Oral History Program Rebecca Schull Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 22 July 2024 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Rebecca Schull Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 22 July 2024 Copyright © 2025 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 Connecting Weber: History of the Cultural Centers oral history project documents the memories and history of the various cultural centers that were open at Weber State University. These centers included the Multicultural Center (later called the Center for Belonging & Cultural Engagement), Women's Center, Native American Cultural Center, Asian American and Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Pan-Asian Cultural Center, Black Cultural Center, and the LGBTQ Resource Center. The centers were closed in July 2024 due to state legislation. ____________________________________ 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: Schull, Rebecca, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 22 July 2024, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Rebecca Schull conducted by Lorrie Rands at Weber State University’s Stewart Library on July 22, 2024, and concerns the closure of the culture centers at Weber State University. Schull discusses the impact having support from a community had on her education and the difference the cultural centers, particularly the Women’s Center, made. Also in the room is Raegan Baird. LR: Today is July 22, 2024. We are in the Stewart Library, room 122, with Rebecca Schull doing an oral history interview about the culture centers for a new project here in Special Collections and University Archives. I'm Lorrie Rands conducting, and Raegan Baird is on the camera. Thank you so much, Rebecca, for your willingness to share your story. So, let's just start at the beginning with when and where you were born? RS: I was born in a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. Born on Labor Day because the doctor wanted to get to his vacation, so he gave my mom a C-section she didn't need. So, September 3rd, who knows how many years ago? None of your business, and I have been in Utah since. LR: Where did you grow up? RS: I grew up in Warren, which is a township associated with Plain City, Utah, which is west of Farr West, which is west of North Ogden, which is north of Ogden, which is where Weber State is. LR: So, Warren is unincorporated, is that what you’re saying? RS: It was when I grew up there. It was later incorporated into Plain City, I believe. LR: Oh, okay. Growing up in Plain City, what are some of your memories of that? RS: I remember not really fitting in, kind of being a fish out of water. Very agricultural area. We had far more farmland than homeland. We had three functioning dairy farms in my family's three blocks that we were around. So, very rural, very 1 agricultural. I was always a reader, and I was always a singer, and already kind of melancholy, so I didn't really fit in with the rodeo queens, and, you know, that was just not my people. I remember making most of my childhood memories with my siblings rather than with friends or neighbors or anything like that. LR: Speaking of siblings, how many siblings do you have? RS: I have seven siblings. I'm the fifth born with three older brothers, an older sister, me, a younger sister, a younger sister, and then a younger brother. LR: Okay, so you have two younger sisters and a younger brother? RS: Yeah. LR: Oh, you have seven siblings, okay. I'm doing the math in my head. RS: It's an even split, boys and girls. LR: Oh, four of you, okay. So, when you went to school, having spent most of your time with your siblings, how was incorporating into education that way? RS: We were all very smart, so it was kind of like I would go into a classroom, "Oh, you're Holley's sister, oh, you're Chris's sister, great.” We already kind of know, we already have a good rapport, because I am the kid that came next out of the line of good students. Made friends, some of us were more outspoken and rowdier than others, me included, but it was nice to have—this is probably too formal of a word but—a lineage ahead of me. To be the next Schull kid was a good thing. I think in a family dynamic like that, we became so cliquish and we became so used to the way that we interact with each other that that became our normal, and people outside of that were like not normal, so we didn't know how to interact with people who weren't our siblings as well as we could with each other. LR: As you progressed in your education, did that start to change? As you got a little bit older, and you’re in school, did that change or was that still that “This is the family dynamic and we're staying here?” If that makes sense. 2 RS: Yeah, I think I caught on. Really towards middle school was when I started really being good with people. It's such a small town and I grew up with so few people that it was very, I mean, the first impression from kindergarten lasted through sixth grade, you know? I do think I got better. I got a better sense of how to be social, I got a better sense of myself and what I brought to the table and what people liked about me. I think that came around junior high, and that's when I kept up my academic progress. I was doing really well in all my classes. That's when I'm in a junior high, and we have classes available that are honors classes. We have extracurriculars like drama, music, available to me for the first time. It got fuller: more friends, more things to do that matter to me, better classes better suited to teaching me on a level I was wanting to engage with. Everything kind of got better around that point. Except I was a teenager, so everything got worse. LR: Did you ever notice a time when that dynamic between family and school and other friends shifted more towards "Look what I can accomplish out here?" Do you remember when that that happened? RS: Yeah, I think I was probably always one of the more accomplished of the kids in our household. We did have to fight for attention, we've only got one mom and dad. There was a lot to fight for, and my accomplishments were always high. I was always doing cool things in music. That was the way I think I got a lot of positive attention at home, so this gave me a new avenue to do more with that, to have more accomplishments. But it didn't change much about how I tried to get that positive attention at home. I think the dynamic with siblings changed a little bit as I grew up from seeing each other as friends, but also we're fighting for attention and resources at home, to, as we became teenagers, we're fighting in a different way, in the way that teenage girls fight, but we're also better friends, and we're also more 3 able to distinguish ourselves as separate people with separate interests now that there are more available to us because we’re in a larger pool, more classes, things like that. LR: Okay. So, let's talk about high school. Where did you go to high school? RS: I went to high school in Fremont High School, which is in Plain City. I think when I went there it was a 5A school, and now I think it's 6A. But it is like a mile from our house. In such a small town, it's central, to the point that if you were to give some directions, "Oh, it's a block past Fremont" kind of a thing, being a landmark. LR: As you're as you're going through your high school