Oral History Program Barry Gomberg Interviewed by Kandice Harris 19 August 2024 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Barry Gomberg Interviewed by Kandice Harris 19 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: Gomberg, Barry, an oral history by Kandice Harris, 19 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 Barry Gomberg, conducted on August 19, 2024 in the Stewart Library with Kandice Harris. Barry talks about his memories of the cultural centers on the Weber State University campus, and the importance of community and belonging. Note: Active listening, transitions in dialogue (such as “um,” “so,” “you know,” etc.), and false starts in conversations are not included in transcription for ease of reading. All additions to transcript noted with brackets. KH: Hello, today is August 19, 2024. We are with Barry Gomberg. Kandice Harris is conducting the interview, and Raegan Baird is filming. We are talking today about the cultural centers and their impact at Weber. When and where were you born? BG: I was born in 1951, in Akron, Ohio. I went to college in Bloomington, Indiana, where I received a bachelor's degree in '74 or thereabouts. Secondary teaching certificate the following year, and a law degree two years later. KH: Okay. What is your relationship with Weber State? BG: I worked for Weber State on two different occasions from 1980 to about 1984, in a federally funded desegregation assistance center that did race and sex equity throughout the Intermountain region. I did that for three years full time, and then another year half time. Then I came back to Weber State in 1988 to be the executive director of Affirmative Action Equal Opportunity, which I continued to do until 2021 or 2. It's somewhere in that pandemic-choked time period. I think it was the end of January or February in ‘22. 1 KH: Okay. How did you get into the field of affirmative action? I mean, you kind of mentioned that with some of your other positions, but was there something that drew you to that aspect? BG: I had been involved in civil rights related movements and efforts from certainly high school. So, when I had the opportunity to work for the Desegregation Assistance Center and had the opportunity to learn in a lot more detail about race and sex equity in education, that, along with a civil legal practice in between those two stints at Weber State, that included a significant amount of civil rights work. That prepared me and enabled me as a white male to convince the university to take a chance to see if I could help move forward the equity, diversity, affirmative action efforts of the institution. KH: How do you feel that, while you were at Weber, you were serving your community in your position? BG: Well, I think that the importance of affirmative action for the institution was huge. I mean technically, the institution, any federal government contractors at a certain financial level, is required to have an affirmative action plan. The nature of that plan is such that you have to monitor your hiring and retention policies for personnel. You have to analyze whether or not the workforce that you currently have reflects the available workforce with the qualifications to meet those job requirements. I think that because of that, over the decades that I was fortunate enough to be here, I saw a tremendous amount of progress moving away from, “Well, my cousin Zeke needs a job, so I'll pull my strings at Weber State college and try to 2 get Zeke a job.” As opposed to becoming an institution truly dedicated to excellence in its faculty and staff. Then to try to better understand what kinds of factors were critical in retaining the faculty and staff, not only from around the country, but from around the world that we worked so hard to recruit, to try to keep them from going on to other institutions or positions. I think that the benefits to the community because of that were that we managed to identify pockets of bias that undermined the goal of educational excellence, and to design strategies around policy development and training— obviously, recruitment and selection and so on—to do a better job of attracting and holding on to and supporting the careers of the truly excellent faculty that we developed over the years. KH: Great. How have you interacted with the cultural centers on campus? BG: Goo gobs. [Laughter] It's a term of art. Well, referring specifically to the three centers that we talked about before we started taping, which are the Women's Center, the Multicultural—what later became known as the Multicultural Excellence Center, may have even a more recent moniker—and then the LGBT Resource Center. I had a great deal of involvement in different ways with each of those three. So, do you want me to go into detail on each? KH: Yes please. BG: At the Women's Center, that center, I believe, existed when I got here. Do you know what year it started? KH: I want to say that they celebrated their 50th in ‘22, so they would have started around ‘72, I think. 