JW: Hi, so, you have been on campus for a number of years, how many years
have you been here since you graduated?
CB: Good question. So, I graduated in the class of '82 and I came back to work
here in 1990, so I wasn't gone very long. And I've worked here ever since, so I
think I've worked here almost 22 years.
JW: And how did it feel coming back to work at your alma mater?
CB: Really weird. Because, I think that a lot of times when alums come back
they've had some distance to the college. They've either been away, maybe it's
their first time back and so that they have a visit back to campus that's wrapped
up in nostalgia, it's wrapped up in their own experience. But when you come
back as an employee, all of a sudden I was working with my former faculty
members, so the hardest thing was really to be able to call them by their first
names, instead of "Professor."
JW: And what dorms did you live in?
CB: I lived in Browning, because, as you guys probably have heard, you were
assigned to a dorm and you, for the most part, stayed in a dorm. Some people
switched back then, but I stayed in Browning for the entire time I was here.
JW: So, you graduated in '82 and you were here for all 4 years?
CB: I was here for all four years, although I was abroad my junior year.
JW: Where were you abroad?
In Germany.
JW: Oh, wonderful.
CB: I was a German major.
JW: And where were you from originally?
CB: San Diego! So, not too far.
JW: Why did you choose Scripps?
CB: So, in my family, my mother and father went to Pomona, and I don't think
that they were overly influential, but we knew about the Claremont Colleges.
And then, as it turns out, my sister went to Pomona, my brother went to CMC, I
went to Scripps-- my husband is a Pomona graduate! His grandmother, his
aunt, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law. So, now there's really probably 10 or
12 of us. Back then I didn't think about it in those terms-- and my daughter's an
alum. She graduated Class of 2009.
JW: Do you think you have a different perspective as part of a legacy family?
CB: Huh, that's interesting. I probably do. I probably have a fondness for the
Claremont consortium, and, also, I think-- I took my major off campus, I did the
majority of my work in German at Pomona, so-- I really feel like I think about the
Claremont colleges as a whole, even though I'm a Scripps alum and I went to
Scripps college. I think that, since I didn't have another experience, sometimes I
worry that I haven't had another experience, because people that come to
Scripps that have been undergraduates at other institutions or have worked at
other institutions really bring fresh blood and kind of a new excitement, and I
have a different kind of legacy, so I bring history with me, but maybe not the
perspective about it would be like not to have gone to the Claremont Colleges
or Scripps.
JW: Speaking of that history, how have you seen things change since you've
been here? What's been the most abrupt or largest change?
CB: Probably the size. So, when I was here there was about 500, back then.
The dorms for example, had about 60, I think, 60 or 70 women. We mostly had
singles and only one RA. So, you can see that it was a much smaller campus,
and I think, though, that I would say, even though we've almost doubled in size
since I graduated there's a sense of commonality, a sense of community that
might not have existed, even though we were smaller, because of the Malott
Commons. We had dining in our individual dorms. So, possibly was the case
that you might have graduated with somebody that you didn't know when you
were there at Commencement, which is really too bad, when you consider how
small we were. But, if you didn't have a class with somebody, and maybe you
didn't live in that dorm, then you had less likelihood of running into each other
as you do, I think, at the Commons. So, I think that's been-- and just, central
mail, we had our mail delivered to the dorms, as well. So, I think that's probably
the difference, the biggest difference, the size, but I think it's a good thing.
JW: And you worked for the Core program for many years, how have you seen
that change?
CB: So, I started working with the Core program in 1996, and you all probably
know that there's a history of Humanities at Scripps. When I was here, I took six
Humanities courses, so, I took a Humanities course every time I was on
campus. And then it went through different iterations, and its latest iteration,
Core, which is a three-semester requirement, Core I, Core II, and Core III, began
in the Fall of 1996. And I was there at the beginning of that new program, or new
version of the Humanities, and I loved it. It was really wonderful and I think it's
really quite a remarkable program. I think, when people try and imagine talking
to someone else about it, and they imagine the entire class taking a class
together and almost all faculty teaching in it at one point or another, that's really
quite rare. And then I worked at the Humanities Institute, as well.
JW: And how do you think the changes in Core have changed the culture of the
way that students view the world?