career, you've already discovered music, you've discovered all of these new things in junior high. How does that become more of a reality in high school? RS: Watching my older siblings go through high school, there was a teacher there, his name is Geoffrey Anderson, and he taught choir there, and I just wanted to be in Mr. A's choirs all growing up. When I finally got there, I did everything I could to make room in my schedule to be in everything that was available to me in his classes. So, I was taking early morning seminary, and I was taking online classes, to make as much room as possible for choir and his bell choir. Later on, I was in the chamber choir, but also the concert choir. It dominated my identity, and it dominated my time, and I loved it. He became a mentor to a great degree. He gave me recommendation letters to internships and programs and the program here. He later, as the director of the Utah Music Educators Association, the president of the Utah chapter, after I graduated from Weber State, I was invited back to work on a special project. I was able to go back and ask him, “Hey, how do you do it?” He had some really sage advice for me, and that propelled me to be able to make a legacy for myself here at Weber State starting a bell ensemble for the first time with Doctor Henderson and 4 the choir department. So, even post-baccalaureate, he's still had a huge impact on my life. I looked forward to him all of my childhood, look back at him all of my adulthood. He was a transformative figure in my life. I also benefited so much from the drama at Fremont High School. I was in the theater program. My senior year, I was in a musical that, having been scouted by the Utah Festival of Opera and Musical Theater, got me an internship with them. So, out of high school, a lot of a lot of opportunities came my way from the performing arts at Fremont, which were supported to a greater degree than I think they are in other rural high schools. That was thanks a lot to Doctor Belnap, who was our principal at the time. His son was an athlete, he had every reason to be like every other principal and really favor them, but he really kept an eye out for how the arts were doing. Hat's off to him. LR: Were you encouraged to pursue an education beyond high school? RS: My parents both hold bachelor's degrees. I think they know that education is important, and I think they love education. But we were a family on my dad's income. My mom stayed home to raise the eight children. Six out of eight of us have genetic diseases, so no money to spare. In fact, no money. So, I kind of always grew up believing that I couldn't go to college. That was probably not something ever told to me directly, but I think because of the way I saw money in my home it seemed so impossible to pay for big things, and I had a belief that I just wouldn't go to college. My parents obviously told me, you know, “You're going to be responsible for getting to college on your own, we can't pay for anything.” I think it was just internalized beliefs that made me think having to do it on my own means it's impossible to do. When English teachers at the end of the year would be like, “Are you going to go to college? Who's planning to do this and that?” I would never be planning to go to college. 5 Then, in my junior year, I took AP language with Brian Fendrick. Throughout the whole year, I felt like finally, I could sink my teeth into this class, it was finally hard enough, finally juicy enough. I loved it. The time came for us to start signing up to take the AP test, and I didn't even bother because I wasn't going to college. That's an $80 test to take at that time, and I wasn't going to college anyway, not doing it. He paid for it, he signed me up, and he said, “You're taking the test.” That was the first time I think I realized it would be a waste not to go. That was the first time the conflict really hit me of “Everybody sees this in you, you kind of know it about yourself. You do well in academia, you love learning, you have a bright future, you're special.” Not special as in no one else can go to college, but there's something in you. People believe in you and people want you to do well. You have support, and you should do it. I think another time that that was made clear to me was after high school. I was taking a gap year thinking I would save up for my first semester of college, see if I could get any scholarships after that. My high school voice teacher, I'd had voice lessons with her on and off growing up. It was something where when my grandparents could pay for it, we would have lessons. She reached out and she said, “I've signed you up for an audition time with the Weber State choirs. You're auditioning. We're going to get you a scholarship. You're going to go.” “Okay?” Her name was Evelyn Harris. She, I believe, started the vocal program here at Weber State, grew it into what it is now, then as she got older started teaching adjunct voice, but not running the program anymore. To this day, I think she's nearing 90, she still teaches voice here as an adjunct professor. She was given, a few years back, an honorary doctorate for just the massive amount of work. She 6 built the program from the ground up, so her knowing how the program works and knowing what they need, she saw the hole that I could fill. After she signed me up for that, I had a really good friend in the program. He was a piano major. His name is Jonathan McDonald. When he found out that I was auditioning he said, “Well, I'll play for you. Let's do this.” So, day of, I came from my job, changed in a bathroom stall into a dress I could audition in, went in. Sang two pieces and was woefully underprepared with music theory and technical musical knowledge, but I had a really stellar audition. I remember the choral professor, Doctor Mark Henderson said, “You have an extraordinary ear, and I think you've coasted on that for a long time. That will not fly here.” Then he gave me a full ride. So, thanks for that. But that was pivotal. Just every step along the way, somebody helped me. Somebody pushed me. Looking back, I'm surprised that people could see someone with so little ambition or drive or belief that they could go and get an education, and they did all the believing and all the work for me. It's humbling. I'm very grateful for it. I want to give back and be that person for people. But it's so remarkable that so many people were pushing me. It was just the power of a community taking care of someone they care about more than I cared about myself, more than I was ambitious for myself. LR: So, it sounds like through the help of others, your internal dialogue changed from “I can't do this” to “I can and I should.” RS: Yeah. Can, should, and a step further, I need to do it for other people, because I was not going to start out by doing it for me. I don't know anybody who could overcome what in their head seems like an insurmountable obstacle for just themselves. I don't know many people who have that kind of motivation. But when there's others behind you, that's a hell of a motivation. 