Oral History with William Simpkins, July 25, 2019 (Ms2019-001)

Ms2019-001

Narrator: William Simpkins

Interviewer: Joe Forte

Date of Interview: July 25, 2019

Transcribed by: Clay Adkins, October 24, 2019

Audit-edited by: Caroline Harvey, March 25, 2020

Final-edited by: Anthony Wright, July 21, 2022

Joe Forte:This oral history narration is being recorded in Newman Library on the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech. It's 2:41 p.m. on July twenty-fifth. It's a Thursday. This is one in a series of oral histories being collected for the 40th anniversary of Denim Day, a 1979 Gay Student Alliance event--awareness event-- that took place on campus. My name is Joe Forte. I'll be acting as interviewer for this session. The narrator is Dr. Will Simpkins. A VT [Virginia Tech] Alumnus from 1999. He is now Vice President for Student Affairs at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Welcome Will. Would you please introduce yourself briefly.

William Simpkins: My full name is William David Simpkins. Born on July 1, 1978, in Radford, Virginia. I grew up in a small area called Snowville, right outside 1:00Radford. It's about 20 miles from the Virginia Tech campus. Virginia Tech was always part of our life because of people being sports fans and the maroon and orange flags were everywhere. I can remember my parents going to a Peach Bowl game when I was a little kid and being very angry that I couldn't go with them. But it was my safety school and so when I began thinking about colleges, while I was at Pulaski County High School, I wanted to go to Tulane University because I had read the Pelican Brief and wanted to be a lawyer and Julia Roberts like the movie and couldn't afford to go. Couldn't afford to go to my second-choice school, also a private university. And had to choose between two state institutions in Virginia. Virginia Tech and George Mason. And ultimately chose Virginia Tech because it was close and it's what I knew. I was, for all intents 2:00and purposes, not technically a first-generation college student. But my mom had gone to college as a mother with children, she was a commuter student at Radford University. So, she didn't have the full campus life student experience. My older sister, five years older than I am, had gone to Virginia Tech and like everything in my life I basically did whatever my sister had done because that's all I knew. So, she had gone to Virginia Tech, so I went to Virginia Tech. She lived on campus, so I lived on campus. Many of the things that she got involved in while she was here, I also moved towards. She was a resident adviser, RA, so I became an RA after my first year. But I think what stands out the most about my decision to go to [Virginia] Tech was that if you graduated from Pulaski 3:00County High School and you wanted to go to college, Virginia Tech was the default university. It was rare that anyone that I went to high school with would have gone out of state to university. It was UVA [University of Virginia], [Virginia] Tech, Radford [University] and maybe William & Mary were the primary universities. So, I knew that when I came here, there would be a lot of folks that I had gone to high school with. Maybe not all the folks that I liked when I was high school or liked me when I was in high school. But I think that common bond, and the fact that we were all relatively alone without the social paradigm of high school protecting us once we got here, it made it a little bit more comfortable. I was joking with my parents this week that my sister when she was 4:00a student in the mid [19]90s, she went home every weekend her first semester, and when I moved in to Virginia Tech with a--literally--a truckload of my personal belongings into Pritchard Hall-- which should be noted at the time was the largest all male living facility on the East coast-- a little anxiety inducing for me. I never went back home; it was rare that I would go home for any reason. College was-- the first few weeks-- I remember feeling out of place, and I remember that being an odd feeling because I had known this university my entire life. I had been on this campus many times, my sister had gone here, my family worked here. My aunt was the head secretary in the economics department, we had family who worked in the facilities area, I believe. So, this was not a 5:00place where I should have been an outsider. And yet everyone that I met was not from this area. They were from Northern Virginia, lot of New Jersey, Pennsylvania folks or the Tidewater area. And I remember feeling very much alone in those first two weeks. I also entered as a Sophomore because of dual-enrollment classes and AP credit, and I think the university may have screwed something up in the paperwork because I was technically--academically--a Sophomore, but still a first year, first time student, but I was placed with a Sophomore roommate who had scared away all of his other roommates the year before in Pritchard Hall, and had the same room to himself for a full year, but I was too stubborn to give in and so had a very interesting year with my 6:00roommate who did not take many showers and smelled pretty bad and he had the window.

F: That's what scared the other roommates away?

S:That's, I think, what scared the other roommates away. He had a way of doing laundry of just letting the pile get really big and then I guess he assumed at some point the clothing at the bottom had become magically clean again. So, he would just put that on. There was one incident that I remember after winter break where-- and the RAs would go around and unplug everything in your room because the buildings would close for three weeks, four weeks--and he came back and his refrigerator had been unplugged and tipped forward so it could drain but they had left the jar of mayonnaise in the refrigerator and he -- and these buildings are steam heated right so it wasn't cool in the buildings so he went in he got the jar of mayonnaise, he unscrewed the top, he sniffed it, he stuck a 7:00finger in, took a big dollop lick, said mm, screwed it back on and put it back in the refrigerator and plugged it back in. Funny story, when I came back to school the next year, the next fall--because you know we were not going to stay in contact--he was working in the sandwich line at the food court, and I stopped having sandwiches that year.

F: His food safety instincts were maybe not where they needed to be.

S: Just a little off. Just a little off. I remember that about him, I do not remember his name. I have no idea. I remember he was from Centreville, but I don't remember his name. I remember what he looked like but that was about it. So that first semester was a little tumultuous. I had gone to college--college was an assumption I knew I would go--I had written my admissions essay about wanting to become a [United States] Supreme Court Justice, so I came in as dual 8:00history and English majors. I loved history, I liked old things--I still do. English was where I excelled in high school. It was the home--academic home-- that I had found in high school, sort of a safety mechanism if you will. I wasn't a jock, I wasn't one of the popular kids, but between the sort of group safety of marching band, which I think puts me firmly in the B+ nerd category, and the academic competition team for English, which I also think puts me firmly in the nerd category, I had a bit of a community in high school that lent some degree of protection from the bullying and harassment that I had experienced in middle school. So, when I went to college, obviously I was just going to keep doing the same thing, and I thought that the eventual outcome would be law school. I also remembered that Nikki Giovanni taught here, and I had been around 9:00her twice, once in middle and once in high school when she had visited our schools to read her poetry. And I think--just this idea of a poet who had ideas and a voice--was so thrilling, to me, that someone could express themselves so freely and not worry about others' reactions to what they thought was the truth. I gravitated towards her. The fact that she was in the English department and taught classes there, I began to take any class I could. I think I may have taken four classes with her over the three years I was at Virginia Tech. So, I dropped the history major, after taking the first required course, which was historical methods, which I believe may have been the only time I ever came to this library to actually do academic work. The instructor said I'm going to give you a question every week and you have to find the answer to the question. The 10:00first one was something like, the name of the oldest living slave in Montgomery County in April 1, 1853, or something. And I thought, that seems really hard, and I really don't want to spend the hours. I had no idea even where to start so I dropped that history major real fast--

F: Who was that professor?