3 BG: That was during the first, no, that was even before the first time I worked at Weber State. So, the Women's Center existed when I got here. But what I discovered about the Women's Center in circa 1988 was that it was a—let me choose my words carefully here. It was an organization that supported a very what I would describe as conservative or traditional view of women's roles in society. It was, I think, saw its mission as supporting individuals who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's interesting, because this issue is now surfacing yet again. You know, with the Miss World candidate with eight children who the New York Times did a story on and it was—Anyway, I'm not going to go into that, but it very much supported that view, I think. I would describe as being, if not hostile, at least not supportive of feminism. My involvement was to challenge repeatedly that perspective, and to do everything I could, which was probably most significantly in the hiring realm when positions came open, to bring staff on board who would serve the rest of the campus community, who I didn't think were at that time really being reflected in the Women's Center services. But also, to become a part of that center, presenting brown bag discussions and having formal and informal kinds of interactions. Eventually, as you've heard and as you know, the Women's Center became what I hoped it always would, which was a much more progressive center that supported the campus community's broad needs educationally and psycho-emotionally and physically in terms of their safety, through the Safe@Weber program, etcetera. 4 I can take no credit for any of that other than the fact that I was an enormous nag. I just tried as best I could to wear down the resistance and to point out that women's centers all across the country were doing the kind of job supporting the women on their campuses that I thought Weber State could and should be doing. KH: When do you feel like the Women's Center transitioned from conservative to more progressive? BG: Well, certainly when Stephanie McCullough? Stephanie… oh my word. This is the hard part about getting old. Well, it’s one of many. You heard the first part, groaning as I sat down. Stephanie McClure, when she came in, there was a notable change. Years before that, when Maria Paria Vazquez de Coco came on the staff there, that change began to occur, and she laid the groundwork for the direction the center eventually took. She deserves great credit, I think, for that. Have you interviewed her yet? KH: I know she's been interviewed for an oral history. I don't think she's been interviewed for this specific project. BG: Gosh, I think that'd be helpful. But I would say that Maria's influence began an incremental movement in that direction. I think Laurie Perez Jensen worked there too, and she had worked in the same desegregation assistance center that I mentioned, and she probably deserves some credit. I'm sure she deserves some credit as well. To her credit, I think Tony Wade, who was the associate vice president I think at the time, began to see that the Women's Center could be and should be something more than it had been up until that time. 5 KH: Okay. How did you interact with the LGBT Center? BG: That was the last of the three that I had involvement in, and my involvement there was in trying to support the effort to create it, and to find resources sufficient to operate it. In that regard, I was a part of the effort to beg and cajole Jane Marquardt to provide funding for the center. She too would be an interesting interviewee, I think. Jane had, I don't need to give you her resume, but she had a long interest in the institution, maybe even predating her father's interest in the institution; his support being primarily in athletics. Hers was, she had been a Board of Trustees member early on. But, you know, she and her wife made a tremendous financial contribution to the center, dwarfed only by Mike Vaughan’s. You've interviewed Mike, because he was the one who told me about these interviews. KH: You know, he didn't mention the financial support though. BG: He was brilliant. Can we pause? [Recording stops] [Recording resumes] BG: In helping to garner the resources to make it happen, and then to structure it so that it met potential legal questions and challenges, obviously, prior to the antiDEI craziness. Then being supportive of the programing itself, but less so. I mean, at that point, the die—was or were cast? Is it plural or single, die? KH: I think it's singular. BG: See, every time I come on campus you learn something. So anyway, that whole—I would have to say that I probably regret not staying more closely 6 involved, because I think that we lost some opportunity to make that center all it could be early on. I was more frustrated with that than I was helpful in solving it. KH: You mentioned that in creating the center that they had to be aware of the legal issues. Could you kind of talk a little bit about what those concerns were? BG: Well, it was a related question to what we had when we originally created the Matthew Shepard Scholarship. That is the delicate balance that we strived to achieve of identifying a population that was underserved and disadvantaged and whose educational progress was undermined and threatened, such that we could provide supportive services for them without being exclusionary. Recognizing that one didn't necessarily have to identify as LGBTQ+ in order to desire and potentially have need for the services of such a center. So, whether or not in that particular instance—and we were always looking over our shoulder at the legislature, you know, whether or not they were going to allow us to provide those sorts of services to be provided