Oral History with Edward Spencer, November 7, 2014 (Ms2015-007)

David Atkins: My name is David Atkins. I'm here with Ellen Boggs and Dr. Edward Spencer and I'm conducting an interview for the LGBTQ Oral History Project. Can you tell us your name, date and place of birth?

Edward Spencer: I'm Edward Spencer and I was born on August 18th 1945 in Pittsfield Massachusetts.

ATKINS: Can you tell us a little bit about your family and how you were raised?

SPENCER:I grew up for my first eleven years in Pittsfield and my father wound up with a forty-six year career in General Electric. My biological mother died when I was not quite four years old and so I was raised by my father and then various housekeepers, one of whom eventually became my stepmother. We moved to Decatur Illinois in the summer of 1956, spent three and a half years there. Then we 1:00moved to Stratford Connecticut for about a year and a half, and then to Auburn New York in the Fair Lakes area for my junior and senior years of high school. And then I did my undergraduate work at the University of Rochester nearby there and then got a Master's from Syracuse; well I went to medical school first then dropped out after half a year. But got a Master's from Syracuse, met my wife in the graduate program at Syracuse and then we moved to the University of Delaware in 1970 for our first professional jobs. And I got another Master's and Ph.D. in Social Psychology while I was working full time at Delaware. My wife and I have one son who we adopted when he was seven years old and he obviously finished his 2:00schooling here in Blacksburg and then he did a career in the army, and moved back home and started to raise his family here. Long story short, I lost my wife to cancer after she went through about an eleven and a half year struggle with that and then last January lost my son sadly to huffing, inhaling, aerosol substances, about which none of us knew anything about.

ATKINS: I'm sorry to hear that.

SPENCER: In a nutshell, that's my life [laugh].

ATKINS: Can you tell me about how you arrived at Virginia Tech, a little bit about your career before then and then getting to Virginia Tech?

SPENCER: Sure. Well I went off to Delaware in 1970 with my Master's degree and my first professional position, which was in the residence life area of housing and residence life and then became an Assistant Director in that program and had 3:00responsibilities for public relations and room assignments and then eventually moved into the facilities area of that department. So by the end of my twelve and a half years at Delaware I had experience in student life area, the administration and public relations and facilities area of housing and residence life. And then meanwhile, I had also finished my other Master's and my Ph.D. in social psych. And Virginia Tech in 1982 was looking for a director of housing and residence life and my credentials were prefect for them and they came after me. To tell you the truth, I'd never heard of Virginia Tech at that point and somebody said to me, 'well it's VPI.' And I thought 'oh okay its VPI now I understand, I know what school it is.' My wife at that point had become- she had 4:00started in student affairs and had moved to academic affairs- she had become an Associate Dean at the College of Business at the University of Delaware and she decided she would like to give up her position and get her Doctorate here, which is what she did. We fell in love with the place when we moved here. And shortly after we moved here the same position she had at Delaware opened up here and they came after her. But she finished her doctorate part-time while working full-time here like I had done at Delaware. So I became Director of Housing and Residence Life, which is responsible for everything about residence halls, from the facilities area to housekeeping, to the student life programming, everything. Had that title until 1988, no it was '89 and I became Director of Residential and Dining Programs when the dining program was moved from Business 5:00Affairs to Student Affairs and Jim McComas was president at the time and asked if I could turn it around into something I could be proud of, which I think we did through a lot of good staff. Eventually became Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, as other departments began to report to me besides Housing and Residence Life and Dining. Then eventually became Associate Vice President as number two to the Deputy Vice President position. And then tragically the Vice President who preceded me, Zenobia Hikes, died while in office from complications from heart surgery. And the Provost asked if I would move into the vice presidency position. He said for maybe three years and I said okay because that would match when I want to retire so that's fine. I wound up agreeing to stay for a fourth year until I retired. So I did a forty-two year career in 6:00Student Affairs the last four of which were the Vice President position.

ATKINS: Did you find any one of those more rewarding than the others?

SPENCER:You know they're all rewarding in their own way, because you get into working some details and special programs and creating things. I think certainly when you become Vice President you realize the impact you can have because you have responsibility for so much and can approve things and take things in new directions. So that's probably the most exciting, to have finished as Vice President.

