Oral History Program Jazmyne Olson Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 23 January 2025 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jazmyne Olson Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 23 January 2025 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: Olson, Jazmyne, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 23 January 2025, 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 Jazmyne Olson conducted on January 23, 2025 in the Stewart Library with Lorrie Rands. Jazmyne talks about her time at Weber State University as a student and staff and how the closing of the cultural centers affected her. She also shares her experiences being a part of the student senate. Also present is Raegan Baird. LR: Today is January 23, 2025. We are here in the Stewart Library with Jazmyne Olson doing an oral history interview for our Connecting Weber oral history project for the culture centers. My name is Lorrie Rands conducting, and Raegan Baird is on the camera. That being said, thank you so much again for your willingness. I just want to get that on camera. We'll start with when and where you were born? JO: So, I was born in Ogden in 2002. I've always grown up about half an hour from Weber State. I've bounced around just a little bit between here and down in Clinton, but I've always been kind of part of this community in this area. LR: Half an hour from Weber. North or South Ogden? JO: Technically, Clinton, which is in Davis County. I am right on the edge. I technically went to Clearfield High, which Clearfield High, if you don't know, is a really kind of gerrymandered school. We are really close to Syracuse High, which was one of the richer schools. I would pass Syracuse High to get to my school, Clearfield High. LR: Okay. It seems backwards. JO: It definitely was, yeah. LR: Were you raised in Clinton then? 1 JO: Yeah. LR: Okay. What are some of your memories of growing up in Clinton? JO: I remember it being a very religious place. It was really difficult growing up with two non-religious parents who weren't a part of the church. I remember one time after, not to get personal, but one time after my uncle passed away, I was talking with a group of friends, and it had to have been maybe third grade. I was having some difficulty with that topic, and they asked me if he had tattoos, and I said yes. Everyone in my family did. It was known that my mom had tattoos because she would come pick me up. They told me that he was going to "H-E-doublehockey-sticks." That was just such a vivid memory looking back, like the running away. I could point you out exactly where I was sitting in the field at my elementary school when that happened. But yeah, it wasn't a bad area, but definitely difficult for my family culture to fit into. LR: Okay. Culturally speaking, how did you differ from what you were surrounded by? JO: The structure of church was a really difficult one for me to kind of grasp. It felt, as a kid, very silly and kind of difficult to respect in a way. But I knew I had to. These were my friends and these were the things that they did. But it always—I know this language is used differently now, but it definitely felt very pushed on me. I remember once I was invited over for a get together with friends, and they called it a movie night. It turned out to be their young woman meeting, and they purposely didn't tell me because they knew I wouldn't have come. We did the whole prayer before. The movie we watched was a religious movie about some guy who falls in love with a tennis player and his sins enact karma on her. I 2 remember we all had to go around and say, you know, what we learned from the movie. I genuinely felt like I learned nothing. It just always felt like everyone around me was pulling at something that I couldn't see and still can't necessarily understand. As I've grown up, I think it's the contradictions that get me. That's where I've seen a lot of my friends who've since moved away from the church struggle with, and also my friends who stayed in the church have really struggled with. Even here at Weber State, I think that the topic that we're on today is a great example of the contradictions that the primary religion carries or Utah's culture carries heavily. LR: Not to spend a lot of time on this, but it's more curiosity on my part. Growing up outside of the predominant religion, did you feel like you had a place where you fit in, where you could belong? JO: I had places where I felt like I could belong, but I wasn't allowed to broach the topic of religion. So, for a period of time, I worked at a nursing home and I loved being there. I loved helping the people, I loved learning from them, but a huge part of obviously working with an older population was them being very heavily religious. My front desk position would literally be lined up with the chairs when they did Sunday morning service in the lobby. Every single time they would, you know, ask me if I wanted to take sacrament, and every time I said no. I think that to them, it was belonging; it was offering that olive branch. For me, it was just an incredibly uncomfortable position that didn't warrant any sort of—I wasn't in a place where I could, nor did I want to confront them on my views on that. But 3 yeah, I think that belonging comes with assumptions about what you can say, what topics can be broached, and as soon as you go beyond that, I think you all know the uncomfortable stare or the kind of bitter silence of that afterwards. LR: Within your own family dynamic growing up, was there a sense of belonging there? JO: My family's been… Sorry, I got to think about what I want to say on the transcript. I love my family, and they also have similar experiences of kind of feeling alienated in Utah, and it's always surprised me that my parents decided to stay in Utah. They've been in Utah pretty much their entire lives. As I get older, I can't help but think about if I had a child where I would kind of place myself, and it wouldn't be in the suburbs of Utah. I think that they did the best with what