Oral History Program Benjamin Barraza Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Kandice Harris 12 August 2024 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Benjamin Barraza Interviewed by Lorrie Rands and Kandice Harris 12 August 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: Barraza, Benjamin, an oral history by Lorrie Rands and Kandice Harris, 12 August 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 Benjamin Barraza conducted on August 12, 2024 in the Stewart Library with Lorrie Rands. Benjamin talks about the role his father played in the creation of and running of the Multicultural Center on the Weber State campus, and the influence it had on this life. He also talks about his current role on campus and the need for community. Also present is Kandice Harris, who was the video technician. LR: Today is August 12, 2024. We are in the Stewart Library interviewing Benjamin Barraza for the oral history project that we still have not yet named dealing with the culture centers here on campus at Weber State University. My name is Lorrie Rands conducting, and Kandice Harris is here on the camera. Okay, thank you so much for your patience and your willingness to sit and share your memories. Let's start with when and where you were born? BB: Yeah. I was born in Ogden, Utah on July 31, 1978. So, local boy. LR: Were you raised here in Ogden? BB: Largely. We split some of our time growing up between Ogden and San Diego, California. LR: Okay. What was in San Diego? BB: My father was in the Navy, so we would spend three months out of the year in San Diego while he was doing educational activities out in San Diego at the Naval Training Center. LR: So, would it be a family move? I mean, because it's not really a PCS. BB: Yeah. We would pack up; he'd pack up the whole family. We'd go out there and we'd stay on base for three months. You know, June, July, August, then we'd 1 come back to Utah during the other nine months of the year, and he'd be doing his Weber State stuff and we'd be in school. LR: Okay. So, I know this is not about you, but— BB: Which is fine. LR: Was he reserve? BB: Yeah, he was in the Naval Reserves. Retired. I think he put in 30-plus years in Naval Reserves. LR: Going back and forth between Ogden and San Diego, how long did you do that growing up? BB: It was, I think nine years. I think it was between—I know we started when I was seven years old, and I think 16 years old was my last summer in San Diego. LR: Okay. As you went in between the two, what was it like culturally? How was it different? BB: You know, my father was from California. He was born in Bakersfield, so all of my cousins on that side of the family, grandparents, aunts and uncles were in California. It wasn't unfamiliar to go to California. We had kind of the Utah culture, but had always been exposed to the California culture, and especially the Hispanic culture, because it was, you know, Spanish was spoken in the home of my grandparent’s house. In California, especially in the 80s, that's where we would go, and we were excited about Mexican food that was available in California that wasn't in Utah. Things like that. LR: Okay. You said Spanish was spoken in your grandparent’s home. Was it spoken in your home growing up? 2 BB: Not so much. You know, my father was bilingual, but my mother speaks English, and that's her only language, so it was just English in our home. But our father was very supportive of us taking language classes, and I think that all of the kids took Spanish in junior high and high school. LR: Okay. Growing up here in Ogden, what are some of your favorite memories? BB: Wow, that's a big question. Favorite memories from childhood? I mean, certainly interacting with friends, you know, and the playgrounds and the hills and the winters in the early 80s where we would have snow piled up above our heads and things like that were a lot of fun. You know, things that are probably common to lots of kids: the games you would play and the relationships that you’d make. I'm really fortunate to still have a lot of those friendships from early elementary school, that have persisted to this very day where this week I've talked to friends that I've had for more than 35 years. LR: As you were growing up, were you encouraged to get an education? BB: Oh, absolutely, yeah. My father working in higher ed here at Weber state, it was almost it was almost a given for that. There’re six kids in the family, and all of us either have degrees or attended college at least part of the time. LR: Okay. With your father working here on campus, what did he do? BB: Yeah, he had a number of different positions on campus. He came in initially as part of the counseling center and was working directly with students. He was, you know, then working in just different aspects of student services. One of the key roles that he had, that I remember, was when he was brought in as the director of the Multicultural Center. He did that for a couple of years, and a lot of that time he 3 was in charge of kind of building it up and hiring people and fleshing out the mission of the Multicultural Center. After that, he continued to serve in kind of executive leadership positions within Student Affairs. Ultimately, he retired as a director of Information Services, kind of research within Student Affairs and how resources were utilized and maybe what student populations were not utilizing the resources as much, answering those types of questions through data. LR: What was his name? BB: Louis Barraza. L-O-U-I-S. LR: Okay. As you were—well, first of all, how old were you when he started here on campus? BB: He started before I was born. He arrived in ‘77 here on campus, and I arrived in ‘78. LR: Okay. Did you ever spend time with him? Would you ever come to campus with him? BB: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, some of my earliest memories were actually here behind the library. His office was in the library during his first few years, and I remember as just a child having races with my father behind the library back to the car. I was fortunate to be in the children's school