Oral History Program Donna Hunter Interviewed by Kandice Harris 30 April 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Donna Hunter Interviewed by Kandice Harris 30 April 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ 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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Hunter, Donna, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 30 April 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Donna Hunter 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Donna Hunter, conducted on April 30, 2019 in her office, conducted by Kandice Harris. Donna discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Alexis Stokes, the audio technician, is also present during this interview. KH: Today is April 30th and we are interviewing Donna Hunter. Kandice Harris is doing the interview and Alexis is our technician. When and where were you born? DH: I was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1966. I’m an east coaster. KH: Would you talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background? DH: Yeah. Although I was born there, I grew up in central New Jersey. Central New Jersey is all farms—so agricultural farms, blueberry bogs or blueberry farms, and cranberry bogs, and horse farms, and of course tomatoes. It’s called the garden state for a reason. So just a beautiful area and where we lived, we were up close to the state forest. So a lot of times we were playing outside, running in woods. That was kind of the environment. My parents’ family are from northern New Jersey, so they are from Jersey City which is right over the bridge, five miles from New York City. They were 70 miles north of us, so we would go up there maybe a couple of times a month and hang out with cousins and grandma’s house. Environment wise, it’s just really different—city, noisy, noisy at three o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the morning a lot more car horns. It’s just a 2 really different environment. But fun too because you can take the train or the bus over to New York City and have fun that way. So in that sense, like two different environments. Which is interesting, we would go up there but extended family didn’t really come down to the country very often, and when they did it was an environmental shock for them because it was too quiet. They were used to the sounds of the city and they’d get panicked with birds. It’s really interesting, and although people live close, they don’t really go out of their communities that much. My parents are married—for more than 35 years. My father was military, out by the time I was born, I’m the third of five. So I’ve got two older sisters and two younger brothers. My mother was a nurse. My dad’s work, I guess, was communications and electronics technician. What that meant for the military, who coordinated a lot of communications, but for us at home, we had a lot of hand radios. He was a hand radio operator. So what that meant was that there were a lot of wires and antennas around our house, but also the voices of a lot of people that were friends of his from different countries. So you always heard British accents or Canadian accents, eastern Canada—like Nova Scotia. I think that was significant, because he also pertained a love of traveling from being in the military. So it was not unusual for him to ask my mom and call her on Friday and say, “Well pack up the kids, we’re going to Canada for the weekend.” To drive up to Montreal, or go to the Poconos, the mountains, or Virginia beach, or to Florida—not for the weekend. Those were more extended vacations. And to this day, I just can’t imagine my life without travel. 3 KH: I understand. DH: I’m just really grateful for that because it comes easy to me. Talking to others, it doesn’t. But between that and hearing other international voices in our home via the radio, other people from different countries and that since have always been friends. So also kind of with five kids, not much money. So we had a garden. So gardening kind of sustained us. My mom canned and put food up. I baked the bread. To this day, I just love gardening. I think my first love was I wanted to go to pastry school—culinary school. But my parents would only pay for traditional college. So I didn’t get to do that. KH: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? DH: You know, I would probably say I was by different people along the course of my life. Our home, we grew up in a religious home. Both of my parents families were from—well I had grown up going to church, Baptist church. My grandfather had a big Baptist congregation in Jersey City and my parents kind of met growing up. They all went to grade school together, they all went to high school together. But my father’s grandfather, as a pastor became blind. My parents, who were kids at the time, would have to go over on Saturday nights and read his bible and scripture to him for serving the next day. So in that sense, you know not that they kind of met that way, but they were always around each other. So they were a big kind of church going family. My mother converted—I don’t know when she converted. But actually we, in our family grew up Jewish because somewhere along the lines she found a 4 different church that she thought adhered more closely to the scriptures like she liked. So she converted. So in that sense, that’s how I grew up. So that being said, the college that I went to as an undergrad, was one associated with our church. Much like BYU is associated with the Mormon church. As far as pursuing education, at that time, it was associated with going to an ambassador college, yes. Anything else, you know, I think more heathen or worldly. I was like, “Oh this makes moving out