CB: So, I think that what Core really tries to do is to develop critical thinkers, and
they want you to come in and take what you've arrived here with, which is really
18 years of a rich life lived, and have that questioned and have your
assumptions questioned, and have your thoughts and the reason why you hold
to those thoughts or the beliefs that you have developed give you some kind of
context for the way that we think about the world, the way that you think about
yourself vis-à-vis the world. And Core really gets you thinking, because it asks
you to reflect, as you read, as you participate in class, about things that matter
and I think it's a journey that's really quite deceptive, because it's really only that
the end, right now, maybe, for Core III, and certainly even with seniors that look
back and say that it was really quite profound and life-changing, even though, at
the time, it was probably difficult. And I didn't have that sense of my Humanities
experience. It was wonderful, but I think this 3-semester sequence and the way
that it develops and the way that it kind of is a trajectory that sets you up for the
rest of your time at Scripps is really wonderful. I don't know, you said that it had
been that way for you, in particular.
JW: It has.
CB: I think it's doing its job, then.
JW: So, when you were at Scripps-- you talked about how you really had a
sense of the whole consortium-- how much did students form the different
schools interact and socialize together, in class and otherwise?
CB: Right, well, I think the part scene was always the party scene, and I think
every college's distinctiveness is not necessarily a bad thing. I had friends, for
example-- we didn't have an Anthropology major at Scripps, or we still don't
have Sociology, so women took their classes over at Pitzer if you were going to
do those fields. Similarly, we didn't have any Math; we had no Economics. So,
you had a lot of women that wanted to be Econ majors, we had one political
scientist, so they took a lot of their classes at CMC. So, because, I think, we
were smaller, because our faculties were smaller, it could be, although I don't
have any data to support this, that you did a lot more of off-campus registration.
Now, we have all those fields here at Scripps, so you could really take Political
Science classes here the entire time and not feel the need to take a course off
campus, and you couldn't do that before. You certainly couldn't have been math
major, you just took your courses elsewhere, or an anthropology major if you
were at Scripps. When I hear students say that they haven't taken courses off
campus, I think it's just, it's too bad. It just didn't work out with their major and
with the kind of courses they're taking, but it's probably too bad, cause,
otherwise, you have this, like, larger university of which we're a small college.
JW: Do you think that part of the reason that those programs weren't offered was
because we're women's school?
CB: Yeah, that's interesting.
JW: And how has that view sort of changed?
CB: Yeah, I don't know, that's a good question. I mean, clearly, the college has
its founding in the Humanities. So, women, for the first probably 60 years, I want
to say, 50 or 60 years, came to Scripps because they had an interest, and a love
and passion, for the liberal arts, but more specifically the Letters. So, Literature,
History, Music, the Arts, Languages, and then you had some Psychology
majors, and you had women who were Science majors, absolutely, and we had
to take breadth requirements just like you do now. So, you were required, still, to
take courses across the fields. You had a Math-- I don't think you had a Math
requirement. But, you had to take a Science, I think even a lab science. Whether
that has to do with its founding as a women's college, I'm not so sure. I don't
know that I would say that. I just know that the emphasis then was in the
Humanities, on interdisciplinary learning, and, especially, I think, women were
here because there was a love and interest in the Letters, then the Social
Sciences, less so the hard Sciences. And then, Music and Art have always been
strong. Very, very strong. Especially the Studio Art.
10:12
JW: And how do you think the fact that Scripps is a women's college has
affected the student body over the years?
CB: I think increasingly with pride. And we all are here for some reason or
another. So, people that perhaps think during their college searches, as we all
must have, whether you wanted to go to a single-sex institution. What would be
the drawbacks, what would be the plusses of going to a women's college?
Clearly, were are within the consortium, so I think that we'll never be able to
divorce ourselves from the fact that we didn't go to a Mount Holyoke, where we
would be isolated as women. And since we don't experience that isolation, I
think embracing the fact that we, in this small, tiny enclave, are a women's
college, and proudly so, allows us to do so without feeling like we've lost
something. Do you know what I'm saying? I don't think we've had to give up
much because we're a women's college. And then, I think absolutely the thought
of being a coed institution or having it be anything other than what it is would be
hard to imagine.
JW: How often did people have guys back to the dorms with them when you
were there?