as my year of preschool, so he would, of course, drop me off and pick me up from preschool. Certainly, there were campus events and things like that that I'd come to through for childhood, but then when I became a Weber State student my landing place was always his office. It was, you know, go and stash my books there, or if I needed to study for an hour, a lot of times that's where I'd go. We'd go to lunch all the time and things 4 like that. As I became a professional on campus, we, of course, continued to stop by each other's offices and go to lunch and share the campus gossip, all of that good stuff. LR: [To Kandice] Do you have any questions? KH: What were some of the things that you were involved in when you were at Weber State as a student? BB: I did two degrees here at Weber. I did a bachelor's of Computer Science, and that was kind of from ‘99 to 2003. Then I did an MBA, and I started that in January of 2010 and finished that up in December of 2011, I believe. As a student, I was an employee through all of that, so an hourly student worker in my undergraduate years, working at the Wildcard Office. That was like my first job, was helping to recard the campus, and then moved into an hourly position in that office. Then I was in campus recreation, and I worked on their website stuff. While I was in, gosh, this would have been fall of 1996, part of my duties at the Wildcard Office was to create a web page. The web was very new. That first web page, I saved it on a floppy disk, and I walked it over here to the library and gave that floppy disk to Roy Stock, the web administrator, and he put it in the web server that was under his desk and started the Wildcard website at that point. Later on, when I was working at Campus Recreation, I was doing an early website for them, so my career, you know, professionally at Weber has always been related to the web and things like that. So, to that end, because I brought in a strong social network from high school and lots of friends, as is common from local high schools, were also 5 attending, I didn't really get too much involved in student organizations or fraternities or things like that to build up friendships. I had a strong understanding of the university, and so most of my interactions were through my job or through the classroom. LR: Okay. The web page, looking at what it is today, how was—what am I trying to ask? Because you kind of came in at the beginning of that. How has it gotten easier as time has gone on to create web pages for the campus? Or harder? BB: This would be a whole another interview, because I've spent 25 years, you know, since 1996 till now, so more than. All of that time actually building pages for Weber, and I've owned the home page essentially since about 2000, 2001 till present. That's been kind of my responsibility to make sure that's up and running. So, there are a lot of things that are a lot easier, as far as we have far more people on campus that are able to participate and create web content. But also, things have gotten far more complicated as the volume, the velocity, and the variety of transactions has increased with Weber State's web presence. Everything has some fingerprint in the web. You know, hosting, we wouldn't be able to do it on one server with floppy disks and things like that anymore. In that regard, it's far more complicated. So, we've moved into cloud and other complicated technologies. LR: Okay, thank you. Working on the web, has that been your major position here at Weber? BB: Yeah. LR: What is your title? 6 BB: My title is Senior Manager in Enterprise Applications. I specifically supervise the web application development team. That's a group of five, six programmers and developers and designers that collaborate. We specifically build applications that, when it doesn't exist in the marketplace or it's too expensive, then we will build it from the ground up. A lot of the software and technology that we have on campus we’ll go out and purchase and another team will do some integration work to make sure that it works at Weber. But a lot of times there isn't a vendor who's providing something really niche, or sometimes it's really expensive or we'd have to hire a lot of people in order to run certain software packages, so we'll build it with kind of Weber State in mind to make sure that it works for Weber where Weber is at. LR: That's fascinating. So, how has campus changed over the years? BB: You know, there's been a lot of changes. There's the new buildings and the growth and things like that on campus. I feel like it's a far more professional presentation on campus, which is nice. It feels grown up with the signage and kind of the cohesive vision that I think those that manage the physical campus have been able to put together over the years. I've been to school in a lot of different places. I've been on lots of different campuses other than Weber State, and it's interesting to compare city campuses versus, you know, dedicated campuses like Weber. But the types of people at Weber have changed. I think that is the demographics of Weber County has changed. It's been different to see more Hispanic students that have come on campus. Weber's prestige has changed a 7 bit, that we'll see other races and ethnicities that have a little bit more of a prominent position on campus and in the classrooms, and that's all been brilliant. Then the digital campus and what that's meant has just been huge to how higher education operates, and of course Weber State not being an exception there. LR: Right. Talking about the changing and diversity here on campus, what are your memories of the cultural centers? BB: You know, the one that I remember the most was the Multicultural Center, as it was called. My father was running that operation. I didn't have as much interaction as a student kind of trying to represent a group on campus or something like that. But it was where a lot of my memories come from, you know, dinner conversations, 'cause I was probably in junior high at the time when he was running the Multicultural Center. Later, you know, when I would come up to campus in