Oral History Program Mercedes Ziegler Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 9 July 2024 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Mercedes Ziegler Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 9 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: Ziegler, Mercedes, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 9 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 Mercedes Ziegler conducted at Weber State University’s Stewart Library on July 9, 2024, by Lorrie Rands and Marina Kenner, and concerns the closure of the culture centers at Weber State University. Ziegler discusses her experiences that led her to work in victim services, her experiences working with the Women’s Center, and what impact she thinks the closure of culture centers might have on Weber students. LR: Today is July 9th, 2024. We are here in the Stewart Library doing an oral history interview with Mercedes Ziegler, for the— MK: I think this is going to go in the Weber State University collection. That's my guess. LR: Okay. I'm conducting, Marina Kenner is helping interview, and Reagan Baird is on the camera. All right. That being said, thank you so much for your willingness and your time. Let's jump right in with when and where you were born. MZ: So, I was born on July 12th, actually. LR: Oh, happy birthday. MZ: Thank you. 1996, at Ogden regional hospital just right over here in South Ogden. LR: Did you grow up in Ogden? MZ: I did, yes. LR: Okay. What parts? MZ: Mostly South Ogden. I’m trying to think, yeah, I spent a lot of my earlier years in South Ogden. I moved a couple of times, so I spent a couple years in Arizona, I spent a few years in Alabama, but ultimately came back. I lived in Layton for a 1 period, but mostly it's just been Ogden. Ogden's my favorite town in Utah, so it's the only place I really want to live. LR: I can appreciate that. How old were you when you moved to Arizona? MZ: I would have been seven? Seven, I think, yeah. LR: Do you have any memories of that move? MZ: Yes, I do. I will just say, trigger warning, I might talk about, like, trauma and stuff because I have a lot of it, and it's all related. But essentially, my dad made a lot of questionable choices growing up. One of the choices he made was to marry this random woman that he met on the internet, and, essentially, he kidnapped me and took me to Arizona for a couple of years. That didn't work out, obviously. But I remember the drive down. I've always held my trauma in my stomach, and I just remember being sick the entire way down to Arizona. If I go off on tangents that are not relevant, just let me know. LR: It's all relevant. MZ: Yeah. So, he had promised my mom that she could say goodbye to me, but she was out of the country, and he ended up taking me while she was still out of the country. That was one of the worst moments of her life, was realizing that he had taken me. She didn't really have any legal custody of me because she wasn't my birth mother, so it was… Yeah, it was a whole mess. But that did not work out, and he asked if I wanted to come back, and of course I said yes, because this is where my family is. So, when I was probably 8 or 9, we moved back. Well, we lived in Layton for a few months, and then we moved into a condo in South 2 Ogden that's down the street from Ogden Regional. So, yeah, kind of ended up back in the original stomping grounds. LR: Okay, so now I have one more question before we move on. You said that your mother is not your birth mother. MZ: Mm-hmm. LR: So, were you adopted, or did you know your birth mother? MZ: So, what happened was, a few days after I was born, she died, due to just complications in the hospital. My dad remarried when I was about nine months old, and so, until I was about four, I thought this woman was my mom. I mean, she still is my mom, she's my mom, but I thought she was my birth mom until I was told otherwise. Yeah. Then we ended up getting legally adopted in 2021, I think. Just for fun. LR: Okay, so you also mentioned that you moved to Alabama. MZ: Yes. LR: How old were you when you dealt with that? MZ: Let's see. It was 2018, so I was 22. LR: Okay, so you were older. MZ: I was older, yeah. I graduated from here in 2017, and that was December. Then in July of 2018, I went to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. So, in 2011, I went on this student trip to Baltimore for kids who wanted to be doctors when they grew up. Obviously, did not end up happening. There I met one of my best friends, Katie. She's originally from Texas, but she's lived in Alabama since she was 12. Then, from that point on, I would go out there in the summer, or she would come and 3 visit me. Once I graduated, I knew I wanted to live out of state, because I never— I mean, I had that one time, but I was a kid, so, yeah. I was just like, you know, we hate saying goodbye every year, so what if we didn't have to? So, I moved down there and I was enrolled in the University of Alabama for a couple of programs that I did not end up doing, because getting in-state tuition down there is a fight. I would have ended up paying like 60k for a two-year degree, and I was not about to do that. But I did end up working at a nonprofit down there that I absolutely adored. I ended up having to come back because I had a family member that got really sick. But I lived there for about two and a half years, and I loved it. LR: Okay. I'm going to kind of go back a little bit. MZ: Okay. LR: So, you spent this time in Arizona away from really what was comfortable for you. How did that experience shape and inform the rest kind of your life moving forward? MZ: Oh, that's a good question. Gosh, I don't know. There was kind of this fear that both me and my mom shared, that at any time he could take me again, right? He remarried when we moved back, and I got really close to this woman that he married, like, she's still in my life. So, it was a lot of me hoping that this would be the time that we finally got it together and could be a happy family. I just would continue to get my hopes up, and then, obviously, that didn't work out. Luckily, he has not been married since, but it was just kind of, I guess, a wakeup call that 4 any moment your life can just be uprooted because you're too small to make choices for yourself. LR: Okay. Do you remember the differences in Arizona? I mean, you were seven years old when you moved there, and I know it was centered around trauma, so that skews your memory. But, do you recall differences between the two, between Arizona and Ogden? MZ: Yeah. I remember there being more racial diversity, which I think is kind of the case basically anywhere outside of Utah. But yeah, I just remember encountering a lot more like people that look different from me, had different beliefs. I don't want to offend anybody, I think LDS people are great, but growing up not LDS, you definitely knew if you were not LDS, right? Like, there were some kids who their parents wouldn't let them play with me or stuff like that. But in Arizona, there wasn't really any of that. Everybody's kind