S:I have no idea. I think I was in the class for one week, maybe two weeks. And I dropped the double major, dropped the history major, was an English major. I remember my advisor's first name was Tony, I don't remember his last name. This was the era of scantron forms so to register for classes-- at least in my first two years-- you had to get the scantron form, bubble in the course code of the classes you wanted to take, your advisor needed to sign it, and then you had to 11:00turn it in in your department and you'd get registered for classes. I had one advising appointment and after that--and I probably shouldn't admit this--I forged my advisor's signature on every single registration form for the rest of my collegiate career. And as a Senior Administrator in Higher Education who oversees a registrar's office now, I think oh I don't want any student to do that but I would applaud a student who-- I can remember getting the newsprint class schedules that Virginia Tech would put out once a semester and just-- it was like shopping, it was like catalog shopping, I would go through with a highlighter and circle all the classes that seemed really cool cause you could do that as an English major. You would take your required courses and then I took classes in playwriting and the Harlem Renaissance, with Nikki Giovanni, and 12:00just courses that were all electives but were things that I just wanted to study, wanted to know more about. So, my career interests shifted, and I was going to become Nikki Giovanni. I was going to get an MFA [Master of Fine Arts] from Columbia [University] and become a poet. She never came right out and said it but at some point, she kind of let me know that I just wasn't very good. In a very nice way. She's still someone that I look up to as the ultimate empowered voice, but it was clear that a career my eager poetry would not make. So, that's when I had to stop and think--and I was at Virginia Tech for three years, [19]96 through [19]99 because I had come in with all those credits and studied every summer while I was here. I had gotten very involved, looked around, and said 13:00well what do I like to do with my time? And I was the typical overly busy student leader who couldn't say no to any opportunity. I remember someone saying well you could do this. You can actually get paid to be a professional RA or a professional orientation leader or a professional student government president-- and it was a graduate assistant in the multicultural center whose name is Jessica Ranero--I'm still sort of in touch with her through Facebook who said that. So, that's how I ended up finishing Virginia Tech, going to the University of Maryland for my master's degree in student affairs. And then the short story of my life is New York City after my master's degree to work at Barnard College then CUNY John Jay College [City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice] then working on a doctorate at NYU [New York University] in 14:00higher ed and then last year moving to Denver for the Vice Presidency that I now hold.

F:Wow. That was the nutshell.

S: That was the nutshell. That is the nutshell.

F: So, can we pop back into that story--

S:Absolutely

F:and tease out some things?

S:Yep.

F:So, coming to Virginia Tech, you said a couple of things that Pritchard [Hall]-- the largest single sex dorm on the East Coast or something -- that's what they called it when I lived there, too, back in the late [19]80s.

S:Ahh, you remember the nasty elevators.

F: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember Pritchard well. But you say you found that notion intimidating?

S: Absolutely.

F:And to top it off, it seems like that whatever your fears may have been, they at least must have, somehow, manifested as reality in the person of your roommate.

S:Yes. Yes.

F:But at the same time, you say you felt comforted coming to Virginia Tech 15:00because you expected there to be a lot of--

S:Right.

F:--high school folks around. So, a couple questions come out of there for me. One is-- so, high school sounds like was a pleasant experience for you, it was a good time.

S:For the most part.

F: You've mentioned bullying in middle school and that sort of dissipated by high school and so is that the reason high school kids-- knowing that there was going to be folks from your high school here--is that why it was comforting because high school was a comforting, pleasant time for you?

S:I wouldn't call it-- it was mostly pleasant, looking back. High school was a good experience, the bullying didn't ever totally go away, but I was able to mitigate it or control it by being in a high school of sixteen hundred students and you could disappear into social groups. Thank God for the clarinet section, 16:00who was a year older than I was who I just sort of buried myself in and they protected me a little bit. I think that lots of gay men also-- I read a book recently called The Velvet Rage that sort of explained this to me-- gay men who, even before they maybe understand their sexual identity, know that they're different. You feel it from an inner place but you're also told that you're different and so to create a healthy identity you begin searching for validation, and so my high school experience was one of seeking validation from social groups that I could navigate and then positions of leadership that made me feel like I was actually good at something, that somebody wanted me to be around because of who I was and what I could do. And so, becoming the drum major 17:00of the marching band or the head of that academic competition team were one way that I just navigated and lived through high school, but I think I still-- and I think many of folks like me-- I still carry that trauma of difference with me and in some ways my entire life probably will always be about a struggle to fit in. Even though, academically, I know that that's a futile exercise. I should just be happy with who I am and people like me will find me, but I think it sticks with you. That first semester in college-- and this is part of the coming out story-- I hung out with people that I had never hung out with in high school before, I drank, and I was not a social kid in high school. Didn't have a circle 18:00of friends, stayed home on Saturday nights watching a lot of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, which was my favorite show in high school-- available on Amazon Prime streaming now and I'm rewatching the entire show-- also think it was because Chad Allen was in the show, and I had a crush on him when I was a kid. So, coming here, hung out with those folks and they were lovely people. Still are lovely people, still connected with them but just not folks that I had much in common with other than where we grew up and where we went to high school. Drank a lot, experimented with marijuana, quite a bit, and felt alone even though I wasn't. I had plans, I always had people to eat lunch with or dinner with. I had 19:00excuses not to go back to my residence hall room to be around the roommate, but I knew something was just off. I had been admitted into the honors program as well, and I remember the book that we had to read was about a coal mining accident in West Virginia and I guess it was their way of trying to get folks not from this area to understand Appalachia. But it wasn't about this area. It was about two hours north of here, west of here. It wasn't about the New River Valley. That wasn't the lifestyle in this book. I just never felt like the honors program was the place for me, and so I took one honors class, never went back. Although I did get the director of the honors program to write a reference letter when I applied to be an RA the next Spring. I don't remember how I 20:00discovered internet chat. I remember both the roommate and I had the big desktop computers, mine was a hand me down or repurposed or something-- it sometimes didn't work. And I remember that to connect to the internet, you had one of those thirty-two prong hook-ups, and we had an AB switch because only one of us could be on the internet at a time through the room phone, which seems like a recipe for roommate conflict just right from the start. It was also that era when all the websites were text based and a picture could take an hour to load. I played a lot on the internet because we didn't have it at home when I was-- before I graduated high school. Had a little bit in high school, at the school. I downloaded a program called mIRC, internet relay chat. I don't know what the M 21:00stands for and I don't remember why I downloaded it. I don't believe it was an intention-- I didn't know what was there. For some reason in my head, I feel like I was trying to download an internet radio player if that existed then. I don't remember how I found the chat rooms, I really don't but I found the gay chat rooms. And I knew enough about myself to know at least some part of my inner head said that I was curious. Although, I still, on the face of it, felt I had crushes on girls and wasn't--didn't ever verbalize this. This would have been sometime in probably early October of my first fall, so relatively soon after I got here. Found the gay chat rooms, remember talking to some people. 22:00There were two guys that were always on the chat room and were always very out. One of whom was clearly always looking to hook up and the other of whom I think had just taken on this identity as the self-help--you know--helping young gay men come out at Virginia Tech at the time. Terry was his name. So, I would chat pretty frequently with him between classes, after class things like that, late at night.

F:So, the chat room was a VT [Virginia Tech] community?

S:No, it was a national, international platform. It was a DOS-based platform that you had to know the coding right to enter and then you had to, you could do like-- I remember it was like join//: and then the name of the chat room and it 23:00was #gayVA, so it was a statewide chat room.

F:Gotcha.

S:But you could also do a, um-- who-- who something vt.edu and you could see anyone from Virginia Tech who was using that chat platform and you could see what chat rooms they were in based on IP address. I think. I was an English major, I don't understand this but somehow, I mastered this in about a week and so I would go in, see who was logged in from Virginia Tech and then, if they were in a gay chat room, I would start chatting with them because you could open up a private window or something. So that's how I found Terry who really became a close friend. Another person I met that year was Ryan, also through the chat room, Ryan Labrecque. I don't think he would mind me sharing his full name and I called him Auntie Ryan. Ryan is still a good friend and was the first gay person 24:00that I ever knowingly publicly did anything outside, like social, with. The first time I met Ryan, he picked me up at my dorm room and we walked to the greenhouse to see a big plant that smelled like rotting flesh.