7 LR: That's true. So, you mentioned you took a gap year between high school and college, and you were doing something with the opera. Will you talk about that a little bit? RS: Yes. I mentioned earlier I think, I won an internship with the Utah Festival of Opera and Musical Theater. It was run, at that point, by Michael Ballam, who's kind of a name in the Utah theater arts you might know. He runs the theater, and his daughter ran the high school internship and program. It's also associated with the Jimmy Awards, the high school theater awards. So, I won that internship—again under much help of other people saying “You need to audition for this, you need to apply.” That was the summer after high school and I went and I was just a paid intern in their shows. This was my first taste of opera at all. I'd sung classical-ish in my private voice lessons, and I'd sung classical-ish in choir, but never opera. Who sings opera in high school? I don't know anyone. I got a taste of professional performing, of what that world looks like. It was terribly exciting to me, and eye opening, and much less glamorous and much more fun than I thought it would be. I saw that I was useful and I was wanted, and there was a place for me in a professional setting. That I had that much to bring to the table with music. That was bolstering to my ego in probably an unproductive way, but also to my selfconfidence and my trust in my value in my field. LR: How do you think that internship helped prepare you for working on your degree here at Weber? RS: It was the catalyst to me choosing music over theater. There are a lot of reasons why I chose what I did, but that was the first taste I had of classical performing in a real way. It was fabulous and I love it. 8 It got me in touch with Doctor Karen Bruestle, who runs the vocal program and is the director of the operas here at Weber state. I remember having a talk with her. Obviously, she was pitching to try to get me to join the program, but also just a discussion about why a person might fit better in opera than musical theater or vice versa. She had some really important insight for me specifically. I'm very tall. I've never been cast as an ingenue in my life, and I never would. So, if I want big roles, yes, there's always a place for a good voice in opera. You're always going to be cast if you can sing the part, which is not always the case in musical theater. No shade to musical theater, but, I mean, that's the case. So, from a practical standpoint, having a place on the stage was great for opera over musical theater, but also the degree I enrolled in and later graduated from is a classical music degree. All of the musical knowledge that comes with that of music history, theory, composition, conducting, general musicianship is the core of that degree. My voice was the instrument of study, like how a violinist learns all about how to be a musician and they apply it to a violin. I was excited to learn. I used to say all the time, I started in this program as a good singer with a good voice and I left the program as a good musician. I was really proud of that and I really was excited to start that. To a greater degree than I realized, it changed my voice, it changed my opinion of myself, it humbled my ego—which thank God—and it made me a part of the classical music world. Which is problematic in some ways, but also I love having a rich history, and I love being part of tradition and the past and the future, and I love classical music. So, that was how that internship was the catalyst for me graduating with a vocal performance degree. LR: When did you start here at Weber as an undergraduate? RS: I started in 2017 as an undergraduate student. LR: How did you interact with the culture centers here on campus? 9 RS: So, my first interaction with the women's center—which is the cultural center that I primarily interacted with—I started with my sisters, Holley and Cassie, my older and my younger. Holley had taken a gap year after going to a different college. I had taken one gap year, and Cassie had just graduated from high school, and we all came to Weber and started in the same semester in the same degree. Cassie, my younger sister, at the time was dating a man in her congregation. Unfortunately, he was using some illicit substances, and the way that he interacted with those was that he was a really unsafe person. It took some time for her to be convinced that her safety was more important than not hurting him, and when she tried to break up with him things were really, really ugly. He was a piano major, so we're in the same building, a lot of the same classes. She didn't know how to be away from him in a way that made her safe. So, we found the Women's Center. I think we searched the website, looked for resources, maybe talked to someone. But we found the Women’s Center. The women's center first worked with the police to get a restraining order against him. They did this marvelous thing that we didn't know they would be able to do, but they arranged for the class schedules of both my sister and her ex-boyfriend to be reorganized so that they would never have to be in class together, and even to avoid parts of campus. That's not as possible when you're in the same building for most of your classes, but they did everything they could to make there not be a reason why you had to be around her, as well as putting the police on guard to let her know she was being watched out for. I mean, it was her first semester. I have the second-hand stress of being the sister of someone in a crisis, but she started college and immediately started getting stalked, you know what I mean? I'm really grateful that the Women's Center was 10 there, was known about well enough that people could point us in the right direction, and kept my sister safe. Having my sisters with me on campus was probably the final thing that made it possible for me to go to college. You know, we talked about growing up, they were my clique, they were the people I understood how to be around. They were my social—not crutch, but they were what made me feel safe to start in a completely new environment. They made me brave and they both left their degrees to get married. I stayed to the end of mine, but those first couple of years were so easy and comfortable because I had built-in friends. So, I'm grateful Cassie was able to stay as long as she did because she was taken care of here on campus, and that was entirely due to the Women's Center. Did I answer the question? LR: Yes, you did. That was basically your first semester here at Weber, and knowing now that you have the Women's Center, that you have that resource, how did that resource help you further on down the line? RS: I've always kind of been busybody helper kind of person. I loved knowing what resources were on campus because my friends would bring up, you know, we're all complaining in the hallway with each other, waiting outside our classroom, and they would bring up what they were going through. I’d go, “I know where on campus you can get help with that.” It was awesome being able to point my friends to the Women's Center. We live in a state and a city that are not always conducive to women's health and safety, and the Women's Center was a discreet place to get help with those things. It was kind of an oasis from a culture that I would say is not just indifferent but hostile towards women's reproductive health, women's safety and well-being from partners. I mean, it's so valuable to students, but it was nice for me to have a place to just say, “I know immediately how to get you help.” 11 Later on in my degree, probably the last year or so, I took a women