expense. CARBAJAL: And that all got better after you came out? Did it let up a little? ROBINSON: Yeah.. somewhat? I think some of it was.. I finally.. grew up.. and out.. and nearly 6 feet tall, rather broad shouldered.. you know.. I was just so- I was just physically larger than many other people who were bullying me before. And so I think that at least a little bit intimidated them. And.. I had lashed out a few times. its, it was, its tough in schools when they, when they have no.. no tolerance policies.. for fighting.. or for cursing of any sort. its just if your seen doing this you either get suspended or expelled. But when the bullying is subversive, and its minor, and button pushing.. they don’t need to be loud.. to get at you. They don’t need to be noticeable to make it affective. But the, inevitably, the boiling over, the lashing out, the.. the steam from the kettle.. That is always loud. The person who is finally- they’ve been pushed too far and need to lash out a little bit. I once flipped a kid out of my .. seat, in Japanese class, because it was MY seat, next to MY friend and.. he was not there for any good reason. And so I flipped the desk over and leaned in really close and told him to fuck off. And.. incidences like that, where I was able to do those things.. to provide enough of a physical presence that I shouldn’t be messed with on certain levels. That was more protective than anything else. People only mess with you to the point where they think that you won’t fight back. As soon as you do, they, they let off. But, the person who’s fighting back has to.. be just as subversive or just as quiet about it, as the other way. So I think theres this underground of.. of barely restrained violence at times. In in when you’re being bullied, theres just, you really, you want to! You want to get it to stop, whatever it takes to get it to stop. Cause those years, between 13 and 17 I was near suicidal. I didn’t want to go out, I didn’t wanna be around people, I... [pause] I did things just to keep up appearances but there were multiple incidences where .. again the bad things are all that I remember, where I just.. I was close. I was close to the edge. And the only thing that kept me from it was I knew that it would hurt my family and friends more than if they knew I was a homosexual. That would be a greater pain, and a burden, than, than knowing. And that was it. That was the only thing that kept me from it. Wasn’t hope for a brighter future, wasn’t thinking that my life would get better later on.. It was only that I would cause more pain by not being here., Than than I would be, than I am suffering myself. I didn’t want to inflict that on anyone else. So I, I took it as my ‘cross to bare’ so to speak. And I didn’t burden anyone else with it and it didn’t let on. But that’s just the same, psychological environment. The same state to be in, that brings people to suicide.. and that makes people lash out. Like I did in high school. I wish somebody had put the pieces together, but nobody ever did. When I came out it was a surprise to everybody. Everybody knew I was depressed but they didn’t know why. They didn’t know what for.. they had no idea to even ask! Which is stupid, because if you look back at a photo album of me, from the ages of like 5 to 17, 80% Page 5 �of my pictures are of me standing in jazz hands, or with one foot up on its toe.. or something what you would consider pretty homosexual, pretty gay at the time. But I don’t know.. I don’t know what people thought of me.. I just, I can’t see that they couldn’t have known something.. cause looking now I know I wasn’t that good of hiding it. CARBAJAL: When did it start to get better? Like your life right now? ROBINSON: It was mildly better in college. I tried to get in touch with the LGBT community here. didn’t work out. It was still kind of cliquish. It was still kinda the same mentality that kept me ostracized in high school. Here’s the “in” group that I’m not part of right now and becoming part of it’s very difficult. And it…and my undergrad experience was not what I was hoping it was going to be but it was at least filled with studying something I really love studying. I am, to my core, a philo philosopher and anthropologist. studier of the human condition like those are what I care about and I’m going through nonprofit work cause I wanna do something about it. And, that’s, that really informs my professional career, my my future, and what I wanna do with my life, but that’s all instead of really having any meaningful relationships or friendships with the gay community and undergrad. Very few. Very few if any. and just looking for something, some way to connect with the people in my own community. I, cause that was my, my jump out to California. I had family who lived in North Bay. Which is Corte Madera. So San Fransisco’s on the end of a peninsula and the bay curves the whole thing. So North Bay is the, the area directly across the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s where my family lived. My uncle’s an architect. I lived with them for a few months and I got a job at that publisher and I lived in San Fransisco…and it and all I knew is that was the A gay epicenter in the United States. That was a place I could go where I didn’t even havet, where no one would bat an eye. That my existence was what I wanted. And it, and it worked. It was, it was good for a time. I, I really. I hated leaving there, but I had to cuz I couldn’t afford it. I was trying to live in a city like that for under $30,000 a year. It was impossible. Like I couldn’t keep it up. Had to leave. And, I dreamt about that city for every night for a good six months. Every night was the same dream. I was back. That’s how much of an impact it was. And it wasn’t until just now in grad school that things finally really took off. In in being a peer in the community, in the group and being part of it. And I don’t know why that is. I don’t know if that was just the people I was trying to get in touch with in undergrad, if I was just not ready for it. If I was just too much of the awkward nerd to be part of it or not but, I guess that means I’m a late bloomer of some sort but I’m just happy it’s working out now. CARBAJAL: What like type of experiences made San Francisco so great for you? ROBINSON: Castro is in interesting place (said with laughter). There’s a bit of a small history about San Francisco. In the 1940’s, the navy discharged every soldier, it was every sailor it found to be homosexual, into the port of San Francisco. That is why during the subsequent fifties and sixties there was such a large uprising of gay men in San Francisco. There is not a large group of gay women in San Francisco, it doesn’t exist. There are some who are natives but it’s not as if gay women and lesbians are flocking to San Francisco. They never did. Gay men did…because there was already a large population of them there and they took over what was an Irish Catholic neighborhood, the Castro. And, that became the epicenter of everything. Of Harvey milk, of of the LGBT rights movement of California that, that because of a policy in the Navy is why that’s there. Jump to 2008, 2009, when I’m trying to move there, when I’m trying to live there, I’m 23 years old and…much too young for it. Twenty years too young to really be Page 6 �part of that community in that city. The young community of homosexuals there isn’t very vibrant because the exodus stopped there many years ago. As fabulous as the city is, it’s an amazing place. It’s not the same gay epicenter that it once was. But just because it was there made things better, walking down the street and having every lamppost rainbow flag on it. Walking down another street and have it covered in leather pride flags. Gay men’s community at least has subdivided itself into many subsequent smaller communities and they all have their own flag of a sort. The leather one is a red heart with black, white, and blue stripes on it and that’s on Fuller Street I believe they have a leather parade there of guys in leather chaps and harnesses and like leather biker caps all covered in studs. It’s kinda the idea. And it’s just because that place is so diverse even within the gay community there, that made it more welcoming. But the problems were it could be reduced to a series of dance clubs and meat markets so to speak. And, outside of that there wasn’t much more of political solidarity and there wasn’t much for me trying to find any … common interests groups to join with. Those just weren’t there anymore. But you could still go to the Castro on a Saturday night and find people walking around naked. That’s just how the part of the city worked. There were they had apparently passed ordinances where public nudity in the areas were were allowed and…people made use of it. So every weekend, it didn’t matter how cold it was outside, that’s the thing you could find. And that’s sort of freeing to see, but none of it was what I expected. And so it got a little better just because it was easy to be out and not worry about it, but it was still alien. It was still strange. It was still not what I was expecting. And that’s been, that’s been a theme for me. That’s been something that’s been pretty constant. A lot of things, I come across a lot of groups I try to become part of are alien to me and strange and I don’t understand them quite. And it’s partially because I hold myself apart from them but also because I don’t really thing they’re as welcoming as they think they are. Of other people. CARBAJAL: Is that the same, like when you went to North Carolina and.. ROBINSON: North Carolina just sucked. I went to North Carolina because my mother and sister were living there and I could crash at their houses for a few months. And I was in North Carolina for nine months total. six months in Winston-Salem, the home of cigarettes in this country. Winston Cigarettes Salem, yeah. Winston-Salem. And then just outside of Charlotte in Matthews, North Carolina and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I’m never living there again. I don’t get along with my sister well, and to get outta there my mother ended up giving me that shitty car, buying herself a new one, and said “just go, just take your stuff and leave, just get outta here there’s nothing for you here.” I didn’t have a job anymore, I didn’t have anything I could cling to. The only reason I could be there because my family was there and we weren’t getting along well anyway so the only option was to just leave. And I did. And I took a really big risk coming back to Michigan. The unemployment rate was worse here, and I didn’t have any plans for graduate school at the time. I didn’t know I was gonna be in grad school til two months before the semester started. That’s why I applied, and my, and and it worked. I don’t know why (said with laughter) I’m glad it did, I’m doing well but…that’s everything since undergrad has been by the seat of my pants. Taking risks and trying to make things work out. Some of them have some of them haven’t. San Francisco didn’t and I ended up in North Carolina, and so I really hope grad school works out because I don’t know where I’ll end up if this one doesn’t. No, no gay community to be spoken of at all in North Carolina that I could find. Charlotte didn’t have anything for bars that were consistent, they were always closing down and opening up so there was no place that I could really depend on to go. I Page 7 �didn’t go anywhere cuz I was also out of money. And up in Winston-Salem there was one which was a really bad. It wasn’t any good. It was always empty. But it was huge. It was just a, was just a gigantic empty space and no one was ever there. So there was no way for me to meet anybody. Do anything. CARBAJAL: So it’s when you came back up here that you started meeting people and getting involved? ROBINSON: I, came back here and I reconnected with some old friends asked if they were still at Grand Valley. And I found that the LGBT community here had grown significantly. That there was two new student groups, that what once was the women’s center here became the LGBT resource center. This used to be the women’s center. These three rooms here. And that we colloquially developed what we call the “queer corner.” Where that, where that piano used to be if you remember that circle of chairs and couches out there . There’s a group of us that are in the student groups and otherwise who are all who are 90% of us are part of the LGBT community in some way. A few people, three or four, out of the 20 or so that show up, aren’t. And so we’ve called it the queer corner because that’s our “space.” We’ve claimed it. We needed a space to be where we could be a community, be a group of friends and not worry about people harassing us. Cuz once we were in a big group like that, we were left alone. Nobody bothers us, no one’s ever come in a confronted us over there. There were stories of a couple of of people coming over there and reading really loudly, the passages of the Bible that condemn homosexuality and talking about them around us. As if to say, we know you and we object to you because our Bible tells us so. But I didn’t see any of that. And, had I seen it I would have confronted them. But, that’s been the bigger part, is having a space for the LGBT student population that we’ve claimed as our own. Has been probably the most helpful. And there’s two rules to the queer corner, unspoken rules, one everyone’s generally welcome but no hate speech. Hate speech at all of any sort against any group of people is not tolerated and you will be ostracized and kicked out of there cuz we’ve all gone through it and we’re never going through it again. Especially not for some jackass who just thinks it’s funny to come over and do that. CARBAJAL: You say you had problems with the SDA activists? Seventh-day Adventists? ROBINSON: I went up and I confronted, I was a philosophy student and I had no idea who the Adven who the Seventh-day Adventists were. But I knew enough of Christian theology that I could place them in the splintering history of Christian churches and I went in there and I specifically asked them what their views on homosexuality were and they told me. And all hate the sin not the sinner. Well, great but I really don’t think you guys understand what your words mean when you say that because you are in fact hating on the sinner when you say that. That’s the point. That’s how words work. You know, that how you make sin into a noun of somebody who performs it. Is to call them the sinner in the first place. they didn’t quite understand that and I just walked away. I was just trying to be there, philosophically challenge them on and just decided not to in the end. CARBAJAL: Besides the LGBT like center here, was there anyone that really supported you? ROBINSON: I never had a problems in the academic departments of any of my teachers. Generally everybody knew. I was pretty open about it and . I got left alone about it in those classes. And but . For actively supporting me? Not really. I tried being part of the student groups but again I didn’t feel, not Page 8 �necessarily not welcome just not part of it, and what friends I did have here I knew some of them from high school. I followed a friend here and his name was Carl. He was a good friend of mine. Who he would become my roommate was when we moved off-campus and we went through