JG: So just to start off with a couple questions, where are you from?
JS: Originally, I’m from Wilmington, Delaware, and my family moved to Los Angeles in 1969.
JG: Why did you choose Scripps?
JS: Well that’s kind of a weird story. I had been taking piano lessons my whole life and my parents told me I had to take them for 10 years before I could quit. But when we moved to Los Angeles, that had been 10 years. I was 15 and had been taking [them ]since I was 5. So I did completely stop it because I had no intention of going into music. I wanted to be a French interpreter. So I got involved in choir in high school and one of the choir members was a composer who didn’t know how to play his own work. So he asked me to play for him. And then that led to lessons with somebody else in the choir, just a woman who was one year older than I. She ended up coming to Scripps, and I ended up auditioning for her piano teacher. That piano teacher decided that I should definitely go to Scripps. It’s the only place that I applied, and my grades were terrible, so I got in because I played a really good audition. So it’s really the only choice I had was to come to Scripps.
JG: Did you feel obligated to continue playing in the music program since you got in because you had a good audition?
JS: Oh, at that point, I had been directed to be a piano major. I mean, I was told that that was what I should do, and I just went along with it.
JG: Did you have any other areas of study that you wanted to study at Scripps, or was it mostly just music?
JS: It was mostly just music. But again I was kind of following instruction. I don’t think my own motivation came until many years later.
JG: Your college decision – how was it different from your peers? Did any of your other friends go to a women’s college? Did they think that going to a woman’s college was strange, or was that totally acceptable?
JS: I don’t remember any discussion of pros and cons of being a women’s college. What I think stuck out was that I was going to be going to a private college, rather than something like UCLA. So it seemed, I think to them, kind of glamorous. Claremont was so beautiful, too, in those days.
JG: Do you remember what the popular majors were, like what your friends were majoring in? Or did you mostly just hang out with music majors?
JS: My friends majored in Modern European History, Philosophy, Literature. I had a bunch of friends at Pomona who were music majors, and all those people stayed in music. It was an unusual time at Scripps, I think, because – has anybody else told you about this? – we didn’t have grades then. Do you know about that period? This was the very end of that era because by the time I graduated, I guess maybe my junior year, we might have had the option to have grades. By the time I graduated, I think we had grades and comments. I can’t remember exactly, but it was a period of transition because women started going more and more into medical school, and law school, and graduate school, which I guess hadn’t been so much the case before.
JG: Did you like have a system where you weren’t graded for your work? Or did you feel like you weren’t motivated? How did that affect your work?
JS: No, I mean a “B” is a very flat kind of message, but when a professor goes into great detail about why you might have gotten a “B,” I think it gives you more detail than you want. I mean, there was the ability to give a lot more feedback. The feedback was more meaningful and personal, and could be a lot more cutting, too.
JG: You mentioned that you had some friends at Pomona. Did you interact a lot with the other schools? Was that common? Or did the schools mostly stick to themselves?
JS: I interacted with other schools a lot for two reasons. One is that people from the music department came from other schools, and my performance class – you know how like you and I have performance class – that class was very close. And we stayed close later. It became a group that had occasionally its own reunions. Some people were from Mudd and some people were from CMC. But when I came to school, two people from my high school came to Pomona. Because of that, since I came to college, I immediately started making friends at Pomona. That’s really where my social life was, more than at CMC. I think most Scripps people hung out with CMCers in those days. But I kind of avoided CMC.
5:30
JG: Were there a lot of interactions between the boys at other schools and Scripps women? Were there specific schools that boys would come court – because there is a story about how Mudd boys would come and sing and serenade the Scripps students, I think it was in the earlier ‘60s.
JS: I remember something about that during Orientation week, that one day we got up really early, and we were serenaded. But remember that CMC wasn’t coed yet.
JG: It was a men’s college.
JS: Yeah. I think that’s where the natural interaction came for social life. But I do remember, my freshman year, that a bus-load of guys came from Cal Tech. They were bussed in. I don’t think there were very many women at Cal Tech, if any. I can’t remember if it was coed, yet. So they came to meet us. Thinking back, that seems really old fashioned to me, but I think that just happened my freshman year.