CB: 24/7. But, that's already, you know, decades after House Mothers and really
quite restricted visitation, so, by the time I had come, there was no issue with
that at all. And, in fact, back to the women's college issue, I think that the dorm
pulled together as a unit, of kind of. You lived together, you ate together, you
were each other's friends, and, not that you protected each other, but, you know,
if something was not supposed to be happening there, you kind of felt the sense
that this was your space, as well. So, yeah, there were guys there or other
people all the time without any kind of rules, but I think with responsibility. I don't
remember it was ever crazy wild, ever. I still don't think it is. I think that people go
other places to be crazy and wild, not on campus.
JW: Was sex talked about openly at the time?
CB: Absolutely. Yeah, I think, the one thing I would really look back on and
realize is that, I have several friends that I know now are gay or lesbian, and that
was maybe something, even in the late 70's early 80's, that those women may
have felt less comfortable. Because, I just think it was a heteronormative society.
We weren't, any of us, I think, in a place where we could have been much more
empathetic or understanding. I just really, that would be the only thing-- to think
that there were probably women who felt marginalized in that sense, similar to
other issues of diversity. And I just chalk it up to, really, ignorance and really
being naive. And I think leaders come forward in all generations to push us in
directions that we all need to be. Yeah, I think sex, but I want sex to include
heterosexual relationships, lesbian, whatever that is.
JW: And, so, do you think other forms of diversity came up in conversation? Do
you think that different ethnicities were marginalized?
CB: Yeah, no, I think it has to have been. Again, historically, you're talking about
a very white women. You talk about women of a certain privilege, a certain
background, a certain class. And I think that we all chafe against that. I know
that, you know, I was here and my mother and father struggled to send me here.
There were a lot of people here that had financial aid, that were working. We
had work-study. But, as in all situations, you have, you know, a range of women.
I still would consider ourselves privileged to have been here. We had the
educational backgrounds. We had the preparation that would prepare us to
come to Scripps. And to say anything different is really being dishonest, I think,
frankly. Women of color-- you know, struggling, always, I'm sure the college was
to try and make this a student body that is more reflective of human society and
encouraging women to come here and giving them opportunities if those
weren't given to them. But, there were, I think, oh, a handful, really, of African
American, Latina, or even Asian American, Asian Pacific Islander people back
then. It just, it wasn't as diverse as it should have been. I remember Pitzer being
quite diverse for some reason. So, they were just kind of out there with the
diversity thing and that was really great. And they seemed to really have a flavor
in their student body that I think extends to today.
JW: Do you think feminism at the college has helped play a role in helping to
diversify the student body?
CB: I don't know. I don't know that those two, that I would think about them in the
same way. That feminism would help. No, I don't. I mean, women helping
women of color, women helping make sure that this place stays true to a
mission that is broadly embracing, yes, but not that we, as feminists, then, think
about how our role should include. I just think they're two different things to think
about, and many times they intersect and those are really powerful women that
are doing both.
JW: How was feminism viewed when you were here as a student?
CB: We were past the kind of 60's, early 70's, and if you go back through
yearbooks you can really see that, I think, there was a lot more movement. It
was a very quiet time on campus and people said that we were part of that
preppy, I don't know why we were preppy, but, so, it was very quiet. There was
nothing I remember that was overtly politicized about the student body, that we
wanted to, you know, put our mark on-- women's right or something. And then, I
got married. Because I met my husband and he's five years older than I am, so, I
got married six days after graduation. So, the only thing that I would say about
the feminism side of it is that all of my friends just said, 'Oh my God, I cannot
believe you're getting married,' cause it was just not supposed to happen that
way. And that was like a throwback to the fifties, where you kind of come here
and, probably the stories are filled with, you know, Scripps-CMC, Scripps-
Harvey Mudd, Scripps-Pomona relationships. So, not to say that that has
anything to do with feminism, per se, but I think women were really focused on
thinking about what a career would look like.
17:14
JW: Can you think of any hot-button issues that did spark the student body, that
made people, you know, fired up?
CB: You know, I can't. I was kind of a nerd, studying in the library a lot. But, I
can't. And, really, what I said earlier actually came from a professor in some
class that I had, and we were in class and he's like, 'Don't you guys get riled up
about anything?' So, he came out of maybe more of a 60's, early 70's time on
campus for his own education, and I remember him being really frustrated with
us that we weren't more impassioned. I don't know that all alums from this era
would say this, so I'm there from '78 to '82, but it just I remember it as being a
quiet time on campus. I don't remember protests or vigils or marches or anything
but, you know, it's post-Vietnam, pre-everything today. It's even pre-Reagan.