of a melting pot. We don't really care what you believe, how you're raised, but then coming back here I got right back into it. So yeah, I would say that's probably one of the main differences was just that culture. LR: Okay. Do you have any questions? MK: I do, but mine won’t move us on, so up to you if you have a couple more. LR: No, I kind of wanted to get that background a little bit. Let me do this. Where did you go to high school? MZ: NUAMES. LR: Okay. This was back when it was still down at Davis? MZ: Yeah. 5 LR: What year did you graduate? MZ: 2014, so ten years ago. LR: Really? MZ: Yeah. LR: That would be when my oldest started at NUAMES. MZ: Oh, interesting! LR: Yeah, so you graduated the year he started. Interesting. MZ: Yeah. That's cool. LR: Both my children went to NUAMES. Well, let me ask you this then, because NUAMES is a melting pot. MZ: Indeed. LR: Having gone to, I'm assuming you went to—What junior high did you attend? MZ: I went to Ogden Preparatory Academy. LR: So, you went to more charter schools? MZ: Oh, yes. Yeah. LR: What about elementary? MZ: I started at Saint Joe’s Catholic school, and then I went to Ogden Prep, and then I went to two charter schools in Arizona, and then when I came back, I went back to Ogden Prep. LR: So, you've only ever gone to charter schools. MZ: Correct. LR: Okay, so you don't even— MZ: I don't know what public school is like. 6 LR: Okay. So, Ogden Prep, was that more diverse? MZ: Oh, yes. Yeah. It's in downtown Ogden, so it's kind of got that inner city feel. It was predominantly Hispanic students, and it was a bilingual school, too. So, yeah, they really made sure that we got our Spanish there. But yeah, no, I was in the minority there. Which was awesome. LR: So, this isn't a fair question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Having had this exposure to diversity through all of your education, how do you think that gave you a leg up as you're interacting with a community? MZ: Oh, wow, yeah. I mean, they're just people, right? It's really hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that people do that to other people to such a degree, where I'm just like, “Everybody's just a person, right? We're all just human.” I think that having that exposure to that diversity that early on and for that long, I would get up into the age where people were being bullies or being phobic or racist or what have you, and I would just be like, “I don't get it. I literally don't get it. Just be kind to each other.” So, definitely, because then, when I got into victim services—which, I'm sure we'll get into how I got into that—you really have to meet everybody where they're at, and it does you no favors to believe in any kind of hierarchy of people or humans or anything like that. It's, I don't know what the right term is, but kind of reflects on people. I'm just like, “No I'm super cool.” You know what I mean? I don't know if that was even an articulate answer to your question, but yeah, it's such in the bedrock of my personality and who I am to just love everybody and 7 accept everybody as who they are, that it just blows my mind that people aren't that way. LR: All right, I actually love that. So, going to NUAMES, you already had an introduction to Weber State. Were you able to work on your associate's degree while you were at NUAMES? MZ: Yes. I got my associate’s before I graduated. LR: Good for you. MZ: Thanks! LR: So, when you started at Weber, did you go right in after you graduated? Did you wait a year or just jump right in? MZ: So, my sophomore year at NUAMES was all NUAMES, my junior year I was half here and half out at that campus, and then my senior year I was here full time on campus. So, I'm sorry, what was your question? LR: Well, now I don't remember. MZ: Oh shoot! MK: After you graduated high school, did you jump straight into your bachelor’s at Weber, or did you take a break? MZ: No, I went right in to finish my degree. LR: Did you know what you wanted to major in at the time? MZ: I thought I did. I ended up changing my major several times. When I started, I was pre-med. I wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon, which still sounds really cool to me, but I grew up to be squeamish, which, not a good mix if you want to be a doctor. So, I started in pre-med, and I don't know if you know anything about 8 the pre-med degree here, but you need, like, eight chemistry classes, and I am shit at chemistry. I'm so bad at it. I got into my third class and was like, “This is not it. I don't want to do this anymore.” I, at the time, was working at T.J. Maxx and starting pretty young. Like, when I was 17 I got my first promotion there. I was kind of moving my way up, and I was like, “Well, you know what, business. I'm good at business. Running a store I can do.” So, I was like, “I'm gonna switch gears. I'm gonna try the Business Administration program.” Tried that. Hated it. Not for me. Was really bad at accounting, really bad at economics. It was not a good situation. LR: Right, you need those classes. MZ: Yeah. The only class I really enjoyed was organizational behavior from Doctor Jennifer Anderson. I'm still friends with her, she's awesome. I ended up going on a study abroad while I was in the business administration program to Italy, and that was so fun. I am grateful that I tried business for that reason, because I got to go to Italy. Then I kind of switched gears. It got to a point where I was sitting in supply chain management, and I was like, “Why is there a class for this? This is the easiest thing that I've ever learned. Like, seriously, what are we doing?” I was just like, “I can't do this anymore,” so I kind of had to go back to basics of what am I actually interested in? Because I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to do whatever business people do. I just had to get real with myself and be like, “What are my interests?” 9 Then I just kind of wiped the slate clean and started fresh. I took a political science class, sociology, anthropology, women and gender studies. I remember, it was when I was sitting in Doctor Wolfe’s human rights of the world class that I was like, “Oh. This is it. This is where I want to be.” That's when I decided to do political science with women and gender studies, so I did kind of have to start over again. It took me, I think, five and a half years to get my bachelor's, but, honestly, towards the end there I was loving the program, I was loving my classes, what I was learning, and I was like, “It's worth it. Worth not graduating on time.” So, yeah, I ran the gambit. LR: The important thing is you got there. MZ: Yeah. LR: So, quick question about the trip to Italy. That was for business? MZ: Yes. LR: How did—I'm still struggling with business in Italy. MZ: Right. So, we went to a few different big companies there, just to talk to them about their business practices and stuff. In hindsight, it's funny, because Boeing was one of them that we went to, and now I'm like, [short, disapproving hum]. LR: Interesting. MZ: But yeah, I think there were 3 or 4 major companies that we visited, and did, I don't even remember what the assignments were, but some kind of analysis. Then the rest was just tourism and stuff, which was awesome. LR: So, what part of Italy? 