to identifiable populations. As it turns out, you know, the state ultimately said, “No, you can't do”—not the state, an overly influential part of the Utah Legislature. The minority, I think, said that. That's why we find ourselves grieving the loss of those centers now. KH: Would you talk a little bit about the Center for Multicultural Excellence? BG: So, that one was in between the two. It was created, I think, do you have… KH: I don't have the exact year, but I can look it up and add it. BG: I believe Mel Gillespie came on board, and I think that he was the first coordinator of the Multicultural Center. His time on campus corresponded to Paul Thompson becoming president. I remember being really disappointed when Paul 7 Thompson was named as president. He was a white member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, administrator from BYU, and it just seemed like another in this long series of individuals who just didn't, you know, have any dedication to equity, to equality of opportunity, and so on. Before, in between the time that Paul Thompson was named as president and started his tenure taking over from Steve Nadauld, he very quietly visited campus one day and he called Mel and me to meet him. At that point he said, “This is my highest priority.” We were stunned. Mel may have disguised it better than I did, but honestly, my jaw, I think it was out of commission for a while because it dropped so hard. Sure enough, we learned that Paul Thompson had been at Harvard, both as a PhD candidate and then as a faculty member in the business school there. He and his wife Caroline got involved in the civil rights movement back there, and this became a burning passion for him. So, the success of the Multicultural Center was enormously important to him. You know, his leadership was consistent. He may be available for an interview. He's getting pretty old. KH: Yeah. As far as I know, he's still alive and in Saint George. BG: He moved to Saint George? They were in Provo, Orem, Utah County for a while. He ran, in fact, for state [legislator] from down there as a Democrat, which is something akin to dancing in a minefield, I would say. But oh my God, I loved him, loved working with him. Eventually Mel left, went on to—I think he and I had similar positions. He was at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. I think that he was disappointed, because his daughters continued to attend 8 here with the leadership that took over that center. It became, I don't know, contentious. There were struggles within the Multicultural Center that fractured it badly. It was very difficult. We had a succession of leaders who weren't really able to pull it together. Anna Jane Arroyo. Of course, Michico and Nakashima Lisarrazo. There may have been another. KH: So, there was Jeffrey Simons. BG: Oh, that's true. KH: Tony Price and Keith Wilder. BG: Keith Wilder headed it? KH: Yes, he started in 2006. BG: For how long? KH: That one I don't know. BG: Twenty minutes? KH: [Laugh] Maybe. BG: I think it's a short tenure. I liked Keith a lot. I liked all of them, but nobody was able to really overcome the internal competition and tensions that the center had. Everybody sort of felt like they weren’t getting a fair share of the resources, and they wanted them to be more singularly devoted to the particular constituency they were a part of. So, that was really the attempt to herd cats. Everybody wanted to go in different directions. Then, even within particular constituencies, most notably I think, the African American student population, there was—and some of the staff got involved and may even have instituted or at least 9 aggravated the tensions in a way that I thought was really unfortunate. You've heard the expression “crabs in a bucket?” KH: Nope, can't say that I have. BG: The phenomenon refers to putting crabs in a bucket where as soon as one gets up high enough on the side of the bucket to potentially get out, they get pulled down. So, that was sort of an apt metaphor for the Multicultural Center, I think. I don't know how much better it might have been had they been more cooperative and mutually supportive rather than competitive and contentious. We'll never know. KH: Yeah. Were there any events from the different cultural centers that stood out to you? BG: Oh my, sure. Each of the component parts of the center sponsored events from within that cultural milieu. Whether it was the annual powwows, or the Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations, Juneteenth. I mean, there were events from each of those component parts that were regular parts of the events calendar throughout the year. Then there were special programs when we could get particular speakers and so on. KH: What about the LGBT Center or the Women's Center? BG: Well, the Peace and Opportunity—I’m butchering the lecture series that Jane and Tami sponsored. Peace and Possibilities, I think, a lecture series that brought in some great people. But they were woefully under advertised and promoted, and so they were never well attended, which was a shame, because they had some great speakers. That's part of the frustration that I kind of alluded to earlier. 