and gender study class with Doctor Jessica Pleyel, who at the time was a victim advocate on campus I believe was her main role, and she—fabulous teacher, incredible feminist, intersectional as hell, love her to death. She, in one of our lessons on Title IX, taught us about reporting and what we have protections from under the law. I think she could kind of feel from the students in the classroom at the time that several of us had something we needed to say to her about that because she would be a reporting person. At the end of class she said, “If you need to talk to me, I've got a few minutes, I'll stay in the room.” A number of us kind of lined up to one-by-one talk to her, and she pulled us aside and had these conversations. For a long time in my program, there was a tenor who did and said things that were inappropriate and was kind of notorious for it. Later on, I would discover that none of the teachers knew, nobody had any idea. He had a well-known reputation among the students, but nothing was ever told to anyone in authority. I think that that says a lot about the general nature of sexual misconduct and the feeling of victims to want to stay silent, or the shame of not wanting to share it. But he operated in this way that was inappropriate for a very long time. Most of my friends had had physical, or over text, or spoken. There was a lot of misconduct, harassment, to the point where some of it was sexual assault, I think. I shared all of this with Doctor Pleyel, and she helped me to learn how to report, and I reported then to her the Title IX grievances that I had and my friends had had against this person. In the resulting report that we made, I made a statement of what I'd seen, what had happened to me and my friends. Most of what happened to me was, I won't say negligible, but nothing I would be uncomfortable talking about. But a lot of things that had happened to other people were things that 12 were really not my business. So, I reported what I had seen and experienced, but then I mentioned that there were so many women in my department who had experienced other things, but it wasn't my business to share. So, I texted those people and I said, “Hey, I've just learned about Title IX, I've just learned about what we're protected from. If you're in a place where you feel comfortable talking about it, I would love if you would email Doctor Pleyel and give your story as well, because I feel like getting a record of what this person has had a pattern of doing here on campus is important.” I invited them to do that, gave them all the information they needed, but I didn't follow up with any of them just because I felt like it wasn't my business to make them dig that up if they didn't want to. But I do know that a couple people then spoke with Doctor Pleyel about it as well. So, knowing just that we had some basic legal protection and that what was happening to us was inappropriate and there was something we could do about it. I don't think anyone ever escalated it to legal action, but there's something very reassuring to me that there's a paper trail now. You know, just a little note out there in the ether. LR: I get it. So, you started in 2017. When did you graduate with your degree? RS: I graduated with my Bachelors of Music in April 2023. LR: Okay, so that means you were on campus during Covid from start to finish, if you will. Not that it's over, but from start to when we were allowed to come back. Talk about that in relationship to the music program. How did Covid affect that? RS: I remember the nonchalance that kind of a lot of people had in my social circle that was a lot of what I was seeing until it became an American concern. It was a joke globally until it became an American concern. Which is a pattern, I will say, of our conduct as a nation. Then, when it became like, “Oh, is our country going to shut 13 down? Is our country safe? We've got a lot of cases here.” At least in my social circle, that's when I started to see people worried about it. I think the faculty, the professors of the music program that I worked with were taking it seriously before they were forced to. When you think about things like choir, we're singing and aspirating at such a high rate, I mean, if one person in the choir gets sick, we all get sick. It's a running joke for all time. So, the idea that there was a virus that we knew so little about. I think it's very meaningful to me looking back to see how careful Doctor Henderson was about having us start to space out, and that was a precaution he chose. Then when it became apparent that we as Weber State would be shutting down, we went to class that day and we sat down and he said, “Okay. Go home, I'll let you know when to come back.” There was an air in the room that was very serious. But he's a man of little words and so him saying that kind of flippantly did not—None of us were under any pretense that it was not a serious thing. So, we were all dismissed and told we would come back when we were allowed to come back. Then I went and I had lunch at the Corner Bakery Café, which is two blocks down from here, and I cried into my salad, and then I came back for a production meeting. I was the social media manager for the opera that we were putting on at the time, and I came into this production meeting. It was solemn, very quiet, no one knew what to say. Dean Springer jumped in and just said, “Okay, what do we need? We need to find a way to get everything out of the performance space and into storage for a couple months until we come back.” So, he offered to pay to ship everything out and get everything cleared and into storage that he would also pay for out of his discretionary budget. He was just jumping in to save things as much as possible. I will never forget how great that was of him. He has now left the 14 university, but he just was a fabulous dean and I was always a big fan of the way that he took our concerns very seriously. So, we packed up and we told ourselves we'd be back in three months and mount it again. Then we did not for unforeseen circumstances. We ended up filming scenes from the opera. We couldn't mount the whole thing, but we did a couple of scenes with a pianist and us all distanced. We would sing one song, and then we would clear the room, then they would flush out the stage for 30 minutes, then we’d come back in and we'd sing. For what a small amount of art we were able to distribute, it was a lot of fuss. That's a good thing, it is a right thing, but it is funny in retrospect the amount of production value that went into the equivalent of a YouTube skit. It just was a lot. I remember the day of filming our lead, our ingenue, tested positive for Covid, so we had to choose even fewer scenes that we could we could put on. We spliced those little scenes with an interview with Doctor Carey Campbell. A brilliant mind. He is a music history teacher, and I know he does other things but all I can think about is world music. He is a composer and he works with Onstage Ogden. He is funny and clever and insightful and just one of those professors who you realize has a specialty, but you also know he could sink his teeth into any subject. He's got a brilliant mind for anything, and he had a lovely interview with us. I think you can see my nightstand in the video just because, you know, it's Zoom from home. But we had this interview about gender and about Covid and about the themes of music and about the relevance of classical music today and about Gilbert and Sullivan as comedians, and it was just so clever. He just knew what to say. I think that was more of an impactful experience coming out of that than performing the opera. 