JG: What dorm were you in your first year?
JS: Browning.
JG: Did you stay in the same dorm all four years?
JS: I stayed in that dorm for two years. Then I took a semester off. I went on a program to Israel. It was a six-month program and I lived on a kibbutz. Then I came back and lived in Browning. Then our senior year, there were senior houses then – I don’t think if there are now. But it was on 11th street. Four of my friends and I had a house. It was fantastic.
JG: How was taking a semester off?
JS: That was great. Actually, I graduated in three and a half years. I got some credit for language, having gone away, but the beginning of junior year was when a lot of my friends were leaving to do their own thing, so I felt like I should do something, too.
JG: Do you remember any traditions and rules that were in place, particularly? Did you have a curfew, or did you have to eat in the dorms on specific days?
JS: Well, we all ate in the dorms, mostly in our own dorms. I remember we could eat at the other colleges. People didn’t eat at other dorms, that much, but we used to go down to Collins and to Frary. Actually, I worked at Frary my senior year, taking ID’s, so I always had dinner there. Traditions? I do remember when I was a freshman that they were still doing this weird tradition of passing around a candle, and turning down the lights, and whoever held the candle at the end was the one who had just gotten engaged. But it seemed like that was maybe just my first year.
JG: Were a lot of students getting engaged in college? Was that common?
JS: It didn’t seem that common, no. I was 24 when I started teaching here, so I think I took two years off and then went to graduate school here. As soon as I started graduate school, I got a T.A. There was a long period where people weren’t getting married right away, and then it seemed like there was a period, I would say in the ‘90s, where people were getting married right after graduation. Now it seems not so common, anymore.
JG: What was the dating like at Scripps?
JS: I think there were several different camps. What I remember was that – now this is my limited perspective from when I was 18 and 19 – it seemed like the people who had money did most of the dating, because they were the ones who could go out to restaurants, go to L.A., go to plays, things like that. I mean, I did know people who did that. But it seemed like a lot of us just ran in packs. We had groups of friends – we hung out in groups. That’s more what I remember.
10:01
JG: What were the attitudes towards virginity or premarital sex?
JS: Conflicted. I think conflicted. One of my best friends – I want to say some of the people I was close to, actually three of my closest friends at Scripps, plus others I can think of, came to college with boyfriends. I mean they had boyfriends at home, or some of them came here because her boyfriend was going to CMC. So in some of those cases, people had already started having sex before they came to school, but it seemed like that was very unusual. One of my friends was very religious, and she did start having sex during her college years, but was not feeling that great about it for religious reasons.
JG: But in general, it was ok to have premarital sex or was it kind of looked down upon?
JS: No, I don’t think it was looked down upon because it was the 70s. I mean, the Sexual Revolution was already in full swing, and people had a lot of options about birth control and things like that. I think their backgrounds still made them conflicted. I don’t think people were extremely open about it, even though there were men living in the dorms. I mean some people had boyfriends who pretty much lived in their dorm rooms. I can think of one couple who were pretty much a couple through their entire four years.
JG: Do you think going to a women’s college affected any attitudes towards sex? Or having an atmosphere of all women – did that affect anything?
JS: Not really, no. You know, I don’t really remember people making such a big deal about this being a women’s college. I think people came here because it was very strong in the Humanities. We didn’t have the Core program, but we had something, not similar exactly, but there was a really demanding Humanities component. [Scripps] was very strong in the arts, really famous for its art department. I think people came here because it was small. I mean, I never remember having a conversation about coming here because it was a women’s college.
JG: You mentioned the Humanities program – was it a relatively new program or had it been around for a while?
JS: It had been around always, but it kept changing. So during my era, it was a six-semester Humanities requirement. We had classes that – how many weeks? – maybe eight weeks plus eight weeks. Like you would take two per semester. They were very specialized. I took one on the Black Plague, I remember. And one was just Beowulf, it was all on Beowulf. It was a really heavy demand. It took up a lot. Actually, I want to say that the music major for a performer, I had something like a twenty course requirement for my major, and then the six semester requirement for Humanities. There was a language requirement, and a science requirement. I think I had, because I took the semester off, I think I had two electives the whole time I was in college. Two – two!