those early teenage years, I would see some of the things that he was doing, other types of things that were really important to him. This kind of overlaps with the cultural center, but with his Navy career, he would leverage his access there to create opportunities for Weber State students, and oftentimes for specifically the Hispanic and Latino students, to bring them out to California to have an experience on a Navy base, take them on an aircraft carrier. You know, for them to see Hispanic leadership that they might not see here in Utah, he would try and create experiences for them outside of Utah. It's those types of trips and things like that took a lot of time and planning for him. You know, Father was out of the home for a week or something like that while he was taking some Weber State students out there. Over time, he expanded and 8 built more and more confidence and would bring nursing students to see how nursing was done in the military, or what nursing was like on an aircraft carrier. Lots of different perspectives from the health professions groups that he would try and partner with to give them experiences as well. Yeah, the Multicultural Center, I saw through that lens of him developing professional staff as he hired people, and would talk about the new hires that he was excited about, or work challenges of personalities and getting funding and getting representation on campus, celebrating the wins of students, and then creating opportunities for students and doing meetings with them. The Multicultural Center, I think for him, ended up being this really exciting and happy place where he could bring his experience to the table and execute his vision of leadership development and student support, and really focus on those populations that he understood well, because he knew what it meant to be a minority student at a predominantly white institution. He did his master's degree at BYU and had a very different perspective and experience at BYU, and he did some of his schooling in California. I think that he was able to merge a lot of those worlds as he created this environment here at Weber. LR: When your dad was on campus, how was the Multicultural Center different than it is today, or was before it closed? BB: One of the things—I can speak to it a little bit organizationally. I know that is recently when we closed these individual centers, and I think that from an organizational perspective, when he was the director of the Multicultural Center, it was a little bit more cohesive. It was one center where students of these different 9 racial identities and groups would come to. There were full-time employees that were hired specifically to help and engage with and kind of be a face, a familiar face, to these different groups. You know, there was working with Black students and Asian Islander students and Hispanic students and Native American and Indigenous students. Everyone's offices were kind of together, and the common space was just one common space. It was a smaller footprint, probably overall smaller staff footprint, compared to now. I think there's probably some similarities, but there weren't quite as strong of organizational lines for some of these student groups. LR: Okay. As you were a student, did you ever utilize any of the cultural centers? BB: I don't think I did, because I brought so much confidence into understanding the university. Both seeing it and being embedded in it growing up, and then being an employee at the university and understanding so much of how the university worked. I was fortunate that I didn't need to learn how to navigate higher ed, and I didn't need to build a social group. To that end, I didn't have to rely on the multicultural centers to help me meet those needs. LR: You mentioned that your father talked about some of the successes as he was working in the Multicultural Center. Were you able to see that, to see how it could benefit and was benefiting students? BB: Oh, yeah. He would bring stories home of students that had received a scholarship or had gone on to do good things. Things that, you know, achieve their goals, achieve their dreams, whether it was something like going to law school or getting some sort of community recognition for the types of things that 10 they were doing. He would share those types of wins and stories with us. A lot of times, too, it would come in a somewhat indirect route where these students would come back and connect with him some years later and it would be, “Oh, so-and-so, who was a student at Weber these many years ago, is now running this company,” or doing this really great thing that they're excited about in another part of Utah, or California, or something like that. So, you would hear those types of stories and wins from those students years later. LR: How did those stories impact you? Or did they? BB: They probably impacted me on a more subconscious level. I think that hearing stories of success is important to any student, or someone who's developing their vision and passion and goals for the world. You know, seeing your parents celebrate the accomplishments of someone triggers that thing in the back of your head as an adolescent to say, “Oh, my parents are celebrating this. These are the types of things that I should be thinking about. Grad school, graduating college, being student senator or something like that. Yeah, they'll shape me.” But I can't say that I could look to one specific student or experience and say, “Oh, this is someone that I need to be like.” I think if anything, it would probably be even like my father or grandparents or something like that, that would drive a bit more of my personal goals and ambitions. LR: Okay. This question kind of goes back a little bit to how the campus has changed, but I'm wondering how the culture on campus has changed in your time here? 11 BB: From a professional staff position or perspective, we are a lot busier. I feel like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, there were seasons of a bit more downtime, which I think allowed for creativity and creative problem solving. I think now as staff, because