10 MZ: We did most of our time in Rome, but we did do a couple days in Florence, and then we did one day in Pompeii and Positano, which was really cool. LR: That's awesome. MZ: Yeah. I'm still really good friends with the person I roomed with. LR: That's really cool. MZ: Yeah. A cool experience, so. LR: Okay. Do you have questions about Weber? MK: As a student, were you involved with any of the on-campus clubs or other organizations? MZ: So, I became a student staff of the Women's Center in 2016, and through the Women's Center I was kind of handed this club that no longer exists, but it's called AAUW. It exists in other places, it's a nationwide thing, but it was kind of a way for the Women's Center to be… Oh, I don't… I hate that I have to tread carefully. LR: I don't think you do. I think you can use whatever language you are comfortable with, at least right now. Am I right? MK: Yeah. Then—Did you explain the editing process? LR: I did. MK: Okay, yeah, so if you need to look through and you're like, “Ah, no,” you can edit this later. LR: So, for right now, just say what you want to say, and we can address anything if we have to. 11 MZ: Awesome, okay. So, yeah, AAUW was a way for the Women’s Center to be political without being political, right? Because as a department, we're not allowed to be political, do anything, really. But, if we sponsor student clubs, students have a lot more freedom with what they can do politically. I was kind of handed this club and my supervisor was like, “You're the president now, so run.” It was myself and then another Women's Center student staff. We kind of took the reins and just tried to do programing and awareness raising and stuff, but, yeah, that was kind of the only club that I was involved in. LR: AAUW, what does that stand for? MZ: That is the American Association of University Women. LR: That's what I thought. But I wanted to be sure. MZ: Yeah. LR: I'm sorry. MK: Oh, you're good. I was going to ask the same. LR: Okay. MK: What kind of programing did you guys do? MZ: We did a lot of stuff around getting politically involved, so like, registering to vote, we did some stuff around reproductive rights, we did some stuff just around feminism 101 stuff. You know, very mid-2010s-type programing. We didn't have a huge budget, so there wasn't a ton we could do, but we did try to do what we could, so. MK: Do you know when AAUW just kind of stopped? 12 MZ: I don't know. When I came back in a pro staff capacity it was long gone, so it had to have been sometime between like 2018 and 2020, I would imagine. MK: That's all the questions I have. LR: Okay. You said you started your relationship with the Women's Center in 201516? MZ: Yes. Around there, yeah. LR: Did you remain with the Women's Center for the duration of your time? MZ: I did, yes. LR: What are some of that changes that you noticed in that year and a half that you were working in the Women's Center? MZ: So, I didn't even know that it existed. I was in Doctor Wolfe's class, and I met somebody who worked at the Women's Center who recommended me, and it was then that I started to see there were people on campus doing work, right? Work that mattered. That was my first exposure to it. Previous to that, I had no idea that anything was really going on, because I was working full time my entire undergrad, and so I would come to school, I would go home, I would go to work. I didn't really hang out on campus. Then, when I was given this opportunity, I stepped down a little bit at my other job to be able to be here more, and that was when I noticed there was a community of people here that were really trying to create safe spaces for folks. This was back when the Women's Center shared space with the Non-Trad Student Center, so, real weird mix of people in there. But it was really cool too, because we would have veterans come in and be like, “What's this all about? 13 What's this feminist life size Jenga you got going on?” you know? That was really neat to just kind of see that bridge form between the two populations that we served. Up until then, I'd never known what an advocate was, and it wasn't until I got there and learned. I hadn't really learned what consent was. There was just so much that I didn't know and I wasn't exposed to that I came into the Women's Center and all these people were so passionate and so just unapologetic with the work that they wanted to do, and I was just like, “Yes. I finally found it. This is my place. This is where I belong on campus.” After that, it was just awesome. I was just like, “This is great. I got my people, we got our work.” So, yeah, that has also made this whole thing even more difficult. MK: Where was the women's center around 2015? MZ: It was in 322, so it was right next door to where we are now in the Shepherd Union building. We're in that main suite that faces out, and then Non-Trad is to the right. We used to be in there, and then where we are used to be a testing center, and so Non-Trad kind of had like the front part of the office and childcare, and then we had the back part of that office where the Veterans Center is now. LR: Okay. I can't decide when to ask this question. I think you said something really telling, that you said you had no idea that the Women's Center even existed, and it's been around for years, right? How common do you think that is for students? For the average? Typically, how common is it for students not to know about the resources that are available to them? 14 MZ: Very, very common. Because, like, I would go out with the pro staff as a student. We would go to classes to talk to students about resources, and a lot of them didn't know. Now, as a pro staff going out and talking to students, a lot of them don't know, and then they hear Women's Center and they're like, “Oh, it's just to help women,” right? They have a very narrow view of what the Women's Center does, and so they think it's not for them, but then I get up in front of them and I say, “We serve everybody and we have a resource pantry and we have food,” you know, stuff that everybody can use. So, I would say it's more common than not for folks not to know what their resources are. Yeah. LR: So, you graduated in 2017, you worked at the Women's Center through that duration. When you graduated, did your time at the Women's Center end? MZ: Yes, it did. I was on a scholarship position, so yeah, it was just while I was there as a student. LR: Did you have career aspirations after you graduated? Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do? MZ: Yeah, I wanted to work at a nonprofit serving victims, which is what I ended up doing. I graduated in December 2017, and up until then I'd also been still working at T.J. Maxx. I ended up just transferring to the store in Tuscaloosa when I moved, and then I was there about two months, and then I got a job as a volunteer coordinator for—It's called Turning Point. It's not associated with the other Turning Point, it’s its own thing. Turning Point domestic violence and sexual assault services in Tuscaloosa. So, yeah, I coordinated, trained, maintained all our volunteers. It was a very small team, so I helped run the shelter, the hotline, I 15 did—They're called code R's, so rape kits and stuff. There was a clinic that I would go to just to be with people while they got their exams done. So, I kind of got into all of it while I was down there, and I was doing exactly what I wanted to do when I was in college. First I was in the women's studies master's program down there, and then I switched to social work, and then there was a moment with a social worker where I was like, “I don't want to do that.” Then I ended up coming back and being a social worker for two years, but yeah, that's what I wanted to do and that's what I did. I loved that job, it was awesome. I loved that place. Yeah, I love the South, I miss it all the time. Their food was so good. And the diversity, I mean, I can't say enough, coming back here and being like, “Something's missing.” LR: Yeah. So, as you're doing this work with the nonprofit, the Turning Point down in Alabama, you're being exposed to all sorts of trauma and violence. What did you do? How did you learn to take care of yourself so that you could show up for those that needed you? MZ: Yeah, so, a big part of it was moving, honestly. I got out of Utah ‘cause I had to. I just had experienced so much harm at that point, and I couldn't foresee a future where I could heal where I got sick, and so I felt like I needed to leave. When I got there, it was so lovely because nobody knew me, nobody needed anything from me. I had no responsibility to anybody except for myself, and so it really gave me the opportunity I needed to set my stuff down. I got a really good therapist while I was there, and I just did really, really hard work on myself, so that way I could show up for others. 16 I think having that space and that time, right, it was very much “I left my work at work, I went home, I lived with my best friend and our two cats,” and my life was amazing. I just felt like I had such a good balance of work and home that I felt like I was in a stable place to be able to do that work but also be able to show up for others on the worst days of their lives and help them through that. So, I think just by virtue of being there and not here, that helped a lot for sure. LR: When you decided to come back, how did you take care of yourself to be in a position where you could find the work that you wanted to do? MZ: Oh man. Yeah, I hadn't planned to move back. I came to visit this family member that was sick, and it ended up being we just weren't sure if she was going to make it, and I didn't feel good about just going back to my life and then having her die. I just didn't feel good about that. But it was 2020, so by some chance of fate, the day after I flew out here to visit, I got a call from Turning Point laying me off from my job, so I was like, “Well, I don't really have anything to go back to.” I mean, I didn't want to move, but I also was just between a rock and a hard place, and I just didn't know what to do. So, it was a very quick decision turnaround. Like, within a couple weeks I was flying back there and then moving all my stuff. I did not take very good care of myself for a while. I've struggled with substance abuse in the past, and I got really into drinking. Oh, so much drinking. So much that I can't even drink now. So yeah, I had a lot of really unhealthy coping mechanisms. But I also didn't want to fall back into those old patterns that I'd been in before I moved. I didn't want to become that same person that I'd 17 been before I moved. I was like, “Okay, this is Utah chapter two, right? We're doing something different because I'm not going back to what I was before.” One of my best friends worked with this therapist that was the director for Safe Harbor, and they had an open position for a community advocate, which is essentially a caseworker. But it was interesting because I had been looking for a job, right? This was the longest I'd been unemployed, and it was only like a month, and I was just losing my mind, because I started working when I was 16 and I never stopped. I had called T.J. Maxx and was like, “Will you take me back? I'm so desperate.” They were going to take me back, and the day that I was going to go in and talk to the manager was the day that I got the job offer from Safe Harbor, and I was like, “Oh, never mind.” Because I really didn't want to go back into retail. So yeah, I ended up at Safe Harbor, and I was going to be doing a lot more of the direct client work that I had done a little bit in Alabama, but not a ton, I was mostly dealing with volunteers and stuff. But yeah, I got there and, you know, it was like, “This is great. I didn't want to be a social worker, but this is fine, this will do,” right? Because it was just talking to people about their lives, what was going on, and then getting them access to resources and stuff that they needed. Or, you know, helping them with protective orders, or going to court. I also helped with doing the code R call outs, kind of everything. Then while I was in there, I was able to get back in with my therapist that I'd seen before I moved to Alabama, because I was like, “Yeah, I need it.” She took me back, which was lovely, and I just had to really get real with myself, like, 18 “Okay, well, wherever you go, there you are, right? So, the problem isn't Utah, there's something inside that needs to change.” So, what is this, 2024? Yeah, for the last four years, I've just been really working on my relationship with Utah, and I was able to get out of the binge drinking hole and get into some more healthy coping mechanisms. I met my husband, and, my gosh, he carries me, I swear. I'm really, really grateful for his support. But yeah, it was a lot of neglecting myself to be able to support others. I would say like for the first year or so that I was a caseworker, I was kind of destroying myself, but it was okay because I was helping other people, right? Then you get into that to a certain degree and you realize it's not sustainable, so then that was when I was like, “Okay, something needs to change. I need to take better care of myself.” I started doing that work, and then it just got to a point where the culture there was just not good for me, I was super burnt out. I just put out feelers, and then I saw this opening at the Women's Center and was like, “Well, that would be cool. What a cool full circle moment to do violence prevention.” So, I applied and then I got it, and Paige, she was the advocate when I was a student staff, and then she was the director when I came back as a pro staff, so that was really cool to already have that connection. Yeah, it was just like a really cool, like, “Oh, here I am again.” I'm downstairs asking if the Women's Center still by the testing center, and the person down there is like, “What testing center?” and I’m like, “Okay. It's been a while.” LR: I'm going to go back just a minute to talking about 2020 and Covid. When you came back to visit, was that at the start of Covid? 