they could, but there was definitely a uniqueness in the fact that there wasn't, you know, neighborhood kids for me to play with because kids wouldn't go to our house on Halloween. You know, it was very obvious that there was one house on this street that didn't quite fit in. That's changed a bit over like maybe the last decade, but growing up, it was a very new neighborhood and so incredibly religious that I think it was difficult for my parents who grew up with a much stronger and much bigger family unit and weren't always in neighborhoods that were so uniform. LR: Okay. I forgot to mention, if I ask a question that you're not comfortable with, just let me know. JO: You're totally okay. 4 LR: We’ll move on. I don't mean to spend so much time on this, but I've discovered, as I've done this, that our early life informs what we choose to do as we grow older. Were you encouraged to pursue a higher education within your own family? JO: Yes. It was not just encouraged, it was expected. The deal was that I had a college fund and that I would go to college once I graduated. That was never an issue to me, but I did have the knowledge that my college fund wouldn't cover probably a semester of most schools, so going to Weber State was mostly a financial decision for me. It was logistical, nearby. They offered me full ride and I couldn't say no. LR: Going back to high school for just a second, did you kind of have an idea of what you wanted to do while in high school? Did you have like, I want to pursue this in college? Were you taking classes that would help with that? JO: I knew I wanted to go into the humanities. I've always been really interested in kind of that social justice, humanities area of academia. But I originally thought I wouldn't be able to pursue it as heavily as I have now. I'm graduating with a communications degree with an emphasis in public relations and advertising. That was what I picked when I first started college, and I have my own qualms with it. It's not work that I want to be doing for the rest of my life. I want to reenter academia and I want to teach, but that wasn't something that I even thought was a possibility when I was still in high school. It was really just focused on the fact that a college degree would get me better job opportunities, and that's changed a 5 lot throughout the years. I really value my academic experience for its academic experience rather than the certification that it puts on my resume. LR: Okay. When you were applying to colleges, did you already know you were gonna go to Weber? Did you try other colleges? JO: I thought about going to the U. I took the ACT a second time, and when I got my score back I was really excited at the thought of being able to pursue a more traditional college experience. Just financially, it didn't work out. I didn't receive the scholarship offer I was expecting. Weber State was offering to cover everything for a full four years. It was a difficult decision. I remember my mom got me like, red balloons and a U of U sweatshirt when I got my scholarship offer. Then, yeah, in a couple of weeks, she was saying, “Well, the cost of that, does it really outweigh what you want to do?” The debt that she'd have to take on. I think that your college experience is largely what you make of it, and I know I don't have the most traditional college experience, but that's what's going to be my best plan long term. I’m avoiding debt and I'm happy about that, first and foremost. LR: Makes sense. So, when did you start here at Weber? JO: I started in 2020. I started right after, yeah, I graduated high school right in spring 2020. Had the whole online thing. So, I started at Weber State that fall. I was actually already on campus a bit before the semester started, because I got a job at the bookstore originally. I was heavily on campus when it was kind of dead. It was definitely an untraditional start in that way. It was really scary kind of entering Weber State with a dead campus and COVID-19 going on, but I wouldn't have 6 had it a different way. I think that it was a unique way for me to learn to be kind of independent and find my own experiences at Weber without having events on campus all the time, and fairs that you could go meet clubs and orgs and stuff like that. LR: Okay. When you first came to campus working at the bookstore, how many employees were actually on campus at the time? JO: Oh man, I… LR: Within the bookstore, I mean. JO: Yeah, probably maybe 10. It wasn't a whole lot. When they actually hired us on, what they didn't tell us was that they would keep a portion of the workers on until the end of what they called rush season, so like the first two weeks of school. Then they would let a portion of those student workers go. The bookstore also at the time, I'm not sure if this is still the way it is, had a special contract that they were allowed to pay workers less than the average of other students, because they operate as their own business rather than like a branch of the university, to my understanding. I left there pretty quickly and I went to the Women's Center I think that same semester, at the end of fall semester. LR: Okay. Well, that's interesting. Let's kind of talk a little bit about that fall semester at Weber. Campus really wasn't open. JO: No. LR: Were you doing online classes, or were you—what was that first semester like for you? 7 JO: I think I might have had one in-person class. I had joined the debate team before the beginning of fall semester too, so I was doing that in person for most of the time and then my other classes were online. I'd essentially come to campus, work in person for a couple hours, find a spot in the Student Union to sit, do my online class, and then go back to work in-person. LR: Okay. Were you allowed in the Student Union Building? JO: Yeah. I think that, if my memory serves me right, a few of the cultural centers were also open. I think it was the Women's Center and the LGBTQ Center at the time were open. They also had their resource pantry open at that time. If I couldn't find a