15 So, we were able to do that. I know musical theater did something similar. They were mounting Pippin, and they performed scenes of that. They had rehearsal footage from before the shutdown, and then they also did spaced and masked performances of some of the songs and dances. So, they were also able to put something together that was at least a representation of what they had been working on. I think this was important for grades. I think there's also an element of how do you fund the next show? You have donors and you have ticket sales. When we come back from Covid, we're going to need donors and ticket sales. I think behind the scenes there was probably something of scrambling to prove that we were still going to have a viable way to make art. It sounds crass to talk about that for the purpose of getting money, but it's true. That's how our program works. That's how you fund a university. I think that is part of why they push to, as paltry as it seems, have those film numbers and those small rehearsals and things. LR: Were you doing any choir at that time too, or not really? RS: Ooo it sucked. We sort of did. The first thing we did was we had the choir president pick two songs that were easy enough that we could record our parts alone at home. Then we sent in our recordings, she compiled them into one of those Brady Bunch YouTube videos that you saw a lot during Covid, and our choir sang two songs for the whole year. The next year when we were able to be back on campus, but in limited amounts with very specific rules about spacing and taking your temperature before you walk in the room, we would go on to the Austad stage, which is huge. It is the largest stage we have on campus. The Russian ballet brings it out when they come through because it's just honkin’ big. So, we would space out like 20ft apart in that room on that stage. They'd have the air purifiers going on so loud we couldn't even 16 hear ourselves sometimes because it's huge equipment. Then we would sing together. There are a lot of metaphysical kind of things that go on with choirs. Listening to each other, feeling each other. A lot of choirs very famously will do things where they close their eyes and then they'll all take a breath together and all start singing and it'll be on the same pitch. There's just something about putting out feelers. So, it was really nice to be in a space together again. It was harder to do that, but we were back, so that was nice. I just don't know if we ever got our feet entirely back under us again, though. The department has a lot less enrollment, especially the vocal program. When I graduated in the spring of 2023, I believe there were seven vocal majors. Just tiny. Not that we'd ever been a huge department, but we've put on operas with just the vocal majors, and now there are seven. I'm hoping and I believe that I'm correct in, if I remember this correctly, that we do have higher enrollment nationally. We're starting to see people starting to enroll in the arts again. But also, post-Covid, for the next 50 years there will be research into this. What psychologists are seeing right now is people are more risk averse. People are less motivated to achieve. People are less motivated to do something outside of what's required. People are less likely to look for a degree in general, but especially a degree that is not in STEM. So, we're picking up. We're not picking up quickly, and I don't know when we will be back to where we should be or where we have been. I can't fault people for feeling that way. I don't want it to be that way, but I can't. Who could say, “Oh well, post-Covid trauma. Get over it. Spend four years in a music program instead.” I think we've had kind of a devastating loss for the future of the program because of Covid. Those two years that I was in classes with Covid, Zooming in to 17 voice lessons. You can't even tell what my voice sounds like over Zoom, what are you talking about? Those two years do feel lost to me. So, coming back, I was much more motivated to do well, to make my mark, to get my degree and make it mean something. But I would say that those two years feel lost to me, and I know they do for others as well. I know people who graduated during Covid, walked across a football field to get their diploma, and how grateful they were to even have that. One friend, she dropped out of high school when her mother died. Got her GED, got a degree here, walked across the field and said “This was worth it because at least I got to walk and graduate.” Sometimes I think I may be ungrateful for the opportunities that they still worked really hard to be creative and provide us something. But also, tuition is expensive, and you had a monopoly on my time, and sometimes the classes don't feel like they were enough for the value of what we got. LR: I'm going to kind of shift just a little bit. While you were getting your degree, were you working on campus? RS: Yeah. When I first started in 2017, I was working in a bakery. Then I took a job as an usher and valet driver for the Browning Center, which does house all the performing arts programs here, but also we rent out our stages and we have performances here. I would be staffing those, which meant I could choose. You would just sign up for a shift and say, “Oh yeah, I'd usher for this play.” Then you'll be able to choose hours. It was never a ton of hours, which was nice because I was already working other jobs and a full-time student. That was my first experience working on campus. The next year, I got a job as the Department of Performing Arts student administrative assistant. That was very helpful to me as a student, because I saw 18 everything from the inside at that point, as well as going through it from the outside. I was better able to help my friends and my cohorts get through the program correctly and know how to navigate things. It was nice because, working on campus in general, it's often funded by work study. They work with your hours. You come in when you can, do what you can help them, then the rest of the time you're clocked in doing homework, honestly. It was nice to get paid to do my homework and also get a leg up on understanding how to do well in my program. I would suggest that anybody who wanted to work while they were in college should try to see if they can do something on campus, because it really made the difference of my time not being wasted in between classes. It helped me navigate the university because I see it from the other side. There's a ton of benefits to it, so I always advocate for that, but it was really cool for me. I quit that after a year just for personal conflicts, then my next job on campus I worked in Sodexo as the head baker. Stopped that after a year. There was trouble with the head chef. Then in my senior year, I worked as the student administrative assistant in the Miller Administration Building for the vice president of Student Affairs. That's since been changed to the vice president of Student Access and Success. This was during a time that the previous vice president was retiring or leaving Weber