anthropology together. And he’s still actually serving in that same forest as an archaeologist that I served in. He keeps going back ser after ser and he’s slowly becoming a federal employee. But, no support groups here. I even count Milt Ford, the man who started the resource center. I spoke to him a few times in his office in the Liberal Studies Department over in Lake Ontario. But again, that’s part of the resource center he started, so other than that no there wasn’t much. CARBAJAL: Are there any activities that you yourself like. Civil rights movements or anything that you participated in? ROBINSON: (with a smile) I was in San Francisco when Proposition 8 passed for California. And Prop 8 was the anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution in that state. And so I got to be part of a march there against it you know, 10-15,000 people walking down market street. Walking from Dubous Park to the city hall. But it was, it was very strange. I we were following the this group. And the person at the head of it apparently when we got to the park, the first stop, was this very large golden drag queen. Gold hair, makeup, dress, all of it. And every other word out of her mouth was community. “How dare these people come into our community and hate on our community”, “we need to stand up as a community, and fight for our community, against the oppression against our community”. Like just repeating the same word to drive home the community part for some reason over and over and over again. And, then one of the local bars had brought a generator and a dj stand and a small dance party began. And I just thought that was, it was absolutely absurd. You’re going to have this political march here and at the end this is what we see? A dance party? Now partly you can see that this was a plan to be celebrating the defeat of Prop 8 as it won only by three points. You know less than the standard error in a poll for for politics was how much it won by so it coulda swung the other way. Not a very big margin. And so there was just this weird sense in San Francisco where Barrack Obama just won, this person that San Francisco absolutely loved and voted for in some crazy 90%. But then Prop 8 passed, and everyone’s going “what do we do?” “How do we handle this? How do we deal with this?” And part of the answer was just go on as the party had. And the chanting the things that had happened at that time were kind of half-hearted. Out of the bars into the streets, out of the bars into the streets and all the old-timers in the bars are goin “whatever, we’ve been defeated before this is just another defeat on the notch”. “It’s another notch on the headboard who cares?” It’s just strange to witness and but other than that for civil rights I mean there’s not that much I’ve been personally involved in. I’d like to have been but I was just always in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was never around it when it was happening cuz some of it’s pretty organic. I was never part of the groups that were starting it. You know part of being an outsider in many ways is that you don’t get to be part of these things because no one’s you don’t have any social connection to it. You know you can say well you just go out and do it anyway if you don’t have social connections there that is making social connections. Yeah, well how many people hadn’t had been at protests alone just because they went there and not with four or five friends that they want that they dragged along. How many people who are there aren’t being supported by anybody else they know and are just alone without anyone else in the crowd that they know? I, I doubt that happens much. I, I bet people are there in groups already made and coming together with other groups Page 9 �of people under that same banner. But since I wasn’t part of that in many ways around when many things were happening I didn’t get to be part of it. Because I would just feel awkward and alone and strange and separated again. CARBAJAL: Do you have any heroes like who conducted these movements, anyone you look up to for doing it? ROBINSON: Go Harvey Milk, good for him being the first elected openly gay politician in the country. Elected city commissioner of San Francisco sometime, I don’t remember the dates. I don’t much have, no, haha Barney Frank. That guy’s cool. senator of Massachusetts. first openly gay senator, I believe, and who was outted during a scandal and kept office through it and stayed there. But he’s also my political hero for what he tries to do in terms of senate in terms of finance for the country. There’s might not be any too many people that I’d look up to as as leaders of the gay community right now. There’s not many, and it- the only times there have been where when the pressure against us has has been so great that one person could rise above it (two women talking in the background) and be seen publicly. And that’s part of the legend of some like cardinal who was an assassinated city commissioner. who was assassinated by some other commissioner. Him along with the mayor, so there’s a story that’s come up a-around that but… because one the one thing that keeps the LGBT community together is the similarity in our impression by other people… that’s what keeps us together,(someone in the background putting something in the microwave) because if you look you look at groups of older gay men and lesbians, they don’t want anything to do with each other, (a couple of people walk into the room and start talking) the common goal, because were treated similarly.. (someone in the background putting something in the microwave) and without that it’s hard to (some papers crumpled in the background) being organize us, there isn’t a collective experience, there sort of is but not really, everyone’s story is unique, being because were the random minority we show up everywhere we show up in every other minority group we show up in every other group of people, were there, this one thing about who we fall in love with and have romance with and have sex with that that’s are one guiding connection (two ladies talking in the background) its very tenuous when you compare with other civil rights groups I don’t think it’s as strong as the connecting thing in the black community in the united states. First, because their impression first was something else entirely and it’s still very real, too many of them… I wish there was more. And I’m really happy for the victories that we have been getting, but it’s so splintered (microwave beeping) when viewed from within that it’s hard to say even organizations that are doing good work cause you think the human rights campaign with some fantastic organization but you could look at the criticism of it from within its not it’s not you know john salnees the current president of the human rights people that yellowy quality signs them, they’re just a gala organization, they throw on big gala fundraisers so they can throw more *clap* big gala fundraisers so they can pay money to people *clap* who won’t give us everything we want. There is just this test they are going to support the Democratic Party and fundraise for them through the gay community and they’re not actually doing very many good works. That’s what we see more of than strong leaders, we see a lot of splintered groups and people doing things for their own local communities but not any large individuals that are taking charge, so it be hard for me to say that there’s many heroes. CARBAJAL: Now today, what are—you’re a spokesperson? Or you speak to your people about? Page 10 �ROBINSON: I *chuckles* perform public therapy ha-ha, even being here telling this story of mine telling what I’ve been through, and what my fears were all makes it easier to deal with than it was before I had done that and so every time I go do a- analyze an advocates training or I can do anything for the-for this organization, it makes me just feel a little better about it. And so I just say I’ve always engaging in open therapy for it, because talking about it and getting it out in the open makes it easier because sunlight’s the best disinfectant. So those emotional scars and that pain (someone getting situated in their chair) I’ve been through is a little bit lessened every time. It’s like a small pain killer, and as if if I keep taking them maybe it will go away completely some day. So this isn’t really to bring people over to my side or get them to understand, this is just more for my own benefit, that…This makes my life easier, doing these things and being open about it. CARBAJAL: Who have you talked to? Like what types of groups and people? ROBINSON: No like I said before the tape recorder was on, I spoke to Greek guys and advocates I’ve done faculty staff, a couple this year and a couple last year I’ve done others for general student body I’m also the treasurer for out n about right now the LGBT community group on campus now, so well I wasn’t part of the community before I am now ‘cause I’m trying to run the organization, at least the money side. And *claps twice*… I think that’s it, I think that’s what I’ve done. And so I’m grabbing every opportunity I can to do these things, just ‘cause ….. Want to… makes me feel better. CARBAJAL: That’s good… for when you present to professors and things like that do you just tell-talk about your life experiences? ROBINSON: Yeah there’s a general spiel I give out, there’s many- it’s certainly much shorter than the one I gave earlier here It includes the when I found out, my first experience when I was five… the times I’ve butt up against the religious organizations, including my great uncle, the student groups here… and how my time at grand valley has been. because that’s the focus of those things, is telling them how my time at grand valley has been and how it could be better, and there has been some pushback against my … people have seem to be as anti religious stances and anti religious organizations stances I’ve had and there’s Benjamin minor but it’s there and I tell them that were the ones that were victimized, it’s understandable for us to be on the defensive and for us to not exactly be open to people coming to that stance, trying to help us, it was about 30-40 years ago that we were still being tortured by the Mormon church with electro shock therapy. And we are still currently being hunted down and killed in other religious countries around the world so it’s not like it’s my fault that I have a (two woman start talking in the background) negative opinion of it in general. CARBAJAL: So what types of things are you doing, like today, with the LGBT are your trying to control money aspect of? ROBINSON: I supposed to run the fundraisers I hold the card in my name and the advisors name I’m just the treasurer you know as much student groups, as much their as officers stick to their roles, it’s just really my name is just on the paper is doing that, I don’t think there’s anything- there’s nothing specifically that I do as treasurer that nobody else couldn’t do, other than I have to sign the receipts, Page 11 �but you know it’s a student organization account it’s not very big, it’s not something that’s *chuckles* ever a problem that I couldn’t keep track of and do. CARBAJAL: What types of fundraisers are there? ROBINSON: We haven’t done any! Ha-ha we’re working on it, as a student organization. It’s again the seed of our pants *chuckles* If you have ever been part of an undergrad organization they’re not exactly the most well run things on campus… Yeah. CARBAJAL: What types of- where would the money go for the fundraiser? ROBINSON: What we do is every spring, we buy and hand out free t-shirts, for national coming out day, April 15th, but we put on the closest Wednesday, to it. No National day of silence what it was national day of silence. And we cycle through the rainbow colors on our t-shirts and we ask organizations to be co-sponsors and we offer them a space—a name their name on the back of our shirts as being a supporting organization for whatever donation they can give us to buy whatever t-shirts and we get them .. I think last year we got them for… a few dollars each. Some really small amount we got 151 tshirts for 700 dollars 600 dollars something like that? That’s like 4 dollars a shirt somewhere around there? I don’t remember. That’s where the bulk of our fundraising money goes to, is to doing that, the rest of it we just run through the school we ask the school to pay for whatever we want, they do. CARBAJAL: You just hand out the shirts or do you have an event? ROBINSON: Yeah we hand them out, no we hand them out. We try and say group members first but that’s what they show up first. You know, Last year was our smallest handout 150 we usually hand out 300, 400 get up to the cost of 1200 dollars of t-shirts. We found a pretty good group to go through last year, and they’re willing to cut down the price by allowing them to put their logo on it and also to … they give us a discount on the cost per shirt because they’re like supporting the organization, the events like that… It was Ann Arbor t-shirt company that did that for us I drove out and picked up the shirts myself. And it’s a good time. CARBAJAL: Are there any other events that they do too? ROBINSON: We did we do an amateur drag show every fall that was just a few weeks ago, we had bout 2-300 people in attendance up in the Pere Marquette room. Ha very small cramped space filled with people. And it was a huge hit. We got a bunch of our students able to put on drag and walk on a runway and back… and we have a door we call it’s our closet door and put a rainbow flag over it, walk through it and stuff. It’s this this fun little metaphor thing they get to come out (two woman talking in the background) in then they’re in drag and they do the runway walk. We partner with a Transpectr, the transgender support group on campus and we do that for national transgender day of remembrance. We do a candle light a (someone opens the door) visual form out around the clock tower, we put on a pride prom in the spring were we provide the LGBT students (people in the background talking) who didn’t necessarily get the chance to be at prom the way they wanted to in high school, we give them the new chance to do it how how they would like.. here. And then day of silence those are our four major things we do. Then other than that we put on education pieces for them community keeping people up to do date on the current political situations we find ourselves (someone slams the door) as well as Page 12 �doing general outings. We’re going to a an orchard this weekend, to have a big gay hay ride where we’re going to freak out some farm owners ha-ha, by coming and being flamboyant as possible on their hayride and there corn maze, eat cider and donuts and do a very Michigan thing for the fall together. The organization is really just is just for that, keeping the community together and keeping us visible on campus making sure people know that gay people are here and that were part of this campus. CARBAJAL: Is there anything that you want to like to see the group do? Like any strides, specifically? ROBINSON: I would like the group to have a specific way, (he moves in his chair) a specific program that it does in the early fall semester to get in touch with the incoming freshman and incoming transfer students and let them know that we exist and let them know that support is here and give