we are just busy all day, every day, it's difficult to try and address that type of thinking. So, that's been a bit of a challenge, I think. One of the things that has changed culturally on campus. I think that dealing with students of different ethnic and racial demographics, there's been seasons where I think more people on campus are open to the discussion and say, “Hey, we're working to help this student group that's struggling. What can we do about that? What can we do to support them?” There's been seasons where we've really been able to do that, and then there's been seasons where we haven't been able to do that. I think it hasn't been a linear path or process for Utah, and for Weber State. LR: I don't know if I like this question, but I kind of want to ask it anyway. How do you feel you are serving your community here on campus? BB: Sure. I guess one of the things that I haven't mentioned is I also work as adjunct faculty in the business school. I teach in the MBA program. So, with MBA program, in that group I am working directly with students. I'm seeing the impact in their lives. One of the pedagogies that I like to lean on is community engaged learning, so I try to bring the community into the classroom and vice versa. As far as impact on the community, that's where I go to first. One of the things that's been nice for me, that's really happened in the past two or three years, more so than others, is as I've had more students in my MBA classroom that are native Spanish speakers. There's been times where 12 they're struggling to understand the concept, and I've been able to drop into Spanish and talk to them about the concept in their language, see the light bulb go off, or see it click, or have them explain it back to me in Spanish, and I can give them feedback. Then we'll go back to English, because they're typically at an English only workplace and they need to develop the skills and language of business. I don't try to take that away from them by teaching exclusively in Spanish. But, the past few semesters, couple of years, it's been really nice for them to be able to do that. So, you know, developing students is the community, developing the community through student resources is part of it. From my web side of things, we have a big emphasis on accessibility and making sure that our digital properties are accessible and available to all of our community, regardless of their ability to utilize their vision, motor skills, audio, those types of things. We try to make our—I work with the campus community on ensuring that we start from the right baseline, that everything is accessible. Similarly, when it comes to exploring Weber State’s pages in people's own languages, that's been something that's been important to me to make sure that we always have a strong translate option on every web page. LR: Have you noticed, and I don't know if you have, but have you noticed a difference for students when they can see things—especially those who English is not their first language—that they can see things from their first language? This is getting a very complicated question. I don't mean it to be. Have you noticed that’s something that's beneficial for them? 13 BB: In the classroom I definitely, you know, I've seen firsthand the ability to hear a concept in your own language. Some of my students recently, in this past semester, I was utilizing a digital textbook. One of the things that I showed a Spanish-speaking student, was “Here's how to use your browser to translate the textbook into Spanish,” because there was a concept that they were really struggling with. This upcoming semester, I have a student who is from South Korea and doesn't feel really confident in their English abilities, at least for reading. That's one of the things that I'm expecting to utilize and lean on with them, is to help them see and navigate the text in Korean and then work back into English, to submit their assignments when they're a little bit more confident with it. You know, sometimes working with a predominant group, the Spanishspeaking group locally then ends up having these spillover effects where I, as a faculty member, start to build more confidence with other languages that I'm not familiar with. To that end, I knew and was confident about different translation capabilities in browsers because of my professional experience. So, I don't have the benefit too frequently to see the Spanish-speaking only group interacting with weber.edu. You know, the parents of Hispanic students or other students that might be coming in where English isn't their first language, I don't get to see their parents doing clicks on the website and things like that. I don't have the statistics with me, but you can sometimes take a look at and see what pages are being translated and how much, that sort of stuff. 14 LR: That's kind of cool. I'm really curious, especially because you heard about the benefit of these cultural centers from your father. What were some of your feelings when the cultural centers closed? BB: Disappointed, sad. I think there's a lot of troubled and trying emotions. It was telegraphed, I mean, I'm involved in hearing about the legislative sessions and seeing bills as they you know, sometimes it takes a few years before they come together. One of the things that, as I was speaking with a colleague about the closing of the cultural centers, this colleague was charged with kind of dismantling the websites. They felt really bad about it because they knew that they were kind of dismantling this legacy. I think part of it was, as I reflected on that, it was as a junior high kid, as a teenager, maybe even pre-teen, seeing the effort that went into building these centers. Seeing them closed down, there was a strong sense of loss in the work that went to stand them up. The work to stand them up was with reason. We weren't building these centers because it was an exclusive club for the Latino students to go and do their thing. It wasn't an exclusive club for the Black students, but it was because one of the most important things is to be able to see community and be able to see