F:Oh yeah, the corpse plant.

S:The corpse plant flower. And that was a big step for me, publicly going outside. I had had a couple of private liaisons from the chat room. The days when everybody had a roommate and it was-- this was-- you were still ashamed of this so I remember the first time I ever kissed a boy we got my car out of the cage-- my [19]87 Subaru-- and drove to the field behind the sheep barn and you could drive back up on the field, behind the barn, and we parked. And that's 25:00where we made out for the first time. Second time was the national forest in the middle of the day and a cyclist came off the trail and went right by the car and died laughing after he saw us making out in the car and probably doing more. So, I had hooked up a couple times but then I had Terry and Ryan who were not interested in me in that way. They were very much helping me deal with issues of identity and finding community, and I really think now how incredible that twenty- twenty-one-year-olds at that moment-- this would be Winter [19]96-- weren't-- They were taking care of people. That was something I had never experienced. A social peer who actually cared about me as a person enough to want to take care of me was not something that I knew how to work with. My 26:00second public outing with the gays was a movie and I think it was Mars Attacks with Glenn Close and someone else, Jack Nicholson.

F: A lot of folks.

S: Yeah, a lot of folks and we went to the New River Valley Mall and there were four gay guys, including me, at that point, and somebody else. And that felt very risky because when I was in high school, we went to the same mall to see the movies, so I knew, going there, that I could run into someone that I knew, and how would I explain this new group of friends if I was seen? I don't remember if I saw anyone or not there. So that's October. I told my friend Alice, that I'd gone to high school with, around the end of October. I remember we took a long walk one night, and I confessed to her that I might be bisexual, and I think she said the same thing and the fact that she didn't say anything 27:00negative--it was a very positive experience, I think-- was the spark that I needed because I essentially, from let's say Halloween to January the seventh, came out to everyone in my life explosively, except for grandparents. That's the next story. It all weaves through Virginia Tech at this stage, right? So began hanging out with the gay guys on campus. Went to my first gay bar early December. Terry picked me up with his roommate and boyfriend and drove me to The Park in Roanoke. It was the first time I ever slow danced with another boy. I was very socially immature, probably still am, and I was just in love with this guy, like that moment was it. All the pent-up feelings of loneliness and like no 28:00one's ever going to like me for who I am just out the door. You know we're going to fall in love and be together forever, well that lasted about two weeks. Told most of my friends on campus at that point-- I think I had gone to my first LGBTA meeting in-- not Squires. What's the other student center?

F:Johnston?

S: Johnson? Johnston Student Center. Where the Burger King was and maybe still is?

F:There's-- it's Subway now--

S: Oh shame, it was a good Burger King.

F:--and like a coffee place.

S:I think it was 100 Johnston. The meetings were always Thursday nights at 8 o'clock every week. Always in the same room, evidently for years at that point. So, December [19]96 would have been my first LGBTA meeting and I met the other members. There was a woman named Jen Gould who was the president at that time and Jen Bubka was her best friend and Terry Howell and Ryan and then scads of 29:00other people that I would get to know over the next couple of years. Went home for the holidays. It was the weirdest three weeks of my life-- knowing something about myself, having a very close relationship with my, not sure how they would take it. Intellectually knowing it would be fine, emotionally knowing it wouldn't be fine. The boy, we had been writing letters back in and forth-- actual snail mail, hard copy letters that I think I still have in a chest somewhere--he lived in Maryland. I left the letters out one day and my mom found them on the bed and read them, and I was working at a clothing store in Radford during that whole semester. And, uh, Saturday afternoon, was working and my sister called the store and said, I need to ask you something, and I said, okay, 30:00and she said, are you gay, and I said, yeah--cause I was at the store so I couldn't like actually talk, it was just yes no's--said, yeah, and she started crying and I could hear her husband on the phone with her--and they had met as RAs in West AJ [Ambler Johnston Hall] -- saying it's okay, it's okay we knew this day would come. We've been expecting this, and then the next day my sister said well let's go out to lunch after church because I was still driving home every Sunday to go to church-- I was the children's choir director, still. I had told my best friend--from high school, we went to church together, we had grown up together-- in December. She told me she was pregnant the day I told her I was gay, so we both had some news for each other. My sister and I went out to lunch and, turns out, my mom paid for my sister to take us to lunch, take me to lunch, 31:00to talk some sense into me, but we ended up just gossiping for a little while. She wanted to know who I had been hanging out with and if I had been dancing and all kinds of stuff.

F:She was supportive, she wasn't on board with your mother's plan to talk sense into you?

S:Yeah, she was very supportive. She was liberal, she still is. So, had a nice lunch, went home, mom didn't ask any questions. Monday came and went, no questions. Tuesday came and went. I went to work, came back from work and they were at church doing something. And I remember so vividly, they came home--must have been about nine something-- and I was making sandwiches and potato soup out of can, Campbell's potato soup. And they said, come downstairs we want to have a talk with you. 's like okay, and I knew exactly what was going to happen. So here I go with my tray of soup and sandwiches. I remember this feeling of 32:00knowing exactly what they were going to talk about, and it wasn't funny but all I could do was laugh because it was so awkward, and it was just that inappropriate laughter that kept bubbling up. They said something like, we've always been very proud of you but lately you've made some decisions that we're not so proud of. I don't remember how it came out, how I came out from then. But I remember the conversation, remember my mom crying. I remember my dad asking very thoughtful clarification questions like, well have you ever slept with a woman? No. Well then how do you know? So, like, well I just sort of know. Then he said something like I think it's genetic and I think you got it from me because he has lots of gay first cousins, tons of them. I remember mom saying something about, well let's just keep this in the family for now. Meanwhile in 33:00my head I'm thinking you are the last people who have found out, I have literally told everyone over the last two months but sure at this point moving forward, we'll keep it in the family. And I knew what she meant was like she was nervous about what the folks in her church would think, she was nervous about what her friends would think, she was scared. I was the children's choir director in our church and in 1997, then, linking gay men with pedophilia was still a pretty common conception. But and I don't know that it bears for this project, I will say that the Southern Baptist Church I grew up in, fifteen miles from here, I had never had a negative experience there, and I am fully out. I still go back on holidays. Everyone there has stayed in touch, I get birthday cards, and graduation cards, and Facebook requests, and they were always 34:00supportive. I did quit the children's choir gig because I couldn't do that and go to the gay bar every Saturday night. I was showing up very tired to church on Sunday mornings. The minister's wife asked me to not quit, because she knew. So, it was a good experience there. So, I returned back to Virginia Tech after coming out to my parents, probably three days later--back to the dorm room-- and was essentially, for all purposes, out, publicly out from that point forward for the rest of the spring semester. I had been accepted to be an RA for the next year so I had to take the spring semester RA preparation class, and I remember asking the older student who was co-teaching the class if I should come out in the conversations, and she laughed and said, yes, because we need diversity and 35:00that's actually going to help you rather than hurt you. I remember my roommate asking if I was gay and saying yes. I stopped hanging out so much with the high school friends and started hanging out with my new set of gay friends. Back to Pritchard [Hall], I remember meeting a guy, Mark Mansfield, who we discovered we lived on the same hall, and I had never seen him before. And he said that he had seen me quite often in the elevators and the hallway, but he never would talk to me because I always looked so mean. So, I think I must have developed this angry, mean facial expression as a protective shield from the toxic masculinity of Pritchard Hall. I think it really was toxic in the academic sense and toxic in, like, there was pee everywhere in this building. So that became my social 36:00life. We had Terry, and someone else, I can't remember the other person, ran Monday night support groups in a conference room in Squires and so I began going to Monday night support groups and Thursday night LGBA groups. At that point, we didn't have the T.