space to sit within the Union, which it wasn't hard to find somewhere, then sometimes I would kind of squirrel myself away in one of those centers and put in some earbuds. LR: All right. Were you living on campus, or were you commuting? JO: I was commuting. I was still living at home and then, yeah, just spending the majority of my time on campus, either doing debate practice or working. LR: Okay. When you started working in the Women's Center, what were you doing? JO: They had two sets of two student assistants. One was for engagement and programing, I believe, and the other was for social media. I started in engagement and programing, and I helped out a bit with the social media side of things as time went on. But it was amazing. It was by far the best place I've ever worked. They really cared about student well-being and for you to walk away not with just job skills or not just to help them, but to help yourself to learn what healthy relationships looked like. 8 I remember when I got hired on, we had like a book club and one of the book clubs was about burnout. The next book was also a self-help book. There was just always really a culture of treating you not as a worker, but as part of a community. It was an amazing shift from the book store, which was very impersonal, very much a business model, versus the Women’s Center, which their primary care was that we were being good students and that we were becoming good people, and that we were happy and fulfilled and engaged with the content we were working on. LR: What were some of the programs and engagement that you helped create? JO: We had, I believe it was called the Sister Circle, I think it was a monthly program where we would do different sorts of activities. So, I remember around finals we would always do like a self-care activity, so students could come in and create a self-care package, learn a few de-stressing techniques. We also worked with— there were sexual assault awareness-based holidays, I believe one is in October. There were different like displays that we would help out with. I remember one month we helped out with the bridge display. I think it was for Native American Heritage Month. But yeah, there was always kind of something going on for students to either have a more educational experience with like healthy relationships, with sexual assault, with domestic violence, or it was kind of more socially engaging events where you would go and you would learn about intersectional feminism and be able to meet people there and kind of really reengage with not only the student staff, but the faculty and staff who had all either worked in different 9 positions on campus previously or were currently, you know, helping out with classes. But all just a group of people who were really deeply and seriously engaged with the academic community at Weber. It was really great to have as a resource as a student starting out at Weber, and also just as a person. It was a really big part in helping me realize that I had some really unhealthy relationships, even years down the road. Both a romantic relationship and a relationship with a professor. Both were seriously impacted by the healthy skills that I learned as a worker in that space. LR: As you were working in the Women's Center, the programs that you had available, were they only available to a certain demographic? JO: No. We actually had discussions about how to reach out across different groups of people, because definitely the Women’s Center attracts women primarily, but I don't think that's anything that the Women's Center is necessarily doing. At the time that I was hired on, we had a man who was working reception, and you'd walk into the Women's Center and it would be a man there. It wasn't a segregated space whatsoever. I wish I would have seen more men come in. I wish I would have seen more of our older, nontraditional students come visit. We had a wide variety of people who utilized especially the resource pantry and the different like activities that we would hold, especially inside the center. But it was never, ever intended to be only meant for a specific group. LR: As you worked through your academic career, were there other jobs that you took on campus, or did you stay mainly with Women's Center? 10 JO: I ended up moving jobs to I think it was called the DEI programs, or no, sorry, Diversity Inclusive Programing. It was DIP. I originally moved there because I knew somebody who had just been hired into one of the higher-up roles, and they were really determined to create a student advocacy center. I was really excited by the thought of that project. They recognized some of the diversity planning at Weber State was not being utilized to the best of its abilities and wanted to take that funding and really open it up so that students could feel the impact and see the impact more easily. I was very excited and I switched over to that role, and shortly after that the diversity area had about three people who decided to leave in a very short period of time. One of those people were my boss, so I spent actually several months with no projects, with no direction, because, to my understanding, multiple people had been essentially pushed out of their jobs, and the university was left without a plan and wasn't prioritizing trying to follow through on the ideas that had already been put forth by the structure that was already ready. Eventually, I was moved over to the Center for Multicultural Excellence to help them with their marketing efforts. LR: Okay. What year was this happening? JO: I believe this would have been 2021 or verging into 2022. I know it was like the following year. I think it was around that winter time, I want to say. LR: Right towards the end of the year, okay. As you're sitting with nothing to do, essentially, what are some of the thoughts going through your head about, "What's the point?" I want your… 11 JO: Yeah, like my thought process? LR: Yes, thank you. JO: I was really frustrated. It's a story as old as time. I walked in bright-eyed, bushytailed, very, very passionate