them the information they need to get in touch with all of it. Because frankly the the student life night isn’t good enough… people in the closet… aren’t that social, to go up to a big gathering like that, that public and it is so to approach a table for- covered in rainbows and about the LGBT community here, that makes us that would make me nervous had I been in the closet and seen that, I would not have approached it and I get the same response when I ask the people in the group, would have you approached a table surrounded by the student body in general which was presenting as a LGBT organization and they say no. we need a way to get in touch and show the kids who may be closeted who are coming in to the first time to a a 4-year university and show them that we’re there. And that we can be used as a support group and that we can be used as a safe place and that were a safe group of people that you can finally be yourself with… And but finding the means to do that’s difficult, do we do it with just an ad campaign were we just put out flyers everywhere and pluggers and point to that you don’t have to be out to join us… you know something like saying something like that you don’t have to come out to be a part of this community, please please join us. So the we got to find a way to be visible, and present and friendly without exposing ‘cause that’s the greatest fear when you’re in the closet and when you’re in that place is being exposed and seen. On something other than your own terms, coming out can be fantastic as long as it’s on your own terms. It’s not on anybody else’s terms ‘cause those are usually bad. So we need to find a way to be that resource…and specifically because I don’t want to see an LGBT student be the one found at the bottom of the ravine one year, because nearly every year I was here as undergrad there’s someone that has jumed off that bridge between Mackinac and the lake halls and there’s enough of a precedent of suicide in the LGBT community that I don’t want to see happen here on our campus. Last year with that group of those 5 or 6 LGBT kids who killed themselves rapid succession last fall, there has been a couple this year that gotten national attention but… it shouldn’t happen here, not when we have this not when we have three student groups and I want us to be seen more for that,(someone talking and moving in their chair in the background) I want people to know who out n about is, I want them to know what it’s for and I wanted us to be recognized almost invariably by the campus because we’re so visible… But that’s a long term goal, and I don’t know if I’m able to complete it, I hope I can just lay the seeds for it while I’m here. But I don’t I won’t be part of the—I’ll be graduating next year before maybe before the next school year starts so I won’t be a part of whatever, they’re doing… next year. Not just I hope I get them to do this while I’m gone. CARBAJAL: Will you ever come back? And see how it’s going? Page 13 �ROBINSON: Oh I’ll be in grand rapids, but… but grand valley will no longer have a program for me to take I will have gone as far as I can in my education at grand valley I can’t do a PhD here because they don’t have it for my program. There is no other masters I’d like to get, because I don’t want to get a second masters it’s pointless. I have one, I don’t need another… and… I don’t know, I’d like to think that I could to stay in grand rapids I’m going into non-profit work in grand rapids is the second largest center for philanthropy in the country, by GDP and so it’s possible? But that’s large because of Bandandels and the other big rich Dutch families in the area… and everybody has to get my resume. you know I left Michigan before for the same reason I couldn’t get a job here, and I had a job somewhere else, so if I send my resume out to every government agency I’d like to work for every non-profit foundation whichever I’d like to work for in the country, I have to be ready to move. You know if I’m willing to go off and work with the consulting firm, I’ll be sent around the country, I’ll be out. I’ll be off consulting, working with people and who knows how large the geographic area? I would love to stay in Grand Rapids, I just I can’t say if I will or not, it’s unfortunate but it’s true. CARBAJAL: Is there anything el-anything else that you wish happens with, anybody that needs to come out or? ROBINSON: I would like to hope that it the the what’s the bad things that happen to you I would like that to even out across the LGBT groups. Right now we’re four times as likely to attempt to suicide growing up. Than just your average teenager where one in four of us get kicked out of our homes and we come out before we’re independent of our parents and thus we account for 60-70% of homeless youth in this country so what I would like to hope is for those numbers to go down. That your not longer 1 in four are kicked out 1 in 5, 1 in 6 and up to none, are kicked out for it. And I would like to hope that Grand Rapids continues to grow and gets better at it, because right now it’s pretty good for what you’d think about a west Michigan city, grand rapids is pretty good, it’s got four gay bars which is incredible that there’s the economy could sustain four of them… and there’s a few friendly gay churches, good. As much as I don’t want to be a part of them, good I’m glad they’re there, ‘cause I can’t speak for all of us. And so yeah Grand Rapids is good, it’s getting better hope it continues to get better, and I hope all of our statistics start to get lower, at least regionally but not completely. (Someone in the background moving in their chair) CARBAJAL: Is there anything else, anything more you want to share? ROBINSON: Any closing tagline any, any bit? No I think it’s depressing enough ha-ha CARBAJAL: Depressing note to end on ha-ha ROBINSON: I think that spiels, think that’s a good way to end it seriously without that end you could put it on MPR ha-ha-ha. CARBAJAL: Ok well thank you for coming ROBINSON: Thank you END OF INTERVIEW Page 14 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/199f33d3ba1eac40d2f7e9f16788f905.mp3 d9d0cdfd05971004cda4b32190a05160 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 Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights--Michigan--History Personal narratives Oral histories African Americans--Personal narratives Gays--Personal narratives Lesbians--Personal narratives Bisexual people--Personal narratives Transgender people--Personal narratives Veterans--Personal narratives Women--Personal narratives People with disabilities--Personal narratives Muslims--United States--Personal narratives Hispanic Americans--Personal narratives Homophobia Discrimination Islamophobia Stereotypes (Social psychology)--Upper Penninsula (Mich.) Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history recordings documenting the history of civil rights and social justice advocacy in Western Michigan. The collection was created by faculty and students as a project of the LIB 201 (formerly US 201): "Diversity in the U.S." course from 2011-2012. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral History Project (GV248-01) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-05-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV248-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1930-2011 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 GV248-01_Robinson_Richard Title A name given to the resource Richard Robinson audio interview and transcript, interview 1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robinson, Richard Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Carbajal, Samantha Espiritu, Arianne Wilusz, Laura Description An account of the resource Richard Robinson grew up in Clarkston, MI. He attended Oakland Community College from 2003-2005 and GVSU as an undergrad from 2005-2008. His undergrad was in Philosophy and anthropology. He is now a grad student studying public administration. He discusses his activism with the LGBT community. Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights--Michigan--History Gays--Personal narratives Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Relation A related resource Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral History Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-10-26 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/12c40449e4fc9e1defbff92f471c7e1f.pdf 427557416c790d55c04b422ffe6b296d PDF Text Text Speaking Out Western Michigan’s Civil Rights Histories Grand Valley State University Special Collections Interviewee: Richard Robinson Interviewers: Iris and Christa Supervising Faculty: Melanie Shell-Weiss Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections Date: 4/5/2012 Biography and Description Richard Robinson discusses his experiences with discrimination as a gay male. Transcript IRIS: Okay, we are here today on April 5, 2012 in the LGBT Resource Center with our friend Richard Robinson conducting an interview; and Richard, we, obviously as I kind of laid out, we just really want to hear your story and our objective is to talk to someone who has been perceived as different by others or by society. So, to start with, how do you think that and why do you think that others perceive you as different? RICHARD: For a while, I didn’t know why people perceived me as different but there were just instances; I was bullied a lot in elementary and middle school. Particularly in middle school there was an incident where people were paying others to punch me in the arm because they knew it would get a reaction out of me. Why they perceived me as different, I could think that because I was sort of an introvert; I was kind of nerdy and I didn’t want, I didn’t.., act like the other boys my age did. I wasn’t into the same things they were. I really didn’t care about sports then; it never happened that I started caring about girls ever. Turns out that later, oh hey, you’re gay, that’s why and so I imagine for a while it was just I was a strange little queer kid and people didn’t know how to handle that; and so they, that sort of social normalization of pick on them until they do what everyone else is doing. That if you’re not acting the way everyone else is acting that you will be perceived as different and they will come after you for it. + IRIS: So what kind of things, I mean when you were little, do you think that really set you apart, I mean at a young age what.., how really different can you be? RICHARD: I was a little ham, I have a, I have a photo album of me flirting from that my mother gave me of all the pictures of me and throughout the ages of oh, 3-4 years old to like 16, 17. I just thought it was clever or funny but for whatever reason ever single picture has me with jazz hands in it. Not a single one was different. IRIS: What’s jazz hands? Page 1 �RICHARD: Yea, the hands are out and up in here. Except for one, there’s one that’s even, that’s even gayer than that. There’s this photo of me about to go on my first day of kindergarten or something and I’ve got my, I’ve got my arm in the crook of my backpack’s shoulder strap. I have my right leg up on one toe, and my knees bent and my head’s back going ‘Yayyy’ *Iaughter* It’s, it’s... I don’t know, I couldn’t teN you why I thought any of that was, was clever or a good at the time, it just was and everyone thought it was adorable so I think I just kept doing it. Oh it’s funny that one time it’s really good you should reinforce behavior in a child once, it’s going to keep going and going and going. It was never corrected, it was never told to stop, it was never tod anything and there was even pictures of my brother mocking me doing the exact same thing I’m doing. Hands on hips or whatever, and he’s but he’s scrunched his face up and he’s brought his eyes towards his nose doing a kind of fish face of what I’m doing; just to be funny, just to sort of poke fun at his older brother. IRIS: So, from a very young age then, you kind of felt this identity... RICHARD: There was something, something going on but I, I I have an aunt and uncle that live in San Francisco for a long time and I showed them that album when I went to visit them for a few months. They, they, my aunt looked at that and she said ‘Rick I’m sorry, if I had seen this, I would have told them’ *Iaughter* IRIS: Told your parents? RICHARD: Told them, that I was, that I was gay. *Iaughter* I eventually did come out when I was 17 years old going into my senior year of high school. I decided that I wasn’t going to do it anymore; I screwed up my courage and I told everybody. I just, I shot gunned it. Before that, there were too people that knew sort of to let the pressure off but at that time I just, I emailed some friends, I spoke to some over the phone, I told some in person. But all that was after I told my mother, I told her first and then everybody else found out from that. IRIS: How did your mother react? How was your family? RICHARD: I came to her... I was going to do it the year before but turns out that my dad wanted to get divorced and so that put pressure on the family and so I didn’t. I guess I sort of held back because I didn’t want to make it worse on people; I didn’t want to go ‘Oh their getting a divorce oh and by the way’. IRIS: Oh, but that’s so sad that that would make it worse. That’s just a fact of life. RICHARD: Yea it is, it is but I’m in Grad school now and I’ve always been sort of a little researcher. If I don’t know something I know how to look things up; and so when I figured out that I was homosexual the internet was just around. I was, it was 1998-9 that I started figuring it out and so... The internet was really just starting but there were already a couple resources on-line. There was a couple websites I frequented, coming out stories, how to come out, you know those things. And all the statistics on what that is... You might want to pause for a minute while we wait for it to get quiet. *turns off recording device* Page 2 �IRIS: Ok RICHARD: Resuming recording. IRIS: Yes, so as we were saying Richard you knew that there was always something maybe a little off. When did you, when were you able to put words with this? RICHARD: There’s, there’s three events that I remember quite clearly that lead up to it. One I was five years old in kindergarten I was, I had been transferred to a different kindergarten than I was in originally because the teacher had accidentally left me in the bathroom when they took the rest of the kids out to recess. So I come out of the bathroom and then there’s nobody in the kindergarten trailer room. That was rather frightening, I panicked. I was only reminded of that But only at my new elementary school and there’s this , there’s this other boy whose house, was sort of friends with, his name was Phillip and for whatever reason, I don’t know why but I did the whole grab hand, knuckle, kiss thing. That I had seen in Disney movies or elsewhere; and three years later or so about seven or eight years old I’m at the bus garage with my mom because she’s a bus driver and my brother’s there we’re both in the same school and we ride the bus home with her to the garage and we go home in her car. And, my brother asks my mom ‘What does gay mean?’ and I pipe in because I loved answering questions and I say ‘Well it means you’re stupid or something’ and my mom goes ‘No, it’s when men like other men and women like other women’. And we’re