to Utah so easy for me.” I’m like, “I’ve already done this.” So same kind of language in fundamentalist churches. In that sense, education was encouraged. And along the way, of course you meet different people. Like in the college or in probably after graduation, I didn’t know what I was going to do because I didn’t get an MRS. Degree. Of course in that stage of your life, that’s supposed to be devastating, but it wasn’t really devastating because I like to travel and I didn’t want to get married. You know, that kind of pull between options. Culturally, I’m supposed to do this but in reality what I really want to do is this. Thankfully, I had a mentor enter my life who worked at a different college or actually worked as a career counselor in college. Knowing that I was a recent college graduate, and I was kind of lost, he walked me through career assessments which is how I found this field. I’m a strong advocate for MBTI. KH: What’s that? DH: The Meyers Briggs Interest Inventory. KH: Okay. 5 DH: It shows you how you are wired and shows you people working in fields that are wired like you. In that sense, I think that it helped with persistence because it really shows the people who might be wired like you who are persisting in these fields because it’s a good match for them. And that’s really kind of the short version of it. He kind of spent a day with me, kind of going over all of the different kind careers that were matched with my four letter word. You know, it has a four letter code and then you kind of go to careers where people who have that code seem to persist and be happy. In reading through this one—and it’s very detailed about what counselors do, or mental health professionals, and it really did seem to be a good match. So from there, he talked about grad schools and doing applications and the next steps, which was great. He would call periodically and see where I was at with that. I probably was moving slow. I know I was moving slower than he liked. But it wasn’t slow. I think it’s what a lot of people face now. It’s, “How am I going to pay for this?” It’s figuring out the money part of it. That took a while. What I ended up doing was getting a job at the University where I would do my graduate degree, because working there I could do graduate school for 50%. That’s how I paid for it. It just took a while to find that. I know a lot of students here and nationally are just going through that same frustration and same anxiety about how am I going to pay for this because it is so expensive. I think that they need help figuring that piece out. I don’t know if that answered your question. KH: It did. What degrees and certificates do you have? 6 DH: I have a master’s in counseling. I have a master’s in leadership from Thierry School of Leadership, which is in Brussels, Belgium. I’m trying to think… a bachelor’s—actually my bachelor’s is in theology. I’m trying to think certificates. I think that certificates really just have to do with different types of therapy I’m qualified to do. One is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which is a really popular therapeutic intervention for working with trauma and PTSD. KH: Okay. DH: So that’s been what I’ve been working on the last three years because as we will talk about later, there’s just a lot of that at Weber State. KH: What were some of the challenges you faced while obtaining your degrees? DH: I think working, and going to school, and kind of juggling family drama/crises. I had a family member who got into some legal trouble. I don’t know if it’s surprising, I was just kind of reflecting about how the use and punishment of marijuana has evolved nationally. Kind of how that formed my experience. Now we’ve got several states that are legalizing it, the criminal justice system kind of has backed off. It’s an industry, an entrepreneurial kind of commodity now. I had a family member get picked up for marijuana possession in a different state. That was New York state which meant at that time, he did not go to jail, he went to prison in upstate New York. Which meant during grad school, I was doing grad school and driving up to visit him which was five hours north. That went on through going through grad school and working. You know, he’s out, done, and thriving now. But in that sense, it really resonates with me here when students 7 are trying to go to school and are kind of juggling major life stressors at the same time. Of course, my situation is different from a lot of theirs, but it’s really surprising to me and admirable to me the way students are juggling so much. KH: What were your career options once you had your degrees? DH: Oh I hated my career options because it was informed of course in the social context that we were raised in. Career options were to be a wife and mother. Kind of that traditional gender socialization or some field that supported your family. Whether that was nurse, or secretary, or something that status-wise was bellow a guy because, of course, the worst cultural sin you could commit was showing up and having more status than a man. Yeah, that’s what was open to me. Well, it was open to me kind of from, in that sense that religious upbringing context. I think that there were different options available to me because of the models of women in my family. My paternal grandmother was a business owner later in life when she retired. She worked in the Westinghouse for basically her whole life. At that time, companies gave people really good pensions, which she had. So after that, she did some traveling around the world and then she owned the apartment building that she lived in in Jersey City. So she owned real estate and because of that she also decided to buy the bar down the street. Which worked out really well for her. My maternal grandmother was just a leader in the nursing field. I think one of the first black females in administrators at—I forgot which hospital, it’s a really big hospital in New York. She had been an administrator at Fisk University too. In that sense, she was a career woman. 