F:Were those affiliated?

S:Yes. So, the support group was a part of LGBA, but it was not affiliated with the counseling center or any student affairs service unit.

F:And the name of the association, at the time, you're saying it's LGBA?

S:Alliance.

F:And then it became LGBTA while you were there?

S:Yeah. We added the T either my second year or my third year. I can't remember.

F:And the A is alliance?

S:The A is alliance.

F:Is this a direct evolution of what, in [19]79, they were calling the Gay Student Alliance? Is it the same group?

S: I would imagine so. There was a staffer on campus, Ken Belcher, who had been 37:00a student maybe ten years prior. And so, he was someone that I had gotten to know and gotten some historical knowledge about the university from. It really felt like, from what he was saying, that this group had been meeting on Thursday nights at 8 o'clock in Johnston 100 for years. At least since he was a student. So, I think it was. Although, when I left Virginia Tech, the AVP [Assistant Vice President] of Student Affairs, Dave Ostroth, was retiring and he pulled me into his office and he said, here's this file. I thought you might like it. And it was his-- he's been here for decades I think-- his official file of all things gay related at Virginia Tech. So, it was memos from the [19]60s where Virginia Tech was wondering if they should officially recognize the Student Homophile Association, may have been the name of it. They had sent out questionnaires to all the other public Virginia institutions to find if they had groups, were 38:00recognized, and what were they doing, and this file had some of those questionnaires in it. It had clippings from the student newspaper about protests and things like that or activities that had gone on. It didn't say anything about Denim Day, I don't remember that.

F: Interesting

S: I remember some drama about a homecoming parade, there's an article about that in the file. So, I think it was--I think that it must have been just the natural evolution.

F:Well, the [19]60s surprises me because by [19]79, the university, according to a lot of other narrators we've been talking to, was anything but sympathetic and they were actually feeling compelled to meet in secret if they felt they could do so safely at all. I know Johnston Student Center was built in the late [19]80s or early [19]90s.

S:It doesn't surprise me. I mean, you get the sense even in the late [19]90s that there were supportive administrators who would do whatever they could to help you. There were ambivalent administrators who either didn't care to know or didn't want to know. And then there were administrators who were not outright hostile at least in my experience but were unhelpful. My student leadership experiences, and my career experience started to mingle. So, first year, I took the RA class and became an RA that summer. Had my first boyfriend, my first toxic relationship, first boyfriend. Wasn't a very good RA because I was dealing 40:00with all kinds of stuff still. To be an RA on an all-male hall-- this was Vawter [Hall] second floor.

F:You're a sophomore when you're an RA?

S:Uh, would have been going into my sophomore year.

F:Oh, that's right. Your second year when you were a--

S:But technically my junior year. Right! So, it's all things sort of screwed up right? Was not a very good RA because of this relationship drama, I was crying all the time. I remember my hall director, Andy Wilson, who's now a good friend and is the AVP and dean of students at Johns Hopkins University--was my first boss in student affairs--telling me I think you should reconsider your plans. I don't think you're going to be a very good RA, and my response to him now almost twenty years later is, I was never a good RA. I should never have been an RA. Thank goodness I'm good at other things but that was not my career calling, but it did give me a single room at a time my family couldn't afford to pay the housing fee. Second year, I was the Vice President of Programming, I think, for 41:00the LGBA--Jen Gould was president-- I was an RA. I applied and was accepted to be an orientation leader for the next summer, so I had to take that class in the Spring. Jen Gould was wonderful and lovely but not eager to be a public leader. She liked convening people, she liked having conversations, but I-- once the doors came off-- I was just out and that hunger for validation and leadership kept playing out so every time somebody offered me an opportunity, I said yes. I was on the Dean of Students Advisory Committee, that was Cathy Gorey, now Cathy Turrentine, I believe, who is now married to Dave Ostroth. At least they were back then. President Torgersen, at the time--I think it was the second 42:00year--here had been a biased, racist email floating around the Greek organizations and they hastily pulled together a listening session for President Torgersen in the auditorium in Burruss [Hall]. They asked four or five student leaders, key student leaders from key groups to moderate this listening session. So, it was myself, Jamaa Bickley-King, who was President of the Black Student Alliance and is now a whip smart political operative on the national scene living in [Washington] D.C., Madonna Mendoza who was president of the Asian American Student Club, and I can't remember the person or the organization's name that was focused on Latinx students at that time. And I can't understand 43:00why they picked three organizations for racial identified students and then the gays, other than somebody liked me somewhere. And from that conversation the next step was the creation of the Vice President for Diversity position, and they asked me to be on the search committee for that position, and we hired, brought in Ben Dixon, who I think was the first VP in that job. We created the Safe Zone Project. That was my internship, I was a intern in the Multicultural Center.

F:That group did?

S:No. The Multicultural Center, I'm sorry, created the Safe Zone Project, the first one. And it was not focused solely on LGBT students, it was focused on all students of marginalized identities, I believe. We created a sticker, we had a system for identifying people, and we had some trainings. Barbara Pendergrass at 44:00that point was the Dean of Students, and if anyone can track down Barbara someone needs to give her an award for something. She was one of the most magical, thoughtful, welcoming people I think I've ever experienced in my life. She was the Dean of Students and yet I, a student, could walk down the hall and pop my head in her office and sit and have an hour-long conversation with her. I can't imagine that happening on most campuses. She was incredible. She set me up with the internship in the Multicultural Center, designed the Safe Zone Project. So, we did a lot in those, sort of, three years. My third year I had just come off being an orientation leader, I was president of the LGBTA, at that point, and still an RA, was head RA, of Barringer [Hall]--I think that's what it is 45:00called-- Barringer [Hall]. And you know said no to nothing.

F:Yeah, you were deeply involved it sounds in a lot of different things.

S: Yeah, but I think y--

F:That whole narrative there you're reaching into so many different places, your hand in a lot of different pies. So, what was driving you down those paths? Like what you say about Jen Gould--was that her name--

S:Um-hm. Yeah, president.

F:--about liking convening people but wasn't into being a public leader. Is activism something you were seeking in the LGBTA, and something you were finding? I mean was this all about just making the campus better and more welcoming for marginalized groups or why so active?