like.. ohh. We thought it was kind of weird, but we didn’t think aboutto for too long we just sort of went about our day; no big deal whatsoever to either of us. But that is one of those instances where I was first able to connect... well then that mustbe bad. Because why would people use it in this way without it being bad; there’s no reason too. It’s either its bad or these other kids are all idiots, which is true but (laughter). And then I’m thirteen years old, oh geez when was this? Freshman high school, so that was makes me yea about thirteen, fourteen years old and I’m in gym class and my eyes lingered a little too long on some of the guys playing basketball and I go ‘Ohhh crap’ and that, it was just very clear right then and there that that started about three or four years of really bad depression. Really really bad depression because every single, because I’m still hearing faggot, fudge packer, gay, queer all day long everywhere. Every five seconds there’s another shout in the hallway or someone saying something completely ignorant around me and once I had had made the connection that what I am is bad, I got really worried and by only and when I get worried about something like that I research. I look up everything I can, what is this? What does this mean? What’s going and the internet had just come around, so I’m going online, I’m looking up comingoutstories.com, other places like that and I find the statistics about what happens to kids who come out before 17, 18 years old and it turns out its scary things like I out of every 4 of them is kicked out of their homes that were 4 times as likely to attempt suicide. That were 10 times as likely to be bullied in school; that was already happening, was already happening. I was already a target for a lot of people. And when you, when you’re bullied like that there’s no way to fight back because their being subversive about it; their being quiet about it, their being... their doing it in ways that can’t be seen and the only response that you can give back to them is to try and humiliate them in return but the only way to do that is to do it more openly, publicly and to actually fight back. When you fight back, you get in trouble because you started something. There was, there’s no finesse amongst, amongst teachers that I had were about dealing with bullying. It was only Page 3 �whoever was the most overt about the incident; they were the one who’d get in trouble. So you don’t do anything, you just sit there... IRIS: So you didn’t do anything? RICHARD: You grin and take it, for a long time and you grin and take it. I ended up later getting some piece about casting the right people out, flipping over a couple of desks. But here’s someone sitting in my chair and (told them to move and they didn’t so I flipped them out of it because that’s the only way to deal with it. If you don’t respond physically, if you don’t show them you won’t be a target, you will be a target. And that’s sad but that’s just the way it had to work out but anyway there’s all these bad things that happened. That if you come out and, you can say, I can say things oh I know my friend wouldn’t do that to me or I don’t believe that would happen or that would be really bad it’s still a 75% chance that I won’t happen if I tell them. But it’s.., it was no comfort that because it’s not true that I knew them well enough to say that because how many of those kid who were kicked out could say they knew their family well enough to say that ‘No they would never do that to me?’ It happened anyway; how many loving families are split up by this because who knows who’s secretly in the back of their minds going ‘I can’t handle the thought of having a gay child’. IRIS: That’s a lot, I mean and so you said you came out when you were 17. RICHARD: Yea IRIS: And you had been hiding this for a couple years. RICHARD: Yea, four years at that point. IRIS: and how, I mean, really how deal with that? RICHARD: Grades were shit... IRIS: Really? RICHARD: My graduating high school GPAwas 2.1. IRIS: Wow RICHARD: And to say that I’m now in grad school it’s like you can see what a big of a gap that is. My ACT score without doing a thing; without studying, without caring, without really knowing what was on the test was a 27 that was about an hour before the test began. My reading comprehensions were 31 so I’m in the 90th percentile for at least one metric on that test. But my grades were shit and that wasn’t the only reason. I was kind of contemptuous of the, of the material there were giving us. Where I would, I would get... I would not do any homework then I would ace the exam and be passing the class whereas the person next to me would have done all the homework, had failed the exam and weren’t passing the class. So I didn’t see a need to do a lot of the work to get by was one and it wasn’t challenging, it wasn’t interesting and I didn’t care not to mention I had so much other crap to deal with. So I’m stuck in this prison for 8 hours a day where my worst hated enemies who don’t want to be around me, I don’t want to be around them; but we’re stuck in classes together, we go to the same lunch hour, we’re we use the Page 4 �same locker room for gym. But the way to deal with that is just I got into a, I found a few safe people to be around that didn’t, that weren’t cruel to me and then I just spent as much time around them as I could. IRIS: That was going to be my next question. Do you have any friends from high school, people that you still talk to? RICHARD: Of course, I have three I have three really good friends. Tim, Tony and Justin; Justin is still the best friend to me in the world and we, we talk every week. Tony and Tim both joined the military afterwards and Tony’s got an interesting story. This was one of those things that could have gone really poorly for me. I came out to him by email and I called him up tried to tell him to check his email but he wasn’t there so I had to give his stepdad the message so like ‘Could you ask him to check his email’ he’s like ‘Yea, airight got it’ and he closes the phone. Airight so I’m worried here that would throw a curve but that wasn’t who I was coming out to anyway and I wait til the next day, I barely sleep that night, wait til the next day, call Tony and go ‘Tony did you check your email?’ And his response was ‘Yea, I’ll be right over’. And he’s coming over my house and I got maybe, ten minutes to think about what’s going to happen? What is it? Is he going to come over with a baseball bat? What’s in his hand when he gets to my door? And I open the door and he’s just got the same goofy expression that’s always on there and we chat for a while; we talk and he comments that I seem much happier now that I’ve told people and I was. I was much, much happier that I told people but I didn’t know what he was going to show up at that door with... and so it really freaked me out for a little while and what was really funny was there’s another incident with his stepdad. Where, I’ve been friends with Tony since middle school. It’s already been five years that I’ve known Tony and I’ve known him for fifteen at this point and , I’m going over to his house and we had slept in the same room, the same bed just as a sleepover and having fun, play video games, guitar, that sort of thing. But the first time I did that after coming out to him, Tony told his stepdadand his mom and his stepdad’s kind of, kind of weirded out by it, kind of weirded out that Tony’s sleeping in the same room let alone the same bed as the gay kid and he’s going ‘Should they be in the same room?’. Like but really, really really tapping around it but not really forcing to say it, like should they really. But Tony’s mom pipes in saying ‘What is he going to do Dave?’ (laughter) I don’t know, ‘What is he going to do Dave, it’s Richard, Dave’ (laughter) IRIS: And of course it was the man who would say that and the women who would say ‘Come on’. RICHARD: Well... Yea, there’s some truth to that but it was just... It was an interesting view, into the dynamic of those two... so, it was hilarious. It was one of the funny things that happened to me but when I say I came out at 17, I really want to get this part in. There’s incidents of before that, that happened to me that would have been worse had people had known. Was at a family reunion when I was fifteen, just before I turned sixteen; so about maybe 4, 3 or 4 months before my dad says he wants a divorce. I think, I think so and I’m at a family reunion and a video game that I liked had just come out. I had my own computer and I had this game, Diablo 2, and I had the collector’s edition. I had the game manual and this thing had come out three days prior and I am forced to go to this family reunion. I did not want to go to this family reunion. I wanted to sit home; I don’t know who those people are. I don’t know any of their names, they’re not my family; they’re sort of my parents family, in a strange way. Page 5 �Even they don’t like the very much, but no, we’re going to this family reunion, fine. Alright, I’m bringing this book. I bring the game manual and I’m wearing one of my snarky, black nerd T-shirts because I’m a 15 year old kid who’s questioning his sexual orientation. I don’t know what else to do but to wear a black shirt (laughter) With some silly nerd comment and it might have been the yellow sign with that, says land party animal with people sitting at computers, I don’t remember. But my great Uncle Val sees my sitting over there all alone all by myself, sort of moppy, sort of pissed off; kind of like ‘, I really don’t want to be here’. And he asks to see the book I’m looking at because the front of it has got fiery letters and gold trim and spikes and it looks all demonic because that’s the game, that’s what it is. And he asks to look at it for a while and he flips through it and he sees all the artwork in there and he sees what they’re talking about; demons and hell’s spawn and it’s the worst kind of video game you could show to an apparently Evangelical Christian. He proceeds, to slide that back over to me, goes to my mother and starts offering her an exorcism for me. No joke, tells her about this time that he and his other churchier friends or whatever held down this kid who dressed in all black and gothicy from the high school and sprayed holy water at them. That’s the kind of people that are on my mom’s side of the family and we left immediately. Much,much praise to my mother for just making that decision to just getting us the hell out of there at that point. But it was, I think back on that; the thing was kind of funny at the time, it was absurd but if people had, if it had been known that I was homosexual at thatevent, that could have gone much much much worse. That could have been much worse for me and I think would my parents would my parents have made the same decision that they did without having regards to his offer. Yea, they probably would have. She changed contacts, she changed information and who knows. And so I’m kind of frightened now thinking back on that day.. I could have, that did not always go my way. Not in the different scenarios I could run, it’s true that that could have been bad. But my parents were worried about me but they weren’t that worried about me. IRIS: I know you said you had a brother, a mom and a dad.. RICHARD: And a sister. IRIS: And a sister. So what kind of conversations did you have with them? RICHARD: I didn’t. I didn’t. I told my family after the divorce, my mom was a bit of a gossip so I tell her and she tells everybody. And then I proceed to not talk to anybody else about it for years. Because everyone just goes ‘Oh’ and them no one talks about it. It was, it was the one of the most dis-heartening parIs of things that happened. She tells everyone and then nobody ever bothers to ask me about it. I didn’t want to get to tell the story about what had been going on with me to any of my family. Not my brother didn’t ask, my sister didn’t ask... they still haven’t asked. My dad, she told my dad during the divorce proceedings, before the divorce was finalized my mother told my dad this thing that I had told her and what I really don’t know is I don’t know if she told him out of malice; I don’t know if she told him to make him feel guilty. But then he never came to me for four years I didn’t talk to him about it, we didn’t mention it. I knew he knew, he knew I knew he knew. IRIS: But not a word was spoken? RICHARD: Not a word was spoken... not any contacts. Page 6 �IRIS: That’s not healthy. RICHARD: It wasn’t and it really depressed me a little bit more but I was out, I had friends and people knew and I didn’t have to hide it from anybody else anymore. I didn’t have to worry about me giving back to them; so if they didn’t want to talk to me about it 1 kind of had this ‘Screw them ‘approach about to it. If they don’t want to, if they’re interested enough to come and talk to me about it then fine. And they since have said ‘Well we just don’t know what to say’. Anything, say anything; ask me a question. Ask me something that you’re comfortable knowing; I will answer it truthfully. You can ask me anything; I’m supposed to be your son, your brother whatever but nope, I didn’t get much of anything out of them. And we’ve sort of made peace out of that it’s just so far in the past now, it was... God, I’ve been out of the closet for, this will be ten years this July. IRIS: So, when did you feel comfortable enough to start relationships openly, open relationships with men? RICHARD: Well, there’s the other kicker because it’s hard enough meeting people when you’re gay, we’re dealing with as much smaller portion of the population. Grand Valley here is a much higher percentage of the population here is women than it is men at Grand Valley alone. IRIS: It is, it really is. RICHARD: It’s like 60: 40 or something like that. Reality I should have gone to Tech which is like 30% women 70% men but anyways, I was bit of a reclusive nerd in every other sense so not only was I gay in a small population, I was the reclusive nerd. My masculine.., what do I want to say? Not mentors but peers were intellectual, largely unsexualized, competitive, compassionate men. Other, other nerd, other people; it was all about seeing who’s smarter than the other ones. It was all about seeing who could figure out this puzzle or who can beat this person at this game, this very, very intellectual game. IRIS: So all your friends were nerds? (laughter) RICHARD: Yea, all my friends were nerds. I was a nerd, my friends were nerds and we already... there’s this thing where because when you grow up and you’re a teenager you supposed to learn to sort have relationships; we had little stupid relationships. When you’re gay, you don’t get those. We don’t learn how to date in high school; we don’t learn how to approach people in high school; we don’t know how to say those things in high school because we’re not given the opportunity to because if we do, there’s a good chance that we’re going to get assaulted from it. There’s a good chance we’re going to hit on the wrong person and it’s not going to go well for us. So we don’t and on top of that I already don’t know how to talk to people because I’m a nerd; since gotten over it but I was... talk about socially awkward people... look at a table of kids who are only brought together because they’re outcasts or because they’re all a little bit smarter than the