JG: Were you ok with not having a lot of room to take what you wanted to study? Were the Humanities pretty accepted because you had so many options?
JS: There were a lot of options. The professors were really fascinating characters, I thought. Yeah.
JG: What was the most memorable teacher you ever had, or class that you ever had?
JS: Well, my piano teacher was pretty memorable. She had come here in the ‘60s and she’d had a really impressive career. She had made her debut at Carnegie Hall and she studied with the most famous piano teacher in the world. She really was a very special person. I think that’s one reason the performance class was so cohesive and close. She was really a mentor to me. She died pretty young. Actually, there’s a poster in this studio, which you can’t see, which I asked for when she died and it comes from her studio. Then there were some – I remember there was a professor named Quincy Howe jr., I think, because his father had been a famous journalist. He was a Classics professor. He gave up his tenure to become a photographer. Then later I think he went back to become a high school teacher, maybe in a very low-income area in New York, and wrote a book about that. There were a lot of really interesting professors, and so he was one that was particularly memorable. Then there was a woman professor – I was telling you I took a Beowulf class. She was one of the first women PHDs at Yale. She left Scripps – her name was Marjorie Downing – she left Scripps to become, I think, the first woman president of a four year university in California. I think it was Cal State Sonoma. Sonoma State, I think that’s what it’s called. So, she’s not alive anymore, either but there were people who were really [at] the top of their field.
16:04
JG: What was your relationship with your teachers? Were you close or was it kind of like a “respect your authorities” one?
JS: Well, I think I was close with my piano teacher. But you’d have to define “close” for me – what do you mean?
JG: Just in general. Did you feel you could go to dinner with them and just have a conversation outside of class? Or was it mostly an in-class “you’re my teacher, I’m your student” kind of relationship?
JS: I have kind of a complicated feeling about that. I don’t feel like my teachers wanted to hang out with their students, but I feel like within the boundaries that they set, they were extremely helpful and generous. They would talk to you about things outside music. I mean the college years can be years where you’re going through a lot of personal change and turmoil. Since the piano teacher relationship is always one-to-one, I think there’s an opportunity there for the piano teacher to be kind of a therapist, also. So I would say it’s more like my piano teacher had a dual professional role: she’s my piano teacher and she was kind of like a therapist. But “friend,” I wouldn’t say she was my friend.
JG: Did you cross-register at the other schools?
JS: Mmm-hmm [nodding]. I did.
JG: Do you remember what classes you took?
JS: I took a great French class at CMC. I took a music history class at Pomona. I remember that teacher gave me really negative comments. A baroque history class – I don’t think I was really into it. But he just said he found it confounding that I was a music major. Nothing at Harvey Mudd, and nothing at Pitzer.
JG: Were there always boys in your classes, or was that a relatively new thing in cross-registering?
JS: Well, I told you I hardly had any – oh I took a Philosophy class at CMC. So the CMC classes were obviously boys. And my music classes had boys. But the Humanities classes, no, because those were Scripps classes. One of my two electives, one was the Philosophy class and the other one was “Women in Literature and History.” I think that was one of the first women’s studies classes taught here. I don’t remember any boys in that.
JG: Was it a requirement to take a women’s studies class?
JS: Mmm-mmm [shaking head]. That was a really new thing.
JG: Do you think that having the Humanities requirement helped you with your life after Scripps? What were your feelings on the Humanities program? We went over this a little bit – just for real-life applications.
JS: “Real-life applications…” Well, if you’re a musician, then you have the option, if you’re good enough, to go to a conservatory, or to a liberal arts kind of environment. So I think the understanding is if you choose the liberal arts environment, you don’t want to be a specialist to the exclusion of knowing what else is going on in the world. So yeah I think that kind of set a tone. I mean, I have lots of interests, so it did set a tone for later.
19:54
JG: Do you remember any of the hot-button issues on campus, like what was going on in the real world during your time at Scripps?