yourself in different groups of people. I mean, it’s this really innate human thing. We would see and, you know, he would talk about how it's difficult sometimes for students in these different communities to find themselves in higher ed, where they were frequently the only person of color in their classroom. Or they might even, you know, back in the 80s, have been the only person of color in their program, for some of these like smaller programs. To not see 15 yourself in your classmates is challenging, and certainly to not see yourself in your faculty and other support systems on staff was challenging. Those types of challenges and building community, I think, continue to persist. It’s going to be that much more challenging for these students going forward to build to that community, to find each other, and to figure out how to talk about and tackle the types of challenges that they're running into. That was a lot of what my father was doing, was helping them to have these types of opportunities and have these types of conversations that weren't natural. You know, people don't sit down and say, “Oh, what are you doing to develop as a leader?” to, you know, your other 18- or 19-year-old friends. But when you have someone that you look up to and respect says, “Being a leader as a Hispanic person in a predominantly white culture, what are the challenges that you all are facing?” You know, so there’s someone facilitating this conversation, and I think that without the cultural centers that we lose the ease with which we can have those conversations. I don't think that they're going to disappear, but it's setting us back 40 years. 35, 40 years, probably. LR: You mentioned that someone had to dismantle these websites that were created. Is there a website for, what has it become, Student Success? BB: Yeah. LR: I don't even know what it's turned into. But is there currently a website that's been developed or available for whatever it's become? BB: Yeah. The website, you know, mirrors the institution’s organizational lines and departments and things like that. I think that as the student-facing services we 16 are leaning into that are designed to welcome all students, they're going to be dealing with those messaging challenges across mediums. Right? They need to figure out how do we get the message out to all groups, and the ethnic and minority groups that might still be struggling, or might be feeling like their identity is a little bit attacked or damaged on campus. They're going to have to figure out how to get those messages out there in a way that aligns with Utah law and helps the university support all of its students. But I think it's going to be a challenge. I'm confident that the websites exist, but I don't know like the URLs or what their messaging that's coming out of them looks like right now. LR: I was just curious. BB: Yeah. LR: How do you think the centers closing will impact the students themselves? BB: I think that the students that had those centers that were aligned with ethnic, racial and other identities, that they have fewer resources. It's going to be more difficult for them to find each other, and it's going to be more difficult for them to find themselves and see themselves on campus. I think that it's difficult enough getting started in college. It's difficult especially when you're a first generation student and you're trying to figure out how to navigate your coursework. But I mean, even more basic than that, it's where on campus are my classes? Where am I supposed to park? There's these layers of things that have to be done, and when you had a friendly space that you knew you could go, and maybe you didn't utilize it, but there was a space where you could go and land and get some help. 17 I think that there's some good programs that are helping students with the basics. I think there's going to be some serendipity in those programs, where your students from different racial and ethnic groups and other groups see each other. I think that something like the Wildcat Scholars program is a great thing to have, and that it's going to serve as a bit of a stand in, but the Wildcat Scholars program isn't going to necessarily celebrate who you are. It's not here to celebrate your identity. It's not here to recognize the value and perspective that you bring to the campus. It's more about recognizing, yes, you were first generation. You've got some challenges. Let's work together and talk about those common challenges. But we're missing and losing the unique challenges and also the unique, wonderful, beautiful perspectives that some of these students bring to campus that we're less likely to have an outlet for. I think that we're worse off for it, from my perspective. LR: [To Kandice] I want you to have a question. [laughing] I kind of feel like we've really gone through these questions kind of fast. There's this part of me that's curious about, being a first generation student myself and listening to you talk, I absolutely agree how wonderful it was to have someone helping me navigate things. But at the same time, I didn't have to look very far to find someone who looked like me. BB: Sure. LR: I'm trying to find the question, I do promise. I love your take on why it's important to have these centers. Did you ever have a moment where you thought, “What if I needed them? What would have happened if I didn't have the strong,” because 18 you were able to go home and you had that encouragement and that strong sense of community. Have you ever thought what would have happened if you didn't? BB: Well, I know, because my doctoral program is an international one. I'm studying in Madrid for my PhD. To that end, I'm at IE Business School in Madrid, and there's several thousand students at the school. There's a lot of undergrads, there's a ton of master's degree students, and there's a small cohort of PhD students. As a PhD student, my needs are completely different from what the undergraduate population needs and what the master’s degree seeking students need. I'll be out there for a few weeks at a time, but I don't have this benefit of being able to