19 MZ: That would have been kind of in the middle. Covid, what, started in March? LR: Uh-huh. MZ: I ended up moving back in October. So yeah, it was like six months in. LR: So, the first part of quarantine, you were in Alabama? MZ: Mm-hmm. LR: Okay, then what was that like traveling? Because you flew, right? MZ: Yeah. LR: What was that like traveling back here with things kind of still, I mean, not really shut down, but kind of shut down? MZ: It was terrifying. 2020 was a wild year just in general. But yeah, I just remember it's such a hard choice, right? Do you risk your life or do you stay home and let your loved one die without you being in it? I think a lot of people were dealing with really, really hard choices like that in that year, and I acknowledge what a privilege it was for me to be able to get on a plane and come out here. That is a privilege that, still, people can't do, and so it was very surreal to just be around so many people after months of being told being around people will kill you. I still am this way, just being overly cautious because, I mean, there was still so much we didn't know. I mean, I hadn't had it yet, and so I didn't know. There was a lot we didn't know. But just anything involving other people just was so surreal that year. Like, pardon my French, but it was a mindfuck. LR: That’s actually a really nice way of putting it. I think it describes it well. MZ: Yeah. 20 LR: Okay. So, moving back here in October of that year, things are still kind of in flux. But then you start working and, you know, you're working with the public. How did Covid affect the work that you were doing? MZ: So, for the first, I want to say a year or so, I did not meet any of my clients face to face. I did not know what they looked like. It was all phone everything, which honestly is kind of nice for me. I'm on the spectrum, so when people don't have to perceive me, I think it’s great. So, that was really awesome, honestly, just getting to know people without even knowing what they look like or anything like that. That was definitely interesting. Then, you know, more and more of the stuff was lifted, I would start to get to meet people in person and that was also really cool, because I already had a pretty solid relationship with them, and then we would see each other and be like, “Oh my gosh, that's what you look like!” So that was definitely interesting, because I went from being at Turning Point having people in and out all day, interacting with kids, just all people all the time, and then I'm just sitting in an office on the phone talking to people about the worst days of their lives. I'm like, “Yeah, again, this is so strange.” Just dissonant, right? So, yeah, I think that it gave me some really good opportunities to forge strong connections with my clients, but I also wonder if there's something that I missed out on not being able to just have those in person. It's hard to know for sure, but, yeah, I'm grateful for the way it shook out anyway. LR: I think you talked about how you got into field work, so— MK: When did you start here at Weber again? LR: Thank you. 21 MZ: Oh, okay, 2022? Yes. I should say too, when I started as a student staff and learned what an advocate was and all of that, I learned what an advocate was, and I knew that I wanted to do that because I had never had anybody like that for myself. I am a survivor of childhood domestic abuse, sexual abuse, I have been in abusive relationships as a teenager and adult, and prior to me starting at the Women's Center as a student staff, I had been sexually assaulted a couple times, but I didn't know that I had been sexually assaulted until I got there and learned what consent was and realized, “Oh shit. Oh wow. Okay. I wish somebody would have told me this when I was like 14 or 15 or 11.” So, yeah, when I got here, I was like, “That's what I want to do, I want to be that person that I did not have and that so many people do not have,” because my life would have turned out a lot different had I just had an advocate in any one of the situations that I'd been in. But because I didn't know it was an issue, I never reached out for help, I had never told anybody, so this was years down the road and I was just like, “Oh no, this isn't good.” So, that's kind of my origin story of getting into victim services, like, “Yeah, this is awesome. This is what I need. This is what people need,” and that's what I wanted to do. So, I'm at Safe Harbor, I'm super burnt out on direct client work, and I'm like, “If I can go to the violence prevention side, I can stop people from becoming victims. That would be really cool.” That was my goal coming here, to be on the other side of things so I wasn't having to deal with all of the other stuff, which I ended up doing anyway, because that's the way that things change. But, yeah. It’s fine. We're here now. 22 LR: Okay, so you mentioned not understanding or knowing even what consent was, and I'm wondering if that was more of a cultural thing for you. I'm just thinking about, having grown up in this culture as well, is that cultural, or have you noticed that across multiple communities and cultures? MZ: It's hard to say, because like I was in Arizona for, what is it called, maturation or whatever you do in fifth grade, where it's not helpful. There's no point to it really. But as far as sex ed and stuff, it really was just body parts, diseases, and that's really about it, right? That's kind of how it was down there too. But I absolutely think the culture of silence that we have created for ourselves just around sex in general absolutely has a huge impact on the way that we understand consent, or don't understand consent, because we don't talk about it. We don't say, in sex ed, “If somebody touches you without you wanting them to, that's assault,” you know what I mean? We don't say you have the right to say no. There's just none of that. There's no discussion on what the interaction would be like, what to talk about, what to say, what to do, literally nothing. They give you nothing. So, you're just a babe in the woods, just wandering, getting messed up. So yeah, it's hard to say because I haven't spent a lot of time other places and gotten to know that specific culture. But I do know, just from conversations I've had with some of my friends that are LDS, they're scared of their wedding nights. I'm just like, “We shouldn't be scared of this! It's such a human, natural thing that we have to talk about if we want to stop harm from being done.” Anyway, I forgot the question that you asked me. Yes, I would say 23 this culture makes it really, really difficult for us to even be able to talk openly about it. LR: Have you noticed it in other cultures as well, or is it more kind of a religious culture? MZ: That's hard because in the South it's the Bible Belt, so it's also religious. But there they don't have the same purity culture as they do here. Like obviously there's, I don't