JS: Well, the Vietnam War was still going on while I was still at school, and that ended I think – was it 1973? So that was my sophomore year. That was a big issue. I don’t remember this with any detail, but I think this was also the era where different minority groups were lobbying to have departments created: Black Studies, Latino Studies, that kind of thing, which didn’t exist before. I told you that there were men living in the dorms, and I remember there was a famous letter to “Dear Abby,” where somebody complained, and that became a big deal because I think maybe the trustees had to discuss how to handle that situation. So probably the changing norms of sexual behavior was an issue for some people. And what was going on politically. Nixon was still in office. He resigned during the time that I was in school, although he resigned when I was in Israel, so I wasn’t here. Those are the things I remember offhand.
JG: You said men were living in the dorms – were they living with their girlfriends?
JS: Yeah.
JG: Did you ever go off of the Claremont colleges, or did you mostly stay on campus?
JS: You know one thing I was thinking of that seems so different from now is first of all, I don’t think freshmen were allowed to have cars, and there was no train system into L.A. I remember taking the bus a few times. Remember that I said social life seemed to me dictated by whether or not you had money? I think that had to do with how you spent your time, as well, because I can’t remember one occasion where I went out to dinner in college, unless somebody’s parents came to visit. So I don’t remember that we did a lot off-campus.
JG: Was there a clear separation between those who had money and those who didn’t?
JS: You know, the way I felt it is – this is personal to me, but I’m also talking about an entire class of us – if you were on work-study, you had responsibilities other than just studying, right? I seemed to have two or three jobs, usually. So what was different about people who had money is that not only could they dedicate themselves totally to their study if they were disciplined, but when vacation came around, they didn’t go home. They went skiing. They went somewhere else. That seemed to be a real separation.
JG: Did people hang out with others that were in their socioeconomic demographics?
JS: I think mostly that’s how it usually works. Although, it seemed to me that one benefit of being a musician is that it let you cross lines. That seemed to be the case – that’s something that dawned on me because I started making friends outside what I would call my social class, and was taken along places, you know, because somebody wanted me to play piano for their parents. They kind of took me around. Then I got the idea that if you had talent, you could move beyond where you started. Yeah, I think I believe that.
JG: What did you do for fun when you weren’t working or studying?
JS: Well there were some great places on campus to hear music. There was a place at Pomona called the “Smudgepot.” I don’t know if there’s still something like this, but it was always open. I guess Fridays were the big music days. There’s a place at Pomona, I don’t know if it’s there anymore, called “The Wash” – is it still there? People used to always go down there on Friday afternoons and just hang out. Then, Friday nights we used to always go to this place called the Smudgepot, which was in the downstairs – I think now it’s called the Smith Center – but this was in the basement of what was there before. There were fantastic musicians, some people from on-campus, and some people off. I was in a band, and we played there. Actually, the Motley was just starting up, and our band played there. That’s something you haven’t asked me about. I was in a band my senior year, and we were kind of popular. So people knew us. We were living in the senior house, and so all our rehearsals were there. We had a lot of parties.
25:05
JG: What was your band’s name?
JS: That I can’t remember [laughs]. But it was mostly – I think there was a guy from Pitzer, and then everybody else was from Pomona.
JG: Do you remember what kind of genre of music you guys played?
JS: Yeah. We played some Little Feet, Flying Burrito Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Moriginals, Paul Simon. I mean, there were so many people in the group, and everybody wanted to do something different. I think the first tune I learned was “Ol’ ‘55” by Tom Waits. I think that was the first thing I was taught. There were a couple of people in the band that wrote. We had two singers. It was great – we played a lot. That took up a lot of time. A lot of my piano practice time [laughs].
JG: Was that the most popular music you guys played? What kind of music was popular at your time at Scripps?
JS: I don’t know, when you went to parties, I just remember a lot of Steely Dan and Steve Miller Band. Stuff that was really hard to dance to I thought, because I grew up with Motown and R&B.
So I just think of the music during my college years as kind of hard to dance to. But, I’ll tell you what was really popular then, because there were so many classic albums that came out then. There was lot of really good Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash, the [inaudible] that was really popular then. Todd Rundgren – I’m trying to think. ‘70s stuff.