ATKINS: I want to talk a little bit more about your role as Director of Housing and Residence Life here at the school. You held that position from '82 to '89?

SPENCER: From January 1st '83 until April of '89.

ATKINS: What were 7:00your original responsibilities or just responsibilities in general with that role?

SPENCER: Well the Director of Housing Residence Life is the chief housing officer for the university so everything on the facilities side, you know, furnishings, the buildings themselves, the equipment, to the public relations, room assignment side to the Residence Student Life program, the RA program, everything like that. So anything and everything to do with the residence halls comes through the Director of Housing and Residence Life.

ATKINS: In your role there did you deal with any issues directly related to the LGBTQ community at Virginia Tech?

SPENCER: Oh sure. At the time I came into the position, 1983, the AIDS crisis was really growing then it was a big, huge issue. Frankly there are so many parallels to the Ebola crisis right now that I see going on, it's deja 8:00vu for me as I look back at it. There had been a student group that I think was originally called the Gay Student Alliance I think formed back in the 70s that was in the process of changing its name to the Lambda Horizon Group. As the AIDS crisis came about and there was a lot of fear and anxiety and prejudice and bias and discrimination going on, simply because someone was gay and therefore they must have AIDS, that's the thinking that some people had. That a lot of us were concerned about helping our LGBT students in the midst of all this. So we had a really outstanding health educator in the Schiffert Health Center, Joanne 9:00Underwood who I hope you're getting to interview.

ATKINS: Yes we are.

SPENCER: Who really was ahead of her time in many ways as a health educator. She had developed a close bond with students involved in what had become known as the Lambda Horizon group. I think she sort of bridged the gap from student to administration in bringing us all around the table together to talk about this. So as the person in charge of the whole housing program, I decided I would get personally involved in it. I knew Joanne through our church, so we had the kind of relationship. So that's how I first got to know Mark Weber, who I guess was president, if not secretary of the organization at that point. And we formed an 10:00AIDS education committee, and this would have been I guess around '85, '86 something like that. And on that committee from the health center was certainly Joanne. Walt von Lem [sp], who was one of the physicians in the health center and Dictus Jardins [sp] who was one of the physicians. Interestingly, Walt had lost his son to AIDS, so he was very personally committed to this. Dr. Schiffert I think himself served as sort of a consultant to the committee. Obviously I was on the committee, Mark Weber, and I think Keith Mckelhenny [sp] from the Lambda Horizon group. Lucretia Cavin, who was a graduate student in our college student affairs program that I teach in, she was on it. And I think Ken Israel from the Counseling Center was on it at one point as well. I may have missed some, but 11:00that was sort of the core group. So we began very much an educational mission to try and educate people about AIDS, and that also moved towards understanding LGBT students and realizing that just because someone has AIDS doesn't necessarily mean that they're gay, or the other way around: that someone who is gay doesn't happen to have AIDS. But as I was saying, this is so parallel to the some of the discrimination and the assumptions and the panic that's going on with this Ebola crisis, it really takes you back to that era of how people think sometimes.

ATKINS: Can you go into a little bit more detail about what you did through the education program? How you tried to reach students, was it just students or was it students and faculty?

SPENCER: Well I think it was aimed largely at students, 12:00but we publicized it in such a way it was really open to everybody. So faculty, staff, and community members, everybody I think took part. So we began developing written materials to educate everyone about it. We put together as I recall a forum, an all day forum, and we had Richard Keeling [sp] come in. Rich Keeling used to be Director of the Student Health Service at the University of Virginia and became President of the American College Health Association, which is the national association of student health services. He was really, in the 80s he was very much the expert on AIDS in the American and campus communities. So he came in to speak and we had, as I recall, we had breakout sessions with various people from the committee and the community leading those sessions in an 13:00effort to educate everybody. And we got, I think, really good publicity on campus. In those days the Collegiate Times was the only way to advertise on campus really [laughter]. And the Roanoke Times covered it as well. So I think gradually we were able to build a lot of education, hopefully change a lot of opinions of the people.

ATKINS: So it was mostly positively received?

SPENCER: It was, it was.

