Oral History Program Mike Vaughan Interviewed by Kandice Harris 9 August 2024 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Mike Vaughan Interviewed by Kandice Harris 9 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: Vaughan, Mike, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 9 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 Michael Vaughan conducted on August 9, 2024 over Zoom, with Kandice Harris conducting. Michael talks about his time at Weber State University and his role in the creation of the LGBTQ+ center on campus. He also shares his feelings about the closing of the centers and the need for community. KH: Today is August 9, 2024. I am with Michael Vaughan. We are discussing the cultural centers and their history on campus. My name is Kandace Harris, and I am the interviewer. When and where were you born? MV: I was born in Arkansas in 1954. KH: Okay, and did you grow up in Arkansas? MV: I spent the first 22 years of my life in Arkansas. KH: Okay, what degrees do you have? MV: I've got a bachelor's, a B.S., an MBA, and a PhD in economics. KH: Okay. What is your relationship with Weber State? MV: I came to Weber State as a faculty member, I subsequently became a department chair and an associate dean, and then the Dean of the Goddard School of Business, and then Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. KH: When did your relationship with Weber State start? MV: 1981. KH: How have you interacted with the cultural centers on campus? MV: Well, I'll say a few things about that. It might be useful to bookend the centers because in my opinion, the first of the centers to start was the Women's Center, which started in the early 1980s. The last of the centers to come into existence, as opposed to being renamed and reorganized, was the LGBTQ 1 Center, and I was heavily involved in the creation of that center. Over the years, I interacted with the centers in a number of ways. I would refer students to the centers, I worked with the centers on various projects, and I participated with centers on various programming that they offered. KH: Would you talk a little bit about what needed to happen to form the LGBTQ Center? MV: At that point in time, the creation of a center required the approval of Presidents Council, the Board of Trustees, and the Board of Regents, so we had to do a formal proposal for the center. We saw a need. I was involved in the securing of financing for the centers, so we thought we were ready to go in that regard. President's Council was supportive, the president at that time was Chuck Wight, and he was supportive. We took the proposal to the board of trustees. We received some opposition from the board of trustees. At a subsequent meeting, we brought a number of students in to talk about their perceptions for why they thought the center was needed. The students were persuasive, and the trustees approved the creation of the center. It then went to the Board of Regents and was approved at the Board of Regents. KH: Okay, what year did you start to try to get the LGBTQ Center? MV: That probably would have been—and I should have confirmed this—that probably would have been 2013 that we began working on that. KH: Do you remember when the center opened? MV: I believe the center was approved in 2014, but I would want to check on that also. The 2013-2014 timeframe is fairly accurate. KH: Okay, and to create the committee, I mean, sorry, to create the center, I know you mentioned the Board of Trustees and the President's Counsel. Were 2 there other campus community members or outside community members that helped with the process for creating the center? MV: Well, the issue of LGBTQ rights on campus has been an issue for quite some time, and a number of community members have been very supportive in that regard. In fact, before we created this center there had been donations for student scholarships. There had been donations for a speaker’s program. Jane and Tammy Marquardt were some of the strongest supporters in the community, but they were not the only supporters. KH: What are some of your favorite memories with the cultural centers? MV: You know, the one that I will mention is when we did the ribbon cutting for the LGBTQ Center; there was tremendous joy around that. Just seeing the students at that ribbon cutting and how happy they were confirmed our belief that this was a good thing to do. KH: Okay, how has the cultural center impacted or influenced you and your time at Weber? MV: You know, time at Weber, I thought about this question, and the thing that I think might be useful would be to go back to that first center, which was the Women's Center. I could talk about the creation of the Women's Center, but right now, I just want to use that as an anchor point. That was the early 1980s. Then after the Women's Center was created, it was followed not by the immediate creation of other centers, but it was followed, if you will, by the genesis of what would eventually become those centers. Later in the 1980s, student clubs and organizations were formed. The position of Hispanic Student Senator was created. The creation of other various clubs, 3 organizations, student senate positions followed. Eventually, those became centers. Again, I'm