know, the southern belle that's like chaste and reserved and whatever. But I wouldn't say it's ingrained like it is here, where we have kids at BYU getting armpit crabs. Like, what the heck? Right? I've not seen people get as creative in other places of the country as they do here in order to get some kind of gratification. Because the definition of sex is so limited to them that they think they can do all this other stuff and it's like, “No, it's all…” Anyway, yeah, I don't think it's as convoluted or covered up in other places as it is here. Because even, you know, Southern Baptist, or my grandma was Presbyterian and I grew up going to church with her, it wasn't something that everybody talked about, but it was definitely not like a “Oh, shh, you don't talk about that.” It was like, “Oh, if you have questions let's answer them.” At least that was my experience. But yeah, I don't know. I went on a tangent, but. LR: It was it was good. So, I'm going to kind of combine these two questions a little bit. MK: Can I ask a question? LR: Oh, yes. 24 MK: When you started again here at Weber, what was your position title and what were your job responsibilities? MZ: So, they remained the same, luckily. Safe@Weber has historically been a program housed within the Women's Center—now it's just its own department— but I've always been violence prevention coordinator. My primary duties are doing the required prevention education for athletics, for clubs and orgs, for Greek life. I also do workshops as requested from professors, departments, stuff like that. But, generally, it's just to provide prevention education on healthy relationships, consent, bystander intervention, stuff like that. I also oversee peer educators who help me facilitate workshops, which is my favorite part of my job, the students. Other than that, I also kind of help with day-to-day administration stuff with the department, customer service, running the show, what have you. Also, especially in the last six months since our full-time advocate became also our interim director, I have been helping more with advocacy, so I've been doing a lot more direct client work, but we are now hiring an advocate, so that will slow down. But yeah, that's always been about 5% of my job too, advocacy. LR: Okay. Has your job had an interaction with some of the other cultural centers? If so, how did that look? How were you able to support those other centers? MZ: Yeah. So, in, let's see, I think it was 2019 when the LGBT Resource Center moved in with the Women's Center. Previous to that, they'd been in Student Services with the other cultural centers. When I came back we didn't have anybody in that position until a year ago, and obviously now that center doesn't exist. Anyway, so we definitely collaborated with them a lot, on prevention 25 education, on programing. A lot of it was just like a joint effort of “How do we be inclusive of our queer students?” because that's very easy to do when you're doing gender equity and intersectional programing. So, we worked probably the closest with them. We also worked with the Native American Student Center, for missing and murdered Indigenous people awareness projects and stuff. So, we did some bridge displays, and then, I don't know if y'all remember this last semester, the handprint project we worked with them on. I didn't really work very closely with any of the other centers, just because when I started there was nobody working in them. The hiring process I feel like just finished, and now they don't even get to have the jobs that they applied for. But yeah, it was a lot of just like, “Hi, nice to meet you. This is what I do. If you have anything you need support with, like programing or anything for your population, please let me know.” But, unfortunately, I don't think anybody has been here long enough for us to actually get together and make plans to collaborate, which I was really looking forward to and hope that we can still do somehow. But yeah, I would say there were definitely a couple of centers that we collaborated with more than others, just because of staffing and stuff like that. LR: How do you feel that you're serving the community in your position? MZ: Like…? LR: Whatever that word means for you. MZ: Yeah. Well, honestly, my main “why” is the students. I love supervising and mentoring. It fills my cup more than anything about my job. It's not fun to watch 26 them struggle, but it's fun to watch them struggle and then succeed, right? Helping them navigate those really messy situations, or conversations they have to have with their professors or with advisors, or just helping them, like explaining how their car works and where to go to get certain things. You know what I mean? Just viewing them as whole people to help develop. It's just so neat for me, and I feel like that ripples outwards. I don't know how true it is, but they tell me all the time that I'm the best supervisor they've ever had. My philosophy really is “If I'm the only person in your life that gives you a break, then that's what I want to be. I want this to be the one place that you can set everything down. You don't have to worry about your productivity, your worth, whatever. This is the one place that you can be real. I’m going to be real. You are a person. You're not feeling it? Go home.” Right? I don't want to be the person that's just making them a cog in the machine. I want them to be a full person who can take care of all of their needs, no matter what job they go into or what field they go into. Really empowering them and building them up as people and as professionals is everything to me. I got a brand-new peer educator last fall who was super shy, not really great at public speaking. Now I watch her give a workshop and I'm just like, “Oh my God, my work is done. I'm good,” you know? So yeah, watching that, and then watching how they impact other students and the relationships they make with other students as those visible peer educators on campus, and watching that network grow, it's so cool. I just love it. The kids are all right, you know. I watch these students, and I'm not that much older than them, but they have so much 27 energy and they have so much knowledge that I didn't have at their age. I'm just like, “No, we're going to be okay. We're going to be okay.” They give me faith in humanity. But also, if I'm in a room and I say something about consent that resonates with somebody and they're like, “Oh, I need help,” or “I need to get out,” or “I need to talk to somebody,” if I can touch one person in that way, that's great for me, because that's what did it for me. Then I went on to help all of these people, and I just think it's such a domino effect, and we don't even know it. So yeah, I'm like, “If only one person gets something from this, then that's one person.” LR: Kind of along with that, what are some of your favorite memories of working with the culture center? MZ: Oh my gosh, my very first Take Back the Night was so fun. It was my first experience identifying as a survivor, and I just remember the energy was