Oral History Program Daniel Wagner Interviewed by Stacy Heik 19 January 2007 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Daniel Wagner Interviewed by Stacy Heik 19 January 2007 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Wagner, Daniel, an oral history by Stacy Heik, 19 January 2007, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Daniel Wagner. The interview was conducted on January 19, 2007, by Stacy Heik. Wagner discusses various subjects about himself and experiences he’s had. SH: Dan, do we actually have permission to release this to the archives on campus? DW: You do. SH: Great. My name is Stacy Heik, and I am interviewing Dan, today. So, Dan, if you would like to speak about your life on campus, your family, anything you’d like to say in a half hour interview. DW: Okay. Well, I was born in Ogden, been here for thirty years. I didn’t start college until I was twenty-five, I guess, twenty-five. (Inaudible) SH: When do you actually graduate? DW: Oh, in spring, 2008. SH: Oh, same as me. DW: That’s what I’m hoping. SH: And your major is? DW: I’m doing social science, I hope to teach high school. (Inaudible) SH: That seems pretty strenuous over there. DW: I’ve done my generals. (Inaudible) SH: Sounds interesting. Would you like to tell us about your family? DW: I come from a single-mom family. It’s my mother, myself, and my two sisters, who are 9 and 11 years younger than I am. SH: Wow. DW: (2:45 Inaudible) I lived alone until about four years ago, then got married. We moved to Ogden, it’s not too far from here. It’s easy to get here on the bus. I came to Weber State just because it was close and it’s affordable, and I’d always wanted to go to college. I dropped out of high school, and just I hated high school. (Inaudible 3:40) I like being able to here and just do my studies, do my work. (Inaudible) I really enjoy it up here, for the most part. I’ve had some difficulties with the administration, I guess a little bit. I’ve had some problems with the police up here. SH: Would you like discuss it? DW: Myself and my friend, we went to see a question and answer session with (inaudible). We were just sitting there taking notes, and somebody called the police on us. So they watched us the whole time we were there, then started closing in on us. Well, they shouldn’t have because we were leaving, and they followed us outside. They actually followed Yang to his car, and they followed him off campus. So, it was kind of disturbing. SH: This sounds like a hard question, but since we’re doing a tape and it’s for posterity, is there any particular reason that you would think someone would want to suspect you of any sort of… DW: Well just the only thing I can think of is race. You know, I’m black, Yang is Vietnamese. We were young, and we were wearing three-piece suits. We stood out like sore thumbs, as they say. But (inaudible). I thought students should be able to attend things on campus without being chaperoned by the police. SH: So, would you say, in fact, in the year 2007, as opposed to the 1960s, that things have changed as far as, I mean, obviously, you weren’t alive in the 60s, but looking back through… DW: Well, yes. It’s certainly different. I mean, you know, they didn’t follow us out and beat us with their right sticks or anything, but people make the mistaken assumption: racism is no longer an issue. And it is, even here on Weber State University campus. SH: Well, moving on to a good subject, would you like to tell us about your wife and I believe you have a child as well? DW: Yeah, my wife is 24, she’s from Brigham City. We had a baby two and a half years ago, and she has a son from a previous marriage, he’s seven now. We’re buying a house. As far as marriage goes, it’s not bad. We have some interesting neighbors. There seems to be a lot of gang activity in our neighborhood, but I guess it’s never affected us. We’ve never had anything broken. Last summer though, somebody tried to break into our jeep, and Jeeps come installed with wires. Well I mean it has that blinking light, it was obviously, it was protected, but these people opened the door anyway. It was 3 o’clock in the morning and it was still 98 degrees, so I had gotten out of bed to go in front of the air conditioner, (inaudible). And all of the sudden the alarms started freaking out. I rushed outside and found two kids running down the street. It was actually pretty comical. They turned out to be 14 and 15, and they weren’t supposed to be out driving, but they had taken one of their dad’s mini vans out. They were just looking for car stereos. They just came to the wrong house. I was outside in five seconds. I sent the dogs out. My wife is very territorial, I guess. So she jumped out of bed, got to the car, and chased them down. SH: Wow. DW: Cornered them in a cul-de-sac, locked them in just staring at the door, screaming, talking on the phone with the police, and they ended up catching them just down the road. The police caught them five minutes later just down the street from our house. SH: That’s really gutsy of your wife. DW: Yeah, yeah, she’s