S:I would love to say that it was all very altruistic, and that I had this 46:00hunger for change and making things better for other people, but I think it was just validation. I think I had discovered some things that I was good at. I was good at meetings, I could hold my own, I was very aggressive, still am, in a group discussion setting. I'm organized beyond belief, so the idea of organizing large scale programming was exhilarating because it was good, I could carry it off, and it was producing something, right. And so, at the time I think my leadership philosophy was just about me and being the best me that I could be and because I was gay, I now had an opportunity to use that skill in a way that resonated with who I was, and I was given opportunities to shine that I don't know that I would've been given in other arenas. I was the drum major of my high school marching band who didn't even apply for the marching band at Virginia 47:00Tech because I had a hunch that I wouldn't make it. And I didn't want that rejection. I think it shifted at some point. I'm not sure when. I think maybe when I went to graduate school and was an advisor to students doing this work, instead of the students doing the work, that it started to click how things were connected and what they were doing. But I think at Virginia Tech I was just trying to get noticed, honestly. And feeling like as a kid, no one ever noticed me. No matter what I did, no matter how good I was at anything, I still wasn't good enough. And finally, I had found something that I could be good enough at and if the kids I went to high school weren't going to recognize that well President Torgerson sure did, and the Dean of Students sure did. So having these positional people who knew my name, and not only knew my name but invited me in, was incredible. And I tell folks now, you know, I have issues with my Virginia 48:00Tech experience, particularly around being local and not feeling always welcome here. But Virginia Tech was probably the best place I could have gone, at that point of my life, because it was comfortable enough to be safe and supportive enough to challenge me out of that comfort zone so that I could figure a lot of things out. Even in 1996, there was a robust gay community here. There was a faculty and staff group-- The Caucus that I think is still around--and we knew there were supportive faculty sort of sprinkled all throughout. Jeff Mann was already here as a faculty member teaching, I think gay and lesbian poetry or something out of the English department, so it wasn't a terrible place to be gay, honestly. My experience was, for the most part, remarkable, as an 49:00orientation leader, and an out gay president of the association, orientation leader. Most of the orientation leaders were Greek fraternity presidents, sorority presidents, student government types, and I was accepted in that social network which shocked me. Never had a negative experience there. The negative stuff that was happening for us in the late [19]90s was on the national scene. The state policies that were being passed. the AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome] crisis was very much still a crisis, people were still dying. And Matthew Shepard died, uh, was murdered the fall of my senior year, which is how I came out to my grandparents. It was National Coming Out Day, the day he died, and we were tabling on campus. We had three tables. This was October [19]98. We had a table in front of Eggleston [Hall], a table in front of McBryde [Hall], 50:00and probably a table in front of Squires [Student Center]. I remember checking on one of the tables that day, and a guy named Josh said the TV station was here, the local TV station, they want to interview someone. We told them to come back because we knew you would want to do it, which I think also tells you a little bit about my peers knew who I was like that could see me, right. They knew I was a bit of a ham and a glutton for attention. So, I did this-- we held a rally on the Drillfield the night that Matthew Shepard died, very hastily put together, lots of other student organizations had banners up. We had religious speakers, the Rabbi, the Presbyterian minister, and the media was there. I still have this-- you have those memories of things you did that were inappropriate, but you didn't know they were inappropriate, and you still feel the 51:00embarrassment twenty-five years later.

F:Yeah.

S:I remember getting up to that stone piece that overlooks the Drillfield, the reviewing stand and seeing maybe two, three hundred people there and saying something like good evening Hokies! Not what you want to say at a vigil when somebody's just been murdered.

F:Yeah. Like you're rallying them?

S: Right. It's not a rally. I didn't know what else to do. So, I remember WDBJ-7 and WSLS both doing interviews and I remember telling the-- they were asking what it was like to be gay at Virginia Tech and the only thing I remember saying is that I shouldn't have to be fearful walking from my dorm to my car. That that's not an experience that I should have to have simply because of who I am. The next day, I remember that I grew up here, my entire family lives here, my entire family watches those TV stations, I had never come out to my 52:00grandparents, who were very much alive. And I called my mother at work, she was a teacher, told her what I had done, and she yelled then said well I guess you better get on the phone with your grandparents right now. So, I went back to the LBGTA office in Squires [Student Center]. I guess it's the third floor, the top floor if you walk into Squires and you're looking at the info desk and you go up the circular staircase two floors and you're looking still at what I guess is the floor above Colonial Ballroom. It was all the way to the right. We shared an office with the Asian American Student Union. And I called my mom's mom first because I thought she would be the easier and she didn't quite get it. She didn't really-- She didn't know what it was.

F: Were they aware of the Matthew Shepard story?

S:Sort of. My grandmother didn't watch TV. She sort of lived above it all, so I 53:00don't remember how I explained it to her that she finally understood what I was saying. And she said, do you want to tell your grandfather, or do you want me to? And I said, [Laughing] I'd really like you to do it. What I heard later was that she watched TV with him that night and she never did that. They led very sort of separate lives inside their house. She watched TV with him that night and after the segment she sort of looked at him and she said well what did you think? And he looked at her and said did you think I didn't know? And that was how my grandfather confirmed. He just died three years ago. Good guy. My other grandparents I was a little more sacred of because they were Pentecostal Holiness evangelical Christian gave money to Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, had postcards from the Bakkers in their family photo album, founded churches, very religious. I called my grandmother and I do remember this conversation, I said 54:00have you seen the news about the man in Wyoming who died, who was beaten up and died? She said I did, now he was gay, wasn't he? I said yes. She said, are you calling to tell me you're gay? And I said, yes. She said, well I still love you; you'll always be my little Willy-- I hate that name-- then she said if you're right with Jesus, you're right with me. And I chose to interpret that as that I was fine. She then said, [Laughing] do you want to tell your grandfather, or do you want me to? I said, I'd love for you to, thanks. I think she told him that night, and I never heard any more about it. I remember the Matthew Shepard being a hard month because like any time anything happened on the national political 55:00scene, it uncovers the bigots, so people are happy to be quiet as long as the pot isn't being stirred, we can all coexist. It's a very Virginia way of doing things but when the pot gets stirred, we have to speak out, right? You had to the pro-gay folks certainly speaking out about the tragedy of Matthew Shepard's murder and then you had the anti-folks responding to that. It was playing out a little bit on campus. A friend of mine from the English department, Erin Smith-- we took all of our classes together and had just bonded and became friends. She was the head of the Newman Catholic Student Organization and had hung their banner next to our rainbow banner during the Shepard rally. She told me later that one of the student members of the Catholic ministries group said, why did you do that? I can't believe you put our banner next to their banner and she 56:00said her response was, why wouldn't I do that? I think that was when I started learning about the power of relationships transcending identities and investing in those sorts of relationships. It was fun and rewarding and felt really good to develop those sorts of friendships. So, some of the programming we did in the LGBTA had been happening for a few years, so a National Coming Out Day celebration or event, we always did. We had done, I think we called it like Pride Week in April. For two years I took the lead on planning all of those activities. We had a healthy budget, I still tell people, I think one year the LGBTA had a sixty-thousand-dollar budget to spend because we hadn't spent any the year before and had gotten another allocation. So, Jen Gould and I and 57:00couple of other people went to the National Association for Campus Activities conference in Indianapolis. My first time on an airplane. We saw all these fabulous gay comics, and gay this and gay that and we ended up bringing a couple to campus. I think we had this-- Elvira Kurt was her name, she was a comedian, Canadian. Very funny. She came to Blacksburg, and I think we had all of twenty-five people at her event. We brought Dan Renzi who had been on The Real World: Miami to campus. I still, I like-- pushed people out of the way to be able to pick him up at the airport and drive him to Blacksburg. We brought a man named Dean Hamer, I think was his name, who was a scientist who, according to Time Magazine had discovered the gay gene. Cover of Time, we brought him to campus. We had drag shows and lots of things like poetry readings and coffee 58:00houses and I'm sure we had books and tabling and parties. The Wear Jeans If You're Gay Day was my senior year and a woman named C.J. Griffin, who-- still friends with, I feel like was the brains behind it, although I can't remember for sure whose idea it was. But it felt like, looking back now she was sort of the ringleader, and I believe it was for National Coming Out Day. I do remember that the Collegiate Times covered it so there should be a story from either Fall [19]98 or Spring [19]99, or April, on this event. We did this, a very, low tech event, I think we may have put an ad in the Collegiate Times. I think we may 59:00have done some flyers and we had an email campaign were we just forwarded emails. I also--this is just an aside--as the president of the LGBTA, I also owned the email distribution list, it was an actual document with just a list of email addresses that was passed from one president to the other cause we didn't have things like listservs or Google, right. You had to be very careful to Bcc this list because if you didn't you were outing people. And I think there were a couple of times when I forgot to Bcc, but it was very-- a big no no. So, I think we used that list and then forward it to anybody we could. And we weren't sure how it was going to go because you never really knew with programming on this campus if would resonate or not. I remember someone saying I've never seen so many rednecks in khakis. It was someone who was an ag major and so taking 60:00classes in Litton-Reeves [Hall] and, you know, out on that side of campus. Saying, I've never seen so many rednecks in khakis before. And it did feel like there were a lot of people wearing khaki pants that day or not wearing jeans. It also felt like there were a lot of people who did wear jeans. We never knew, some of them, if they knew what was going on or not. I think we had some tables out that day. It was just one of the things that we tried to do to raise awareness. I think our mission was to show that we were there, to claim identity, to claim space so that other people coming out or thinking of coming out or who were out but didn't know how to find us, could find us. It was all about finding each other and there were no organized way to find each other back 61:00then. And so, we had internet chats and that was one way. Honestly a lot of people did come out through the internet, especially the gay men, came out by being on the chat rooms and meeting someone and that person bringing them to a meeting or helping them in some way, but we tried to do these other events as sort of a net to catch other people.