Reagan's elected, then, I think right as I graduate, or, he's elected in '80. So,
yeah, kind of a quiet time on campus. I think. That's how I remember it, at least.
JW: How did you imagine going out into the world after graduation, especially
newly married?
CB: I know, I wanted-- so, I was gonna get a PhD. So, my goal, my idea was that
I would get a PhD in German Literature. Went and lived in Germany. So, I had
lived there before and put that on hold. So, I had three children. I think I told you
Meggie's a graduate, graduated 2009. And then came back to work when they
were little, to Scripps. So, I came back to work here but didn't do a postgraduate
degree.
JW: And, currently, you're working with Humanities Institute?
CB: No, I'm in the office of the president.
JW: Oh, I'm sorry, in the office of the president. But you have worked for it.
CB: For twenty years, yeah, I worked for the Humanities Institute and the Core
program.
JW: Oh, both together?
CB: Yeah, I did twenty hour and twenty hours. So, I did that and that was really
fabulous, wonderful. And I've been working for the president, now, for two years.
JW: What do you like about working with the president?
CB: Yeah, for me, I realized, having worked on the academic side of the college
for twenty years, that I had a little, very little, knowledge of the rest of the college:
admissions, student affairs, institutional advancement, the alumnae, the board
of trustees, and so that all comes together in the president's office, so that you
really are thinking about the college more holistically, whereas before I was a
little cog in the wheel, so to speak. I was in a very small part of the college. A
huge part, because that's our mission, to educate students and without students
and faculty there's no reason to be here. But, it's a different viewpoint now.
JW: And you told me that you miss some of the interaction with the students.
CB: Absolutely, that's the hardest part for me, is that I don't have any connection
to students or to coursework or to faculty anymore. It's just not part of my job.
JW: How did you feel professors interacted with students when you were a
student versus when you were working with the Core and Humanities programs
versus now that you're working with the president?
CB: So, you should know that there's some of the faculty that were here when I
was here that are still here. So, that's one great thing. And some of them teach
in the Core program, so that's wonderful. And I think that the faculty are just
amazing. I would imagine really that, from my perspective, since I'm not a
student, I see them in much the same way as I saw my own faculty, and that is
dedicated, completed, 100% committed to their teaching and to their students.
So, one difference, but you have it in the Commons, is, you know, we had lots of
faculty come up and eat in the dorms with us. Now, they do so at the Commons.
So, there's kind of that lovely kind of intersection between academics and life
outside of class where faculty and students can meet, and meet at the Motleywe
had the Motley back then, too. So, and the president wants very much to stay
tied to the campus, at the same time her job takes her outside of the campus to
raise the profile and the national visibility of the college. And that's a tension that
I think she feels, too, because she was a professor of Geology, so she started in
the classroom. So, how to keep in contact with students in more than just a
shake you hand, I see you when you come in and I see you when you
graduate? And that's hard, that's hard to break down. So, we're always thinking
of ways to have her be more part, at least, more visible on campus. Any
suggestions?
JW: Ha, I don't know.
CB: Yeah, no, cause she's really highly accessible. Just pick up the phone and
call her and you can have an appointment, which is also so rare, and I don't
think something people know or take advantage of.
JW: And, where was the Motley when you--
CB: The Motley migrated. Well, I think, actually, the whole time I was here it's
where the Registrar was. I think it migrated afterward, cause I know it's been lots
of different places. And I get mixed up, was it when I was working here or was it
when I was a student here?
JW: And, a final question, do you remember where your class painting was on
the wall?
CB: I do, absolutely.
JW: And you visited it?
CB: Many times, yeah.
JW: What is it?
CB: So, it's Alice in Wonderland, and it's on Toll, and it's up at the very top. So, if
you're looking at the Rose Garden, it's up in, like, the Northwest corner, high up.
And I forget the Lewis Carroll quote, but it's something like "We're all mad," or
something, "that's why we're here." So, that's my class.
JW: Is there anything else that you'd like to add?
CB: No, no. It's good.
JW: Perfect, thank you so much.
CB: You're welcome!
23:33