amazing. Everybody showed up, we all had posters, Angela Romero was there, it was such a buzz. I had never attended anything like that before, and I remember just yelling my lungs out saying “Take back the night” all our march. I was just like, “Man, this is great. This is awesome. I could do this forever.” I also remember, during my undergrad I had a stalker, and I remember going into work one day and having a little bit of a panic attack, and Paige was like, “There are resources. We can go to Title IX. We can do that.” I was just was like, “Oh my God. Oh. People care.” It was just such an "aha" moment right where the bar was really low, but yeah. Just moments like 28 that. I had a coworker who was like, “Yeah, your stalker came in the other day, I told him you didn't work here,” and I was just like, “Thank you.” Right? Just those opportunities to create community. We made Jenga out of two-by-fours, so it was life-sized Jenga, and we had written social justice, feminist questions on them, and people would come in and play Jenga. That was super fun. Then the retreat that we went on when I was a student staff—which, we don't have the money to do this anymore—but we got an Airbnb in Park City and stayed the weekend and just did Women's Center stuff. There was a night that we all just got to go out and walk Main Street and Park City together, and that was so fun. It felt like everything was a team effort. I always had a crew, and we had such similar passions, and it's like everything we did together was fun. It was awesome. It was such an interesting juxtaposition too, because working at the Women's Center and then going to T.J. Maxx, and people would be complaining about a stain. I'm just like, “There are real problems out there. There are actual problems. I don't care about your discount.” But yeah, it was the community that it provided. Finally, it was a place that I felt like I belonged, which was something I didn't really think that I was going to experience, just because I was such a nontraditional traditional student. I was working all the time, and, I don't know, it was a very pleasant surprise to stumble into that changed my life completely. LR: Would you describe and talk about what Take Back the Night is? MZ: Yeah. It started in I want to say the ‘80s, but essentially it's a reclamation of a time of day, of a place, where gender-marginalized folks have not historically 29 been safe. So, you know, nighttime down by the bars, or out on the streets, or whatever. It’s going out into those places and being super loud and obnoxious and having posters, or having chants. In that way, Take Back the Night is like, “No, I am safe here. I am safe in these streets. I am safe at night. This is also for me.” It's super, super empowering, and we usually do a Survivor Speak Out as well. The last two years I've gotten to do it in a professional staff capacity, and I spoke at the Survivor Speak Out, this most recent one. That was also really, really cool. But yeah, it's just creating a space for victims, survivors, and their allies to take up space, and speak their truth, and experience that community, which is just it's really cool to see every year. LR: Any questions? MK: No. LR: Okay, I have two questions in my head and they're getting mixed up, so I'm going to read the one I'm going to ask first. MZ: Okay. LR: So, if you're willing to talk about it, what are your feelings around the closing of the cultural centers? MZ: Yeah. I feel like I've been in mourning for months now. Well, when did this come out, February? So, since then I've been confused, and angry, and sad, and over it, and looking at other jobs, and just feeling the full spectrum of human emotion, because the image of Weber that I had in my brain was this safe haven that would take people in and change them for the better and take care of them. Then it was a total paradigm shift these last few months, because Weber looks out for 30 Weber. That was really, really hard, because I'm like, “Can't they see that we're in pain? Can't they see that we are miserable, that this sucks so bad? Can't they see?” I'm like, “They could.” This is not the Weber that I grew up with. This is not the Weber that I got my bachelor's from. Luckily I just got my master's in December, but I don't know. I don't know, man. This is not it. There are so many people I've talked to where they're like, “No, I don't recognize it either. This is not what I grew up with. This is not what I signed up for.” So, it's just unrecognizable, almost. That's how I feel. I feel a lot of things, but mostly just like, “What? What? What are we doing?” It just seems so at odds with the rest of my experience at Weber. LR: Okay. You might not be able to answer this question, but I'm going to ask you, how do you see your job changing and staying the same under the new restructuring? MZ: So, the biggest thing, really, is that I'm not really going to be able to talk as much about intersectionality. I'm still going to try to because statistics show that like queer, undocumented, and students of color experience the highest rates of victimization. That's just science. You can't really argue with that. But in the online training that all of the students are required to take, I had a whole section. We had a whole section on intersectionality and identities, and I had to remove essentially the whole thing, because in any of our required trainings we can't talk about intersectionality, we can't talk about oppression, we can't talk about gender socialization. It's very limited on what we can even say, so I do foresee myself 31 having to be a lot more careful, at least with public facing documents and required trainings. I will have to be a lot more careful. LR: No, I appreciate it. I don't think a lot of us truly understand what it's going to look like, so having someone talk about what it's going to look like, what you have to take out, I think is important, and the only way that we're going to make a change is by talking about it. MZ: Yeah, I agree. LR: How do you think the students are reacting to the centers closing? That being said, we're still in summer semester, so there's not a lot of students on campus. But how do you think they're going to react? MZ: Poorly. I mean, from the student reactions I've seen so far, nobody's happy and everybody's confused. I think a lot of students felt the way that I have felt, like, “This place is supposed to take care of me. It's supposed to be there for me. What is this?” I've seen a lot of outrage. I've seen a lot of depression. I've seen a lot of, like, “Shit, this is statewide. I can't just go to another school.” You can't just take a bunch of distinct populations with their own special needs and shove them together and call that Student Success, that doesn't work. Success rides so much on support and belonging and community and like, where is the community? Where is it? It's nowhere. We're lucky, we fought hard to stay where we are in our office physically, to not move, because we've worked really hard over the last five years to curate an environment where people