JG: Do you remember what the fashion was like? Like what you wore to parties?
JS: Yes. What you’re wearing, today. That’s another thing that was really distinctive. I don’t remember, in my entire four years in Claremont, that you ever saw anybody wear anything but jeans. No matter who. Everybody wore jeans. Because that changed later. I remember in the 90s, when the economy was really good, people would come to piano lessons dressed up like for job interviews. I mean, people wore high heels, really dressed. And then it went back. Now, it’s very much like it used to be. My interpretation is just that – yeah, sure because you’re the kids of all the people I went to school with. I think, also, so many students now that I interview about what kind of music they listen to, they listen to their parents’ music. That definitely was not the case when I was in school. You were asking about hot-button issues. This is not exactly in this category, but one thing that is so different now, from then, is that I think the generation gap is huge between students and their parents back then. And I feel like there’s not so much gap anymore. Students and their parents seem to want the same things. There doesn’t seem to be that much conflict. So I don’t know if it’s a compatibility and ethics goal – I don’t know how that’s working.
JG: Did you contact your parents often when you were at Scripps? If you did, how did you contact them?
JS: Payphone. There was phone. Dorm phone and payphone. Nobody had cellphones. I didn’t even have an electric typewriter, but I think most people did. Since my parents lived so close, I mean an hour away, I tried to not be a person who went home very much. I had a rule for myself as a freshman that I wouldn’t go home until Thanksgiving. And I didn’t. I would call. All of us wrote letters in those days, and I still have a lot of letters from college. Yeah, so I would write once in a while. Probably, I would call every couple of weeks.
JG: Did you have any siblings?
29:41
JS: I have a little sister who is three years younger, and she went to Pomona.
JG: Did you ever interact with her when you were at Scripps?
JS: A little bit. A little bit. But we didn’t have a great relationship, then. I told you I worked in the dining hall at Pomona – so, my little sister was taking a creative writing class at Pomona, and evidently she was writing about me, in “not a very flattering way,” because I used to have people
coming up to me in line, and say [laughs] “you should hear what your sister said about you in class today.” So that wasn’t the most comfortable for me, but we got over it.
JG: You have a good relationship now?
JS: Yes, we do.
JG: You mentioned that the Motley had just opened – where was it located?
JS: It was where, I think, the Registrar’s office is, now. Then, it moved around a lot. It was in a couple different places. Now is definitely the nicest. I think that’s maybe when it started – 1975?
JG: What was it like?
JS: [shrugs] What was it like… it was small, it had a little stage. It felt kind of hip. It was a fun place to go. I think I went there probably every night and had coffee, because I was living on 11th street, so I would just stop by, and continue walking home.
JG: Was the Scripps pool still between Harvey Mudd and Scripps? Kind of on Platt?
JS: Sorry, say that again?
JG: The Scripps pool – was it still between Harvey Mudd and Scripps, on Platt Avenue?
JS: No, there was a pool on campus. Are there still apartments? Senior apartments?
JG: They are by Routt.
JS: Yeah, so it was just east of the apartments.
JG: What were the cultural attitudes of drinking? Especially because half the students were underage? Was the drinking age 21 or 18?
JS: It was 21 – it’s 21 now, right? Yeah, it was 21, but some people came from states, like Colorado, where the drinking age was lower. Or, you could drink a certain kind of beer. I would say [attitudes were] all over the map. What I noticed is that as soon as some people got to college, the way they expressed their freedom was just to get smashed at every opportunity. I think it was just to get out from some sort of repressive environment. I do remember on weekends, if you walked across the CMC campus, people were constantly vomiting in the bushes. All the parties had at least beer. I can’t remember so much hard stuff, but there was a ton of beer around. I always stayed away from that. I don’t think I had a beer until I was a sophomore. Then, I drank lightly. I could never drink a lot, and handle it. I think I tended to hang out with people who didn’t drink that much, as well. But, as far as attitudes, I would say you could find every attitude.
JG: Were there any schools that were more prone to having a party scene or were all the colleges equally involved?
JS: It felt pretty equal.
JG: What was the party scene at Scripps like? I think Scripps had TNC?