anchoring this in the early 1980s. I think it's useful to go back and talk about what the campus looked like before those centers were created, and what does the campus look like now? So, prior to 1980, women students were in the minority on campus. The split on campus was approximately 60% men and 40% women, and the women students were predominantly concentrated in teacher education and nursing. In the 1970s, it would not have been at all unusual for students to take classes in accounting or management or computer science or manufacturing engineering technology or physics and not have a single woman student in class. I would say in some of those areas, male students could say that they didn't encounter women students in most of their classes. That's the way things were in the 1970s. If you had gone to institutional research in the early 1970s and asked how many Hispanic students are at Weber State University, they would have said, “We don't know. We don't track it. We're not concerned. We can't answer that question,” In 1970 there was a particular, I'll call it a scandal, regarding student housing. I'll try to be brief. The athletic programs, the football program and the basketball program, would recruit athletes from out of state, and in 1970 there was a shortage of student housing on campus. When these athletes were recruited, the athletes and their parents would ask the normal questions: “Am I going to get a scholarship? Is that scholarship going to cover books? Is that scholarship going to cover housing?” They were told, you know, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your tuition's covered, your books are covered, your housing will be covered, don't worry 4 about it.” The students would arrive on campus, and because there was a shortage of housing, the athletic department told the students, “You need to go somewhere in Ogden to find an apartment to live. You need to go downtown to find an apartment. Don't worry, we'll reimburse you, we're going to give you—” at that time, it was probably $75, $90 a month for rent. “But we're going to cover your rent for you. Just go get an apartment and you'll be taken care of.” The issue was that the African American students couldn't find housing. In January 1970, the Signpost did an article about this, and the Signpost reported out of 75 landlords that were contacted and asked the question, “Would you rent an apartment to an African American student?” only one out of 75 said yes. Those apartments that were rented were much above the market rate, and they were very substandard. They had non-functioning plumbing, non-functioning heating. That was the condition confronting the African American student athletes. With regard to LGBTQ students, for the most part they were invisible, and I think unfortunately, a great many felt that it was necessary to be invisible. They would not be comfortable coming out in 1970. That was the environment on campus prior to the centers, and you look at the situation today and it's been transformative, it's totally different. Women students are not rare on campus. In fact, they're currently the majority, and it's not unusual for the outstanding graduate in accounting or computer science or mechanical engineering to be a woman student. The situation for Hispanic students, not only could institutional research tell you that we have almost 15% of the 5 student population are Hispanic students. They would go on to say we're trying to increase that number. So, the situation has changed dramatically. KH: Do you know how the Women's Center was created? MV: The Women’s Center has focused on very different things over its 40-some years of existence. It started as a support group for divorced people. There was a woman on campus named Mary Jo LaTulippe, and she saw that divorce tended to be a life changing event for people, and that many people, as a result of divorce, would go back to college. In particular, women students. Women who had not previously envisioned working outside the household would suddenly find themselves single in their late 20s or early 30s with three, four or five kids, and say, you know, “My original plan is not going to work. I'm going to have to get a job that will provide enough income for me to support my family. One of the ways I'm going to do that is to go back to college and get a degree.” So, Mary Jo started a support group for divorced people, and that morphed, with Mary Jo’s pushing, into the Women's Center. KH: Okay. You said that it's kind of morphed from its original purpose to what it is now. Do you know the other kind of themes or purposes they had over the years? MV: I couldn't give you a comprehensive list. I know most recently they were very focused on sexual assault and domestic violence. I think even with the demise of the Women's Center, there's going to be an effort to keep the Safe@Weber program operational. That was not a focus back in 1980. Different directors have brought different visions to the center over the years. KH: Okay, I'm sorry, I'm going to be picking your brain because you have such a long career with Weber State. Do you know anything about how the 6 Multicultural Center was founded and kind of how it morphed into what it was before it was