really just marinate in the culture of the university, and to really intimately know where every office is, who the right person to talk to is, how I navigate this challenge or that challenge. There are so many times as an international student there that I go to my—I almost always start with my doctoral program office, whether it's a registration issue, or tuition issue. Certainly, you know, things with the classroom and everything that needs to happen in order to graduate and do the degree. I'm always starting with that office, and they understand so many of the unique needs that I have as an international student. As someone who speaks Spanish but might not be as fluent as everyone else in Madrid, and they go to bat for me. They are there to help me find my way around. When my advisors or faculty aren't sure what to do, that office is there to help me out. I think there's a lot of parallels to what we see here at Weber with undergraduate and graduate 19 students that are trying to figure out Weber State, and this is an office. Sometimes the program office is able to do that, and I think for a lot of students, they rely on that. But other students, a certain subset, see themselves through this lens of identity. That office helps them to navigate these types of things. I know that I rely on it. If I were to have been a first generation student, or had been needing to find my identity on campus, I absolutely would have relied on those types of centers to socialize, to ask questions. Ideally, me on the other side of it from kind of a faculty and mentoring perspective, I know that that's where I can ask those questions and safely develop those students in a way that challenges them, that they're not taken off guard by it. Or we can ask them questions of, “Have you thought about applying to be Hispanic student senator, or the Black student senator? Have you thought about joining this club or that club that aligns with whatever identity we're dealing with in the center?” That type of growth faculty and staff can put into those centers, and that if I were outside of my comfort zone, that type of growth is something that I would not know that I need as much as I do. Does that make sense? LR: Yeah, it does. I have two more questions. Before I ask them though, is there any other story or memory you'd like to share? BB: I'm thinking about my father's legacy and things like that. I think that there's an interesting discussion out there in what leadership means and how we develop leadership within an organization and with, you know, for individuals. It's like one of these intergenerational stories, but I think that it ends up being these things that our students bring to the table. Some of these generational stories, whether 20 it's stories of migration, challenge of moving, being the first one who's moving from a working class into a more professional class, ambitions of education. As I prepared for this interview, it was a lot of that type of stuff that I was thinking about, and that helped ultimately shape, like my father's perspective on the Multicultural Center and all of these other types of things. How I benefited from that intergenerational work of identity and establishing trajectories, whether they're professional trajectories or social trajectories, were all really huge for me as this third generation that benefits from it. Because my great-grandfather was involved in agriculture in California, came up from Mexico. They were, and I'd have to look up dates and things like that, you know, the proper names. But there were farm worker strikes and cotton picker strikes that were happening in the 20s. One of my uncles, one of my great-grandfather's brothers was shot by—and I can't remember if it was the sheriff's department or if it was the farm owners in California. So, there was a big protest, and I think there were seven or eight people who were shot, and a handful of them died. My grandfather was seeing this, you know, he was seeing and heard stories of his uncle who was shot in the protest and his father, who was on the front lines in this agricultural work. Then we go forward a generation, where my grandfather was working in agriculture in California, but wanted to get out of it. World War II hit, so he signed up to be in the Army and went off to fight in World War II. He, you know, during his first break, he came back and married my grandmother. They had my father, you know, she got pregnant and he was off to D-Day. He was there in Europe 21 from D-Day to V-Day. When he came back from Europe, there wasn't—he was in this rich multicultural environment in the army, and he had a leadership position. So, this was something that was new to him as a Hispanic man, because he had been, you know, the agricultural business in California and was seeing the landowners that were white and the Hispanic workers. When he was in the military, he now was at the leadership table. He was involved in these strategic leadership decisions, and he was working with a full color of ethnicities, races, and personalities. When he came back, he wanted a seat at the table. He wanted to be a business owner. He wanted to make money. He wanted to craft his vision of life. That's what his involvement in the community was after the war, was selfishly trying to create community but doing it wanting a seat at the table. He was the president of, I believe it was the—I'd have to look up the name of the organization. But he was the California president of a community organization, and this was the organization that Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and others that ultimately went on to UFW. They studied under my grandfather. They would crash at his house. My father, you know, sometimes would tell stories of how he was upset because Cesar Chavez was in his bedroom and my father had to sleep on the couch sort of things. They had some falling out and things like that where Cesar Chavez and others were very much focused on that social justice element of community. My grandfather was then, you know, more about the economic justice for that community and being able to get a