JS: What is that?
JG: Thursday Night Club – it’s a party that Claremont McKenna hosts now, but I know Scripps used to host it. I’m not sure when.
JS: I just remember that different dorms would host [parties]. I also remember that they were never that much fun, really. I mean, you’d get a bunch of drunk people smashed into a room where it was too loud to talk. It never seemed that much fun. The parties we had at our house were always great. I think I just always liked the smaller scenes.
JG: What about the drug scene?
JS: Some of that was somewhat invisible to me, but I know it was going on. I mean, I know that a lot of my friends at Pomona smoked – actually one of the guys in my band was dealing pot. There was lot of pot. It was super cheap in those days; you could get a little bag for 10 dollars. There was a lot of LSD, probably mushrooms. Those are the three things I remember. I don’t think ecstasy was around. Also what I remember was really big was amphetamines around test time. People were always trying to score “whites” so they could stay up, but what usually would happen is that you would take something – because you thought you were going to stay up and study – and because everybody was so exhausted, it would be the first time you felt great in weeks, so you would just talk and not study. But those are the kinds of things I remember.
35:19
JG: Was it generally accepted, or was there a stigma against [drug use]?
JS: Who would stigmatize? I mean, I don’t think it was smiled on by administration, but who would stigmatize people you didn’t want to hang around anyways?
JG: What were the attitudes towards the queer and LGBTQ community?
JS: I think things were pretty closeted. That’s what I would say. I just have to go back to my one experience. I had a really close friend at Pomona. He was one of the people I was talking about from a very different social class than I was from, but included me in a lot of things. He took me to this kind of “ball” at Pomona our senior year, but he was gay. He didn’t tell me he was gay until after we graduated. I think I was always extremely naïve. Probably if you had a little more experience, a little more sophistication coming to college, you would perceive things that I couldn’t perceive. I just don’t remember that it was discussed very much. I don’t remember
anyone in the dorm who was gay that I can think of. Later, I found out about people coming out. I’ll go back to what I originally said: pretty closeted.
JG: Do you remember any homophobic remarks or sayings that were accepted?
JS: I tend to remember more anti-Semitic things, but the truth is homophobic remarks were casually made. I mean, still it seems like in some corners, it’s almost still acceptable to talk in that way, that I might not have remarked on it. The things I heard – it really might not have been on my radar, then.
JG: You mentioned anti-Semitic remarks. Were…?
JS: There weren’t that many Jews. I mean, I can think of two Jewish professors in those years that I know of. My piano teacher was [Jewish] and a member of the English department, who later became a dean. But there seemed to be very few of us. I remember some pretty nasty things.
JG: Did that make you feel uncomfortable for being a minority, in the sense of religions?
JS: Well, not – I don’t know uncomfortable. I definitely noticed. But I think I was more alert or sensitive to the social class differences.
JG: So abortion had just been legalized [cross-country] in 1973. Do you remember any discussion about that?
JS: I remember some abortions.
JG: At Scripps?
JS: Yep.
JG: Do you remember discussion it in class or having information about it?
JS: No.
JG: There was also an Equal Rights Amendment struggle [at that time], where women would be treated as equals in the work force to men. Do you remember learning about that? How did feminism really play into your time at Scripps, if it did at all?
40: 07
JS: I think it was just in the air. It was in the papers, it was on the radio. I think it was just part of the climate. There probably were meetings and rallies and things like that, but I was generally in the practice rooms.
JG: Being a feminist – was that a positive or negative connotation?
JS: Positive [nodding].
JS: From all the 5-Cs or just at Scripps?
JS: I’m only thinking how I felt. But I think my peers pretty much felt [the same way]. I mean, by the time I graduated, most people I graduated with, if not all, were preparing themselves for a career. So I think in those days, if you were doing that, you thought about yourself as a feminist. Now, it feels commonplace but then it felt like you were doing something deliberate.
JG: You graduated from Scripps in 1976 and you went to CGU two years later?
JS: Mmm-hmm [nodding].
JG: What was it like being back at Scripps then? How did you decide to work here?