ATKINS: I want to talk a little bit now about the AIDS epidemic and how it affected student housing. Was there a university policy about it related to student housing, or not?

SPENCER: Well really from this committee, which made recommendations to the Student Health Service, and really the Director of Schiffert Health Center is the one who makes medical decisions for the campus, and that was Dr. Schiffert at the time, who is still alive by the 14:00way and living in Blacksburg. The basic policy we developed was very simple: that each case would be considered individually, what was the best to do in any situation. Was any action necessary? Was there education of roommates, hall mates if we had such occasions in the residence halls? How you contract AIDS and how you don't contract AIDS, that kind of thing. So there wasn't a blanket policy it was more individual, where we'd look at each case individually and determine what to do.

ATKINS: Is there any one case that specifically stands out as being different or-

SPENCER: When I think back, I'm not sure we ever had a case that became apparent in the residence halls. I know we had some students living off campus who had contracted the disease, but I don't think we ever had 15:00one in the residence halls. I might be wrong, but I can't remember it. I think if we did I would have remembered.

ATKINS: What would you say the general attitude towards AIDS on campus was with faculty and staff and with students at the time? And I guess how it changed from your initial involvement in '83 through the 80s.

SPENCER: I think initially there was unknown exactly what this was, what it meant. And then I think there was some panic that developed and then I think people began to understand that AIDS is not an easy disease to catch and I think that was a lot of what our focus was to get people to 16:00understand that. So I think there came to be understanding about the disease and what we were doing and what needed to be done. I think then, simultaneous to that, you have attitudes about LGBT students. When you go back to the 80s there was a lot of discrimination, homophobia that certainly we saw throughout the country and throughout the campus for that matter. And I think it was a very difficult situation for LGBT students to be students in that era because of those attitudes and biases that were going on. I think it's a lot different today, we've come a long ways, but those were difficult times.

ATKINS: Can you speak to that change over time, how you've seen attitudes change in regards to 17:00the LGBTQ community?

SPENCER: I think it's been a very long slow process that you also see with attitudes towards gay marriage too. That's come about over a long slow period of time. I think people began to understand and accept LGBT students, to be less threatened by them. I think some role models started to develop because we started to have some RAs who were openly gay, and I think that that helped a lot. At the same time, folks who chose to do that and be open about it sometimes faced real homophobic responses. I know we had some RAs who had graffiti on their door from hall residents and that kind of thing. We tried 18:00to be supportive and come to their assistance when that kind of thing was going on. But I take it back, very parallel to the civil rights movement. I went to school in the sixties when the civil rights movement was really going on and I think the slow changes in society that we saw from the civil rights movement is what we are now seeing in the gay rights movement. To me, it's a very parallel situation.

ATKINS: What kind of support did you offer to those people that experienced that discrimination?

SPENCER: We often when we had that kind of thing, we would call floor meetings where this had happened, to discuss the situation with residents of the floor and that we wouldn't tolerate that kind of 19:00thing. We wanted to be as supportive of that RA as we could, to increase our level of educational programming and housing programming about that subject and to show people that we wanted to be a welcoming community to everyone. That was difficult to do sometimes when you're surrounded by a society that didn't have the same maybe forward looking attitudes that you did in higher education. Some of the same kinds of situations that Blacksburg faces in the midst of a very conservative area of Southwest Virginia.

ATKINS: Was the Gay Student Alliance or the Lambda Horizon group part of any of those conversations?

SPENCER: They were. We began to partner with them more and more. We tried to help them with 20:00advertising their events, their meetings. In those days, in the eighties initially, my recollection is the Lambda Horizon group could not even advertise where they were going to meet because there had been incidents of well I remember a rock being thrown through the window of one of their meetings. So if you wanted to attend one of their meetings you had to call a number and, I believe this is what I recall, and find out where they were going to meet and who you were and that kind of thing. Pretty sad. We've come a long ways, but it gives you a feel of what it was like.

ATKINS: Do you know how they determined from the phone call whether they would tell you where the meeting was? Do you know how that worked?

SPENCER: I don't know. That's a good question to ask 21:00somebody, probably Mark Weber I guess.

ATKINS: I was just curious. So have you been involved in any other LGBTQ organizations here at Virginia Tech or elsewhere?