closed? MV: I'm going to defer that one to someone else. KH: That's fair. MV: The individual that I mentioned before we started recording, I had mentioned you really should ask Barry Gomberg about some of these things. I was talking to Barry Gomberg last night, and he started talking about the creation of the Multicultural Center. Barry can dig down into the nuts and bolts of that much better than I can. What I will say is that different presidents have brought different visions for Weber State University. When Paul Thompson was appointed president of Weber State University, he made diversity and a focus on multicultural issues a priority. He talked about that frequently, and he talked about it in the early days of his presidency. I clearly remember what Paul said. Paul said, “I graduated from Weber State University. I had grown up in western Weber County. I was a farm boy. I came to Weber State, and I went away to Harvard and lived in Boston, and it was a different world. My experiences in Utah, my experience at Weber State, had not prepared me to live in that world. One of the areas where I was totally a fish out of water, was dealing with diversity and multicultural issues. We're doing a disservice to our students if we don't prepare them to live in that world.” That was really one of the things Paul said about diversity and multicultural issues. That was a priority, and I believe the Multicultural Center was created during his presidency. KH: If you're willing to share, what are your feelings about the closing of the cultural centers? 7 MV: I think it's regrettable. It's sad, and I can enumerate many reasons why it's sad. I think the one that I would focus on initially is just to say, I think the people that pushed to mandate the closure of these centers really didn't have a good understanding of what they did. I think they envisioned these centers almost like a country club that was only open to men. So, when they would hear about an LGBTQ center, they would say, you know, “They're exclusively focused on gay students,” or if they hear about a women's center, “Well, that's just where all the women go and the men aren’t welcome.” I and other men have been welcomed into the Women's Center, and the Women's Center offered a variety of programing and, to my knowledge, never said men aren't welcome. They did a film festival focused on films made by women and about women. But, you know, roughly half the audience was men. The LGBTQ center, as a straight male going in there, I could say, “You know, I'm not gay, but I want to help you. I want to be an ally. Is there anything I can do to help you out?” They would have welcomed that. These were not closed-door centers. The entire campus benefited from the programing offered by these centers. To go back to my athletic story: It benefited the entire campus to be able to recruit African American athletes. You know, if you couldn't recruit African American athletes, your athletic programs would be very different, and individuals needed to step up and to address that issue regarding housing. It was very important to do. KH: Kind of going back to that 1970 incident. Do you know how it was resolved? MV: I think the initial reaction was to become more proactive in helping the athletes find housing in Ogden. Eventually, the campus built more student housing. 8 KH: Okay. Why is community important? MV: Now, studies indicate that the single most important factor with regard to whether a student persists in college or drops out is making a connection. Do the students that enter a college or university move through successfully and earn a degree? Or do they leave in their first semester or first year and disappear and become one of the many hundreds of thousands of students that have some college but no degree? The studies indicate the most important factor is making a connection with someone, that if a student makes a connection with someone on campus during that first semester, they are much more likely to persist and earn a degree. It's difficult to predict exactly where a student will make a connection, but people tend to make connections with communities that they identify with, and those communities are numerous. You can have an accounting student that identifies as a marathon runner. You can have a biology student that identifies as a fly fisherman. Many people and many students define their community in terms of race or ethnicity. You may have a Hispanic student that has some anxiety about taking a class in algebra, and they're concerned about whether they can do it or not. It's very helpful for them to talk to a student that looks like them. If you've got a Hispanic student from central Ogden that's concerned about making it through the mathematics sequence, it's helpful to talk to another Hispanic student from Ogden who says, "You know, I did it. This is what I did. These are the suggestions I can offer to you," and that works. Now, would they have to talk to a student that looked just like them? Maybe not, but as I said, you don't know how people are going to do to define 9 their communities. For some people, their perceptions of themselves involve race and ethnicity; that's how they define themselves. If you were to go to my mother and ask her