curve. That’s the group of people I came up in so I really didn’t have any... in high school, community college, undergrad. I really didn’t start having relationships until I got of undergrad and I got my, I moved to California. My aunt and uncle were the ones who lived in California. I did my undergrad here at Grand Valley in Anthropology and part of that was I got to do an archaeological field school which qualified me to be an archaeologist and I was. I joined the forest service for a service as an intern, and I was an archaeological field technician intern. I got paid to hike Page 7 �around the Sierra Mountains for a summer and it was one of the best times of my life. But after that, I had family that lived just north of San Francisco and they let me stay with them until I found a job and I got to live in San Francisco. lt wasn’t the great... it was sort of this really ignorant thing I did because I think, ‘Aha’ I just came to the gay city; I just came to the place that is the place for it. But I get there and I find out it’s not younger people, it’s the gay men’s population there is in their 40s now so it’s much older than I am. I was 23 at the time but whatever I had fun there. I was there for seven months; I lost my job and the city’s so expensive. I was paying twice the Michigan mortgage for an apartment making less than $30,000 a year so it was not going to no... And I moved back... I moved in with my mom she was in North Carolina at the time. So I go from San Francisco to Winston Salem, North Carolina *Iaughter* IRIS: Yea, that’s a big jump. RICHARD: Right it’s just, it’s not the... it wasn’t a very good, wasn’t a very good move for me but I eventually made it back here got into grad school. IRIS: I’m just checking on the time. RICHARD: No it’s fine. IRIS: So when you came back here, when you came back, I’m just interested in like what kind of relationships have you had? RICHARD: Not many, none that I would call serious boyfriends, just a couple flings here and there; nothing that’s... kind of once, nothing serious now but that’s always been... there was no point in my life where I knew where I could see far enough ahead where I could see something. Since the divorce.., since my parents’ divorce, about 11, 12 years ago now, I have moved on average two or three times a year. Either in the same city because the apartment we couldn’t keep it or something happened or we needed a cheaper place or whatever, it just happened that I lived in 16, 17 different places since the divorce 12 years ago and right now. In some of those years I moved 4 times; a couple of those years I didn’t move for the whole year but a bunch of those years I moved a lot and.. IRIS: *fly interrupts interview* Oh that fly is going to bug me. RICHARD: Yea, it’s getting to me too. But I never thought that any of that was conducive enough to actually finding something that was longer term or serious because why? I don’t know what my life’s going to be; I don’t know where I’m going. I went from Grand Rapids, Michigan to the Sierra Nevada Mountains to San Francisco for seven months to Winston Salem, North Caroilna to Charlotte, North Carolina to Detroit for a little bit, back to Grand Rapids. I lived in Holland for a month, found a job at a milk factory. Moved to Standale to my friend’s parent’s house; paid them rent for a bed. Lost that job, got back into Grand Valley to finish off a minor; ran out of money and got a job selling natural gas door to door. This, so right up until a couple years ago, just before I started grad school, I did not know about this program that I am in until two months before I was in it. Two months before grad school started in that fall, I found out about the Massive Public Administrative program and I did a bunch of research into what Public Administration was and I go ‘This is cool; I want to do this. I want to study this stuff; this Page 8 �sounds great’. And my job in San Francisco had been with a non-profit, I had just worked for government. And then I go and talk to them about it and I’m saying m graduating GPA from here was 3.2 and I tell them that I had this experience in government work and the non-profit sector and I would like to pursue that and they go ‘Oh you’re a shoe-in. Just get us your letters of recommendation and we can get you in for the fall. And I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried but it seemed as if, that it wasn’t going to work. It seemed as if I had missed my opportunity that something wasn’t going to come in on time and in the, the Wednesday before classes started I got my acceptance letter. I got my admittance letter that I’m in grad school now. And I’m like ‘Holy crap. What can I do?’ and the next day and I’m in the graduate student office and I’m going ‘Can I do this?’ and their like ‘Yes, go talk to Financial Aid.’ So I go talk to financial aid; I sign-up for financial aid on Thursday. I sign-up for classes on Friday; I borrow money from a friend on Monday to buy a book and I’m in class that night *Iaughter* And that’s was my entry into grad school and it’s been indicative of my entire time since high school. I have never known where I was going to be; it has been so tumultuous that I have never felt ready to be in anything. I’ve never known anyone. When you move that much; when you move from different towns, from different places, you never get a chance to be a part of a community. IRIS: So are you from Grand Rapids? RICHARD: No IRIS: Where are you from? RICHARD: I’m from Clarkston, Michigan. If you know where the DTE Energy Music Theater is? CHRISTA: No IRIS: No, I’m from Ohio. *Iaughter* RICHARD: Oh, it’s a Detroit suburb in northern Oakland County. IRIS: Okay and that’s where you went to elementary and high school? RICHARD: That’s where I went to elementary, high school, middle school, the whole thing. My entire, my mom’s from that town. My entire families from that town, except my dad; my dad’s from Ypsi... Ypsilanti which is closer to Detroit but more about Ann Arbor area. I didn’t even know about Grand Valley until several months before I came here the first time. It’s been by the seed of my pants, doing this whole higher education thing and... IRIS: Yea, I completely understand that’s kind of how I am too. This is the third university that I’ve gone to; I’m always moving about, trying to find the next best thing. But that’s really interesting.., but where do you see yourself? What do you plan ondoing? Do you want to live in Michigan? Do you want to live in Grand Rapids? RICHARD: Yea, out of anything else, out all the places I’ve been, California’s beautiful but there’s something about Michigan that I just find so endearing. I love, I love this state. I love all the trivia, I know Page 9 �about it. I know so many little things about this place that are just so strange. I go elsewhere like if I went to Ohio I don’t know if we’d find the same sort of strangeness about the state. Like for instance, this has nothing to do with the interview but it’s funny. There’s this town in Michigan called Novi; Novi is the number six stop out of Lansing from Lansing to Detroit. So Novi, N-O-V-I is the number six stop. IRIS: Oh so you just randomly know that? RICHARD: The name of the town, the name of the town in Novi it was the number six stop. They sort of built a town around a train station and caHed it Novi. (laughter) IRIS: What does Novi mean? RICHARD: Let me write it out for you. This is why it’s hilarious. Number six.. Iris & CHRISTA: Ohhhhhhhh. I get it. Really, that’s why they named it that? RICHARD: It’s called Novi. Michigan is full of liftle shit like that and it’s just, (just find it so amusing that that stuff exists. That’s why, that’s why that’s the number six stop. IRIS: How do you feel, I mean I know you said you’ve been to a lot of different places but as far as like culture goes, I think people are different everywhere.. RICHARD: Well yea, there’s... for the lower belt line of Michigan, there’s largely three groups that you can vaguely discern. There’s people who live around Detroit, auto industry. Every single one of my uncles, my dad, my dad’s family, all of them – auto industry. I have connections to GM, Chrysler, Ford. I have people who work in the UAW just as part of that organization. Every single family out There is completely, inextricably linked to that industry. You get to the middle of the state, it’s state workers. You ger around Lansing, the people that work for the state. There’s this middle bit around Lansing, Ann Arbor that’s much, much different than the Detroit suburbs in the Detroit area. And then Western Michigan that’s this whole other culture in its own. I mean these middle two are similar but within Michigan itself just the lower ha’f of the lower peninsula is three completely distinct culture groups and more if you want to start dividing by ethnic lines and insular cultures and specific countries of origin. Michigan itself is so incredibly varied within it, even if it is mostly white people. IRIS: Especially west Michigan. RICHARD: Yea, especially west Michigan. But yea, I think I interrupted the question that Michigan, that other places are so different. IRIS: Oh yea, so I mean do you, do you feel like there’s more out there? I mean I feel like especially west Michigan, just coming into Grand Rapids I feel like I’m coming from a big bubble a smaller bubble. I mean I’m just, my question, I feel like you have all these ideas and your very inspirational. RICHARD: There’s a couple interesting things about Grand Rapids itself. Grand Rapids is the second largest city for philanthropy per capita in the country. Some west coast city, whichever Bill Gates lives in. Page 10 �IRIS: Seattle? RICHARD: Yea, so I think Seattle counts as the highest place for philanthropy per, as a percentage of the city’s GDP is there and then Grand Rapids is second in line. So if I’m doing non-profit work, Grand Rapids is one of the best places to be but there’s also a lot of competition. I mean, largely my plan is to take a job wherever I can get it. If I have to move to get work, I will. I have no compunctions about leaving the state; I’ve left it before. I’d love to stay, love to stay but if someone hands you an offer ‘Here’s $45,000 a year’, I’m going to leave. IRIS: So your main concern is work then and not so much finding those new people, different people building different relationships? RICHARD: I have preferences; I’d love to live on the coast again; east coast, west coast. On the water, as close to the ocean as I can. And this largely is the same here I mean I live reaHy close to the lake. If you haven’t had a chance to go out to Lake Michigan, wait til the summer. IRIS: I can’t wait; I’ve never been. RICHARD: it’s amazing. Absolutely fantastic beach; really smooth sand, clear water and you get in and it’s not salty. Its fresh water and you’re like ‘Holy crap, this lake is gigantic’. IRIS: It’s cold though. RICHARD: It won’t be warm enough til about late July. 1aughter* Til then, it’s still going to be about 40 degrees that water, it’s crazy. But I loved living in San Francisco; I love being that close to the ocean. I worked in an office where I overlooked the bay from my window that was five feet from me and I looked out one day and there was a pirate ship. Someone had a mock pirate ship; it had a mast, sail, mooring lines and all that. IRIS: See that’s my thought that people who are weird, are different you like to push theboundaries, they can do that. On the west coast like no one would think anything of it whereas here, it’s ilke someone. I say, one of my friends came to class, he’s going through his transition this summer. He came to class in a kilt, a skirt and everyone was like ‘Oh my God’ what I mean like I just knew. I mean, I just, I don’t know. How do you feel? RICHARD: Grand Rapids is getting better. I mean look at how small this city is and you realize there’s four gay bars downtown. Four. So this place is small it’s insular but there’s a community here and Grand Rapids was, in 1994 one of the first cities to enact any ordinance barring people from being evicted from their housing for being gay. That was 1994 that Grand Rapids did that. The current mayor, he was on the board; he signed that. He put that forward through the city; he was on the city board, city council then so he did that and that, so he’s still there I don’t care that he’s Republican at all but he signed that; he got that through in 1994 and he’s still an ally now. And so what we can ma e some broad strokes about it but I really.., you’ve got to dig into the city to know that for certain. And not to mention, Grand Rapids is fantastic for food. It’s a foodies paradise here if where to look. Page 11 �IRIS: Peppinos? RICHARD: Oh no no no, you haven’t even scratched the surface. IRIS: I think I found my new favorite pizza when I had Peppinos it was so good. RICHARD: Yea and it is extremely good but you haven’t scratched the surface of Grand Rapids food; it’s amazing. There is a woman named Olga, she opened, she’s Haitian and she opened a Haitan-Creole restaurant in Easttown called Shea Olga. And it’s this absolutely amazing food! It’s absolutely amazing. You can get black rice mushroom gumbo there. You can get, you can get lamb in fried plantains. You get Haitian coffee and ginger tea and it is the best food I have ever had. It’s in Easttown. IRIS: My mom’s Dominican so that’s my favorite too. RICHARD: Go to Shea Olga, you will not be disappointed; absolutely, amazing and the little things like that are everywhere. There’s two Papoosarie’s in town. There’s a Papoosarie from Honduras and there’s one, I think they’re from somewhere South American but there’s just a fantastic variety of food from all over the world is in the middle if Grand Rapids and people wouldn’t know it when you look at Grand Rapids but if you start branching out a little bit from downtown, you start looking around, it’s there. And it’s getting better, it’s getting so much better in Grand Rapids and as long as the metropolitan city, there’s very little you can discern between them. I mean yes cities have their cultures and cities have their own places but if cities get big enough, there’s going to be two things happening. The gays are going to show up and there’s going to be better food. *Iaughter*Thats really the only two things I require. (laughter) Which is another reason why San Francisco was awesome because there was more bars and restaurants per person in San Francisco than anywhere else in the planet. It’s a tiny city that seven miles by seven miles wide with only 700,000 people in it but the bars and restaurants per person is more than New York, is more than Beijing, is more than any other city anywhere. IRIS: Have you ever been to Washington, D.C? RICHARD: I have, it was a middle school trip I was about eleven years old. I went to Washington, D.C. IRIS: Really? I went there recently. I think you’d really enjoy it. RICHARD: I think I would too. There’s sort of this political environment that I’d be really happy about. I even told a few professors that I should get into politics eventually but I’m a gay atheist in West Michigan. There’s no chance for me to be elected locally here; I’d have to move. IRIS: Yea, you might have to move. RICHARD: I might have to move. IRIS: Wow, that’s funny. Alright well let’s see what else we want to talk about. RICHARD: We’ve gone over where I’ve been; we’ve gone over where I’m from. I gave enough, I gave all the pieces to my little progress. Not necessarily in order but close enough. Page 12 �IRIS: Yea not in order but that’s okay. airight, well, I think, let’s talk now about kind of what you’re doing at the moment. I know we met you at the Transpectrum Transforum. So you’re a member of what exactly. I know transgender that you were saying is an umbrella is an umbrella term but how do... RICHARD: Yes, I’m not at all a member of their community but I am, I try to be a strong ally. I try not to draw too much attention to it. Because 1 don’t want, I’m really conscious of not trying to make, trying to be an ally without making their pain about me. Like I’m just going to be there and I’m going to support as much as I can because if you talk about pain people go through. Theirs is so much worse. So much worse and just to measurably statistics are so much worse. The things you can see; the rate of suicide, the rate of homelessness; the rate of poverty all the soulful metrics are far worse if you are transgender in this country versus just being a member of the LGB community. And somewhere in the sexuality spectrum if you start breaking through the gender spectrum, things get worse pretty quickly for you. IRIS: Where so you see the LGBT community going? I mean I personally through even coming to Grand Valley and taking something these classes on diversity and women and gender studies, I feel like these future generations are getting more and more educated. No one thinks.., no one would openly say ‘Yes, I’m racists’ in myopinion as we’re progressing throughout time. So I feel like there’s only a matter of time before everyone is equal, no one can be excluded and no one can have their rights taken away from them because that’s wrong. 