JS: I never left because one of my work study jobs had been to be an accompanist in the dance department. I just continued doing that. So I graduated, I kept my job at the dance department, and started working at the newspaper in town, Claremont Courier. I might have done a little private teaching. I just did a million things to make ends meet. Then my teacher said to me, my piano teacher said, after two years, “you know you could have had your degree already!” I said “No, I don’t want to go back to school.” She said “Well, I’ll give you the T.A. You can start teaching.” I said “I really don’t want to teach.” And she said, [laughs] “Just do what I tell you!” So I auditioned, and went to Grad school. I kept working – I was teaching a lot, actually. I’ll tell you how I got my job here because it’s an interesting story. I was working 30 hours a week at the Courier, and I was teaching between six and twelve hours a week, AND going to graduate school. So I taught one year doing group piano. I think I had six sections of group piano. Then, as I started my second year at school, about two weeks before school started, the person who had my job – the job I have now – had a nervous breakdown. It was two weeks before school. So I just got put in. Then that job was divided up so there were three of us, sharing a twelve-hour position. Then one of those people left, so then there were two of us sharing, and we’re still here. Gayle Blankenburg and me. But now we have our own positions. Now we have twelve hours each. The demand has grown for what we’re doing. But that’s how I got my job. I never had to audition, interview, no job search. I just got put in.
JG: Did you like your job at the Courier?
JS: Yeah that was really fun. Well that was sort of what you might say an extension of what you were asking about the Humanities classes. When you’re a reporter, you’re learning about something different, each day and that seemed really fun. I liked what you’re doing right now: talking to people.
JG: Oral history?
JS: Mmm-hmm [nodding].
JG: How has Scripps changed since you’ve been here? You’ve been here for quite a while, right?
JS: Quite a while. I would say, first of all it’s grown, because when I graduated I think enrollment was 550, and it’s probably at least 400 people larger, now.
JG: The Scripps total class? There’s almost 1,000.
39:20
JS: Ok, so it was half the size. The curriculum has expanded. They’ve added economics, math – those are the two I can think of. Many more people are majoring in the sciences. A huge percentage of people are double majoring. I don’t remember that was so common. The generation gap thing is really significant to me, what I spoke of before. As far as the composition of faculty, what I notice is not only many more Jews on faculty, which I would notice because that’s where my radar is going, but gay [faculty] also. The faculty has a much different representation, which I think is great. What else? I mean, I’m under the impression that the standards of the college are much higher. That the incoming freshmen are always, you know, the SAT scores are always higher and higher. People seem to be coming to school with résumés already in high school and that is very different. People didn’t have résumés during college. I think the most significant difference for right now is that the economy is really bad. When I was graduating, I don’t think people worried about if they were going to get a job; it was if they could find the right thing for themselves. The right kind of job – there seemed like there was a lot of work.
JG: Alright, well I think that about wraps it up. Is there anything you’d like to go back to, or that I didn’t mention?
JS: I can’t really think of anything.
JG: Also, if you’d like to play a piano piece, you’re welcome to play a piano piece, but there’s no pressure to if you don’t want to.
JS: [shakes head, laughing]
JG: Alright well, thank you so much.
JS: Thank you.
[In retrospect, Ms. Simon wanted to add a couple points she forgot to address. This is a written addition, and was not part of the interview]
JS: From my vantage point--someone who essentially never left Scripps--these are the significant differences between then (the 70's) and now. It's worth repeating what I said about what was called the Generation Gap, and these opinions are formed by conversations with my own students over the years. Compared to the 60's and 70's, I think today's parents and students seem
to have fewer conflicts about life-style, goals, values and courses of study. Speaking as a music teacher, I find it really symbolic that students in many cases talk about loving the same music that their parents listen to. Once in a while I've had a student whose parents have forbidden him/her to major in music because of worries about career path, but in many cases the parents seem to want for their child the same thing as the child wants. Also, in the early 70's, two female students quite obviously--in retrospect--suffered from severe eating disorders. They were truly skeletal in appearance, and yet, continued living in the dorms and going to classes. We had no idea what was going on with them. The whole topic of recognizing and treating eating disorders had not yet been fully developed.