business license and start a business. He was very much an entrepreneur, because he 22 wanted to get his after the war. He had seen war; he didn't want to fight. He had seen the agricultural protests and then lost family and stuff like that, and he was not wanting to be on those front lines. I think that all of that influenced my father. He watched what his dad was doing in establishing business, and just as my grandfather saw the military as the way out from agriculture, my father saw a combination of military and education, out of the kind of working-class world and life that he was seeing. So, he joined the military. That got him out of having to pump gas at his dad's gas station and wait tables at his dad's restaurant. While he was in the military, then the importance of education became really apparent to my father. He was the first one in his family to go to college, and became a high school teacher and did all of this great stuff. He was very insistent that his kids didn't join the military. He said, “I've done the military. Your grandfather was in the military. We've done our service. Education is the most important for you kids,” and really emphasized that for us. That was this view that he would bring to Weber State, was you need to own your story. You need to be proud of your background. You need to bring it to the table, and you need to explore different opportunities, whether it's through military service, whether it's your academic perspective. He had a unique way of developing student leadership on campus because of that varied perspective. But, because my grandfather was able to focus on these very normal things of, “I want to start a business, but I need to get a business license, and I need to be at the table in developing the economic circumstances of the 23 community.” This wasn't a Mexican thing, but it had this Mexican aspect to it because it wasn't just a natural fit for him. He had to go out, he had to fight for it, and he had to become a president of community organizations. He had to learn how to go out and fight with it and negotiate with people and get a seat at the table. He passed those lessons on to his son. My father recognized that he still had to go out and fight to get his seat at the table too to be seen as an administrator, you know, a Hispanic man that was an administrator in higher ed, that had a voice. For me, because of the fight that they had to go through, I didn't have nearly as much of a fight. It's like it kind of lessened from generation to generation, and for me, I've been able to focus far more on my education to get multiple master's degrees and to go and get a PhD and to focus on my career, and less so about the identity. But, if that work wasn't there, if those support mechanisms weren't there for those people who are early in the fight still, because it isn't just a one and done social fight. It seems like every family in every generation has to establish themselves and has to establish their place in the community. If you don't see yourself in the community, then the first fight is to make yourself known in the community. When that gets taken away from us, it's back to that reestablishment discussion again. LR: Thank you for sharing all of that. You keep mentioning community. Why is community important? BB: I think so much of our individual identity is derived from community. Where do we see ourselves? Where don't we see ourselves? You know, both sides of that 24 equation end up being important to the individual. Community is there to celebrate your wins, and community is there to support you in your losses and to help you push through the challenging times. Community comes in a lot of ways for free to a lot of people. I think that we can point out and look at a lot of social issues where when people don't have community and are held in isolation, of the trauma that that produces for the individual. Whether they're the loneliness epidemics or depression types of epidemics, they're in some ways a lack of community, among many other things. But then also the anger and resentment and frustration that lives in society sometimes is because of these types of community and social issues. It's easy enough to—or not easy, but creating communities ends up being a way to move past so many of these individual and these social ills and move forward. I've been a huge beneficiary of community, of having a family and having a relatively stable childhood, of being able to maintain friendships over the years and to easily find new community in different academic and professional arenas. So, I've seen the benefit of community. I think that allows me to observe when people are struggling. I'm able to observe in my classroom when students are struggling more because they don't have a community, when they don't have study partners, for whatever reason. If they don't have community in the classroom, they're not as successful. Finding that community in higher ed, it should be easy, but sometimes it's not. I think that as an institution, we can make it difficult, unnecessarily difficult for people. So, community is a core aspect of humanity. 25 LR: Out of—and you might not be able to answer this, but out of curiosity, what is the likelihood of a first generation student who doesn't find community, what is the likelihood of them staying in college? BB: You know, I could only speculate. My classroom is graduate students, so they've had the benefit of success up to that point. They've all successfully completed a bachelor's degree. They know they can do difficult things, and they know they can achieve in higher ed. To that end, it's a little bit difficult for me to assess. But one of the things that I think is easy enough, and this is maybe the scientist in me talking or the statistician. When we take away a support mechanism, we expect to see positive outcomes decrease. Unless there's some compensating mechanism that compensates more than what was taken away, you invariably expect to see a decrease. You know, if you decrease the total number of funds for small businesses, you're going to see fewer small businesses. If we decrease