8 That may have been viewed with maybe progressive at that time. But, I think it would be important to say that it came at a really big cost to her, and to my mom and her family. Because the reason she pursued nursing in the first place was because of divorce. She had to find a way to raise two girls which was my mom and my aunt Brenda. She had to arrange for her mother-in-law to take care of the girls while she went to school. After she finished school, she was expecting to get the girls back, there was a custody battle. In that custody battle for whatever reason, my aunt Brenda went with her and my mom went with either her grandmother and also—which would have been her dad’s mom. So in that sense, the family split. That I think, broke the hearts of both of them. Probably over my lifetime I’ve probably only saw her about five times because it really lead to an estrangement between my mom and her. So I probably have mixed feelings about that. Of course, there is pride because of her career achievements, but I also think it’s important to tell the whole story of what it cost with it. Yeah. What was the question again? KH: What were your career options once you had your degree? DH: Oh yeah, we were talking about models too. So I think both of them gave me a vision in models of other possibilities too. Which I really value. KH: What mentors or resources did you have available to you in your program? DH: In my program? I think my professors. All of them were great. As well as the mentor Stan that I had. I think experienced what a lot of students say here, they really appreciate the encouragement of their professors and their instructors and 9 their ability to point them to other resources and directions. Again, while they are on campus pursuing stuff, being a soft place to land. They were just really caring. KH: That’s great. What resistance or battles did you face as you progressed in your career? DH: None that I really can remember. I mean in this sense, I love what I do. As far as gender is concerned, it’s a helping profession. In that way, I think that society looking through the lens of gender, I’m in my lane. I haven’t gotten a whole lot of resistance. KH: Okay. What positions have you held in your career? DH: You know, I think the trajectory is like working as a secretary while I was going through grad school. When I came to Weber State, I started out in the Women’s Center working as an advisor there and programming there. For a little bit I was also the director over the—what was that place? I oversaw student government. Herding in 26 student leaders. That was a fun year. Then I had the opportunity to come up here in 2000 to the counseling center. That’s where I’ve been since. KH: What drew you to Weber State? DH: I finished my program, I graduated from Rider University, which is in New Jersey, and I still wanted to do counseling at a college. At the time, while I was at Rider, I attended conferences and professional conferences. Which is always great to do as a student because there is just so much open to you. You really just get a picture of how you can use your degree and what different people are doing in 10 your field and if you love learning and researching in the field. I just love learning. At one of those presentations that I went to, was on family therapy and in following up with them afterwards. Eventually, I was able to get a scholarship to an externship program at UNLV studying family therapy. I was able to do that for about three months over the summer in ’97. But to get certified, I needed to be out here. That motivated me to start looking at job opportunities out here. So I was looking in Las Vegas area, Utah area. I don’t remember if it was at the conference, somehow I found about Weber State. Weber State had what they called a Diversity Residency Program. At the time they were trying to get more minority professionals out here, and the Vice President for Student Services at the time, Marie Kotter, had developed and cultivated a diversity residency modeled off of medical residency. That allowed applicants to be able to come out for a year, work in different departments in Student Affairs, and after that year if they didn’t like it they would help them find a new job. If they did, they would help them kind of find a position. In my head, I’m like, “I can do anything for a year.” I came under that program. Again, my first job in that program was at the Women’s Center. She had done a magnificent job of problem solving—taking something that worked in her field, which was nursing and medical field—and just transferring it to solve another problem in a different discipline. By the time I got out here, I think it had been going for maybe six or seven years, and there was a great cohort of maybe between six and ten students from different parts of the United States that were working under that program. What 11 that meant for me, is I had a soft place to land when I got here. Utah culture is different and I would not have survived if it weren’t for them. Somebody to interpret kind of the cultural norms and rules. For me, to ask questions like, “What the hell is going on here?” And to make sense of it all. They had already gone through that journey and kind of knew what the ebbs and flows of my transition would look like. If I didn’t have them as advisors and friends and allies, to kind of make sense of the environment and to learn how to consult with them about how to navigate it, I don’t think it would have turned out as well as it has. It wasn’t just them, the staff, Toni Weight who I think was the vice president after Marie Kotter, and Marie Kotter herself really did make it a wonderful experience. KH: That’s good. What year did you start? DH: ’98. 