to describe herself, one of the first three sentences would be that she is Italian. If you were to go to one of her brothers and sisters, who have the same parents, they might not describe themselves in the same way. Her brother might say, “I'm a businessman.” KH: Okay. What do you think we as individuals can do to foster relationships and meet the needs of all of Weber’s communities? MV: You know, it relates to what I was just talking about. I think you offer different services to different people. When I was provost, we decided that we wanted to be a Steinway college. We bought a large number of Steinway pianos for the piano program. Those Steinway pianos were very expensive. They cost upwards of $100,000 for a piano. That's what the piano students needed. We decided that we were going to remodel the dental hygiene lab, and we actually bought all new equipment for the dental hygiene lab. That equipment is also very expensive. Those dental chairs that they use today are incredibly expensive, but we bought new dental hygiene chairs, and we do that for many programs. At the same time, it would be ludicrous to suggest that because we bought Steinway pianos for the piano program, we should buy every student a Steinway. Or, because we bought dental equipment for the dental hygiene students, that we should put dental equipment in the computer science program. Different programs have different needs. The needs of a firstgeneration low-income Hispanic student from central Ogden are going to be different from the needs of a Weber State student that comes from Fruit 10 Heights with a father who is a doctor and a mother who is an advertising executive. Those students are going to need different things, and we should meet the needs of both groups. But, it's ridiculous to say that we should turn a blind eye to race and ethnicity when we're trying to give students what they need. There is a saying from Plato, and this is paraphrasing because I'm talking off the top of my head, but it is something to the effect that treating unequals equally results in inequality. That's been repeated many times by many people. The gist of it is if people are the same you treat them the same, but if people are different, perhaps they should be treated differently. KH: That's great. Are there any other memories or facts or things you want to share about the cultural centers, or any advice you'd want to give? MV: I just hope that—I don't know who you’ve spoken to with regard to this project. The person I alluded to, Mary Jo, is still alive and would probably be willing to talk to you. There were just key players, the other person, and I don't think I mentioned him on tape. Perhaps I did before the interview. Barry Gomberg is a person you should talk to. Paul Thompson is still around. So, if you wanted to track people down, those people would be worth speaking to. KH: Great. I know that we've been trying to reach out to Mary Jo. I can't remember if we've been able to set something up yet. MV: She's, older, and I think both she and her husband have some health issues. So, even though she's alive, she may be difficult to get to. Now, Carol Merrill is easy to reach. She was one of the Women’s Center directors that followed Mary Jo. In fact, when they closed the centers, they devoted a day or two just to reflection about the centers and invited people, and Carol came back to 11 campus for that. She lives in Davis County, so she is easy to reach. Forrest Crawford would be an important person to talk to, if you haven’t talked to Forrest. KH: I want to say the last oral history we did with him was a year or two before he retired. So, I think it would be really good to reach out to him. MV: I don't know about Adrian, if you've spoken with her or not? KH: With who? MV: Adrian Andrews. KH: No, I don't think we've reached out to her. But yes, I'm glad that you're saying all these names, so that way we can reach out. One of our goals for this is to get as much input as we can and memories from people. Most of it has been advertising that we did during the closing event, closing reception for the centers. Then it's kind of been word of mouth from the people that we've been interviewing. They've been giving us other names to contact. I really appreciate you sharing those names, so that way we have more people that we could try to get to share their memories. MV: Do you have a definitive end date or are you just going to keep working on this until it's done? KH: I mean, I think our goal is to try to get as many people as we can within the next year while it's still fresh in people's minds. But I don't know that there will ever be a stop to this project. MV: Something I'll mention is that when Paul Thompson came in as president and started his diversity initiative, he received a lot of pushback from one of the members on the Board of Trustees. Even back then, 1990s, there was opposition that is not dissimilar to the anti-DEI movement now. Paul 12 addressed that and dealt with it and had to gather a lot of information to address the concerns from that particular member of the Board of Trustees. KH: Okay. Is there anything else that you'd like to share? MV: I think that's it. KH: Okay, great. Well, thank you so much. MV: Thanks. 13