state. We got an interim, the interim being Doctor Jeff Hurst, and then the full replacement being now Jessica Oyler. I was a student who, you know, Brad knows on a first name basis. I was having coffee with the provost all the time. It was just surreal to really have a bird's eye view of campus, really be associating with people who make the big decisions but don't see the little stuff. It was nice to sometimes provide the little stuff if they had questions, but it felt like a cartoon when there's a little character running trying 19 not to get stepped on. I was just a student trying to navigate the fact that I know stuff I shouldn't know and trying not to let on that I know stuff I shouldn't know. But working there, immediately after I graduated, I had a job in financial aid because I had my finger on the pulse of who was hiring. I wanted a job for health care. I wanted a job here so I could continue to work on that project, that Bell ensemble that I think I mentioned earlier. So, I mean, I've always had strong ties to Weber and I do think working on campus made those a lot stronger and made it easier to be successful. LR: Working in the financial aid office, the scholarship office. Does it almost feel like a full circle moment for you? RS: Oh, definitely. When I started here, I was offered that scholarship for the full cost of tuition based on my activity in the vocal program. The logic being the amount of activity I do and the value I bring to that program with ticket sales and the donors seeing students doing great stuff offset the worth of my tuition, basically. I was given that in the full amount of my tuition, which is an incredible boon. So that was the first thing that I said, “Okay, I can go, I got it covered.” Then I was eligible for Pell Grants. So, between the two I tuition, books, fees, stipend, everything is paid for. Since that first semester, there's never been a semester where I had to pay to go to college. In fact, sometimes getting paid to go to college. Now, turning around, working in the financial aid office from the time I saw the job posting, I said that that was for me. I can do the same thing that was done for me. I can be that for other students. Which is really gratifying to be able to say to students who come and say, “I don't know how to make it. I don't know how I'm going to get here to college, help me.” Or students who, “I've never been without a scholarship before, help me. How do I navigate this?” Being the person on the other side who says we can help you; I will get you through. Let's go. It's very gratifying. 20 Then on days when all I'm doing is reviewing FAFSA’s and I'm not looking—I haven't spoken to a single person, I'm just looking at data. Occasionally you'll see a student with such little income, you don't know how they're living. You can say to yourself, “they're going to get a full Pell Grant and they're going to go to school.” So, it always comes back to being able to do for others what was done for me. Not that I could tell you the name of who first processed my FAFSA and got me my first Pell Grant, but I know because it happened to me. I know that it changes the entire trajectory of lives. It changes someone's ability first to set foot on campus, then it changes their ability to believe that they're being backed by someone. That is a tremendous change to their self-worth. You see your value very differently when it has, “Yeah, we'll pay for your college,” attached to it. In that—Not only by setting people up for academic and therefore career success, but setting them up for the emotional and psychological foundation that comes with self-confidence. It makes a monetary difference, but it does a lot more than that as well. It changed my life, and I'm changing other people's lives. I, on the worst days, when I'm so tired and everything is so boring and confusing, I know that this could really make a difference for someone, so work hard, do it right, it still matters. LR: Sorry, I was trying to get the actual number of the house bill so I could ask the next question. Getting back to the cultural centers, if you're willing to share, what are some of your feelings about the closing of the cultural centers because of the passing of HB261? RS: There's a phrase that people who are chronically online—used derogatorily—but people who are online have probably become familiar with this phrase. But the phrase is “The cruelty is the point.” The damage done by taking away simply the visibility of a project removes people's access to it. 21 If you want to take the example that I first had of my sister, she said, “I'm experiencing stalking, relationship violence. I'm scared for my physical well-being. I'm not safe.” Everyone said, “Go to the Women's Center,” because they knew about the women's center. Even if you take all harm out of it, even if there was total harm reduction, nothing bad happened other than we had to change the way we talk about it. What's Women's Center called then? I don't know. LR: I don't either. RS: Where am I going to send you when you say “I'm being stalked on campus,” or “I've been hurt by my partner,” or “I don't know anything about birth control, but I was raised Mormon because I'm in Utah. I think I want to be intimate with my partner, but I don't even have any education on this. I don't even know how it works. Could you send me somewhere?” I don't even know how to say. I don't even know where I would send you. Even if the center was allowed to exist in its full capacities, which it is not. But even if it still existed in its full capacity, as it previously held, it no longer has the visibility. It no longer has the recognition on campus that it once had. Nobody knows where to go, even if it exists in the exact same way, and like I said, it does not exist in the exact same way, because the cruelty is the point. Because the people saying we're not allowed to talk about the fact that someone is a woman. The people saying that are not women. The people saying we're not allowed to acknowledge that someone comes from a different culture are not people of a different culture than the socioeconomic dominant class. To be frank, to be blunt, and put it into the exact language of what I mean. The rich, white, 22 Christian, conservative men who made this law are purposely being cruel to anyone who is not of their exact demographic. Back to my sister. She's experiencing stalking. She's experiencing potential violence. She is fearful of her safety from her romantic partner. Currently, if she were in that situation, and we didn't know where to go, and someone happened to have their finger on the pulse enough to know what the Women's Center is now called, the Women's Center doesn't run as much of that of those safety precautions as they used to. Now, a lot more of it is in the hands of the police. I don't know if my sister is comfortable enough with the police to trust them the way she would trust a center full of women who are saying, “Let's advocate for you.” You can like or hate the fact that the police aren't trusted by everybody, but they're not trusted by everybody, and there's reasons for that. Even if those reasons weren't founded in, you know, the lifetime of American precedents of police violence. Even if they were founded on nothing, that is the way people feel, and they will be deterred from speaking to the police to get their needs