SPENCER: I've been I think a very strong ally for the organization over the years, is probably the best way to describe my relationship with them. And certainly have been that way with the undergraduate group and then with the graduate group as it formed, and certainly I have been a friend to the faculty staff group as well. When people ask me 'what are the things you've really achieved here?' certainly turning around the dining program, for example, is one of the things I always say, but as when I was vice president I was the one who finally approved a full-time position to work with the LGBT community as part of multicultural programs and services. So Catherine Cotrupi, who was the person 22:00who went into that position, we had her as a wage person for the first year that she worked in the center and then we were able to establish it as a full-time professional position the next year. And she easily was chosen as the best person for that job. Sadly, she and her partner moved elsewhere and she's no longer here, but she was a great person to start that position.

ATKINS: Can you talk a little bit about how that came about, I guess within the university, was there resistance to it?

SPENCER: Yeah I think that if I had been Vice President back in the eighties and tried to establish such a position it would have never gone anywhere, just the political background would have prevented that from happening. I think as things gradually changed over the years the openness to doing that was there and then I think it was a matter of how can we put funding 23:00together from either the Multicultural Programs and Services Department or other departments to have enough money and an allocation for a position to do it. So, we were able to do it that way.

ATKINS: You talked a little bit about the contrast between the Virginia Tech community and the surrounding community. Did you ever deal with any I think you even mentioned some community members that came and spoke at the education meetings and forums. Was their experience in the greater community different from LGBTQ experiences at Virginia Tech, do you think?

SPENCER: Oh yeah, cause I can remember hearing stories told over the years by some of these folks of things they have experienced in the local community. Of graffiti, name calling, sometimes attacks, personal attacks, 24:00physical attacks, that kind of thing. I think some of those community members would tell these factual stories to our students to remind our students that this wasn't always the safest place to be, even though we wanted it to be. We started Safe Watch on campus, we started the Safe Zone program, really trying to send a strong message that we want this to be a welcoming and safe place for all. And I think things like that, when you put all those efforts together, it eventually turns around a culture. As you well know, a culture is not something you turn around over night. It's a long slow process. But frankly, when I was a 25:00college student, did I think I would ever live to see gay marriage approved, I would have thought 'no way, that will never happen in the United States.' I mean look what's happened- amazing.

ATKINS: So the Safe Watch program, that was something for all students, right, and it just happened to cover

SPENCER: It was for all students, faculty, staff, really everybody. It was an effort for people to have a way to report incidents that had happened. You could report something that happened to you personally or it could be a third party reporter, reporting something that you heard about or witnessed happening. And then those reports came into the Dean of Students' office. The Safe Watch line was looked at two or three times a day by the Dean of Students office. So it was checked each day, and then they would follow up on the various incidents to determine 26:00exactly what happened, what we could do in response, if we identified a person that we need to meet with, a floor of a residence hall. Is there some place in the community where this is coming from? That kind of thing. So it was a good way to get started being proactive and reactive about incidents.

ATKINS: Do you know if the incidents occurred more on campus or off.

SPENCER: They were mainly on campus. And it really was developed mainly in response to homophobic issues, but it became appropriately used for other kinds of incidences, because occasionally we'd have racial issues going on as well, or sexist issues. But it really developed in response to concerns from within the gay community.

ATKINS: For student safety?

SPENCER: Yes. And one of the people initially involved in 27:00that with us, partnering with us, was Michael Sutphin, and I'm assuming you're probably interviewing him. Michael is a graduate at Tech, he was very active in the gay student group as an undergraduate, and I forget whether he became the president of the group at one point or not. He now works as a public relations officer in college, it's either the Vet school or the Ag school, I forget which, but he's a member of the Town Council of Blacksburg. He got elected to Town Council. He would be a very good person for you to talk with if he is not on your list.

ATKINS: Okay. You spoke a little bit about LGBTQ meetings and meeting places, do you know were those off campus, on campus? Did they have meeting spaces available?

SPENCER: They were a registered student organization and 28:00eventually a chartered student organization. And so sure, they could reserve space on campus. Now did they always meet on campus? I don't really know for sure. I suspect they might have met off campus as well, but certainly they could reserve space. Now whether or not they publicized where the space was had to do with how the atmosphere was at that point. I think eventually they became very public about where they were meeting. Thank goodness that they were able to do that.