1998 KH: Do you remember the others that were in your cohort? DH: Some. Margarita Guerra, who was a former director of the Women’s Center. Some others, Kim, I don’t remember Kim’s last name. She was in what is now student support services. Michael, I don’t remember Michael’s last name. Cedric Howard, and Cedric was over the Diversity Center at the time. Peter, and Peter I think was here just for one year and then he left for a new position. So those are some of the names that come back to me. KH: What were some of your biggest shocks moving to Utah? DH: Some were pleasant like this is a place where you says, “I appreciate ya, a lot.” That’s not something you hear a lot on the east coast or in New Jersey. In that 12 sense, thanking people was kind of nice. It would just make your head tilt a little. I don’t think it’s done a whole lot in other parts of the country, so that piece was nice. You know, what I eventually kind of learned is if… a lot of culture has to do with how you solve problems, and language, and how you make decisions. Eventually, I learned if I was purposefully dyslexic that would be helpful. What I mean by that, whatever women would do on the east coast, if I just flipped and do the opposite here, I could make it work. But it took me two years to learn that. It did. So I started off in the Women’s Center, and on the east coast the range of options for women, there has a lot more kind of flexibility to it. It’s not as rigid. You see a lot of different models of women doing different things. In that sense, there’s a bigger range of roles that women can do and be legitimate. That’s much more narrow here. When I’m used to those roles and you’re talking to women here about those roles in 1998, it wasn’t met with excitement, maybe fear. I had to adjust to them and what was an acceptable range for them. So learning to meet people where they are at. KH: What was Weber State like when you started? DH: You know, I honestly don’t remember. I was thinking about that. I think about it in terms of people. Of course the people have changed, but I don’t know if the feeling has. It has always felt like a good place to be. I think you can walk into people’s offices and just have conversations. It’s always felt warm and welcoming. Of course the landscape and the buildings have changed a lot, but I have always really admired how Weber State in that sense is progressive in providing the resources that I as a staff need to be able to do my job. I think the 13 resources that students need, whether it’s computer labs, or housing, or they’ve added food pantries, community gardens, how the campus has pursued sustainability in green issues. I have really always admired their ability to provide resources for students and staff. In that sense, be good community members and leaders too. I just think they are excellent there. KH: What was the Women’s Center like when you started? DH: I think the goal of the Women’s Center, I think came out kind of local history. So it might be different than other Women’s Centers nationally. But I also think Women’s Centers come out of their local and community history wherever you are. So this one was really geared toward helping women who may have been formally homemakers get back into school and form careers to support their family. They may have had a divorce, or their spouse would have died. That was really the historical focus of the Women’s Center. I think when I got there, they were starting to maybe do a lot more outreach to different types of women, and help them navigate life’s circumstances, much like a lot of the departments do now. Women who have challenging life circumstances and perhaps open up different avenues for them to consider that they may not have considered. KH: What was it like being the advisor to the student government? DH: That was a little bit more challenging and fun. I had great people to work with who were supportive and great allies. But my role was a minority woman over student government which was predominately male from the dominant culture. I don’t’ know that they were used to women in authority and navigating that. A lot 14 of different social identities to navigate. They were typically young white men in their twenties. I don’t remember how old I was at that time. So maybe I was in my thirties at that time, a black female professional. Even in that, they would not have had a whole lot of exposure to here. I think within a dominant culture in Utah, they are typically seen as the authority, so they weren’t really used to a woman being held accountable and being challenged. So we learned together. KH: How has counseling changed over time? DH: Let me see my notes that I wrote. Let’s see. You know what, first of all, I don’t know really what people think about counseling. Or if they think about this at all. A lot of people don’t ask me a whole lot about what I do. What I think they maybe assumed a decade ago is that we just help student overcome breakups with their boyfriend, and help with study skills, and transition from high school to college. Again, it’s me projecting what I think they are thinking about us. How it’s changed is even just nationally. It’s just a national trend, we have been for the last decade or more seen a whole lot more severe mental health issues. You know there is an expectation I think just because trends in mental health cares in schools, and people being able to do their life activities with