1/ RICHARD: We’d hope so; we’d hope so but our history tells us something different. We must always remain vigilant about the victories we have gained because if you look at the area that is now Germany, in the I 880s and 90s, the Jewish people were getting voting rights, property rights, and protections from the government. They’re starting to make all the gains that gay people are making right now. Civil rights protections, ilberties; they advert, they participate more openly in fully in government and then 50 years later, look what happens. Not even 50 years later shorter than that. Within a generations lifetime, things completely go to hell for them and we’re There living there in that part of the world. Yea, we can say that it’s wrong for them to take these things away from us but by no means that relieve us of the responsibility of making sure that the victors we gained aren’t lost further down the line. It only takes the right set of circumstances or people to start fear mongering and grab the other again and to put all the blame for all societies’ ills all on a group of people. Number one, we can stop them then we all would be better off and so, I disagree on that point but I... IRIS: I just feel like that once all these old people kind of die off. (laughter) all the stubborn old people will give up. RICHARD: It’s not.., we sort of want to put the blame on an older generation that’s that didn’t know any better. But I’ve met enough of that generation who do sort of know better that it’s just a cultural thing. It’s just a piece, it’s just an idea that’s been spread generationally and yes young people are disproportionally to be more supportive. But it’s disproportional, it’s not all of it. It’s not everybody. So those gains that we’ve made with the older generation, we made with them and you keep making with their grandchildren, we should. But, I totally understand. My grandma blamed the internet; she said I was gay because I was up on that computer and he saw those guys and he’s like that and he said I want to be like that, that’s what he did. I see that but where I see it going is, I’d like to see it go this direction. Page 13 �Right now we’re sort of tacking letters onto the LGBQTIAIAA bit and it’s creating this long alphabet soup list because everybody with a different starting letter or even the same starting letter on the sexuality spectrum feels the need to put it in there for our presentation. Just for sake of simplicity, I’d like people to start saying gender sexual minorities; GSM. GSM, GSM, GSM, GSM,GSM. Alright, covers everybody alright every area that we’ve discovered that’s part of the human sexuality spectrum, fine. It’s in there. IRIS: I’m sorry, you said gender... RICHARD: Sexual minorities. IRIS: Minorities. RICHARD: Gender and sexual minorities. So it’s just anybody who’s off the norm in these two axis of human experience. We can talk about in this way but really what where it needs to be is it needs to be something that doesn’t have to be talked about. It needs to be something that doesn’t have to be mentioned. That, where people don’t assume that you’re straight until you say otherwise. IRIS: I completely agree. I think it’s so sinful. It’s sinful to judge other people just because they’re different from you. You know what I mean? Their life and what they do had absolutely no effect on you so why are you blaming them? Why are you showing so much hatred? And it’s just I don’t understand why people care so much. It’s really disheartening; it’s really beyond me. RICHARD: It’s sexist but in the end it’s about male privilege more than anything else. They see a gay man as being less than, less man than, other than, other men. RICHARD: What you do when someone is showing less masculinity is that you provoke them into being masculine again, it’s that bullying thing. Women who are homosexual, its almost seen as where lesbians are sorta more accepted in a weird way, sort of, by the straight male people most because oh that sexy. They like looking at it but they’re completely unwilling to make that sort of the same thing as gay; but they see women trying to be more like men because they’re dating women, but they see men trying to be more like women because they’re dating men and that’s bad. Women are rising on that masculinity spectrum and gay men are lowering on the spectrum and so they see this level and that sets that’s where the whole hornophobia comes from especially, for transgendered people, especially against male to female transsexuals where they’re literally changing themselves. IRIS: So you think that homophobia comes from this emasculated point of view that our country has? RICHARD: Everything, every trait that you could supply to masculinity is something that could not be applied to a feminine perspective as well unless it’s just not feminine. There are no positive traits to masculinity it4s always things that are just not feminine; you’re strong not weak, don’t be weak, don’t show weakness. It’s not be strong as much as don’t be weak. There’s no, there’s nothing that’s that we can point to and say ah hah that’s a strong masculine idea that we should be to be men, no it’s all just about not being feminine. And so when we do say as the sexual minorities that’s not our experience, it’s certainly not the normal masculine, it must be feminine. It’s really its strange and it’s stupid. If we can Page 14 �just get over that and break through that sexist boundary with more people, I think that things would be a lot better. IRIS: So 1 was reading an article, it was called the erotic and it was in in my Women and Gender Studies class, it was talking about how we are so trained to suppress our erotic, meaning ourselves, our true colors, loving affection that everyone and anyone can show, fear, just love in all of its forms and how especially men are trained to just say no. Do you feel like you are more freed because you’re not held to that standard of masculinity and how do you think we should go about future generations so men don’t have to suppress so much? Boys already know that they’re not supposed to cry and little boys already know to not be a sissy. RICHARD: 1 don’t know that sounds flowery to me and so I don’t know how much I can say about it without reading what she said but it sounds like an appeal to emotion at that point, and oh yeah this natural state of everyone being happy and lovey dovey towards each other, mmmm, I don’t buy it. As an anthropologist 1 don’t buy it, as someone who studies human cultures I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it because that’s going to bring the heart break that going to bring powerful emotions in the other direction as well. As much as we say just love each other, love each other, there’s only so much you can do. Some people you don’t necessarily like you, don’t have to like you, and you should be free to express whatever emotions you have. Whatever its sexual orientation you have with other consenting adults great, but to say that there’s something blocking people from experiencing them that themselves, I don’t really know how true that is and it would be very hard to say how true that is so it sounds good so I think she gets away with saying things like that. But what I would just like to see is, I would just like to see, whatever’ you’re sexuality is, to not be so demonized and put down by others.f we can just allow people to grow in their teenage years to just sort of not care that would be great. IRIS: How do we do that though? RICHARD: I have no idea, but just people coming out and saying I’m not straight, do that enough times and suddenly everybody in this country would know that they know somebody. I don’t care how small your family is, I don’t care how small your circle of friends is, somebody you know is somewhere, somehow off straight on the sexuality spectrum, and that personal connection is what bridges the boundary and because we can show up anywhere, at any time, with any family, at any moment, the child that you have, that child might be gay any child that’s born might be gay. It doesn’t matter there’s no positive correlation in any ethnic group, there’s no change in any country of origin, there’s no change anywhere; we are the hidden minority, we are the surprise minority, we show up ha ha and guess what. It can’t be seen, it can’t be tested for, at least not yet, but when we get there, when we get to where people can just be more and more comfortable as we break through that line of just being more and more comfortable with saying yes, and staring down those who say that we should be quiet, say that we shouldn’t do that, that’s where we make victories; and how ever it turns out, if it ends up being that everyone loves each other and the be happy thing that sounds like what she’s, talking about, great that’s fine, but I don’t think it needs to be talked about in that way. We just gotta be careful about those appeal to emotion bits because there’s sort of this line in the LGBT community because the gay rights movement started in the 60’s and 70’s free love era, I think there’s some hold overs about what this Page 15 �means, and I don’t think there all right I think there’s some things that are in fact not true about that sort of everybody love each other, everyone be happy free love, everyone’s sort of bisexual; like, no It’s not, never. IRIS: So you’re a realist? RICHARD: I care about data and what’s happening and I want to know what’s real. Everything else I could care less, I’m atheist; can’t show me evidence, I don’t want to hear about it. IRIS: Do u have any other questions? CHRISTA: I think we got mostly everything IRIS: Actually one question, do you think that if you would have come out at an earlierage, I know you said things definitely would have been different, but do you think everything would have been worse or, because I mean you were really, really depressed hiding this feeling like I don’t know, I don’t have anyone to talk to, what do you think realistically would have been better or worse? RICHARD: On the one hand I would hope it would be better, but in the end I’m not exactly unhappy with how it turned out. Those 4 years where I was depressed were spent being even more introverted than ever before. I was doing nothing but reflecting and thinking about myself, who am I, what is this, what does this mean, what’s going on, what am I going to do with my life? All that I’m not going to have go down the regular path, I’m not going to get married and have kids, that sort of wedding where there’s a woman across from me at the chapel, that’s not happening and all those little things about your future are different when you realize you’re homosexual, and I spent those 4 years thinking about it, I spent hose 4 years just being an amateur philosopher about my life and so it was no surprise to me when I got to community college, took a philosophy class and feel in love with what it was talking about because here’s how we know things, here’s how we think correctly, here’s how we can identify poor thinking, and getting things wrong, here’s how we can be sure that when we say we know something we really mean it and the tools that that gave me for further reflection, for further thinking and further work on it was really, really good. I really am happy that I have a philosophy undergrad as much as people say that is a worthless degree, absolutely not. I know so much about myself and my opinions are more formed now because I was a philosophy major because I know what bad thinking and what bad rhetoric looks like. IRIS: So it’s very pertinent to your life. RICHARD: Absolutely, everyone should take one philosophy course, it should be required freshman year of college, take a philosophy course. IRIS: I took a philosophy course and it ended up being a feminist ethics class. RICHARD: You wanna start with Socrates, everyone should have to read all the dialogues all through the Republic to become a citizen, it should be a required reading to become a participant in democracy. Page 16 �Uris: Then maybe just to wrap up, how do you, how confident are you in yourself right now, I mean honestly I don’t want to sound like stereotypical, but no one really knows you’re gay. It’s not like you said, I couldn’t pick you out of crowd, but do you think that people interact with you differently, look at you differently know if they do know you’re gay and how are you comfortable with that? RICHARD: I have always had to tell everybody, everyone was surprised, they shouldn’t have been if they had seen that photo album, they should not have been surprised, but I was I did a similar one of these things because I’m an ambassador for the resource center, and I went and I spoke in front of Greek life I spoke in front of some fraternity students and one of them had the balls to ask me, why is you’re voice so deep, because he was wondering cause all the gay guys he had seen were Jack’bn Will and Grace and everyone talks in a little higher voice and being flamey about it and no my voice is very comfortable on the baritone register because my vocal chords are just that long, but it’sone of those questions that people don’t pick up on, people don’t think about. I am presumed straight even though I am really gay, I mean it, I know what I’m talking about, I know what I like, I know who I want to date. I’ve always had to tell everybody it’s never been, people don’t look at me and say oh that’s a homosexual man, people look at me and think oh that persons gone through the whole sexuality issue in high school. IRIS: So you prefer to tell people? RICHARD: I have to! It’s not even, not even prefer, I really wish people would pick up on it. I’ve thought before, why don’t I dress a little bit more gay, why don’t I just put out more signals that I am. So I have a couple of pride shirts and I do what I can but it’s in the end 1 just whatever they’re all wrong but if that means I don’t get approached by some guys that would be interested would they know? I don’t really know if that’s ever happened, I don’t if that’s going to happen, there’s nothing I can do about it and so right now I’m still I’m about to graduate, I have one more summer class to take, but after that I really don’t know where I’m going to go, I don’t know where I’m going to live, I don’t know what city I’m going to be in, I don’t know what kind of job I’m going to be able to get. I can hope for all these really good things to happen to me because I’m getting a professional degree from Grand Valley and if you haven’t heard, Grand Valley master programs are phenomenal they’re all practical, professional programs; none of them are academic, they’re MBAs MPAs the only PhD is in physical therapy. Everything Grand Valley does at the graduate level is practical, pragmatic, and with careers in mind and its known for this so my degree is going to incredibly valuable when I leave his university, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to find work immediately. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to find work that will provide me a moving stipend to help me get to where the job is. If I have to leave the state I require one so I can’t know, again I don’t, I’m still not in a place where I feel comfortable getting in a relationship or approaching people about it because I just don’t know where my life’s going, I just don’t know where I’m going to be and I don’t feel comfortable doing anything until I know that, until I have my own, I’m more independent than I am now which is still living off of student loans. I’ve been doing this for ten years I’ve been in college. I did it right out of high school, I did five years and I got my undergrad degree, an associates and bachelors, two years off, two years master’s degree, there’s 9 years out of high school. But that’s all I’ve been doing and at no point in there and at no point right now do I Feel comfortable saying yeah I know where my life is going. I have no idea, there’s no way to tell. It’s hard now a days and we all walk out of here with 5, 6 figures worth of debt’ I’ve got 6 figures worth of debt because I went to Page 17 �grad school, grad school is expensive! It costs me $30,000 a year to do this just in student loans that’s what I take out’ oh yeah tuition is 15 yeah but it cost me 15 just to live, just to get by, rent, cell phone, car, insurance. It cost me 15 thousand a year just to survive right now, so any job that offers me more than 15 thousand dollars is fine that is more than what I’ve got right now. IRIS: I think it’s really inspiring that people who, I feel like people might look at me difterently because I’m Hispanic, people in high school especially they thought I was black, ignorance, but I just, it’s really inspiring for me that people who, obviously you have to deal with this every single day, this homophobia, it’s really inspiring that hey, it is what it is, I’m so proud of myself, and I’m so content with everything. RICHARD: Thank you. IRIS: Thank you! CHRISTA: Thank you for talking with us. RICHARD: Absolutely, this is sort of therapeutic. When I started doing it, I wasn’t always as comfortable with it but as I do this more and more I start telling people and I see the reactions and it gets easier and easier every time I tell people, so I’m more than happy to talk about it. IRIS: I’m glad that you enjoy it because honestly I love hearing stories like this. One thing that I wrote on the Transpectrum survey was that I would love to hear more personal stories and I know that is not always easy, but how inspiring is that, you know what I mean, and educational. I would have liked to hear a lot more about the transitions that some of them went through or what they were dealing with. RICHARD: The LGBT student group is having elections tonight so I’ll put that forward that people like hearing that and maybe we can work with something. IRIS: I mean maybe it’s just me but I feel like hearing someone’s story like that, it really opens your mind, like wow I really have it good, I don’t know what’s going on around me, need to open my mind. It’s amazing. RICHARD: Yeah recognize privilege and deal with it. Not everyone’s life is like that. I’ve got a lot of privilege in a lot of ways, but you just try to recognize it. IRIS: And not enough people do it and that honestly I think that would be the solution for homophobia, for racism, for sexism is for people to open to their minds and realize that gay people aren’t going anywhere, it’s real so what are you going to do about it, it’s crazy. RICHARD: I hope you stick around for Grand Valley cause next year were trying to bring in somebody who’s been through reparative therapy to speak. Reparative therapy is when people try to change someone from being gay to not through various means, the Mormon church did this a lot with electroshock therapy in the 70’s and 80’s. IRIS: Wow. Page 18 �RICHARD: Yeah there’s a lot of it out there so were looking for someone who’s been through one of the ex-gay groups or has been through that sort of thing and is willing to tell their story, so were putting out feelers for people but hopefully we’ll find someone whose willing to speak out against those organizations like Exous international and a few others that are still functioning to this day. IRIS: Try to straighten out gay people? RICHARD: Right now there are places where a parent can send their child to pray the gay away. IRIS: I’ve heard that before. RICHARD: Yeah and it’s legal, it’s not child abuse, it should be, but it’s not. IRIS: Yup, wow that’s amazing. RICHARD: So were trying to bring that next year so stick around stay at this university and keep going to things. We have pride prom in a couple of weeks it’s going to be fun. IRIS: Like a dance kind of thing? RICHARD: Yeah because we don’t, gay people don’t get prom in high school. We don’t, we can’t bring a date to those things, are you kidding me, that’s asking for trouble. IRIS: You can’t wear what you want to either. RICHARD: Nope, so we put one on once a year and this one’s going to be good. IRIS: Well if aN goes well I’ll be out of here by next December, graduated but knock on wood. RICHARD: Well good luck. IRIS: Thank you, thank you so much for coining I really appreciate it. RICHARD: No problem. END OF INTERVIEW Page 19 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/29fa15a8c94c7f84601475edb7d2e25d.mp3 9264ca98f31c792e92d44d4f15ff45f9 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 Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral Histories Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights--Michigan--History Personal narratives Oral histories African Americans--Personal narratives Gays--Personal narratives Lesbians--Personal narratives Bisexual people--Personal narratives Transgender people--Personal narratives Veterans--Personal narratives Women--Personal narratives People with disabilities--Personal narratives Muslims--United States--Personal narratives Hispanic Americans--Personal narratives Homophobia Discrimination Islamophobia Stereotypes (Social psychology)--Upper Penninsula (Mich.) Description An account of the resource Collection of oral history recordings documenting the history of civil rights and social justice advocacy in Western Michigan. The collection was created by faculty and students as a project of the LIB 201 (formerly US 201): "Diversity in the U.S." course from 2011-2012. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. Brooks College of Interdisciplinary Studies Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral History Project (GV248-01) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-05-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV248-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1930-2011 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 GV248-01_Robinson_Richard_2 Title A name given to the resource Richard Robinson audio interview and transcript, interview 2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robinson, Richard Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Iris Christa Description An account of the resource Richard Robinson grew up in Clarkston, MI. He attended Oakland Community College from 2003-2005 and GVSU as an undergrad from 2005-2008. His undergrad was in Philosophy and anthropology. He is now a grad student studying public administration. In this interview, Robinson discusses his experiences with discrimination as a gay male. Subject The topic of the resource Civil rights--Michigan--History Gays--Personal narratives Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 application/pdf Relation A related resource Speaking Out: Western Michigan Civil Rights Oral History Project Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-04-05 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b26f3a78fa49c6b845b02fa3304b80db.jpg 2dff4e6807d2a04a856a02593f5bfdcb 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 Robert H. Merrill photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Merrill, Robert H., 1881-1955 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1909/1950 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Robert H. Merrill papers (RHC-222) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-222 Description An account of the resource Photographs, negatives, and lantern slides digitized from the papers of engineer and archaeologist Robert H. Merrill. A Grand Rapids native, Merrill held an accomplished career as a civil engineer. He founded the company Spooner & Merrill, which held offices in Grand Rapids and Chicago. From 1919-1921, Merrill lived in China, working as Assistant Principal Engineer on a reconstruction of the Grand Canal - the oldest and longest canal system in the world. Merrill became fascinated by archaeology, and among other projects, he traveled to the Uxmal Pyramids in Yucatan, Mexico, with a research expedition from Tulane University. Merrill's photo collection includes images of his travels and projects, friends and family. Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 Merrill_EastmanAlbum_1_1909_050 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1909-07-10 Title A name given to the resource Richards Landing Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of street at Richards Landing, Ontario. Subject The topic of the resource Ontario Richards Landing (Ont.) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Robert H. Merrill papers (RHC-222) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Merrill, Robert H., 1881-1955 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/19ffe7306d4e9b7a528630ca52dcbce8.mp4 4120dec0370db5bdbe4a399cfcb5342d https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6f23892d48154271861aed917ff9d6ca.pdf 90250aa7d4d907020ba8f696bec75de9 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Ray Richardson (1:40:43) Background Information (00:59)                  Born November 13th 1920 in Winterfield Township, Michigan. (1:00) Served in the U.S. Navy Reserve and served as a lieutenant junior grade(2:00) He attended grade School in Hazel Park, Michigan. (2:46) His family moved to Marion, Michigan where he attended school through the 7th grade. (3:17) He attended Marion High School. (3:56) He was the president of his class all 4 years of high school. (4:10) He graduated in 1938. (4:20) His father worked for General Motors, and then became a farmer during the Depression. (4:50) He attended College after high school at Central Michigan College in Mount Pleasant. He graduated in 1942. (5:20) He has 1 brother and 3 sisters. (6:03) The home he lived in at the time of this interview (August 2011) Ray built himself. (7:22) He took music lessons on the banjo as a child. He and his brother would play in square dances for entertainment. (8:00) All through high school and college he and his brother played in a dance band to help make money. (8:53) He worked in a bomber plant for 1 summer in Ypsilanti, Michigan. (9:29) As his draft number approached, Ray enlisted in the Navy before he was drafted in November of 1942. (9:50) He joined the U.S. Naval Reserves. (11:10) He was then sent to New Philadelphia, Ohio, to take flight training. (11:26) Basic Training (11:30)            The program was 6-8 weeks. Upon completing the course he was rewarded his flight license. (11:56) After receiving his license he returned home until January 1943. he was then called into active duty and told to take pre-flight training. (13:26) Pre flight training was given at the University of Iowa. Here there was only physical training and school work. This was approx 6 weeks. (13:55) He was a cadet all though training. (14:25) He does not recall to many men from his military career. (16:15) He was then sent to Pensacola Naval Station. Here he had primary training. (16:50) After completing primary training he was assigned to Bronson, Iowa. (17:10) A man could not be married and be in the cadet program. (18:05) He completed his training in January of 1944. (19:00) At Bronson he learned how to fly much larger aircraft and use other forms of navigation. (21:15) He also had many classes on how to identify German and Japanese aircraft. (21:57) �   Aboard the PBY Catalina (which Ray flew) there was a pilot, a copilot, a navigator, and engineer, a gunner, and a radio man. (22:17) His education in college meant he was older than most cadets and more educated. This led to Ray being placed in more leadership positions. (23:56) He was commissioned into the Navy in January of 1944. (25:10) Service as an Instructor (25:44)                After graduating, Ray was sent to Atlanta, Georgia, for a short class on instrument flying. Then he was sent back to Whiting Field Naval Air Station as an instructor. (25:50) He was married in January of 1944 in Michigan. (26:30) His wife came down to Pensacola in June of 1944 after completing his training. (28:00) He spent about 8 months as an instructor in instrument flying before he was transferred over to the Seaplane base at Pensacola. (28:38) The instructors were required to land the plane at night before instructing at the seaplane base to ensure they can do it. One of the aircrafts crash-landed on a beach during theses exercises. (29:20) While testing a cadet an aircraft continuously stalled because it had been tampered with. (32:19) After serving as flight instructors, the men were moved out onto fleets. (34:16) The day that Ray left for his fleet was VJ day (August 14th 1945.) (35:12) In order for Ray to continue his military career he needed to be in the Navy not the Naval Reserve. He chose to be discharged. (35:50) He was discharged in late summer of 1945. (36:36) Instructors had the responsibility of patrolling certain portions of the gulf where cadets would “challenge” or test them on what flags to run up to communicate with the aircraft. (37:05) An instructor was assigned several cadets whom he saw through sea training. (39:24) When finding that a cadet was not in the area of the plane he designated them too, Ray gave them one strike before reporting them. (41:20) The PBY Catalina was used for air sea rescue and look outs after the war. (42:11) During the war the Black Cats (PBY Catalina) would bomb sea targets. (42:33) Life after Service (43:48)    He looked to see if there were any flying jobs available after exiting the Navy.