about a university that I thought really had a lot of dedication to its students and to ensuring that the programs and engagement that it facilitated was consistent and helpful and available to students. As I became more deeply entrenched in my work at the university, instead of just my academics at the university, it became incredibly clear that these people weren't being given the resources, the help, the structure to effectively do their jobs. I mean, I was watching people who were asked by like administration members, or I guess higher-up faculty in the student association, people who had their own jobs with the diversity would be asked to set aside their responsibilities to help programing for projects that already had hundreds of dollars being easily thrown at it, already had a mass amount of student staff support, and were very actively being supported by the administration. Meanwhile, it was Hispanic Heritage Month and we had two student workers who were on reduced hours doing all of the marketing for it. It doesn't matter if you were a part-time staff or a full-time staff, I saw very consistently that DEI workers were seen as a support staff for the university's primary goal, which is getting more students and more tuition money. LR: Okay, so you weren't seeing it being worked as a department that it could have been? JO: Absolutely not. 12 LR: Is my question making sense? JO: Yeah. I think the big issue with it is that it wasn't allowed to succeed. It wasn't put in a setting where you had the same support as other more general programs. I mean, I fought tooth and nail for a very small budget to do a giveaway for students, for the marketing for DEI programs. In that same month, they literally just gave out money at a football game. So, it's tough for me to understand where we were expected to serve an entire student population without the support to even do the basic responsibilities that they were being asked to do. LR: Okay. When you were moved into the Center for Multicultural Excellence, was it more of a because there was nothing to do or there was no real structure within the DEI program? JO: Yeah. To my understanding, they were unable to hire anyone else for the Diversity and Inclusive Programing position that my boss had previously held. So, I essentially was just moved to where they needed the support, and the CME was where they needed that support. Then they closed it down like that same year. LR: You were moved in 2024? JO: No, I believe I was moved in 2022. I can also go through and like accurately find these dates. I was moved in the year prior that the CME was closed down. LR: So, the Center for Multicultural Excellence, is that different from the cultural center? JO: The Center for Multicultural Excellence was established, I want to say, in the 1980s. It was one of the first DEI sort of programs that Weber State had, and it was closed down to make way for the cultural centers. Originally, to my 13 understanding, the recommendation that was given by an outside consultant was to maintain the CME and then add a Black student center. That was not what ended up happening. We were told, I think it was November, that the center would be shutting down, and they set the official shutting down date for like January 5. But that was right at the end of winter break, so the effective shutdown point was mid-December. We had about a month and some change where we were told that our primary boss was fired after, I think, 17 years of working at the university. She'd been head of the CME for years. Then, yeah, we were all kind of dispersed. They brought in a new person who I believe at this point has also left, who was originally supposed to be overseeing those cultural centers. To my understanding, most of the cultural centers hadn't even been established by the time they were removed. So, like the Native American Student Center didn't officially have a space, to my understanding, before it was already shut down. LR: Okay, so this was happening in ‘23? The end of ‘23? Because I know that the Black Cultural Center opened in February of ‘24. JO: Yes, it was at the end of 2023. I had also worked with a couple of different students to meet with—I'm so sorry, I'm terrible with names. She's left now, but she was previously the DEI vice president. LR: Adrienne Andrews? JO: Adrienne Andrews. So, we met with Adrienne Andrews a couple of times. We met with the student Senate. We requested a meeting with the president, basically trying to work out the logistics of this. We were told originally that, you 14 know, within a month, every single student affinity group would have their own space, that it would have stronger staff, that it would have the same support. Several months passed and that didn't happen. One of the spaces they offered was in part of a house on the edge of campus. But obviously, that space versus a space right in the heart of campus held incredibly different implications for two student groups. It was definitely, I think that was the final straw for me. That was actually when I stopped working at Weber State University after that. I watched a lot of my friends who had worked in the CME have their hours cut, be asked to do tasks that simply weren't part of their original job description on a short period of time. I remember we had received a presentation from a woman that they had hired on to try to make Weber State an Emerging Hispanic Institute. When asked, you know, what was her goal for creating an engaging, safe, welcoming, and culturally aware student space, her answer was that her goal was to bring more Hispanic students into Weber State. Those seem like backwards goals to me. LR: Yeah, they're very different goals. JO: That was actually an issue that a lot of my friends at the CME had, was that they felt like we were abandoning a culturally safe or inclusive space for a set of certifications that would put Weber State on the map for new students, but not help current students. LR: Okay. As you're navigating this world of, and I'm gonna put words in your mouth, chaos, were you still able to focus and do things academically? 