ATKINS: Did that occur gradually as well?

SPENCER: I think so, that's my recollection. I think probably in 2014 if you said to one of the people in the current group, 'you know at one time we couldn't even publish where we'd meet' they'd look at you and say, 'you're kidding' [laughter]. That's how much times change.

ATKINS: Especially now with all the other means of publication.

SPENCER: Oh absolutely. Yeah, cause you have to think back, this was at a time, as I was saying, the only way to publicize things was really in the Collegiate Times. We 29:00didn't have cell phones, we didn't have email and instant messaging or anything like that. So it was a different era.

ATKINS: Are there any issues you can think of with the LGBTQ community here at Virginia Tech that you felt the university dealt with very appropriately or perhaps even inappropriately? Or anything specific you can remember?

SPENCER: I can't remember anything that we might have handled inappropriately, I don't believe so. Of course I was a member of the administration so you're not always your best critic [laughter]. I think the way that we handled things by really trying to be proactive and reactive and jumping in new things through Safe Watch , through responding to issues that might be brewing in the residence halls, by moving the LGBT group from a registered to a 30:00chartered student organization, by changing the discrimination code at the university to include sexual orientation. I was on the Commission of Student Affairs when we made that change, which I think was during the McComas administration, if I remember right.

ATKINS: Do you remember the year?

SPENCER: I wanna say it was probably about '91, '92, something like that. You would have to dig, well you could go right into the university council minutes and find it, but I think that's when it was. There were in incidents in Squires at the office of the LGBT group. There was some door defacement that went on there a couple times that we had to deal with.

ATKINS: In the Student Center?

SPENCER: One of them occurred after we had security cameras in place and my recollection is we 31:00were able to identify who did this from having those cameras.

ATKINS: Was it a student?

SPENCER: It was.

ATKINS: What happened to that student?

SPENCER: Well it would have been referred to the student conduct system, but I don't have a specific recollection of exactly what happened. Sometimes it's just enough to confront it and show the person the jig is up to get it to stop, but I'm sure that person faced sanctions and the student conduct system.

ATKINS: Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about? Or is there anything I didn't ask that you wish I would have asked you about?

SPENCER: As I look back on all those years, I have a lot of empathy for what our LGBT students went through during 32:00the years when it was much more difficult to be out than it is today. I hope we did all that we could do to help them. In retrospect could we have done more? No I can't think of anything off hand that we could have done more. I think we did a good job, we were responsive, we had a great relationship with the group and we simply worked very well together. But I think there are probably many LGBT students who were in, maybe still are in the closet and didn't want to deal with the atmosphere of those days. But I think they had some good leaders in the group, like Mark Weber, who were good leaders and helped the group come out and 33:00move to a position in the hierarchy of student organizations that they are today.

ATKINS: Was your relationship with them, did you feel it was always positive or reciprocal?

SPENCER: I think so. I never heard anything from LGBT students that they didn't like me and wanted me out or anything like that. I think we had a good relationship. And I still have contact with a number of those folks, like Mark. I assume he is a person you're interviewing too?

ATKINS: Yes. I know he's on the list. Is there anyone else that you can think of that we might want to interview?

SPENCER: Well I mentioned Michael Sutphin because you didn't seem to have him on the list.

ATKINS: Yeah I'm not sure we do.

SPENCER: He would be very important because he was really with us as we started the Safe Watch program and was really one of the driving forces to help us get that going. Mark may know where some of the other folks who were initially involved 34:00are today, I don't know. Certainly there have been gay RAs. Jason Sesul [sp] who works for the CDC in Atlanta, was one of our first openly gay RAs. He was an RA up in I think maybe Thomas Hall, if I remember right. Trying to think if there are other ones that come to mind off hand. Jim Devaty, D-E-V-A-T-Y, he was one of our head RAs, and head RAs are like hall directors. When I first came here, 35:00the halls were staffed entirely with undergraduate students, we had no live-in professional staff at all. So head RA was a very prestigious position held by some of our best and brightest, and Jim Devaty was one of those. Now, I'm not sure he was at the time openly gay, he certainly is now. He and his husband have adopted a boy and they live in the Pittsburg area. If you need an address, Mark probably has an address for him because they were out of the same era. Is there anybody else? Tonia Moxley, who is the Higher Ed reporter for the Roanoke Times, is a graduate of Tech and former editor of the Collegiate Times and is openly lesbian. I don't think she was ever an RA for us. But you know, as a former 36:00Collegiate Times editor and now the Higher Ed. reporter for Virginia Tech, she'd be a good person to talk to also.