medication in schools, that there is just an expectation of services at college too. Counseling resources are stretched. What I had written down, there’s a national survey of college counseling. Directors, 95% of them, report that the number of students with severe psychological problems has increased in recent years. Again, we have certainly have seen that here. Again as the severity increases, so does the time to be able to manage them. I also think that it’s a product of both nationally 15 and in communities, services for mental health are poor. There’s really just a poor infrastructure. It’s really not uncommon for when students come to counseling here, this is their first time ever, one, getting any type of mental health care, and their first time seeing a counselor. What that means is people who have been needing care or intervention for years, by this time, it’s urgent and it’s desperate. In that sense, it’s been a ride. It gets to be—it’s busy. It’s busy from beginning of fall semester to the end and beginning of spring semester to the end. We start summer next week, we are hitting the ground running. It’s high demand. KH: What type of services does the counseling services offer? DH: There’s individual counseling, there’s couples counseling, there’s family counseling. We’ve got two licensed marriage and family counselors. We have an APRN who does our prescribing. So there’s medical evaluation and medication management for stabilization. We have ADD assessment that students can do at cost, which has been a really great service too. We have groups, whether it’s our meditation group or a group for ADD and ADHD. I’m trying to think—A women’s group, an interpersonal process group, is available here too. And crisis services. KH: What does a typical semester look like for you? DH: You know, really busy seeing clients. So that takes up most of the week, and the paper work in case management that comes with that. You know, maybe it sometimes—a good analogy if you think about the wing of a hospital. Every 16 room, each person in a room has a different condition, different status, their health coming in has been different. They could be really healthy and have some acute things, they could have chronic conditions for a long time. It takes a lot more eyes on them, and a lot more management, and a lot more coordination and resources. So that might be a good analogy of why it can be so taxing, because each person is unique and their conditions are different and their resources are different. It takes a lot of conversations with them and the staff to be able to coordinate those things. KH: What committees or organizations on campus or otherwise have you or are you a member of? DH: I think my favorite is the Women’s Studies Executive Council. I’ve taught in Women’s Studies probably for the last decade. I love it. This is probably my first year not doing it because I’ve transitioned to studying more about trauma and increasing my skills in that because of clinical demand. I also think it’s in line with kind of the topics and issues that we see in Women’s Studies—how women and children are subject to a lot of trauma. Whether you are talking about childhood trauma due to family violence, childhood sexual assault, a lot of relational trauma, emotional neglect, and those are the issues students are presenting with. So I’ve kind of backed off teaching to stay on top of that and increase my skills to be able to respond to that and deliver services. So I don’t know that answered your questions. KH: What other organizations and committees are you on? 17 DH: Okay. Outside of here, there is kind of a guild of LGBTQ—LGBTQ Affirmative Therapist. So I participate in that. I’ve done two, like I said before, my specialty is doing the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy. I have participated and belong to two consultation groups for that. What that means is that we get together once a month just to talk about difficult cases, what we might be seeing, and how best to do case conceptualization, planned interventions, etc. So I’ve really enjoyed doing that in a group. It’s an international group, so we meet by phone and we will have colleagues, not only here in the United States, but Canada, Asia, Australia, and Africa too. What seems to bring us together is a trauma lens. It’s just going to be happening to just—it’s an international phenomenal. How do we best do kind of case conceptualization and treatment with those clients? So different countries, but same consolation of symptoms. So that’s been most helpful. KH: What type of outreach do you do here on campus? DH: It depends. Outreach requests usually come in, we have a person who is our outreach coordinator. She does a lot of our outreach programming with the staff and peer support that she has. There are sometimes we do kind of get individual requests, so recently I did one for the developmental math department about how to manage anxiety. We also do get off campus requests too. So we might do kind of consultation sometimes with other centers, which I recently did down in Salt Lake too. KH: What topics have you written about? 