15 JO: Not as well as I would have liked, and that was actually a really big reason for kind of closing out my time at Weber State University. It was the beginning of 2023 was when they officially had closed the Center for Multicultural Excellence, and it was like during that semester that I was just beginning my classes and also trying to figure out a way to get the president of the university to hear the group of 10 students who had been dedicated to the space, who had seen the dedication of full-time staff members, who had watched students time and time again come into the space, whether or not it was for a brief moment of connection or for academic help or for starting a new club. It kind of was the downfall of me maintaining my relationship with Weber State University in the way that I thought I would have through the end of my college career. It was a big reason why I chose to begin working off campus after working on campus for three years. A big reason why I chose not to take up a student leadership position again. I was offered a position on a student board that I ended up turning down this year, because when given the opportunity to… it didn't even have to be a fight, but simply stand in place for students the way that some universities did. Brad Mortenson openly said that he was going to take a more aggressive approach. I remember seeing this last summer, the news article where he said that in front of a legislative committee, that Weber State was going to take a more aggressive approach to these cultural centers and these programs. That was when I knew, you know, the guy who sends out an email with just his first name, lowercased, isn't there for you in the way that the faculty and staff that you work 16 with on the ground and classrooms every day is. That's not something that a conversation’s going to change. LR: You mentioned student leadership. What did that look like for you, and why did you get involved? JO: I had always really wanted to. When I started to realize that Weber State wasn't the perfect university—which I know now, none of the universities are, but I was a bit more disillusioned about it at the beginning—I had a period of time where I was like, well, there are still resources at the university that can be utilized for, you know, these groups of students who are really passionate about making change, and even if the university itself isn't willing to provide that structure, there are students who want to help create it. So, I knew a student previously on student leadership, and they had talked about having a lot of difficulty with kind of the group of students that were engaging in leadership. They had mentioned particularly they had an incident with a fraternity and a sorority who had to receive disciplinary punishment from the student Senate, and how that process really just opened up their eyes to the fact that some students just didn't care about the same things that they did and the reason why they engaged in student leadership. I had also noticed that Weber State had a really low turnout for their student leadership. The student Senate especially had a lot of spots left open even after election, so I decided to throw my name in the hat and got it. It was only the second year that the LGBTQ student senator position had been open. The first year, I believe it was Garrett Potokar, and he then became the student 17 Senate president I believe, so he would oversee a lot of our meetings. It was difficult. It was more difficult than I was expecting. It wasn't completely a negative, you know, setting. I don't want to say that, you know, all the students that were there were there for the wrong reasons because there were so many students who were passionate about using the funds that we were allocated to really support great student projects. But it became really clear that any conversations around like inclusivity or putting funds towards like programs that had been historically underfunded was not a priority nor an interest. It was rather boring to a large group of the students there. I think this was most striking where in, I think it was the same session, we had a student who put forward a bill to ask for funds for the Model United Nations team to attend a trip. This student was also on the Model United Nations team, so I felt a bit uneasy with giving funding for, like, someone's individual trip. I asked if we could talk to any of the other students. They brought in a foreign exchange student, and when we were asking questions about, you know, about them and their experience on Model UN, we asked, “How would going on this trip benefit you?” That's when we learned that that student actually wouldn't be allowed to go on the trip because the team had not properly put in the paperwork for them to go as an international student. Out of the two people that we knew on the Model United Nations team, we had one white male student who had been on leadership for some time, who was going on this trip and would be financially benefited by this, and one student who was already facing a multitude of barriers, 18 this international student, who wouldn't even be allowed to go on this trip, but was instead paraded in front of us. That same day, we had another proposal for a program that, to my understanding, had been going on for a few years, and it was for Pacific Islander youth to basically come to Weber and learn about going to college. The goal was to increase this group, their interest in college, their knowledge of college, especially when a lot of them were first generation. We fought tooth and nail for that. We were told repeatedly that these aren't Weber state students, so why should we care about them? Why should we put the funds towards them? We were told that this is something that someone else can figure out how to fund. Meanwhile, that personal trip, the Model UN trip, was fully funded, and the Pacific Islander college night was only funded partially and was scaled down as a result. I think that instance was really painful, in a way, to look around and realize that some of my fellow students hadn't been taught empathy and apparently weren't learning it in these classrooms. There was a disinterest in lifting up others, I think. You know, I've gotten into college, I have these opportunities, and they don't want to look back. They don't want to turn around. Yeah, it's not as exciting as a Model UN trip, but I think it's more important, and that wasn't a conversation that was invited to be had. LR: What academic year were you on student leadership? JO: I believe I was a junior at this time. LR: Okay. That would have been 22-23? JO: Yeah, 22-23 I believe. 