filled here on campus. So, the Safe@Weber program—which is what I'm now referring to—now run so much more by campus police will be less effective for the simple reason that people don't want to trust the police with the stories of their intimate lives. Not only are we talking about House Bill 261—Is that correct? Not only in the context of House Bill 261, but in the context of other legislature about women's safety. You don't want to go to the government to talk to them about your reproductive health. There is a reason people don't want to go to the police about whether they want an abortion, or about whether they need protection from their spouse, or they have lost a child or miscarried something. There is so much hostile legislature that who wants to go to the government about things the government would get you in trouble for? So, the Women's Center, now I believe the 23 Safe@Weber Center, if I remember correctly, has been greatly diminished in its capacity to be seen, to be found or sought out, and then to help. It has been diminished greatly. When we talk about my job in the financial aid and scholarships office, there is a long list of words we're not allowed to say anymore. I can't ask someone if they've been discriminated against. I can't say the word bias. I can't say words like transgender. So, if I'm asking a student about their situation and what niche scholarships might exist to help someone in their exact demographic with all their intersections, I can't see intersection anymore. I can't ask them about their demographics. So, if a person is experiencing a situation, or fits into a special population that maybe a scholarship has been set up to help them with, they'll have to self-report because I'm not allowed to talk about it. I'm not even allowed to say the words that I would use to ask them the questions. On top of that, the scholarships that have been set up for—This scholarship is for a woman. This scholarship is for a single mother. This scholarship is for a queer adult. No, it's not. Not anymore. So, we are trying desperately to find words we can say instead, the doublespeak we can possibly do to fulfill the donors wishes enough that they will let us keep that money. Scholarships can't be published until they are legally allowed to be—until the language has passed through legal, because God forbid we come up in an audit having published a scholarship for women. There are scholarships not even published yet, much less awarded yet. Do those students who would have gotten that money know that they'll have money? Are they going to enroll in Weber? Because by now they should have that. They should have the award and have set up their financial plan for it. We haven't even gotten it published to be awarded or nominated by a professor. We are months 24 behind, years behind. Donors want to pull out because they had a vision for their money helping a specific kind of person or someone in a specific situation. The cruelty is the point. The non-white, non-man, non-Christian, non-conservative people are very specifically being targeted and very specifically being hurt by this. We talk about, or you hear about DEI hires, and that's a derogatory term in the media. If I'm in a room with a man who has the same job as me, and I worked harder to get there, he's there because he's a man, who is the "didn't earn it hire," you know what I mean? I think there is a ruling class that has been very used to privilege. Now that they see not even equity but approaching reparations, the loss of having more privileges than someone else feels so much to them like oppression. And they are fools. Our capacity to do good at this university, my ability to do for others what was done for me, to give them the leg up, to start on their journey, that has been reduced greatly on purpose. I don't know what to do about it, but I know we're trying. I know we're desperately trying to figure out ways to overcome the selfishness of this bill. I know we are desperately working to find any way to make good things happen for the people who need them and deserve them. We're doing our best. Our best is constantly being undercut, but we will not be stopped from doing good in our community. We will not be stopped from helping the people who need help. It's just a hell of a lot harder. LR: You've kind of talked about how this bill has hindered, there's not really helped but more hindered students. How do you think students are going to react when they come back on campus this month? RS: I remember when first we had a Salt Lake Tribune article come out that was talking about which schools in Utah were doing more and making more changes based on this new bill that had come out. I mean, I'm a recent enough graduate. It's currently 25 2024, I graduated in 2023. I'm a recent enough graduate, and I'm from the community that mostly is at Weber. I'm from the area, and this is a commuter school. I would think that more people would have heard of it. More people would even know. But it was very purposely done over the summer so that people are going to come back and things will have disappeared and they will not know why, and they might not even have noticed. But the people who needed those resources will notice. The people who needed those resources will come back and say, “Man, three years ago, someone told me about a center where if I needed help because I was experiencing issues in my personal life that I now am not safe on campus, I used to know where to go for that. What's the name of that again?” I think people will not know until they need to know that something has changed, and then they will find that it has been systematically scrubbed from our university. That the very resource that existed to help them has been hidden from them. Maybe this is a numbers game because, well, if you really needed that center, where are the numbers for that? Well, we hid it from people, so there are no numbers. Maybe that's what this is about. But I mentioned before, if you don't know, and if nobody else knows where to send you, what's the point of having it? How are people going to get there? The great news is the people who don't want this to be the case, the people who are still trying their best to help people despite the constant hurdles that are being thrown up, we still know what they're called. We're still paying attention to where on campus they are if they have to move, so we know where to send them, if they know to ask. If they even knew. But when you take out—we're not allowed to call it a women's center. When a student searches women's help, what are they going to find? 26 So, I think students are going to come back. Students are going to have—I mean, God willing, the students are safe and God willing, the students have everything set up and they're okay. That's not the case. There are tens of thousands of students here. A handful, at least, are going to need the help and not be able to find it. I think there's not going to be enough discussion or discourse, there's not going to be enough talking about it that they'll even know what's changed or that something has changed. But I think we'll feel, as we are trying to become a Hispanic serving institution, and we've lost all of our cultural centers. We're going to feel the detriment of—Well, I was going to say this is no pun intended, but actually, let's use this word and mean it. We're