pretty good. SH: Do you have any particular challenges with being married with children and going to school at the same time? DW: I really do. My wife works graveyards, so I do what I can to make sure the baby sleeps until I get home from class. My step son, our older son, goes to school in the morning, so she sleeps when she gets home. I use all my free time to do my studies. (Inaudible) We’re making it work. I actually went to culinary school, I was a chef for about ten years, and I did like that. (Inaudible) I had a series of car accidents, I had some back disorders. So I was unable to work the twelve hour shifts in the kitchen anymore. That’s kind of what led me here. My grandmother taught here in Weber County Elementary Schools. She taught special Ed. Even when I was in school, I thought that was something I’d enjoy doing. (Inaudible). I’m starting to see high school friends in the newspaper for robberies and drug related offenses. So for the most part I consider myself pretty lucky. SH: That’s good. You’re a great role model for someone. DW: Before I came here, you know, I finished my senior year of high school, but I had, there were three teachers that taught me in school (inaudible) and for the most part, the rest of the teachers just seemed like they were there for the check, which didn’t make much sense because I know they don’t have too much to look forward to as far as money goes. SH: Okay, are there any other particular traits that those three teachers had or things that they did that made them stand out? DW: Just a willingness to answer questions, the ability to spark your interest in a subject, and an ability to provoke the students. I know those teachers were either history or English teachers. I was an English major up here for a couple semesters, that’s kind of why I want to be here, and I’m switching to history. It’s more interesting. And I love the history program here. SH: Speaking of the history department, do you have any interesting stories, minus names, or grievances against teachers with no names again. Interesting, juicy stuff. DW: No, nothing like that, I don’t think. Am I allowed to use names if it’s not bad? SH: Yeah, definitely. DW: Oh, I’ve received a lot of support from most of the professors up here. In particular, Dr. McKay, in history and English. I love Dr. McKay, she’s really nice. Dr. Ewert and Dr. Louis really helped make it nice. Dr. (inaudible) especially. I really, she’s been really great to help me. But yeah, the only problems I’ve ever had were, in that department, so many other students, and I think it’s just because they have doctors in mathematics teaching people pre-algebra, or algebra, and they’re just not, you know, they think that we should just know it already. SH: I agree. DW: And that makes it really difficult for pretty much everybody I talk to. I’ve talked to several other students up here. Most of the people that I know have had to do 1010 at least twice, sometimes four times. You can do that or take a philosophy course instead. SH: Really? DW: Yeah. I wish I would’ve done that. They started that the semester after I finished up all my math requirements. SH: Me too. DW: I’m so happy to be done with math. That’s really the only unpleasantness of it academically here. SH: Is this an area you hope to stay in because your family’s here? DW: No, I hope to flee Utah as soon as I get my degree. I want to go teach in low-income areas, particularly Los Angeles. This is where some really good teachers might be hesitant to lay down the rules, but I’d like to. SH: Is there any particular grade you’re hoping to teach? DW: High school. Nothing more particular than that. I’d eventually like to do some Master’s or Doctorate work, and teach at a University. Trying to make solid plans for making it past and getting a Master’s degree. SH: I’ve noticed in the past that you’re interested in groups and causes, are there any groups or causes you’d like to speak about? DW: Hmm, that’s an interesting question, there’s several groups on campus that are meant to be catalysts for social change, recent issues. I’ve seen that, really, no one seems to really be willing to come out and take a stand. SH: What kind of causes would be dear to your heart? DW: Personally, I’m interested in the disparity between the rich and the poor. I’m big on communism, I think that everybody should be able to work. They should be able to feed themselves and their family. All too often they can’t, and I think in these days everybody’s got a computer, internet access, and a lot of the times people forget that there are people suffering. We don’t hear every day. I recently went to the dentist and the dentist told me a story of how he went to somewhere in Sudan to do free dental work. There are people here who can’t afford to go to the dentist. SH: So would you be an advocate of some sort of nationalized health care then? DW: Absolutely, it’d be good. Socialized health care would be one of the best things for the country. I didn’t come prepared with statistics, but you can see how every year they put something