19 LR: Were you in the LGBTQ+ Senate position, or were you in a different one? JO: I was in just the LGBTQ Senate position. I think the previous year I had helped out just for a bit with the DEI, or like the diversity team of the student association. But it was not very well organized, so I basically did an interview, I helped with a few items, and then the school year ended. I wouldn't count it as like student body leadership, because there was so little that was done by that team during the time. LR: Okay. Did you feel like your time was well spent in that position? JO: No. I think that I did the best that I could with what I had, and I wish I could have done more. You know, I wish I would have fought for more funding. I wish that I would have been willing to just fully alienate myself, not only from my fellow students, but from the faculty and staff that were around me. Because there was still that hesitancy with, “Well, I don't want to seem like the crazy, angry leftist who is standing up with their big gay mouth and getting mad that we're not giving all of our money to the poor.” I know the stereotypes that a lot of people carry, especially in Utah, about people on the other end of the aisle. I didn't want to play into that, and it didn't get me anywhere. It didn't help me. LR: When you finally decided to work off campus, where did you begin work? JO: I work for the government. I don't see why I can't say this, I just hesitated. I work for the Salt Lake City Council. I work as a speechwriter. I help with their communication materials, so if a press release is sent out by the Salt Lake City Council, I've had my hands on it. 20 LR: We can move that along. We don't need to go there; I was just curious. I'm going to kind of progress a little bit towards this last year. You're no longer working on campus, but you're still coming to class. Because you've spent so much time, you might as well finish your degree, right? JO: Yep. LR: The writing on the wall, from what I'm hearing to you, is not shocking at all. In fact, almost like you're expecting it to happen at any moment. When the Black Culture Center did open, what were some of your thoughts about that? JO: I thought about the promises that Weber State had made to us. Originally, something that was said in multiple meetings and was really important to the students who were transitioning from the CME over to these cultural centers is that every cultural center would open at the same time. We were promised directly by Adrienne Andrews there would be no center that was prioritized, whether or not they had the space available for it, whether or not they had the staff available for it. They would work to ensure that all of these centers would be available for students at the same time. They were not, simply put, and it was a bittersweet moment. I knew a lot of students really wanted that center, and so I was very happy that they were able to make that change for the university. But the feeling that I carried since I had originally talked to those students, I mean, I had worked with this separate group of students who were working towards the Black Student Center. I had attended their protests prior years, had spoken with them at student senate meetings, had spoken in support of them as a student senator. But the underlying feeling was they don't quite know what 21 they're gonna get. They put a lot of faith in the university when I don't think that there was faith to be had. I think that there were plenty of students and there were plenty of staff that were really passionate about making this goal a reality. But I mean, it had been multiple years that students had been asking for that, multiple years that have been recommended by an outside consultant, and the accompaniment of promises that were made I feel like were almost sacrificed. There was a willingness to put something half together and put it out. I think that that space can be made great by students, but is not great simply because the university decided to finally implement half of an idea that has been rolling around since I've been here. LR: I mean, that center was not even open six months. JO: Yeah. LR: As the trickles of HB261 coming down the pipeline, they're talking about it and nothing's decided yet. You know, when it's just that trickle, what was your thought as you were hearing about that that house bill? JO: It's finally come for us. Yeah, I heavily follow the national, global politics, and it's no secret that fascism and censorship and intolerance are becoming the words of the month every other month. It was only a matter of time before Utah was successful in what so many other states have been successful at doing, which is rolling back progress and creating a uniform, strict, and conservative Overton window for us to engage in. The language of it was especially funny, or maybe ironic to me. Especially once, you know, the bill kind of kicked into effect, I was trying to really make it a priority to find out what exactly is going on at Weber 22 State. What exactly are the changes that are going to be made? What can I do? What can I not do? Going into fall semester at the end of the summer, I was calling the president's office, the student success office, like any office that I could get a hold of. I was calling and I was asking for meetings, or for them to just call me back, or if anyone even just had somewhere I could get that information. I was