F: So that was the primary motivation then?

S:Yep.

F: For folks, students who may be questioning or wondering or looking for a community like knowing, being comfortable with their own sexuality not knowing where the community was, that you're reaching out to those people saying here's this resource, this support community?

S: Right.

F: And also raising awareness but more so the other thing.

S: Yeah, I think at this point there was some altruism behind this work. I mean 62:00we were lesbian and gay and bisexual men and women. Interestingly enough we added the T, but I don't think any of us actually knew a transgender individual at that point or anybody who identified as trans. We were young people who had just come out in our early twenties and teens. And, so, there was also a dating pool aspect of this too, you know. We went to the meetings to see who was at the meetings. Our joke was that the first meeting of the year was always the largest meeting because that's when everybody would come out of the woodwork to see who the new kids in town were to see who they could date or who they could go out with or whatever else. Then the second week your attendance would be cut in half as people didn't go back. So, I would say it was a little bit of both. It was about expanding the social network and it was about supporting people as they were coming out.

F: So, Wear Jeans If You're Gay Day. That's distinctly different than the 1979 63:00Denim Day, which was wear denim to support gay rights. One is a coming out, the other is-- and in [19]79 they didn't expect support.

S:Right.

F: But it sounds like-- despite the-- you're describing a very different campus environment than the narrators from [19]79 describe in terms of how open and accepting and, you know, you could meet in public and there was support from administration and all this stuff but still an interesting identical consequence of the awareness event. And that is people consciously identifying as either not supportive or not gay by not wearing jeans.

S: I do remember some allies being conflicted. Should I wear jeans to support? And I--

F:Like asking you explicitly?

S:Yeah, asking us. Sort of hearing stories about this and some people asking me directly, and I think our response was no, like this is very much about coming out, like wear jeans if you are gay. Are you gay? If you're not gay, then don't wear jeans. Even though we appreciated allies and their support and what they were doing.

F: Sure.

S:We had a ton of them. Um, yeah. You know honestly, we did so much those two years. There was so many meetings, so much programming happening. We were everywhere that this was just another one of our programs that we did.

F:I wonder about-- were you aware specifically of these earlier programs with 65:00denim, Denim Day in 1979.

S:Had no idea.

F: But also more broadly, did you have a sense--an appreciation--did you seek to learn about, sort of the history of the LGBT community on campus?

S:No, we assumed there wasn't one.

F: Yeah.

S: We had some folks on campus who had been here for many years either as instructors, faculty members or staff or graduate students. Some of them still work here. They would tell us some stories. If I slip back into my nineteen- and twenty-year-old self, what I thought at the time, was that we were the first time that students en masse were coming out and so we were creating something. 66:00Even though I knew that they had had-- my impression was that it had always been smaller before, a few people doing something. Now we're talking three dozen, four dozen doing things. I also think that, you know, the interesting--1979 to 1996, a bookend of the AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome] crisis.

[Break in recording]

F:Where did we leave off?

S:You had asked me if sort of our awareness of those who had come before. And So, I was saying that [19]79 right as the AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome] crisis was beginning, [19]96, when I got here was, and [19]97, would be the first years that antivirals, were widely-- the one-a-day or a handful-a-day-- it was the first time, from what I gather, that folks with HIV 67:00[Human Immunodeficiency Virus] felt like there could be a future. It wasn't an immediate death sentence. So, the seventeen years in between that--it was my childhood--so you equated gay men with death at that point not with activism, riots. I knew nothing about Stonewall. I knew nothing about what was happening in New York. My first gay memory is the 1993 Gay and Lesbian Inaugural Ball that the Clintons hosted because they had newsreel footage of it on the national news. And that was the first time I'd ever seen gay people in real life.

F:Yeah.

S:I read books and things like, but-- probably found porn somewhere I don't know. But that was the first idea of aha! There are adults who had this, but I 68:00still--growing up in the early [19]90s and late [19]80s, gay equaled AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome]. I think here in Southwest Virginia the gay community went underground or stayed underground maybe. I remember a story about a woman in the small vil-- the community that I grew up in. I mean there's no stop lights in this farmland. I remember a story in the newspaper about her son who was HIV [Human Immunodeficiency Virus] positive coming to live with her to die. It was in the Roanoke Times or one of the newspapers. And knowing who she was-- and that was the only connection I had through any person to AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome] at that time. There was a PFLAG chapter that was active in Blacksburg that met at one of the libraries on main street. I remember we would sometimes go to one of their meetings just to introduce ourselves and they would do collaborations with us. I remember there was a guy 69:00who started going to the meetings and he was out about being positive and he would come to our meetings. I think that much of the activism that started in the late [19]60s and picked up through the [19]70s probably came to a screeching halt when people were really fearing for their lives. I think a lot of people didn't come out of the closet. My entire life, my friends who are my age and I have always talked about the missing generation above us. That it feels like I know gay men in their seventies who came out late in life, you know who came out at fifty, right? They have grown children and an ex-wife somewhere. And I know gay men who are five, six, maybe even ten years older than I am but I don't know gay men fifteen years older than I am. It's a group that either they died, or 70:00they never came out of the closet, and I spent seventeen years in New York City. Lots of time on Fire Island, which was like ground zero for the AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome] crisis on the East Coast. This concept of the missing generation is so powerful there. And I think we felt it at Virginia Tech. I have a hunch that things just stopped happening for a while because people were fearful. I think Matthew Shepard brought national attention to a need for more education and more work, and certainly what his parents have done since then is still important. I was in college when Ellen came out. I remember that night--

F:Yeah.