18 DH: So I tend to be a clinician rather than an academician. So I’m not under the publish or perish mandate. KH: What recognition have you received for your accomplishments? DH: The recognition that I would like is sleep. Like if you could just give me a week to sleep that would be great. I think that we’ve gotten kind of department recognitions through Student Affairs. As a center we are accredited by the International Association of Counseling Services, which I think there is only 300 centers worldwide that have that accreditation. I think that we can be really proud of that just because it’s a standard of level of professional standard that we adhere to and that our professional peers have said that we have met. So I think that says a lot on a service delivery that we give students here, but I also think it’s important because every other department and discipline—I love that Weber State pursues accreditations in their disciplines and fields, and we’ve been able to meet that too. KH: I notice that you have a Crystal Crest Award. DH: That, yes I do. That was given to me by that group [Points to a frame on her desk of a group of students] who is a group that I worked with that year that I oversaw student government. That’s a savvy group who kind of acquired it, and as a group presented it to me. KH: Oh that’s fun. DH: So I can always count on Dee to do something like that. 19 KH: What year were over student government? DH: That’s a… I want to say ’99-2000. KH: How have you become a mentor to others in your field? DH: You know, I think I belong to a lot of—I don’t know if it’s professional groups. But in a community just to meet with a lot of other clinicians. Whether it’s psychologists who work with the VA, and we just talk a lot. I don’t think I’m just a mentor to them, but they are just a mentor to me. We all spend a whole lot of time working together. I think there are times that the students would say some of the counseling sessions are mentorship sessions. You know, even if that’s encouraging them to go back and see your academic advisor, or the dean in your school, or your professors in your school for professional kind of mentorship. Encouraging them to have those relationships because it might be telling them twelve times before they will actually go in and do it. And they will love it—every single time. But putting a bug in their ear to cultivate those relationships, because I don’t know how much the professors want to have those relationships with them. It’s not until you take the risk and go for an office hour or have the conversation and give yourself a new experience that somebody does want to be in a relationship with you to have them. But it does take maybe giving them some courage to do that. KH: What advice would you give to students and women starting in your field? DH: Pursue your learning in trauma because you are going to need it. It’s pretty much at epidemic levels which makes sense when we look at the news. You 20 know, whether you see it in local news—people who kind of have been murdered in gun violence, people picked up because of domestic assaults, women killed because of domestic assaults, children dying because of domestic assaults. Of course, the epidemic of gun violence in the country. Historical violence too, I mean talk about invisible subjects. Family violence has always been a part of our national history, but maybe not to have a whole discipline about it. So I think just one of those invisible forces that have always been going on. So they are going to need to be in relationships with people who have been cultivating your skills in that because you are going to need it. KH: Do you feel there is still a stigma with counseling? DH: I think it’s less now. It might also depend on where you are and kind of what social identity you are talking about. I think with a lot of teens, young adults, who have grown up with counseling, not so much. For those who may have grown up or been socialized in religious institutions, it depends, it can be. People don’t want to be seen as defectives. So I think it really depends on which subculture you are talking about. If you are talking about men in military, yeah, you don’t do that because in that culture it’s seen as weakness and perhaps as a block to career advancement, even though people really do need help in that area. So it really depends on how the culture views mental health. KH: How do you feel it is here at Weber? DH: Like I said, I think it’s good. We’ve always had great support with faculty and staff referring students to the counseling center here. I think our student 21 government and all of the student governments in the state of Utah have done a magnificent job of taking up student mental health as a mantel, and talking about it with the legislature because of the initiative and the advocacy of that the student government in Utah. There are a lot of colleges that have gotten resources and services that they would not have gotten, I think, without students leading the way. I think the students in student government and leaders have recognized the extent to which it’s an issue because you know, they see their peers, they are talking to their peers, they are on the front lines with their peers. They may have had experiences in their homes or in their own families. I think they know how much of a need it is. I think the larger community is getting better. You will see public service announcements about suicide prevention and suicide awareness, which I think KSL has picked up, which I think is great. You know, in the larger community I really think there’s room for growth. If we talk about it more and have more shows about it, it reduces the stigma. I think that Weber State is great, and there’s always work to do in the community. KH: What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State? DH: I love graduation. You know we just had graduation, and so it’s always a gift I think for everybody. You know, from our perspective here, you kind of know the struggles and the suffering and really the price people had to pay to get their degree, and how hard it is. Those are stories we can’t share with other people. It’s really nice to go to graduation, and you might have some insight on that story, and really just cheer and be proud of how they have been able to progress through the most difficult of