told to email the president's office and I sent a whole list of questions, and I received maybe two or three of them with a response. The biggest thing was that I was told that, you know, the language of the bill only restricts activities or programs or centers that are restrictive in and of themselves. I am obviously white, obviously present white, and when I worked for the Center for Multicultural Excellence, I was literally the only white person like at the time. I never once felt excluded by their hand. If anything, it was my own uncomfortability in being placed in this space by someone else. But I mean, I also feel like it was one of the best places for me to be after growing up in Utah my whole life. I learned so much from the experience of the people around me. I got to experience what it was like when I didn't know the language everyone else was speaking. I think that's important, especially as we have programs at Weber State that are supposed to focus on Spanish-speaking students. That was the only space I've ever been on campus where students were able to congregate and connect through their culture, to bring their cultural foods and not have someone make a comment about how it smells in the microwave, or to be as loud as they wanted. 23 It was after the CME switched to the cultural centers and we had several staff that were removed from the space, we had some other staff from different fields that were enmeshed in that space. They stopped spending time in that space because they quite literally were not welcomed there anymore in the same way. They were told that they were messy, they were loud, for the space that they had worked and been social in for years. I don't think that that's a coincidence. I think especially the use of those adjectives was not a coincidence. LR: I feel like I'm not quite sure what it is I'm trying to say, so I'm just going to pick another question here. From everything that you're saying, you kind of have a unique perspective on the closing of these centers. How do you think, even with the closing of the Center for Multicultural Excellence—? JO: [Laughs] It took me a while too. LR: Wow, that's a mouthful. Having gone through that experience, and now with the closing of the centers, are the students reacting? Is there the same type of reaction among students? Is it different? How do you think students have, and are reacting? JO: I think what is so ironic about the question is that the spaces that we would have normally went to connect with each other, to talk, to meet other students who are going through those same things, now we no longer have that space. There is certainly a reaction that I have seen from a small group of students to take action to help disseminate resources or to try to build new structures at Weber State. But unfortunately, none of them have come to fruition. I think in large part that's because we are already at a point where the majority of students are just trying to 24 survive. They're trying to put food in their mouths, trying to get good grades, trying to finish their degree so they can enter a job market that is getting more terrifying every day. It feels like you're a salmon swimming upstream and you don't get your big surprise at the end. You hit a wall. You hit a wall, after a wall, after a wall. I knew a student who was interested in trying to create a volunteer basically cultural center, so it would not be impacted by state funds and would essentially get around all of the language of the bill. Had spent several months and no progress has been made on that, because the University is not willing to give space, which again, these things don't surprise me, because the University originally wasn't willing to give that space. Even when the LGBTQ Center was around, the LGBTQ Center and the Women's Center was the same space. They functioned as the same area. They essentially shared staff. There's not that web of support anymore. You don't know who to reach out to. In fact, one of the things that I found out was that the resource pages that had resources for LGBTQ students that included like local resources and resources for the name change process, all of those pages were taken down over the summer. There's nothing in the bill that says that that needed to happen. That wasn't a restrictive space. Also, plenty of people get name changes. Plenty of people get surgery that are in need of an understanding surgeon. There were a lot of resources and a lot of help that wasn't just intended for a specific group that now is permanently lost. Work that Weber state funded, they have now 25 willingly given up and kind of thrown to the side, when it's more important now than ever. LR: How do you think the closing of these centers will hinder and/or help students? JO: I think it will help students who want to stay in their bubble, and only want themselves and people that they believe are acceptable in a professional space, to succeed. Utah is notorious for being kind of homogeneous in its culture and not the most open and accepting place. We're very polite, we're very kind; we're not the most inclusive. I think students who would normally enter college and realize how open and diverse the real world is will now happily turn away from that diversity in their classrooms, will happily pretend it doesn't exist. Some literally believe that these people either don't exist, or that their experience or that their struggles or that these barriers don't exist. I think that this only serves to reinforce those beliefs. I think all students will be hurt by that effect. You come to college, and I had the brilliant experience, that I didn't completely expect in college, that I had my eyes opened to all the ways that I was not the most progressive person, or that I wasn't the most aware, or that there were simply some experiences that I literally did not understand and could only understand by the sidelines. The students who are unable to maybe pass or to kind of be hidden or to kind of sidestep their identity, I think have lost a place to exist. I can't tell you