out there. Lists how many days or how many hours of work, how many days of school are lost because people are sick or injured and they can’t see a doctor. My personal thing with my back problems, I was supposed to have a disc confusion when I was twenty, and my insurance dropped me 72 hours before my surgery. So it’s been ten years, just being in pain. I have nothing to look forward to as far as getting it taken care of until I’m out of here and I get a job, and I’m at a job long enough to get insurance. Then I wait long enough for pre-existing conditions. SH: Do you think your injuries pose any problems with you on campus, maybe sitting for a long time or walking around, or getting around? DW: They do. I usually walk with a cane. Luckily, well since I’ve got my scientific and math prerequisites out of the way, all my classes are here in the SS building, so I take the elevators, and I talk to my teachers and they’re fine if I need to just stand up for a minute during class, especially if I have classes for three hours. You know, it makes it a little difficult but it’s not enough to keep me home. I could have far worse than I have right now. It seems like the center for students with disabilities is a pretty good job. SH: Well, superficially speaking, would you, since people in the future will be listening to this as well, in the year 2007, would you like to mention that, what kinds of music or entertainment or anything that you like or periodicals you like to read, or novels, anything like that? DW: Sure, well I listen to pretty diverse mix of music. I listen to a lot of hardcore, political punk from the mid-nineties, Born Against, Hinder, some of the new heavy metal like Kill You Dead, and I’m also a huge jazz fan. I love Albert Ayler, Bille Holiday, and Ornette Coleman, that stuff will always be good. Been reading a lot of periodicals from activist groups, the economist party, the great party, amnesty. As far as novels, just again the classics, R.L. Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath was as poignant today as it was when it was written. I like to read (Inaudible) which is also political. It is very my personal political beliefs, but (Inaudible). I watch TV, I play a lot of video games, game cube, Xbox, and Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and a Nintendo DS. I primarily play Role Playing Games, Final Fantasy series, The Elder Scrolls. It helps blow a lot of steam. If you can get 50 hours into a game, it’s a pretty good escape. SH: You seem to have mentioned the word communists several times. Are there any particular challenges in 2007 that would be different than challenges than when it was a hot button kind of word in the past? Do people still look at that, maybe with a little bit of doubt? DW: Yeah, I think there’s still a lot of sort of McCarthy Era fear of communism. It’s unlikely that it’s really going to change until we can get enough people to look at it from a new perspective. Stalin was responsible for ten million deaths, but he’s not around anymore, so I, personally, distribute (inaudible). SH: Do you see it as a viable system that could possibly work in the US? DW: I do, but everything would have to change. But everything needs to change. (Inaudible). Divisions of class lead to racism, sexism. It gives the overall feeling that people perceive and protect their objects. SH: If you choose to answer, yes or no, you don’t really have to answer, being that we’re in Salt Lake City area, you know, Utah, are you in part affiliated with the dominant religion of the area, or any particular. DW: I never have been. My family was three or four generations ago, but we switched to Presbyterian. My great aunt was a minister Presbyterian. I never had religion forced on me like a lot of people around here seem to in their youth. (Inaudible) I’m not involved in religion at all. SH: Were there any particular challenges growing up in this area and not being a part of the dominant religion that most people are around here? DW: Yeah, there were always, I think in my elementary school, I was maybe four kids out of five or six hundred that weren’t members. I was the only colored student. There wasn’t another black until maybe junior high, and then it started to become more diverse. (Inaudible). SH: Well, is there anything else you’d like to say to people in the future, maybe twenty years from now or so, that could be reviewing this tape or transcribing through it? DW: I don’t know, anybody that doesn’t see this tape in twenty years, I don’t know. Look at what the Bush Administration has done, see how things are getting better from today. SH: Are you hoping to have either a woman, Hispanic, black president in twenty years? DW: I would love to see a black or Hispanic woman. (Inaudible). Weber State’s a good institution, I’ve really enjoyed my time here. (Inaudible). SH: Well we’re definitely over a half hour, so if you don’t have much more to say… DW: Thanks for interviewing me. SH: We are going to sign off and thank you Daniel for doing this interview, and this is Stacy Heik, so see you whenever.