the resources that are dedicated to the success of groups that historically and currently struggle with academic success, we should expect to see less academic success. Now, that doesn't mean that those resources were unique. There might be other ways to reach these different groups that might even be more effective. But, so far, it seems like nationally, what's been established and proven are these patterns of being able to confidently call out different groups that are going through some unique challenges and to support them. It'll be interesting. I hope that the university measures the success of these groups and isn't prohibited from at least measuring whether or not these types of changes that we're making 26 have an impact, positive or negative, on the graduation retention and frankly, happiness rates of these different student groups. LR: What do you think we as individuals can do to foster relationships and meet the needs of the underserved communities here at Weber? BB: Talk to people, and to really talk to them. One of the things that I was embarrassed as a kid to no end was my father would always ask every cashier and every server at every restaurant, or every random person selling him a car or providing any type of service. He would always ask, “Are you a student at Weber State?” Especially anyone that seemed to be outwardly of a Hispanic background. He would, you know, also dig in with them on whether or not they were going to Weber State. As a kid, especially as a teenager, I was like, “Oh my gosh, so embarrassing,” because the cute server at the restaurant was talking to my dad and, you know, “Don't talk to him,” sort of thing. Now 100%, that's what I do. Every server, every cashier, every person in Weber County or Davis County that I'm talking to, I ask them if they're a student at Weber State. Often, they are, and often they're not. We talk about it, and we talk about what I do in higher education. It's been fun to see them reach out and connect to me, because a lot of times they don't have someone in their family, and they have not been in higher ed long enough to establish confident connections with faculty and to have someone there that says, “I'm here to support you. Whatever else happens at the university, you can ask me a question.” 27 This is honestly a conversation that happened for me this week with a first generation Hispanic student that is anxious about starting college and doesn't know everything of what they need to do and what's going on. They're fortunately part of the Wildcat Scholars program, so I'm confident that they're going to get off to a good start. But also, they're starting to ask me questions about college, because they can't ask them at home because the answers aren't at home. Going out and trying to navigate the website or the internet is a lot, and just putting ourselves out there for those community connections, and not coming in with a judgmental perspective of who deserves to be a college student and who doesn't ends up being important, because you never know what way someone is going to perceive you as part of their community. Even when you might be polar opposites and different in every way shape and form, there is this like human connection that we potentially can make with anyone and say, “Even though I don't see myself in them at all, they see the potential in me, and that's enough to help me get in the right direction.” LR: Well. Thank you. I really appreciate your willingness. [To Kandice] Do you—? KH: I actually do have a question. Last month we interviewed somebody who said that, among the faculty and staff, there's a new organization that's for the Black members of the Weber community. Is there anything like that for the Hispanic community? BB: I hope so, but no one has coordinated or reached out to me. I'm not aware of anything that is specifically targeted at the Hispanic students. I believe that we're still able to have the student-run clubs, but I don't think that they get any funding 28 from the university. I know that there are some programs that just inherently end up supporting Hispanic students. I believe that like the Dreamers organization, the support for Dreamers, of undocumented immigrants, ends up supporting a lot of Hispanic students. I'm hopeful that they're able to find each other through those types of events. I know there's also going to be a lot of events coming up in the year that will hopefully catch the eye of like Hispanic students, but might not necessarily be sponsored by a Hispanic group or club on campus. KH: Do you know if there's anything for the faculty and staff? BB: I don't, and I know it's really lacking. I've been one of these people that throughout my career, I sometimes get mistaken for Italian or my European heritage from my mom's side. Sometimes people's guard gets let down around me in the faculty and staff conversations, and I've seen some, you know, whether it's racist and bigoted types of comments and issues, or whether it's structural types of things that sometimes happen at Weber State where we're excluding certain demographics by having really high levels of minimum requirements for jobs and things like that. I don't know of any real strong Hispanic faculty, staff, association types of things. LR: Kind of on that same lane: you talked about on the senate there was a Black student representative, a Hispanic student representative. Are those still able to be in the student senate? BB: No, I believe this year those that were elected into those positions will still have the titles of student senators. The kind of racial and ethnic identities that are associated with those senators are dropping. Though for this coming academic 29 year and then going forward, I think it's just going to be student senate elections without any type of identity dimension to it. LR: That's interesting. BB: Yeah, those student senators aren't losing their senate position, but they will be losing the identity dimension of their position. LR: Okay. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate everything you shared and your willingness to share it. BB: Absolutely. 30