S:--we went to someone's house to watch it and there were maybe two dozen of us in this big living room somewhere behind the 7-Eleven. I don't remember where, watching this episode of Ellen. I had never watched this TV show before, ever. I 71:00remember sitting in some guy's lap and asking him if he was gay and he said no I'm straight, but this is fine. And I thought, well all right. If that's what we're doing. This was also the era of rave culture and techno music and big pants and loud colors and spandex and--what I now understand--lots of people doing lots of molly and party drugs. Lots of pot and beer, everywhere. So, I remember things getting a little bit freer. I remember we had a drag show in one of the venues in Squires [Student Center] and it was actually really crowded. It 72:00was fun. It was really fun to be at Virginia Tech, then. Of course, we had our every Saturday night drives to Roanoke. There were two gay bars then and a gay restaurant, there were three gay venues, and a bookstore! There were four gay venues in Roanoke that you could go to! Fusion, The Park, I can't remember the other one, that's the one where the shooting took place, the restaurant, and I can't remember the bookstore's name. So, we'd drive to Roanoke every weekend. We tried to do some work with other campuses. So, the Radford folks or Roanoke College, and could never really get anything off the ground but other than the faculty who were here, that was our only link with the past.

F:So, you didn't have any connection to gay and lesbian communities in Blacksburg, or in the area, that weren't campus affiliated directly, or anything like that?

S: Other than that very small group of PFLAG folks--

F:Yeah. Oh, right.

S:--who was half parents and friends and half lesbians and gays. I think that's what served.

F:So you mentioned things seemed to be opening up at that time, but it's still a time when stories like the Matthew Shepard, right? And you mentioned Clinton's inaugural ball, but it was still very much a don't ask, don't tell kind of conversation and even after that--for a long time after that--a politician had to say I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but I support equal rights, right? And then all--

S:Is there where I talk about dating a cadet? [both laughing]

F:I don't-- If you like. I was just trying to speak to the climate now and how much-- there's been a tipping point recently, it seems to me. And you mentioned like the Ellen Show for example. It was such a huge deal then, but it seems strange to look back on it now.

S:There are cataclysmic shifts in our culture that have happened over the last twenty years, that-- Each one is more powerful than the other and, in my mind, irreversible. Marriage is a policy. It was-- it's fine. The policy could shift, but the cultural reality of the recognition of our relationships will never go away, and I think that's important. Even if somehow the Supreme Court or someone creates a policy that restricts marriage. I don't think it'll happen because people take it for granted now, even though it was what, four years ago, five years ago? The Obergefell [v. Hodges] case. I think that hate crimes, you know, Matthew Shepard spurred hate crimes legislation which went pretty far but never quite went far enough. I remember being here and there were still conversations 75:00about whether teachers could be out, schoolteachers, K-12 teachers. Conversations about adoption. I think it's relevant that we're sitting here in the state of Virginia, which unless I'm wrong, you can get married, put a wedding announcement in the newspaper and get fired the next day. I don't believe there are employment discrimination protection in the state of Virginia unless a governor has done it through executive order, which still isn't a part of the Virginia code, and a Republican governor could overturn that any time they want. I live in Colorado now which in [19]94, [19]95, [19]96 was the hate state for passing a restriction, rescinding non-discrimination policies and now Colorado, I think was the second state in the country to legalize, or maybe third state, gay relationships, marriage, civil unions, I can't remember what it was. I've only been there a year so, not totally up on my history, Colorado 76:00history. That's a huge shift in that fifteen year window. I think it's phenomenal that Virginia Tech has an LGBT center director now. I think it's phenomenal that Virginia Tech had this very public celebration of the 40th anniversary of Denim Day. We had supportive administrators, but our stuff didn't get on the website. We didn't get in the magazine. We didn't get fundraised around. We weren't celebrated. We were the dirty secret that the university wasn't sure it should really publicly celebrate this part of its vibrant diversity. Even though there were very supportive administrators. President Torgersen, I sat on a couple of committees with him. His chief of staff wrote a recommendation for me for graduate school. But I don't think they knew what the 77:00cultural landscape was going to be like. They were being you know cautious there as well.

F:So, the fact that the current community is on the website and celebrated more than tolerated. Do you-- and you mentioned you think it's great, this forty-year anniversary Denim Day celebration and of that. But is there a value or a need to continue to look back and be aware of that history? Like, for ex-- when you-- do you wish at the time you had known more? Do you think it's important to keep in touch with the previous struggles and the evolution of the community you inhabit and lead?

S:Yeah, I think it is a terrible thing to grow up without a mentor. To grow up without someone who can tell you what you're about to experience and how to make it through that experience. I think when my generation looks back, the common experience that we will all have is that we were helping each other. The fact that my coming out mentor was two years older than I was. I look at friends from other minoritized identities who have the elders who help them deal with the realities of their lives. I was reading an article yesterday about the experiences of Black mothers having conversations with their Black sons about this is how you handle a police stop, this is how you manage this interaction. I didn't have that, I had the person who had figured it out the week before me, telling me how to figure it out and then I would tell the person behind me. I think that lack of that generation above us, I don't think we know what the 79:00long-term effects will be. I look at the generation below, a couple generations below now, and I find them so free and willing to express their emotions and willing to engage in relationships and welcoming and not at all cautious and not careful. We were cautious, we were careful, we protected ourselves. I think emotionally and physically and that stunted many of us. I sort of made a joke about the cadet I dated but it was my senior year, we met online and dated for several months. He was closeted in the ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps], 80:00he was a uniformed cadet living in the quad. He was also a student leader, he was a very public person on campus, and we spent every minute of every day together. He, more often than not, slept in my dorm room, in Payne [Hall]. I remember sort of saying to him, you can't expect to date the most visible gay man on campus, and no one figure it out. And I think some part of him wanted people to figure it out. I think he wanted them to force him to come out so that he didn't have to do it himself. I heard that one of the commanders or staffers in the [Virginia Tech] Corp of Cadets pulled him aside and said, we know, and 81:00you need to do something, or we will take your scholarship. This is still in the Don't Ask, Don't Tell era and I think he lost his scholarship and had to leave the cadets. I don't know that he ever graduated from college. We broke up, and it was-- he blamed me for what was happening to him.

F:What was the something he could have done to avoid that?

S:That he could have done? Nothing.

F:Yeah, because you quoted the guy saying you need to do something or you're going to--

S:Well, he did-- you probably need to stop hanging out with me.

F: Yeah. So, end the behavior?

S:End the behavior. We were out publicly about our relationship with all of my gay friends and most of my straight friends and so it was the worst kept secret on campus. We went to the ring dance together, but with women. Which was strange because I was very out.

F:The women were complicit?

S:Yeah. Very. Well, mine was. I don't know about his. He had a lot of-- he struggled emotionally those two years, and I can't imagine that experience. Even while I was partying it up in Squires [Student Center] at a drag show, we had members of the [Virginia Tech] Corp of Cadets who were scared for their lives to come out of the closest. So that bifurcated reality I think existed on this campus for many years. Probably until 2009, 2010 whenever the Obama administration changed policies. That would have been the reality on this campus. That because--if I'm recalling correctly--if you were in the ROTC, you had to be in the Corp of Cadets, I think. And ROTC lived by the same policies as the U.S. [United States of America] military.

F:Yeah. So, you talk about the community being stunted by these realities, but 83:00also the cautious behavior, the cautious existence. It seems to be, at the same time, keeping the community alive and going. Doing what's necessary to strategically to keep it going. Do you see it that way? And in that sense then, contributing to the larger arc that's led to the freedom and safety that today's generation feels. Or is it just waiting for a cultural awakening?