ATKINS: When was she here, do you know?

SPENCER: I think late eighties, early nineties. I think that's right. Her spouse Maureen, I can't think of her last name, was the prime staff member for Planned Parenthood in Blacksburg. And they have certainly a perspective from that agency 37:00as well.

ATKINS: Do you have any questions about the project or anything else?

SPENCER: How's it going? What are you going to do with it all?

ATKINS: It's going well. Ultimately they will all be housed in Special Collections, part of the building of the LGBTQ collection there. Which, as you probably saw, it's fairly small right now, but it is a brand new collection.

SPENCER: It was funny, I went in to look at it and the person couldn't find it and they said 'oh wait a minute, Mark Weber has it on hold for you' [laughter]. I said 'Oh ok great.' So I just sat down, I looked at it quickly and I came back yesterday to look at it more. He left some great things in the files there.

ATKINS: Anything in particular that you thought was interesting that you found in there?

SPENCER: Sort of the history of things that Greg Edwards wrote for the Collegiate Times. 38:00Greg was himself HIV positive and frankly I don't know whether Greg is still alive. Mark can tell you, but I think Greg and those articles gave a good historical perspective on things and that was very helpful. And then reading Mark's handwritten notes from meetings is really interesting. But it was really helpful for me to refresh my memory, because the minute you start to read, oh the AIDS education committee, I remember who was on that now. So it was very helpful to bring all of that back.

ATKINS: So the interviews will be housed there and anything given by individuals will be there as well. Initially at this point it's just to start a collection and preserve it and I think the goal is to see how the LGBTQ community at Virginia Tech has changed over time.

SPENCER: Certainly the organization has been through cycles as sometimes viewing itself as a political organization, sometimes viewing itself as an educational organization. Some years when it seemed like all the leadership positions were held by women and some years all the leadership positions were held by men. My sense is now they have a pretty good balance between the two. Sometimes I would hear a lot about political infighting within the organization, which is never helpful for any organization. I think they've come a long ways to be very well respected now. Really the graduate student organization sort of spun off from the undergraduate organization. The faculty, staff group sort of developed 40:00simultaneously in parallel to the undergraduate organization. I think my impression too is sometimes each communicating with the other has not been as smooth as one would hope it would be.

ATKINS: Between the three?

SPENCER: Yeah, but my sense now is they're much more united and recognize and value each other's purpose.

ATKINS: Do you know if it was anything in particular that caused them to have moments where it was mostly male officers versus female members and stuff, or just perhaps the way it happened.

SPENCER: Well I don't know. Yeah you'd have to ask somebody like Michael or Mark and get their perspectives on that. Tonia, I think, would be a good person to give you some good perspective too. It would be good to interview Tonia. She's always interviewing everybody else cause that's her job. It would be nice to turn the 41:00tables and have someone interview her.

ATKINS: Is there anything not in the collection that you would like to see in there?

SPENCER: I think these interviews will be a great addition for people to the collection. I don't know what else I would think of offhand. Whether there's someone who could sit now and write sort of a more lengthy updated history of the whole organization. To take some of the early stuff that Greg wrote and Mark wrote and to follow it forward to the present.

ATKINS: I know they're working on a working timeline. To add to that to kind of supplement the history of it.

SPENCER: That would be great.

ATKINS: So that is something that will eventually be available, but is still a work in progress.

SPENCER: Sure.

ATKINS: Is there anything else you would like to add?

SPENCER: I think we've covered a lot of territory, anything else you want to ask?

ATKINS: No, we've covered all of my questions.

SPENCER: Ok good. Well good luck with it.

ATKINS: Thank you for agreeing to sit down and talk with us today.

SPENCER: I hope I've given you some help.