10 Much of the best work, I think, that took place in the LGBT Resource Center was more at an individual level, where the coordinator in that area worked with individual students who were struggling and really had at least the perception that they didn't feel comfortable going to other resources on campus. That was true of all the centers. I think there were a lot of women, especially, that went to the Women's Center, who wouldn't have felt comfortable going to the counseling center, even though I think the Counseling Center tried hard to serve well all the student populations, and over the years really worked to diversify their staff in a lot of meaningful ways so that they would have that kind of capacity. That was clearly true, particularly true, of the LGBT Resource Center. Maybe a little less, because—I was going to say maybe less than the Multicultural Center, because their staff was more diverse. Sorry, the Counseling Center’s staff I think was more diverse in that respect, and more obviously so. But even with that, I think there were a lot of students from ethnic minority backgrounds who, you know, could walk into and just sort of casually interact in the Multicultural Center who were not comfortable or confident, if they needed resources, to go to the Career Center or the Counseling and Psychological Services Center and elsewhere. So, in terms of the loss, which I think is the critical part of all of this, I have enormous fear that these students are not going to be served, or at least not very well served going forward. This effort to homogenize and amalgamate the services offered, it's not going to be as successful as it was to have those services identified for those populations. So, their persistence, maybe even their recruitment, but certainly 11 their persistence and ultimate success here, I'm sad to be as confident as I am that it's going to be sacrificed in the name of an ideology, or what claims to be an ideology, that is, in my opinion, terribly ignorant of the real dynamics, and refuses to acknowledge the inequities that our society continues to perpetuate. You know, we're doing better, and for certain populations, like the Hispanic students, that group will be better served than the other ethnic minority populations, because the institution is exempt. Well, the institution's effort to become a historic Spanish-serving—is that the term? Hispanic-serving… KH: Institution. BG: Institution was exempted from the prohibition, so I think that there will be more efforts sustained to support those students. I think the fact that the Safe@Weber program will be ongoing will enable the folks involved in that area to continue to provide some measure of support for women students on campus. That was a very important part of what they did prior to, but it was only a part, and the rest of it, you know, it's going to be hard to maintain that, I think. KH: You shared some memories of events that have happened in the past. Do you have any more memories related to the cultural centers that you want to share? BG: Well, I guess what I would say is that they operated at several levels. There were the formal events that they sponsored throughout the year. There was the counseling and advisement that went on within the centers. There was the informal interaction of the students, giving them a space in which they could feel a part of a community. To feel that, even if they didn't always feel welcome 12 everywhere on campus, there was a home for them here, and that the institution cared enough about them to support the existence of that home. Then there of course is the broader context, the way in which the staff of those centers offered their services out. So, you have Women’s Center staff who are doing trainings across campus. Faculty would invite members—you know, Stephanie when she was here, and Paige when she was in the center, and the other staff—into their classrooms to address specific topics, and that sort of cross-pollination increased the sensitivity of the faculty and staff who called upon them. That was very helpful. For example, the university kind of evolved, a bit, a behavioral intervention team. Here we called it the STAR team. [Under breath] Strategic… task force… Lord. Essentially a group that met weekly that included representatives from the police department, the Women's Center, the Counseling Center, Dean of Students office, Legal Counsel, Affirmative Action, EEO, and looked at circumstances that might generate harm to students, particularly physical harm. But also, you know, we responded to other forms of hate related behaviors. Well, that group was made so much more insightful and effective because of the involvement of the Women's Center staff. More directly, I would say, they taught me how to do my job, which I had done for a quarter century before Stephanie McClure came on campus. Yet when Stephanie came and hired Paige, the two of them were enormously helpful in sharing, well, in teaching me to have insight into what their clients needed that I just was ignorant of, despite—I mean, the D6 center work that I had done from 13 1980 to ‘84, and then the legal work that I did to ’88 was all in the area that should have prepared me to know what they knew, what they taught me. But I didn't get that until the ‘90s and the ‘00s. So, the reach and effect and impact of the staffs of those centers can't be overestimated. KH: You kind of mentioned this, though if there's anything else you want to add: How have the cultural centers impacted or influenced you in your time at Weber? BG: Yeah. KH: Okay. I wasn't