feel safe to come. But the other cultural centers don't have that. They're being moved, and their spaces are being taken over, and 32 I don't know, I think we’re just going to see a lot of [looks around with confused expression]. People are going to be lost for a while for sure. I don't know if y'all remember the old social sciences building. They had to have somebody on every floor at the beginning of the semester to help people find their classes. I'm like, are we just going to have to have people stationed across campus that are like, “We don't have that anymore, but you can go here.” I don't know. I think it's going to be a mess, and I hope that that mess shows everyone why that won't work. But we'll see. LR: You were kind of hinting at this, but why is community important? MZ: Oh man. So, I mean, humans are not wired to live as individual beings, right? We need social support to be able to function. Even though the American ideology is like, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” not everybody has those. But for somebody, for example, if they are queer, or undocumented, or Hispanic, or Asian American, you can't just like walk into a place with a bunch of white people and be like, “Yes, this is where I belong.” They don't understand. They don't understand anything about your identity or what you go through day to day. If you're an international student, they don't understand what it's like to move to America and have to relearn a whole new culture that doesn't make any sense. There's just so much. We need people that are like us around us to make us realize, “Oh, this isn't normal. I shouldn't be feeling like shit all the time. That's not me. That's a symptom of a cultural issue in the society. It's not that I'm the problem. It's that this is the problem. I need people around me that are going to help me see that 33 on my lowest, lowest days.” Because you get oppressed to a point that you're just like, “No, it is. I am the problem. This is me. I should just not try, I should just end it all,” or whatever. Not having people around you that understand your culture, your language, just your way of being, it's so damaging, because you don't feel understood, you don't feel supported, you don't feel like you belong. That belonging is like, if you don't feel like you belong somewhere, then what’s keeping you there? So, it’s being able to have that support around you of people who understand. I mean, I didn't come out until I was in my early 20s, and I'm married to a man, so nobody really believes me that I'm bi anyway. But just having other queer women who are also in hetero relationships has been so empowering for me to affirm my own identity. Anybody in those kinds of situations, where they're just like, “I have to be the only one,” but they're not. I feel like this is very long winded, but yeah, community care is so important. We can't just shout self-care at people all the time when they actually need community care. Because sometimes you don't have the juice to do selfcare. You don't have the resources, you don't have the skills, you don't have the knowledge. So, it’s being able to go to somebody and say, “I'm struggling, I need help,” and then have them provide that support to you in a way that's maybe is really special to your culture or to your identity. I mean, that's what keeps us alive is helping each other. So, anyway, I think I answered your question. Many times over, maybe. 34 LR: Did you have a question? MK: Nope. LR: Okay. I think you've kind of talked about how the students will be helped or hindered by the restructuring, however you want to describe it. So, I kind of only have one more question. Before I ask it, though, is there anything else you'd like to add that you haven't said already? MZ: I will say, over the last year, I've been working on creating this Safe@Weber Ambassador program, and everybody in it has just been so supportive. They're just like, “How can we support you? This sucks for us, but it's not impacting us like it's impacting you, so what can we do?” I just have had so many people step up and be like, “Do you need help with workshops? Do you need help with programing? Put us to work, because we want to create the community that's going to keep students safe now that there is no community.” So, I will say, I personally am very, very excited, and my ambassadors are very, very excited to use this as an opportunity to create community under the umbrella of safety. Because belonging is safe. A community is safe. I am very encouraged that there are so many people on this campus that care so deeply, because I think when we get into all of this yuck, it's very easy to be like, “Weber doesn't care. Weber doesn't care.” It's like, “Okay, well, Big-W Weber might not be able to care in the way that we want them to, but there are so many people here that care, and we just have to find them and connect with them.” So, my goal for the next year is creating that community and being visible to students so that they know they do have people that care. 35 LR: Okay. You kind of hinted at this, but I'm gonna ask the question, what do you think we as individuals can do to foster relationships and meet the needs of the underserved communities at Weber? MZ: Well, you could become a Safe@Weber ambassador. [Laughs] I laugh, but I'm not joking. Get involved. As a Safe@Weber ambassador, people are going to be able to say, “I am a safe person to talk to about literally anything. If you need help, I can refer you to the person that you need, whether you're queer or of color or undocumented.” I also just think the thing that I needed the most in this whole process from the people around me was transparency and authenticity. If somebody in Upper Admin would have looked at me and been like, “This fucking sucks, and I hate that we have to do this, and I hate that we're beholden to legislature, but we have to do it,” that would have meant the world to me. So, if a student is in crisis or is just really struggling, getting real with them and being like, “Yeah, this sucks.” I will say the least helpful thing this whole process has been the toxic positivity of like, “Oh, it's all going to be okay,” or “We just have to keep trying and keep working really hard.” There's something to be said for inspiring hope and giving people something to hold on to, but when you're just saying empty things because you don't want to sit in the discomfort with somebody, that's really, really not helpful. So yeah, I would say be honest, connect with people. We don't have to act like we're cool with this, because we're not. I think just being real with students is going to be the most important thing, because that's all they really have asked for 36 is like, “Just tell us what's going on in a timely and kind manner.” Then just ask, “What do you need? How can I support you?” Just helping them realize that even though the structure's gone, the passion's still here. We still care. LR: Thank you so much. MZ: Yeah, thank you! LR: Thank you for coming with us to share. I'm very grateful. MZ: Thank you. Me too. 37