S:I think you have to ask yourself why parties, writ large, play such a central 84:00role in the gay male community, especially. I think there's a lot of intersections there. There's intersections with alcoholism as self-medication for managing anxiety, stress, depression, resistance, right, to all of those things. I think that historically if the only place we were ever able to convene safely were these little dive bars in the backstreets of cities, then, that perpetuates itself, but I think there's also an act of resistance in partying--and I'm going to say this and it's going to sound awful--partying while people are dying. You know that the world is awful and yet we can also find a little joy in it. There's something that's about resistance there. Of strength, of flipping a big old bird to the dude upstairs because we're going to 85:00do this anyway. That's sort of what programming on this campus in the late [19]90s felt like, it was a little gorilla. That we were just going to do some of this stuff whether that wanted us to or not. Yet we were doing it and we had advisors. They always knew what we were doing. Years later I ran into a staff member, Gail Kirby, who was the director of res [residence] life, at a conference. I said, Gail if you had known the things that I did as a student, you would have fired me as an RA, and she laughed and said, Will we knew everything. I think, okay we weren't as sly as we thought we were, but I think that duality-- we lived it. I don't know that we fully understood it then and I don't know that we fully understand it now. But my question still comes back to what are the aftereffects, the long-term aftereffects or of living with that 86:00duality? You talk to what's left of the generation before mine, people like Peter Staley from ACT UP in that How to Survive a Plague film. He really talks about this experience of what you have to call post-traumatic stress disorder for those who lived through the AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome] crisis, and those who survived the AIDS [Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome] crisis. This idea of why me? All my friends are dead, why am I not dead, why am I still here? That, I think, carries with you for the rest of your life. I saw him on a panel after that film came out and he was talking about how several of the people who were in the film had committed suicide since the film and he was saying these demons they just don't go away, you carry them. I look at my generation and I think, we didn't have anybody to teach us how to have relationships. I went to my parents-- the bad boyfriend, first boyfriend where I 87:00was crying a lot. I remember going home one night in, you know, in a huff and my mom asking what was wrong. I said, you know, it was about this and I asked her something about advice. She said something like I can't give you advice because your relationships are going to be so different than mine. I think that's how our straight friends and family felt. That the relationships were different and so they couldn't offer feedback. So, if I look back on my life, probably the biggest regret I have is not understanding how to form true intimacy. We were also the first generation where sex was basically like on demand because of the internet chat feature. That dominated-- it was the underbelly, undercurrent of all of this programming and social scene, it was meeting people and struggling to build relationships with them. In your mind, it's I'm going to meet him and 88:00I'm going to date him and we're going to be together forever. We didn't say we were going to get married, right. We're going to be together forever. We'll have some strange commitment ceremony with a witchy lesbian on the beach, right. But the reality was the number of times we all dated each other, and it just seemed to go in a cycle. You know, you would break up with this one and he'd start dating that one, who'd start dating this one, who'd start dating that one. It was very incestuous. I think that-- I have struggled with that my entire life, to know really truly what's the difference is between a hookup and love. A lot of it is because we didn't have teachers who could show us the difference. And I think part of it, too-- we had some resistance to older gay men because we felt like they were just trying to sleep with us. And they may have been doing that. Looking back, it was glorious and painful in hindsight.

F:Well, what about the other struggle the first one you mentioned, right. The, just, sense of difference, of being apart. Is that something that's been mitigated over the years, now on the other end of this narrative or is it still there as strongly as it was?

S:I think it'll always be there. I think part of my identity is being from Appalachia [pronounced Appa-lay-chuh], Appalachia [pronounced Appa-latch-uh] I'm supposed to say. When I'm out of the mountains I have to say Appa-lay-shuh, pretentious, and when I'm here my mother corrects me that it is Appa-latch-uh. So being from the mountains and not living in the mountains, I will always have this feeling of being other than, because the identity of mountain folk is sort of baked into you. It's part of my family lore and the stories of where I come 90:00from. Sometimes it's cute like when people find out I grew up on a farm. It's cute, right, and it makes me sort of interesting. But when people start making fun of poverty, of people who live in trailers, of people who have thick accents which I dealt with daily at Virginia Tech. That's when it hurts because that's my family. That's my people. My parents lived in a trailer for a few years when they first got married. I think that at forty-one, I'm now able to enjoy feelings of difference because it makes me interesting, and I have enough friends who are also different in their own ways that we revel in it, we talk about it. I do think however that as a senior leader in my university now, in 91:00Denver which is still sort of a small town--everybody knows everybody there. I realize that my socialization is a little different than everyone else's. I'm never quite sure if it's because I was raised poor in Appalachia. And so, knowing the sort of, polite socialisms and which fork to use and what to wear where is always going to be odd to me. I don't know if it's that or I worked-- even after I left Virginia Tech, my job at the University of Maryland was to advise all of the LGBT organizations. My job at Barnard College was to be the LGBT liaison. At John Jay [City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice], I helped create some programming and support things and then now at MSU Denver [Metropolitan State University of Denver] I supervise the LGBT center. So, it's always been a thread of my work in the community. Gay people relate to each other in ways different than we do with straight people, or that 92:00straight people do with each other. We have our own rhythms of speech. We have sayings that don't make much sense when you actually listen to them. Although RuPaul's Drag Race is, you know, mainstreaming basically everything. I think that we are much more comfortable with sexuality than other folks are and so I always have to check myself a little bit now that I'm sort of rising in my career because I'm the only gay person who sits at a senior leadership table of nine, ten people. Sometimes the joke isn't so appropriate, or the comment shouldn't be made, or. So, sometimes I feel the difference but most of the time it's like the quirky thing that makes me different and people like that now, 93:00rather than resisting it. If that answers your question.

F:Sure.

S:I probably need to think more deeply about that one.

F:No, it sounds good.

S:That's the post-mid-life crisis debate.

F:Well, um, does that seem like a good place to end or do you think there's something we haven't touched on--

S:Yeah, I don't think I have anything else to tell you [both laughing], other than the things that I have already forgotten about my time here.

F:You've been a great narrator; I feel I've barely had to say anything at all.

S:The only other thing that I would say-- When I was at Virginia Tech, there were two gay communities. There was the out gay community that went to the meetings and went to the events, right? Was on the listserv. And then, there was still the illicit underground gay community. I remember hearing stories about the Duck Pond, that you could take long walks at night around the Duck Pond and hook up. He's laughing. I'm wondering if this is still a thing at Virginia Tech. 94:00I remember hearing stories about the bathrooms in McBryde [Hall] being the place that if you needed to quick hook up, you could head over there. I think I came out so fast I never needed to use those particular tools of the trade. But it was definitely part of the folklore. It was part of the story on this campus at that time. So, I wonder if there are people that were part of that gay community, and I wonder where they are now and what they're doing, whatever happened to them.

F:The bathrooms in McBryde [Hall] to me are like the worst and most crowded bathrooms on campus--

S:[laughing]

F:It seems like the last place you'd meet.

S:Yeah, you know, never had fascination for me. I was always too scared, I guess, of being caught or I don't know. Also, the internet, right? Like why walk 95:00around the Duck Pond at 11 p.m. when you can just log on and talk all night, or whatever. Yeah. No. Don't know.

F:Well, thanks so much.

S:Thank you!

F: This has been a pleasure.

S:Sure, my pleasure.

[End of Interview]