sure if there's anything else you wanted to add. BG: They made me much less mistake prone… KH: I like that. BG: Than I would have been otherwise. They saved me over and over again. Of course, the outcome of that was individuals involved in the process, whether a complainant or respondent, coming back afterwards and saying, “Gosh, that was such a powerful learning experience. I feel so much more empowered to handle situations not only on campus, but as I think about moving out into the world of work, to bring these skills for speaking up and being able to productively resolve conflicts.” Even thanks from individuals who were being accused of violating their rights, expressing appreciation for what they were able to learn through that experience. I attribute so much of that capacity to the staffs of those various centers. All three. KH: Okay. I feel like I'm just going to keep repeating questions that you've kind of answered just to see if there's anything you want to add, but what are your feelings about the closing of the cultural centers? 14 BG: Crushing disappointment, fear, anger. Just mystification as to how people could misunderstand how they work so profoundly. I want to have the legislatures for a daylong workshop, and help them understand better what it is they've so severely damaged. KH: How do you think the students are reacting to the closing of the cultural centers? BG: Incredibly disappointed. “Where are they?” You know, it is true that the timing of it was such that it came right before summer began. I'll be very interested to see coming this fall, if they're just going to passively accept it, or if they'll speak up and let their frustrations and disappointment find expression with those responsible for the decision. We'll see. They have the capacity to, if not reverse this miscarriage, at least to blunt any further effort along these lines, which I fear is coming. KH: How do you envision students will be helped or hindered under the restructured department? You've kind of answered this too, but... BG: Yeah. It's the connection. It's the sense of place. It's, I mean, there are a lot of ways in which I fear that the benefits that the prior structure had will be lost. But probably the biggest is, you know, when I think about a student who is questioning their sexual orientation, walking through the student services building and seeing that LGBT Resource Center sign above the door for that old center, and probably passing it a number of times before they kind of ventured in. I think that that's gone, and it's just tragic. KH: Why is community important? 15 BG: Weber State's become a big institution. You know, I went to a big institution, Indiana University in Bloomington, had probably 35,000 students. I was heavily involved in what was called a living-learning college. One of the 10 or 12 large residence halls brought in faculty who were based in the dormitory, the residence hall, and shared meals and held classes, and it created a close-knit community. “Hey, you're from Foster Quad?” “Yeah.” The sense of belonging, the level of confidence that it gave, being a part of the community that was of a size that didn't render you anonymous, I think can be enormously beneficial. Not to mention, that doesn't even begin to talk about the special needs that were previously addressed in the cultural centers, and the pride that it generated and the encouragement that it provided to pursue rigorously learning both within traditional academics but also outside through those activities. So often, I think, the most powerful learning experiences that students have, whether it's in K-12 or especially higher ed, don't take place in a classroom. They're experiences that grow out of co-curricular, formal and informal interactions. There's going to be a sharp drop off, I think, in that type of learning. KH: What do you think we as individuals can do to foster relationships and meet the needs of the underserved communities of Weber? BG: Well, I'd love to see the law reversed, and it's a ridiculous law anyway. I mean, it fundamentally undermines the very freedoms that those who've advocated for it tout. You know, individualized thought, merit-based reward structures. 16 What can we do? Well, I suppose that we should be thinking about, if the law can't be reversed, then we should be thinking about parallel organizations to the university that would help meet those needs, in much the way that, you know, we have the Newman Center and the Institute providing supportive services particularly targeting members of those religious groups. They're never going to have their own buildings, but the university is required to have its facilities open and available to community groups that meet certain criteria. Which, now that I think about it, we might be able to make up some ground through volunteer efforts in those parallel structures. So, you might be able to have an LGBT support group. But the problem is that you're just piling on responsibilities for faculty and staff who already have full-time responsibilities. You'd be asking them to do more without any additional compensation. I don't think that's fair, but that might be something that could take up some of the gap, close some of the gap. KH: Okay. Well, is there anything else you'd like to share? BG: I don't think so. KH: Okay, great. Thank you for your time. BG: You're most welcome. 17