going to feel the consequences of whitewashing this university. So, losing the status, as I believe we will, of trying to become a Hispanic serving institution, I believe we will not be able to meet those goals because of these changes. I think that the noblest goals of this university, the loftiest ideas of we're going to help individual people have a better life. Yeah, white men. I don't know. We used to be able to be open and proud of what we were able to do for special populations, for people of specific intersections, specific identities, and now we are forced to sweep that under the rug. I wonder if they will feel that we want to sweep them under the rug. I wonder if they will feel as if they, to belong at Weber, feel as if they will be forced to sweep their identities under a rug. We've masked the best part of us, which was diversity. LR: I like that. I mean, I like what you said, I don't like that. RS: [Laughs] Oh, do you now? LR: Why is community important? RS: Oh. I think I mentioned earlier, it was only having a community behind me that made me do something that was scary or seemed too hard. If I was on my own trying to 27 make myself do something, important, scary, insurmountable, intimidating, I don't have the motivation to make myself do something that's scary. If I have people to do it for, people to encourage me, people who would help me do it, the communities behind me, I can do anything. I have a reason to do hard things. One of the really, really prized American values is individualism, which is the value of the self above the community. Which is the prizing of the things that make you, you. The looking out for yourself. It's tied to independence. It's tied to selfreliance. Those are qualities that we really, really prize in America. But I would be surprised if very many Americans knew the word dividualism, which is the opposite of individualism. It is the understanding of yourself as part of a greater whole, and it is the valuing of the thing outside of yourself. It is, “I am part of this, and I am me because I am part of this.” Either extreme is a danger. In the middle, we have a person with the prize of the individual. The self-worth, the independence, the self-reliance that we so prize. But they also have the community behind them, and they're behind the community. They have the understanding of the importance of human connection. They have altruism when we find both of these traits combined in one person. It's the way that cells make up tissue, and then tissue makes up an organ, and then organs make up a person, and then a person makes up a society. If the cell dies, the person dies, and the society dies. The very smallest, most individual component is as important as the greatest whole component. But you don't prize an organ more than you prize a person. So, a balance of individualism and dividualism is an understanding of the greatest whole and the smallest individual, and their value to each other, and the relationship of all of them together. I don't think—I won't go negative with this. I desire that we have a better understanding of ourselves in the whole, and that despite not having this 28 understanding, despite maybe some self-centeredness that people can be prone to, despite that selfishness, somehow still we already have community. Somehow still we already have people pushing us to do well, and working to help other people be successful, and taking care of families, and taking care of friends. We have donors making scholarships, and we have people in the scholarship office so happy to get other people money so they can go to school too. We already, without being conscious of trying to be a good community, are community for each other. I would be so excited to see what could happen if people were a little less obsessed with themselves as an individual and a little more excited about themselves as a dividual. As part of a community that could make great things happen, that could push a person into a more positive life, that could make a person brave. Then that brave person, backed by a whole community, going—Like waves on the sand, it comes back with the community as it draws away and pushes something else. How does that tide rise? How does that tide clean? How do things get better? When we push our best forward and our best comes back to us and bolsters us again, that's the power of community. It's the wave always coming back a little bit better. It doesn't take that much. But it takes a little. LR: Before I ask my final question, do you have anything else you'd like to say? RS: I think I've said what I needed to say. LR: Awesome. So, what do you think we as individuals can do to foster relationships and meet the needs of the underserved communities here at Weber? RS: I think our underserved communities here at Weber, I've just spoken about how much I think they've lost. So, the way we do that is we fill the gap. We already have our education. We already have our jobs. We already have a stable place at Weber State. So, when people come to us, can we just have had the little bit of work? Can 29 we just have typed up, if we can't remember it off the top of our heads, a list of what the cultural centers are called now? A list of where to go, some numbers to call? The visibility of resources has been diminished, but the resources are not gone, and we're working very hard to find ways to keep them here somehow. Let's not waste that work. Let's make sure that, to the degree that we can help, we need to help. Maybe we've been complacent because there's a center for that. Maybe now that there's not a center for that, or we're not allowed to have one, we get to know what power is in our sphere a little more carefully. We take a look at what we can do, what's actually our power to do. I'm sure there are small things that each of us have within our power to help with that. We just haven't had to look yet. But now we have to look. So, understanding what's within our sphere of power, being more conscious than we used to, even, of where to send people and what can be done, for whom and how. It takes consciousness when things are being hidden. It just takes a little bit more clarity of thought and consciousness and preparing before you're in the moment. If you already have figured out how to help people, and you already have your list of resources, something to refer to in the moment, it's a lot easier than trying to make it up, find it out of the ether in the moment. You know, they talk about if you make the decision before you're in the situation, you've already made the decision. So, I think it's about preparation. I think it's about being creative within your own powers and abilities. Then clarifying for yourself what you'll be able to do so that people don't get lost. You know, we talk about the Weber shuffle in our offices, and how people get sent to the same six offices and never find one answer. We just can't afford to do that to students anymore. We never should have. But it is so much more critical now when there's less clarity and less transparency than ever before. It's so important 30 that we see the way through when we help them see that, because a lot is being obscured from people. But you could bring in the light so it'll help them see. LR: Alright. Well, thank you, for your willingness to share, and just—Yeah, I'm just grateful. Thank you. RS: Thank you. 31