how many students would just come and sit in the Women's Center just to be there because it was a nice place. You never had to worry about if there was a comment or snide remark or a laugh or that uncomfortable silence after you walk in a room. 26 LR: Okay, I've got two more questions. Before I ask them, is there anything else that you would like to add or comment on? JO: I think that this is not just a tragic or uncomfortable move by the university or the state. I think that it is fulfilling exactly what the University's intending to fulfill, which is that when something is seen to be beneficial for its enrollment rates, that they'll engage with it, and the second that it threatens an individual with powers, either the position that they hold at the university or their perceived success from the state legislature, the true colors show, which is that neutrality is always on the side of the oppressor. There are plenty of quotes and important figures that I have learned about in my classrooms that have warned against this exact sort of slow creep or crawl to a uniform society with heavy government involvement and yet we all just smile and wave to the legislature and we all still continue to go to our classes and pay our tuition because that's all we can do right now. I hope that this is a call to action and a realization for a lot of people that you can't destroy the master's house with the master's tools. LR: Why is community important? JO: Community is a word that I think gets thrown around a lot at the University. We're told to engage in community work, that our project should be community oriented, especially in the humanities. We are told that, you know, you should be connecting with your community. We have the CCEL on campus that is supposed to connect you to your community. But community isn't just a non-profit that is in your area. Community is the people that you see every day and 27 specifically your reliance upon them. You can't be a pure individual in a community. There is always going to be an element of mutual reliance and growth that comes from that. You know, we live in a very individualistic society, and even now, none of us are completely individuals. We've all been shaped by our time at this university, by our families, by the students around us. For me, community is putting a name to the fact that we have to be aware and be happy about this mutual reliance. It doesn't have to be a negative thing that we can't do it all by ourselves. We need to be able to turn around and lift a hand to each other so that the person in front of us can do the same thing. If we just keep going up a ladder without looking down, someone's gonna fall. They're going to take out everyone beneath them. I don't want to be at the top of the ladder. I want to be on the stairs with everyone else. LR: Appreciate that. Finally, what do you think we as individuals can do to foster relationships and meet the needs of the underserved communities here at Weber? JO: I think we need to stop relying on the traditional structures that we've been presented. A: this false binary between us here at Weber and underserved communities. Many students here are the underserved communities. We have a very high population of non-traditional students. We also have a fairly high number of students who come from a background of marginalized identities or first-generation students. 28 All of these are underserved communities, not just from the moment they enter Weber, but from the years prior to that. A lot of people don't understand the culture around college or understand what a credit is. Like, I came from AP classes and CE classes in high school, and I still didn't understand the credit system. I didn't understand how many years you would actually go for a master's program. There are so many things that are I think seen as a given that can be helped and supported by the structures at university. For example, having an emotional support system. A lot of students may enter Weber State, especially if they are moving, without any social support, without that emotional relief at the end of the day, without that bit of joy and happiness after your classes. That's just as important as somebody who sits you down and explains that you can't take 20 credits in one semester, or the benefits of being a full-time student. I think it's difficult that we as individuals are expected to help those underserved communities, because we don't have the same means, we don't have the same resources, and we're also not the reason why they're underserved. But that doesn't mean that we [can’t] each take individual actions that can be beneficial. After I leave my job, I take the extra food from like our work dinners and I bring it to the Weber Fridge. Well, the Weber Fridge, even though it's one of the best community groups and one of the best community resources in Ogden, isn't a certified CCEL partner. So, students are never going to be easily connected to that resource, are never going to get an award for helping them. But it's the 29 individuals throughout the community that can connect you with those, that can show you where some of the biggest impacts that you can make are. A quote I really love is that idea of taking action on what you love and what you can reach. We can't all help our local underserved community, but we can be on the student fee recommendation committee and give a positive recommendation to student fees that will help serve these marginalized students. But it can't end there. It has to be further, has to be community based, and I think that creating community and working on really knowing your neighbors, your fellow students, and offering support not as a charity model but as an act of fostering a mutual relationship, that can be a long-term growth that leaves us without the "us versus them" of underserved communities. LR: Thank you. JO: Beautiful. Yeah, thank you. Sorry that some of it was a little… LR: No, I'm appreciative of your perspective. It's been amazing to get your perspective, so I appreciate your willingness to share. 30