circumstances. That’s always a bonus for me. I’m 22 trying to think of what else. There are fond Crystal Crest memories. Those times when we can get together and celebrate have always been some of my favorite. KH: You mentioned that you love to travel. What are some of the places you traveled? DH: Oh my word. I’m trying to think, well I think I’ve been to all of the fifty states except for two. So I have not been to—or maybe there is three. Somehow I may have… I don’t know if I have gotten South Dakota. Alaska and Hawaii are still on the list. My favorites in the last couple of years have been Indonesia—especially Bali. So I’ve been there twice, and it’s hard not to go. I’m trying to think where else. Even in the states, one of my favorites, Glacier National Park. I think it is absolutely magical. To be able to be so close to national parks here: Zion, the Tetons, Yosemite. It’s just lucky to have such stunning landscapes. But those have been some of my favorites. I love Chicago. Chicago has great food. I love cities. Philadelphia has great food, New York has got great food. I love food too. I still kind of pursue my interests of pastry and baking too. I tend to do that, I would say on the side. But having your hands in dough and bread really does relieve stress for me. There are times that I will take extra classes in that. So I’ve done that at San Francisco Baking Institute and French Pastry School in Chicago, which I love too. KH: Great. How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? DH: Kind of a large question. 23 KH: Yes. DH: Let me see. You know, what came to mind for that was their ability to kind of make invisible lives visible, and invisible situations visible. What comes to mind is Kirsten Gillibrand and her advocacy for those who have experienced military sexual assault, and staying on top of trying to get the military institution to change for a greater accountability in the institution and greater justice in the institution. To have her work to get patriarchal institutions to change and honor their social contract to have safe places, and justice for women and men who have gone through military sexual assault. I think she has kept it in what I call above the water line. She has kept it discussable, and has kept the energy going about accountability that they do—I think that men and institutions that are typically male identified have a social obligation to be good relational partners, and be partners in safety. It is not just up to the individual, it is not an individual world. You know, Elizabeth Warren who talks about the economic forces on the middle class, and how it disproportionally hurts how policies and institutions hurt the middle class and again, calling for greater accountability there. You just can’t stay, you have to contribute too. In doing that, I think that she again makes the individual cost on families, on children, on women visible. And makes it so that in doing so, it makes their lives legitimate. I think it creates an environment where men can maybe stop avoiding that, as a group. Of course there is a lot of individual differences, and it certainly doesn’t represent each man and all men. But as a group and as a social group, to help them change their view and their mental 24 model of women, and how they engage in relationship and responsibility for that. It’s not just individual family responsibility, it’s community responsibility too. I think they’ve taken their place as full citizens, and that’s been a fight. It’s still a head scratcher, like why was it a fight? In doing that, I just think they round out the picture of what citizens look like, and what society should provide citizens, not just male citizens. As far as me personally, I think what they have contributed and their voices, it allows me to stay on top of that. To what extent can candidates—do they know what’s going on in women’s lives, and children’s lives, and their community? Do they have a plan to use public resources to be able to help? Do they know what they are talking about? Do they do their research? You know, not just women, but men go to college too. They absolutely know how to do research in that area. So I don’t accept the fact that you don’t know. It couldn’t be easier right now, all you really have to do ask Siri if you are going to be that lazy. But you also have resources like aides. You have libraries that Ben Franklin founded. So it’s not that there’s a lack of resources, there’s a lack of effort. I think women and children, if you talk about the Parkland students, they are not taking laziness and disengagement as an excuse anymore. They want you to put your efforts into doing your job. If your job is a representative, then represent. But to do that, you have to have information, and you have to have accurate data on people, which if you went to high school and you went to college, you know how to do this. You are not doing this, we are not accepting 25 laziness anymore. We are asking for accountability as they would ask for accountability. That’s what I’m looking for, people who have the skills, are they just choosing not to do it because this, “I don’t know.” It’s not going to fly anymore. We’ve passed a critical point. KH: Is there anything else you’d like to share? DH: These interviews are great. I don’t know if it’s something that has to be transcribed, but I just appreciate you being able to do these because I think collectively it is data about not only where we are at, but where we have been. Again, it can be used for civic purposes too. That we are able to reflect, not only our experience but our community’s experience too. You’ve allowed a platform for it to be seen as legitimate data. So I appreciate that. KH: Well thank you. DH: You are welcome.