(43:50) Both he and his wife received teaching jobs in Alpena, Michigan, in 1947. His wife taught Spanish and English at the high school. (44:27) A representative form the FBI came to Alpena Michigan looking for recruits. Ray was accepted into the FBI and called up on July 7th of 1947. (45:30) Service in the FBI (45:50)   His new agent training was at Quantico, Virginia. It lasted 3 months. (46:59) After completing training he was assigned to Portland, Oregon. (47:25) �           He was assigned, like other new agents, on a “road trip” where he recruited and tracked fugitives. (49:10) He tracked and caught a man involved in a deserter case. (51:53) He bought a felt hat because (FBI Director J. Edgar) Hoover at the time wanted all the FBI agents to have felt hats. (54:05) After 8 months in Portland he was transferred to Seattle, Washington, where he spent about 8 years before being transferred to Detroit. (54:50) Ray requested a resident agency after arriving in Detroit. He was sent to Grand Rapids, Michigan where he spent 8 years. (55:35) The Resident Agency in Grand Rapids Michigan was in the Post Office. (56:25) He arrived in Grand Rapids Michigan in 1960 and left in 1968. (57:50) In the summer of 1968 Ray was transferred to Marquette, Michigan. (59:09) While in Grand Rapids, Michigan he recalls there was a bank robbery where the perpetrator was dressed as Santa Claus. (1:01:14) He retired from the FBI in May of 1973. (1:02:29) He retired to Winterfield Township. (1:03:33) Life after Retirement (1:04:23)     He served as the township supervisor for Winterfield Township for approx. 10 years. (1:04:23) He aided in zoning the township as well as repairing the township hall. (1:05:30) As Supervisor, Ray had to oversee township assessments. (1:07:14) He retightened as supervisor after his wife retired (approx 1984). (1:07:56) Thoughts on Service(1:08:15)                He did not keep in contact with fellow soldiers after service. (1:08:20) After his father was wounded in a car accident, Ray contacted a service man (John Goodman) at an air field and flew his father to Michigan to a better hospital. (1:10:00) While in Seattle he Joined the American Legion.(1:12:30) He joined post 40 in Seattle Washington. (1:13:18) He has changed his legion Membership to Harrison Michigan since living in Winterfield Township. (1:14:03) He joined the VFW but is not active. (1:14:25) He has not attended any reunions. On one occasion he did go and visit the museum at Pensacola. (1:15:28) Ray had 3 girls. (1:17:12) One of his daughters, Rosemary, went to acting school and attended school in New York City. (1:20:26) Rosemary ultimately worked for a bank. (1:22:55) Rosemary married and lived in Puerto Rico for several years before divorcing. (1:24:00) Another daughter, Sharon, also taught a bit of school but ultimately ended up working for a phone company. (1:25:32) Sharon has 2 children. (1:26:32) His first wife died in 1991. Approx. 1 year later he married Shirley. He and Shirley were married approx. 15 years before she passed due to lung cancer. (1:28:04) He still is in touch with several agents who he severed with while in the FBI. (1:30:02) �Documents (1:33:28)        A notice of separation form service (a release from active duty).(1:33:30) Ray and his wife Eleanor. (1:34:19) Wedding picture from Central Michigan University. (1:34:48) Training log book for pilot training. (1:35:16) A report of a flight (flight instructors report). (1:36:47) Aviation flight log book. (1:38:15) The final page of the log book lists 1,311.9 hours. (1:38:42) � 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 Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- 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 Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American 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 Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> 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 RichardsonR1293V Title A name given to the resource Richardson, Ray (Interview outline and video), 2011 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richardson, Ray Description An account of the resource Ray Richardson, born November 13th 1920 in Winterfield Township Michigan, served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942-1943 and then in the U.S. Navy from 1943-1946 as a flight instructor during World War II. As a flight instructor, Ray trained cadets on the PBY Catalina in Pensacola Florida. After completing his service, Ray served as an agent in the FBI from 1947-1973. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Erichsen, Wallace (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng 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 Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-08-05 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9f98e2fcff62df4f4a5c11dc8a341fff.mp4 835ce25ad2230aa37d3d189386310bdc https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/64a73e1c15ce8b5269fe146da5867672.pdf 5e4be89054b2f1e7cc6e5d1ce97da535 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Raymonde Richardson (00:46:44) (22:20) Background Information • Raymonde was born in Paris, France • Her father worked as an engineer and her mother stayed at home • She grew up during the depression and food was quite scarce • Raymonde would get up at 5 AM to wait in the food line, and would be replaced by her sister at 8 AM so that she could leave for school • Her family had not talked much about the impending was so as not to scare their children (4:20) Beginning of the War • The German invasion all happened very fast; no one had been scared at all and then there was widespread panic • The French had first thought that they could protect themselves and hold off the Germans with the Army fortifications • Her family left Paris to live in the country, but were forced by German troops to return back to their home in Paris • There was no longer and fuel and everyone was riding their bikes around • There were German soldiers all over patrolling the streets (14:00) Life during the War • Raymonde spent time dancing, seeing movies, swimming, and basically sneaking around the Germans so they could have fun • All the colleges were closed, so her future had been put on hold • There was nothing else to do and no where to work, so her parents sent her to a training school where she learned to sew, cook, and took a few basic classes for 2 years • There were many Germans staying in the expensive French hotels • Some of the French Resistance had been captured by Germans, where they were tortured or murdered (18:40) A Turn in the War • Raymonde remained in Paris throughout the war • She remembered hearing news of a pending US invasion • The Germans confiscated all their radios because they did not want them to know that the Germans were losing • The French Resistance continued fighting in Paris • Soon Americans entered France and it was like everyone was going crazy • People were dancing in the streets and running mad all over Paris • It was a fantastic time �(24:15) Post Invasion • French took revenge against those that had collaborated with the Germans • The transportation got better and the food supply increased slowly • In 1946 Raymonde moved in with a good friend in Normandy that helped her get a job with the US Army working in graves registration (32:40) Life After the War • Raymonde met her husband in Paris in 1955; he had been working there as an engineer • She had been working as a secretary before meeting him and he had been in the Army • They moved to Clarksville, Michigan, which was a very small town compared to Paris • Her husband owned a farm and she was a housewife • They had five children and the change was not hard on her • Though she did find that Americans are quite different in the way they are not very serious and take everything so lightly (39:40) Present Day Paris • Raymonde visited Paris two years ago with her son, and the young people spoke a different type of French • It is frustrating that Americans sometimes can’t understand her because of her accent and young French people can not understand her either • In Paris everyone spoke English and could understand her son • There were many immigrants from China, India, Africa, and the Middle East • There were also many homeless people all over the streets begging � 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 Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- 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 Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American 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 Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> 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 RichardsonR Title A name given to the resource Richardson, Raymonde (Interview outline and video), 2008 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richardson, Raymonde Description An account of the resource Raymonde Richardson was born in Paris, France and grew up during the depression. Food was very scarce and she would have to stand in a food line for five hours a day. She describes the German conquest of France and her experiences as a teenager living in German-occupied Paris. After the war, she worked in graves registration for the US Army in Normandy after the war and later met and married an American Army officer and moved to Michigan. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, French Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives, American Video recordings Women Language A language of the resource eng 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 Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-06-24 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c2c950c4ad2df0106194acf8d02c8344.jpg 33b4ccb8eeff641b08e73ade829cbb50 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 Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 RichardsonScott_Photo1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Richardson, Scott Description An account of the resource Scott Richardson, Vice President of Administrative Services Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College administrators Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d052519d3fd7a4925bdfcd77a6d16204.jpg f8f825636f82de486076cfa0b11c59c2 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 Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 RichardsonScott_Photo2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Richardson, Scott Description An account of the resource Scott Richardson, Vice President of Administrative Services Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College administrators Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f5883c6b1d2870c952e5aeed54b54102.jpg 89cfc0ede5a377708df02ea7a99a310d 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 Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 RichardsonScott_Photo3 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Richardson, Scott Description An account of the resource Scott Richardson, Vice President of Administrative Services Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College administrators Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fa486e19574b60ab86e5ae11543ac745.jpg 1f1f7b9529a90741f21df68c9e9531a9 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 Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. 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 RichardsonScott_Photo4 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Richardson, Scott Description An account of the resource Scott Richardson, Vice President of Administrative Services Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College administrators Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/76518aaa183227210ff968778f13ad18.jpg 8c85a688939606c0cd57db1039a2962e 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> 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 RHC-50_1409 Title A name given to the resource Richelieu (Jean Bart) French battleship Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Richelieu (Jean Bart) French BB (battleship), April 1, 1953. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy Military education Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Slides France Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953-04-01 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b55afd0d9cb5f8a32f07628e183b58d2.jpg c9a8a2299ca740554cc7a30a9a9ba8fd 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> 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 RHC-50_M2752 Title A name given to the resource Richelieu battleship Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Richelieu, French BB (battleship), March 15, 1944. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 France Military education Warships--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944-03-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2456fffa3b81ac24c753da3173c35d6b.jpg 21ffeb14d8cd96e27254d08f8f87e1fa 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> 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 RHC-50_M2754 Title A name given to the resource Richelieu battleship Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Richelieu, French BB (battleship), March 15, 1944. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 France Military education Warships--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944-03-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/11487851ee5722e5e8da9b4c23801da8.jpg ba344c9e140710c11b8afeb83880a359 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> 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 RHC-50_M2755 Title A name given to the resource Richelieu battleship Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Richelieu, French BB (battleship), March 15, 1944. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 France Military education Warships--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944-03-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9410f06a4b4cfeb925daa804dc8fae7a.jpg 7607c8ce1c44c15dd15e7507c7433797 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> 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 RHC-50_M3245 Title A name given to the resource Richelieu battleship Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Richelieu, French BB (battleship), June 15, 1944. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 France Military education Warships--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944-06-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ed179c01f9cea1a3cbd06743f2457fbd.jpg 0642dcf1496cab5b25f324dcab282afc 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 Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> 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 RHC-50_M3246 Title A name given to the resource Richelieu battleship Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Richelieu, French BB (battleship), June 15, 1944. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy World War, 1939-1945 France Military education Warships--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1944-06-15 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives