Heather Novak: OK. My name is Heather Novak. I am interim director of the Center for Community Action and Research here at Pace University and I am also a Pace alum. Um I graduated from the MPA program in 2005.
Madison: Where did you grow up? Where are you from?
Heather: I’m from Rockland County, New York, which um is about 30 minutes from the Pleasantville campus. Um so across the river, um actually, that’s where I live now. So I didn’t move out of my hometown. Um So I, I’ve been there um pretty much my whole life.
Madison: When you were at Pace, were you at Pleasantville?
Heather: Yes. Yes, I was. I was working at Pleasantville and going to school at the same time. I was at the graduate center at that point, which was in White Plains. So it was when we had the graduate center in White Plains.
Madison: What made you choose your career and go down this path?
Heather: Um So I guess one of the things I would say is I didn’t necessarily choose this career, I found this career um and I had had a background of community service and um like, I did that for fun. So um I was in what was called a key club in high school
Madison: yeah
Heather: yeah um and Girl Scouts um and I was raised in a family um that believed in making contributions to your community, not just um taking things from your community. So um that was something that was in my background. I went, I was the first person in my family to go to college, um and I wanted initially to go to college to be a biologist. And then I took chemistry and that was the end of that. Um and then I had a lot of different kinds of majors when I was in school because I didn’t really, I really was looking to find something that I enjoyed.
Madison: Right
Heather: Um I, I was not one of those first generation college students who like, I’m going to make the most money I could possibly make to bring my family out of poverty. I was like, I’m going to find out, like what it is I like. Um and so initially, I graduated with the Human Services degree, my undergraduate degree in sociology and Human Services, and I had planned on going to graduate school to do counseling, like to be a social worker, get a social work degree or counseling degree. Um but because I was the first person in my family to go to school and because I knew how expensive graduate school was going to be, I wanted to make sure that that was something that I wanted to do in real life, not just like theoretically. So I was hired um from my internship from um my undergraduate into a nonprofit. It’s called now the Center for Safety and Change. But at the time it was called Rockland Family Shelter, and it was and it still serves survivors of um sexual violence, domestic violence. And I did that for three years. And I had lots of different jobs in that organization. I did fundraising. I did administration. I was an advocate. I would go um to the police station or the hospital and meet survivors of sexual violence um and I remember distinctly the moment when I realized that that was not going to be my career, I was talking to um my supervisor at the time and I was talking to her about a particularly difficult case. Um. And I was like, I don’t understand how you do this. It was very emotionally taxing on me. Um.And she’s like, Heather, you know, the longer you do this, the more training you get, the less this will, you know, the more you build, like kind of like a barrier around yourself so that it doesn’t hurt you as bad. And I was like… I don’t want to get to a place where this doesn’t hurt me like that, something horrific like this would make me upset. Um. And if that’s if that’s what doing this is about and that’s what the training is about, I don’t want to do it because at the same time, as I felt like I was particularly good at it, I felt like it was bad for me personally to do it.
Madison: Right
Heather: And so it was during that time, I was like, OK, well, I don’t think I want to be a counselor anymore. I don’t want to do counseling. But I really enjoy working in this nonprofit world where I can do all sorts of different things and also feel like I was contributing to society in some way. So um I was given a job announcement for what at that point was called the volunteer coordinator for our program at the time was called VIA Pace, Volunteers in Action at Pace. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. Not only can I um work on all different things, which was something I really liked about working in the nonprofit sector to begin with, I could encourage and support people in finding their own things that they wanted to do. Um. And rather than feel like I had to save the world myself, that I could work and develop relationships with other people. Um. And initially it was my focus was on students because that’s where I was at the time. I was twenty-five or something like that. And I was really interested in doing that with students. But as time went on, it became doing that with everybody. So students, faculty, community members like how could I build partnerships that would be beneficial to everybody? Um. And so I started at Pace in 1999 um and, and I was really, really happy to make that transition. I, I also had um misconceptions of what working for a university would be like.
Madison: Right.
Heather: I really had to like he’s like, oh, like I’m going to work for a place where everybody is really good and everybody is working for the benefit of the students. And, you know, it’s so amazing. And I realized that higher education was like any other sector with people having all sorts of reasons why they were doing that work.
Madison: Right
Heather: But I was able to find enough people at pace who felt similar to me, even if they weren’t working in a job similar to me, that I would be able to get into that support other people and making positive change. Um. And so that legitimately has been one of the reasons why I’ve stayed at pace as long as I have, because I felt like there was a space that if you were passionate and if you were committed and if you could find enough people who felt similarly to you, that you could make really serious kinds of inroads into pace to make those things happen for other people, that’s great.
Madison: That’s great.
Heather: And so I have been with the center since 1999 in varying roles in the center, um and I started out in Pleasantville, but now I cover both campuses. So New York City and and Pleasantville.
Madison: So could you tell me a little bit what it’s like uh working on campus and how you interact with students on a day to day?
Heather: So initially when I first started, I was the primary um student facing position on the Pleasantville campus. So my job was to make inroads with students. Um. In the late 90s, the campuses were very different than they are now, I would say. Um. They were not as inclusive, they were not as representative. Um, I was surprised because the organization that I had worked with prior to coming to pace was very progressive.
Madison: Right
Heather: In their inclusion policies. And so we would. it was, it was something that was discussed on a regular basis about how we could be inclusive, how we could make sure that we had representation, you know, all of the varying portions of our community. So we in Rockland County, we have a large Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community. So how can we make sure that we’re hiring somebody who knows that community and can make inroads to that community? We have a very large Hatian community. How can we make sure we have somebody who speaks Creole and how can we make sure that we’re um going out into that community? We had a um hiring policy in which there was a diversity interview separate from the general interview for um to apply for jobs at that organization. And that was for everybody. That wasn’t just like the high ranking people. And so I was very surprised at how, I don’t want to say conservative, but it’s not conservative, it’s, um it just that was not something that people were talking about at that time.
Madison: Right.
Heather: and again, I thought to myself, you know, how can I make sure that I am being inclusive? That was something that I took from from working at that organization and going to clubs and organization meetings and um going to SGA meetings and making sure we were hiring students who could do that as well. Because what we found in our office over all of this time is peer to peer recruitment is the most effective way to get students engaged. And so I can go into a classroom and talk to 30 students um and maybe one of them will follow up with me um even when I was younger, and I look like a student, but you send a student in there and there’s like five or six students and we’ll talk to that student about, you know, opportunities and they feel more comfortable talking to another student. And so that was like a big thing in our office to make sure that we had student representation and that those students were making inroads on their own campuses. That was also really important that um, we were, we were reflecting what we were seeing on the campuses and that students were involved in deciding what kinds of things we were going to be looking at and what kinds of issues we were going to be exploring. Certainly some of that was you know, administering driven. But very early on in my career, it was decided that we were going to encourage students to be representative of their own campuses. So, you know, how can we make sure that we’re engaging people? The, the challenge with my office is that we are nonpartisan. And so generally, that’s not an issue. You know, um generally you don’t consider one side or another side evil. Right. And so we were, um we had always been able to make connections with the more social justice component of our campuses um and the more conservative Republican part of our campus was not as interested in working with us. And I think that that reflected the fact that, you know, a lot of the students who are working in our office at a particular time had a particular kind of social bent. Um but like, for example, if a student came to us and said, I want to do, I don’t know, a pro-life kind of event, that you know, as long as we were not, precluding people from participating in that, that we would support, that is the same as we would support a pro-choice kind of program or that we if we were discussing something that we made sure that we got someone who didn’t necessarily agree to be giving the counterpoint to that, because we’re not trying to get students to adopt a particular political or social agenda. We’re trying to provide the supports and put those supports in place to help students make those make their their own connections on that. And you know, in 2002, the university decided that they were going to make civic engagement and public value courses a requirement, and that that, again, was not saying that we wanted to make students moral or good. Right. A lot of times when you’re talking about like social justice or civic engagement, you know, people are like that’s not of the world of education to make someone moral or to make them good. You want to have them be educated. You’re not trying um to change who they are. And um my point my thought with that was you have to perspective you have to understand that your perspective is not the only perspective and that um the way you would address something is not the only way there is to address something. And that even though something doesn’t necessarily impact you directly, that it still is impactful on your community, even if you don’t see how, you’ve never experienced it yourself, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. And so it became more important to. Um. And at the time when I started, it was very fundraising, volunteer focused. There were some undergraduate research, some grants that had been and where we were working with the community on providing undergraduate research. But a lot of it had to do with very light community service. And part of my initial interest in working at pace was changing that, because we really had a situation where you had students who were interested in policy and government and they looked at students who did volunteer work is like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. Right. People who wanted to work on policy were like all of this doesn’t matter if we don’t change the policies that create it. Right. And then you had all of the students wanting to do direct service who were like, people need help now. They can’t wait for you to figure out the policy and you know, get all the policy work done. You know, there are people who are suffering now. And I want to work on supporting those people and trying to have people understand that both of those things are important. It is one or the other. It’s both. And in addition to other things, um and that even if you like doing one more than the other, you have to recognize the value of why everybody has to pitch in the way it is they can to make this world a better place. And I think um over the last decade, while that has been bubbling up in youth, I don’t think adults have wanted to move, you know what I mean? And so I I think there is this um pressure that’s been building up among people who are marginalized and people who recognize marginalization, to not wait for older people to move. You know, that it’s it’s time and it has been time for a very long time. Um. And and that’s, I think, reflective of the world that you live in right now, that you grew up after 9/11 with recessions and school shootings. And, you know, that consisted consistent deaths of people of color and trans um folks. And that you keep seeing that and… you won’t accept that’s the way it is as an excuse for um why we shouldn’t do anything about it, and so that pressure has been building and building and building. And it’s inspiring, to be honest, because, you know, I feel like every generation sort of has this moment where they can take um the reigns for leadership for the next generation. Um. And your generation, I feel, is very strong in not waiting and not being accepting. Um. And that’s something that’s changed in my lifetime. You know, there are some things that still need work, like, for example, you know, blaming the victim. Right. That’s still the same, the same as it’s always been where someone suffers a sexual assault and people start asking what they did um wrong to you know, make that happen. And I think the work that I that I did on systemic violence and issues with patriarchy, um it was ingrained in us that those sexism, racism, homophobia, they were all the same, um you know, all their basis was all the same. Um. And that if you were working on one, you should be working on all of them. So, again, I’m very grateful that I started out in a place where intersectionality, although they didn’t call it intersectionality at the time, was something that was encouraged and supported and that we spent time talking about those things and we spent time training about those things. Um. And again, so that you understood that, yes, there were individual people impacted by these systems, but there was a system in place.
Madison: Right.
Heather: that that happened. And I you know, I remember having conversations about how I could not understand that women could be survivors of domestic violence, but men could not. I remember my adviser saying to me, I can’t believe I trained you, that you don’t understand the difference between, you know, violence and systemic violence and and me sort of like I don’t understand the difference. Like, why is it that if a man is a woman, that’s domestic violence, but if a woman hits a man that it’s not in her saying because there is a system in place that encourages violence against women and supports violence against women and rewards violence against women, where that system is not in place for men. Um. And yes, men can and men can be victims of violence by women, but they’re not victims of domestic violence. They’re victims um you know, individually. And even now, it’s when I talk to other people, like they’re like, I don’t get that. I, I don’t really see the difference. And it seems like semantics. And you’re like, OK, it’s not, you know, again, it’s this idea of recognizing that um people are individuals, but they can be impacted by a system. And when a whole bunch of people are being impacted the same way by a system, that’s not, you know, bad luck or or poor behavior, that is that is something that you can actually see if you look at it. Um. And so I started a pace in 1999 and I was really focused on trying to get people to understand that feeling good. That’s, that’s, that’s a positive thing. Like of course you want to feel good, but that is not the purpose of doing this work. But work. You may feel good as an offshoot of the work that you do, but that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to support relationships, to create positive change in our communities. And again, that it wasn’t focused on what we wanted to do for a living. It didn’t matter if we wanted to be a counselor or you wanted to work in business, that you could do those things simultaneously. You didn’t have to make a choice between doing things to make your community a better place and getting the job it is that want to have. Um. And so during my time, it really became how do we transfer like this interest in doing good and feeling good into something larger. Um. And because my office is in Dyson College, um we had the additional kind of mandate to make sure that we were educating for citizenship. It wasn’t just we were doing like events to bring people together and make them feel good, like there was a purpose of that. They learned more about the organization that they were working with or they learned more about the community that that organization serves or how they can get involved after this point, um you know, if they were interested in doing that and um initially we had a lot of issues in Pleasantville with transportation that students didn’t have transportation to get to places where they could do community work. Yes, some students had cars, but a good majority of our students did not. And so how can we overcome that boundary, well we can provide transportation? Right. So trying to problem solve to find out why things were happening and in ways that we could offset that obstacle or work around that obstacle to allow students to do more work. And then what we found was that students were bonding with each other like that was an opportunity not only for them to do something good, but also to meet other people who felt similarly. Um. And so it was also community building, providing a place where students felt like, OK, this is this is my people. Like, I can I can I can see a path here um and giving them every opportunity to be able to pursue that path. Um. And so we’ve grown over time instead of doing just one time service events, we know that we can do like longer immersions, trainings and discussions and policy discussions and and teaching students to write a letter to an elected official or how to look up their elected officials and all of that kind of stuff. And in doing that work, obviously, um racism and social justice was something that was coming up on a regular basis because they’re not separate. They are inclusive of each other. And so um, I think the focus primarily was about, look, having students look at um, look at the world through a discipline and also be able to look at how that discipline can help solve an issue, um and the focus wasn’t primarily on perspective taking or working with different different constituencies, people who hadn’t worked with before. But that became something that was you couldn’t do one without the other. And so um we’ve consistently been working on social justice issues since, I would say early 2000s, mid 2000s. And over the last five years, it has become like you can’t do this work without without talking about it. Um. And so um, it’s something we’ve been involved in the entire time. But we’ve been taking more of a leadership role in the last five years because students have demanded that it um so, sorry,that was a long answer to your first question.
Madison: No it’s great, I love um getting all the information. So to shift into today, how has covid-19 affected your work and your ability to have students involved in their communities?
Heather: It’s it’s. Probably one of the most challenging obstacles I’ve faced in my career, um because there is no doubt that the need in the community right now is more than it ever has been. You have people who are hungry. You have people who can’t pay their rent. You have people who have to make decisions about um feeding themselves, or feeding their children, people who are working in unsafe conditions. You um, the inequity has never been more in your face about how one person, let’s say, for example, like myself, can be working from home during this time. But my sister, um who works as a cashier in Walgreen’s, has been working on the front lines since this whole thing began. She didn’t have a choice about whether or not she stayed home and she didn’t have a choice about whether or not she went in, if she did not feel safe. Um. And so as a first-gen college graduate, a lot of my um immediate circle is people who are in that same boat. And so um there is tremendous need. This is a historic moment. This is a systems breaking event. Um. This is not just about health, this is about education and and health care and mental health care and all of these things are coming up… At the same time, I feel a responsibility to keep people safe. This is the first time in my career where I felt like choices that I make could kill somebody. Um. And that was very, very difficult because we had to shut down in-person um service in March because it wasn’t just about protecting the students, which was very important. Obviously, we can’t protect anybody. Right. Um. But it was also the fact that college students were high risk and I had to protect the community from them and um that I could not vouch for anybody that they were going to do what they were supposed to do. And so um that has been a consistent challenge during these times where I feel comfortable going into a Black Lives Matter rally or I feel comfortable going um to do some sort of community work. But I was not going to require that for anybody else. And I was going to make sure that they understood that they did not have to do that to be able to make impacts on their community. So we spent in our office a good month um researching remote virtual opportunities when in the past we would not be accepting those.
Madison: Right.
Heather: um. And that was because the campus needed it, not only because students were doing community work as part of courses, but because there was such a huge need. And we’re still sort of fighting that battle right now. Where is how can we provide support to our community partners in combating the obstacles and the issues that they are seeing in their community, but at the same time not putting them at risk and not asking for more at a time where they’re totally overtaxed and they don’t have the resources to give more because accepting volunteers takes time and energy on a community partners part. Um. And sometimes they they just they can’t handle that. And to ask for to try and um put that on them during this time is like very difficult. Um. It’s also been difficult, you know, connecting with community partners right now because they are so overtaxed and, and also because everything is changing. Right. And so. Nothing right now is permanent, it’s like everything is static and changing by the minute, and, you know, initially when you compare it to the pandemic and you think about in March, OK, this is going to be what people were like a couple of days. Right. And I remember earlier in the things like, no, not a couple of days. This is going to be a while. But I had no, even with me being like, this is going to be a while. I had no way of knowing what this was going to be like.
Madison: Right.
Heather: And so for a long time, people just living like day to day, like, I’m going to make it until tomorrow. Tomorrow will be better or I’m going to make it till next week and things will be better next week. And then, you know, I’ll move on with my life. And then you’re like, oh, OK. Um, I guess I need to get through this month. And when this month is over, I’ll be able to get on with my life. And then you’re like, OK, it’s been three months, you know, when is it going to change? And then you’re like, it’s six months. And then finally, finally people are like, OK, this is I guess the way it’s going to be for a good long while. Um, But during that change everybody sort of was waiting for it to be over. And I think people are still like, you know, they call it covid fatigue or whatever where or mask fatigue where people are just like I’m over this already, like I want this to be done.
Madison: Right.
Heather: And not having real serious leadership to be like, look, this is going to be, you know, two years. Do you know what I mean? Because no one wanted to say that, um you know, even if we get a vaccine distribution, distribution of that vaccine is going to take time, um you know, even if and that’s if we have enough vaccine. So so right now, I think, at least from my perspective, I’m really interested in and I want to be exploring how we can make it through this time as opposed to waiting for this to be over before it is. We can do something about it. And and also giving people access points. I see students, but really it’s not students. It’s everybody. Um giving people access points for ways that they can make an impact. Now, not like wait until this is over and then make an impact. And so, um the, the place, the evil of social media and the evil of the Internet as a tool, it’s a tool like any other tool that can be used in a positive or negative way. And one of the things that I would definitely say is, you know, I was around during 9/11, when Pace went through 9/11 and we didn’t have the infrastructure, the technology, the technological infrastructure to do what we did this time. When 9/11 happened, we didn’t have communication in downtown for two weeks, like no phones worked. Like um all the mobile phones were blocked, like it was a nightmare. Um. We couldn’t continue having classes, you know, when that happened. But this time with this crisis, even though people are not happy, 100 percent happy with how we pivoted and went online in March and how we’ve been handling it this semester, I have to tell you, as somebody who’s been at Pace a long time, if you would have told me that we were able to do this, I would not have believed you. Like, I would have been like, there’s no way that that could be possible. But it really was possible and we really did do it. And so I understand that nobody is happy, like, you know what I mean? Like, nobody was like, oh, yeah, you know, spring semester went amazing, you know, but we made it through and we made accommodations to make sure that students had the best chance of um pulling that out. And I think we’re still trying to do that now, when you have professors have never even use the Internet teaching online for the first time, you know, like it’s just it’s just crazy. It’s a crazy time, but also that there have been so many silver linings in this time going back to that idea of there being infrastructure in place. Like what we’re seeing is people showing up to stuff virtually in, in, in, in, Um In large amounts, like when we would have an event in person on one of the campuses, like if it was a low turnout event, like you could theoretically have one person show up. Right. And then you’ve done all that work. And it’s one person that one person has an amazing experience, but a lot of time and energy goes into providing the opportunity, whereas now we can do things virtually online. And a low turnout event would be 20 people showing up and those being students from New York, students from Pleasantville, faculty from New York, faculty from Pleasantville. And so what’s happening is, at least what I’m saying is like this breakdown of the silos, New York, Pleasantville, you know, political science and English, you know, all of these people come together to kind of, um talk about all these things that are going on right now and people wanting that and people feeling a sense of community by participating in that, which I think is really hard for older people to understand that you can get that sense of community that you would normally get by hanging out with people in person in a virtual say, if that makes any sense. They don’t understand that that’s possible. Um. And so it’s been really interesting um creating space for that community for.
Madison: Absolutely. And then adding on to that, we had the Black Lives Matter movement. And how did that come into play with trying to navigate covid and this year in general?
Heather: Well. I was on the Pleasantville campus when D.J. Henry was killed. Um. And pace has come a long way since then. Um…It was personal for anybody who was on the campus at the time, we were going through um the merging of the Pleasantville and Briarcliff campuses at the time, which required the town of Mount Pleasant um to approve plans to expand the Pleasantville campus, to build the new dorms to do all of this. And it made it very complicated um, for pace to adequately.. support the Henry family and support, D.J., during that time, when supporting D.J. or supporting that family could impact our marriage negatively. Now, that was not something that people were talking about at the time, but it was something that I felt at the time um and all of those and again, I, I don’t think people understand. That it wasn’t just D.J. being shot and killed by the police, he died in front of one hundred and fifty students, um who were trying to get to him, who were, who were threatened with being tasered or arrested, there were students who are handcuffed trying to get to him. He died bleeding out on the pavement in front of one hundred and fifty people. And um… I will always regret… Our response to that, um I’m not saying that Pace was not responsive to the Henry family or to the fact that it happened, but I am saying that I felt that the time that it was not an adequate response. Um. And what has happened is 10 years later, all of these individuals who have been murdered, all of the people who have been lost, have been piling and piling and piling and piling and piling. And there’s only so much somebody can take before you want to explode, and so one of the things I would say about the Black Lives Matter movement is how in awe I am of them not seeking revenge for all of the terrible things that have happened that, um that they want justice, not revenge. And and that is so… pivotal, pivotal, pivotal, to my awe of Black Lives Matter, and what happened was that the students started doing stuff on their own, they did not, with with gun violence. I mean, there was a lot of stuff around gun violence. There was a lot of stuff about gun violence and why it is a whole bunch of white people die, that that’s big news. But, you know, if if a marginalized person is being murdered, like people are not paying attention to that and and it just kept growing and growing and growing, it became a situation where we’re doing events on a particular regular basis. And after 2016, it just became a regular thing, like we could not not be working with the, with, with social change or making a positive impact in your community without addressing that. And so, um we started programing, started partnering with other offices at the university um to address these issues, because when you have white dudes in khakis with tiki torches saying the Jews will not replace us, like you have to have a response to that. You can’t, you can’t not create a space where students can process that. Um. And so um, Black Lives Matter became um one of the rallying points that our students were working on a regular basis. Um. And so. It wasn’t that we weren’t addressing it, I think often there’s like a situation in the university where you’re like, that’s not my job, right? That’s diversity, equity, and inclusion’s job. They’re the ones who have the training to support those kinds of things. But instead of waiting for diversity, equity, inclusion to do something, we’d ask, are you doing something on this? Can we co-sponsor?
Madison: Right.
Heather: And I think that’s changed a lot about like what we think we’re responsible for. So it’s not diversity, equity, inclusion, responsibility to do all this. It is everyone’s responsibility to be working on it. Um And I think that that’s a change that I’m seeing. I think there’s been a lot of people at pace who believed this was something that needed to be, needed to be addressed for a long time, I would say, at least for a decade. And people who have been working on the inside of pace, whether they were students or faculty or staff, to try and address this issue. Um But Black Lives Matter and, and what has happened in this last these last two or three years has required us to do it. Like, again, I, I can’t tell you enough how much alumni and students holding the university accountable has made us move forward and how important it is for people to understand it isn’t one person’s responsibility to fix it. Like it’s all of our responsibilities to hold people accountable and do what we can to make sure that this is addressed, um because um for a long time, most of the people who are in charge at Pace were white. You know, and so… Hiring somebody to be the head of diversity, equity and inclusion is not going to fix this. Um. One person is not responsible for this. We are all responsible for this. And so I think that in, especially in the last year, the the university itself has made space to make this a priority. Um. And there are a lot of people working on it, um a lot of students, alumni, staff, faculty, working on addressing the complaints that people have about you know, how we do things and making sure that we can’t graduate a student who doesn’t understand that their perspective is not the only perspective. Do you know what I mean, that we, regardless of what grades that student got, if they graduate and think that their perspective is the only perspective, we failed as an educational institution. Um. So I hope that answered your question.
Madison: Yes, definitely. So that kind of touched on um my next question, the Share Our Truths movement that sprung up on this campus within the past few months. How has the Community Center for Action and Research addressed that? And how is it playing into the activism you guys are bringing forward?
Heather: I think, again, it’s, it’s inspire, inspiring people. It is um making us want to work with different people. Um It is. I mean, I’m going to be 100 percent honest like Pace has been facing a lot of financial issues and our department went from having five full time people to two full time people to cover both campuses, so.. I don’t see that to complain. I say that to put this into context, which is this overwhelming kind of um sense of things having to be done and not having the resources to be able to do them.
Madison: Right.
Heather: And so one of the things that’s been very challenging for me is trying to protect my staff from burning out and this is like an issue that anybody who works on social change movements, you know, has to address, right. Which is you have this overwhelming need. The need is not going away. If you gave every minute of every day of your life to seeing it, um you know, seeing it addressed, you wouldn’t have anything left and trying to be able to figure out. Um. How to make sustainable, you know, contributions and so partnering has been really, really important for us. Um. We would not be able to do the work that we’ve been doing if we did not have partnerships with clubs and organizations, with other departments, with faculty who were willing to speak and community partners who are willing to speak and not get paid. You know what I mean? Like and so that is a very challenging um place where you recognize the resources these partnerships are bringing in, but not able to financially recognize them, um that you have all these amazing opportunities to do all of these things. But you can’t be in two places at once. Right. And having to figure out how not to beat yourself up for not being able to capitalize on every single opportunity that’s available right now, I think is, is really a challenge. Um. So and that’s a challenge not just for myself, but for the students and staff that works in our office and our professional staff are teaching people that sometimes it’s OK to say no, sometimes you have to say no to something you really want to do because you just don’t have the resources to do it well. And so that’s been a challenge, um being able to find the time and resources to um address all of these issues. And the only way we’ve been able to do that is through partnership. Um. And and again, that’s something that I think is endemic to this time, is like partnership is you know, it’s like when you ask students, do they like group work? Right and they’re like, and you’re like, OK, but the product that comes out of those relationships and those partnerships, yes, it’s it’s it causes more trouble and you have to have more conversations and you have to work out and compromise with people. But the product is more representative for everybody.
Madison: Right.
Heather: And so I would rather collaborate and take more time working on these programs than do a whole bunch of stuff on our own without having the benefit of other people’s insights on how it is we do things so… Next question.
Madison: So with everything that happened this year, we have seen so much change in such a rapid amount of time, especially the past few weeks with the election, projecting a bit, where do you see the campus and your personal working life going in the rest of the year and into next with covid and Black Lives Matter and in general?
Hather: OK, so I’m going to talk about, I’m going to answer this question first from a personal perspective, not from my professional perspective. Over the last four years. Um. This is the first time in my career. That I felt neglectful being nonpartisan, that I felt like I was not doing my job by not addressing things that this administration was doing and I was I mean, I was, like so old, I was here during the George W. Bush administration that went into war, um ready to invade Iraq with faulty evidence. Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, Trump isn’t the only person who’s done terrible things as the president. Right? But the lack of critical thinking that’s been happening, um the, the, the idea that saying something over and over and over again makes it true, um you know, has been personally very challenging for me. Um. That being said. It also has galvanized people, it has resulted in more people turning out to vote than ever have turned out to vote, um and it resulted in um the people by over five million votes voting for the Biden-Harris ticket, which made me happy, at the same time. I truly believe um we have to stop thinking that somebody is going to fix it for us, this idea that now that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been elected, that everything is going to change and everything’s going to be amazing. That is not the case. Um. And if people are going in with that expectation, we are not going to do well in the country. Um. It is. You know, JFK had the ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, like that’s where we are right now. Um. And so the the purpose that I have right now is how do we leverage all of this energy that’s been going into making change and not let it die after this election.
Madison: Right.
Heather: Which is what happens every time we have a presidential election and people get involved. And then they’re just like, oh, I did my thing, you know, I’ll see you in four years. Um. And us trying to make sure that people understand that that’s not the case. Like you should be doing activism every day should be something that you make a part of your life. Again, you may not be the person who’s going to be on the front lines with a placard, you know, yelling for change. But you writing a paper or an article for your paper about something that you care about or you volunteering at a local animal shelter because that’s something that you care about, or you find out who the local officials are or showing up to a community meeting to see what’s going on in your local community are all things that people can do. And one of the things that’s really kind of fascinating to me is that there is not really a playbook by how to do that, though. Um. Right now I’m focused on how can we create that playbook. And that’s what I’ll be working on for the next year, at least, um you know again, giving people the tools that they need to be able to do what we’re asking them to do. And then also like there being an expectation that people are doing things, um that people have to do things. And it’s not just the president or the elected officials that have to do something we have to do. Um Sorry, my dog is sorry, um sorry dog tax, that’s Luna.
Madison: Aw, so sweet.
Heather: Luna go lay down. OK, what’s your next question Maddy?
Madison: Next would just be as a nation, as a whole, what do you hope to see moving forward? You kind of touched on this. You know, keep working, keeping our activism going. But where would you like to see us this time next year?
Heather: I would like to see a response to covid-19.
Madison: Mh-mm
Heather: There are people dying… And it is horrifying to me that it has become so normalized. Um just to put it into perspective there were less than twenty two hundred people who died in the World Trade Center, every year, every year, celebrate, memorial, naming every single one of those people every year, there are two hundred and forty three thousand people dead and hearing people being like, well, that person was old or that person, you know, all the reasons why that’s OK um, is horrifying to me. Horrifying in a way I cannot express, um you know… That if it doesn’t, if they don’t know anybody who’s died from covid, that it doesn’t exist, that is not real um and that is you’re seeing that play out all over the country right now. The the issues that we had in New York in July are playing out all over the country, and it did not have to be this way. Um. And so that’s what I’m focused on right now, um that the massive public health issue that we have and the inequality um and injustices that that is pointing out into our system, until we get covid-19 addressed, nothing else can be addressed.
Madison: Right.
Heather: Not black lives matter, not health care, not anything until we address that. So I want to still be able to support all of those people who are interested in doing other things other than that. But a lot of my work is going to be focusing on trying to get people to at least agree that this is a bad thing and it exists, you know, um again, because we’ve been so sort of caught up in the election and what’s been going on with the election, people have not been paying attention to what is happening all over this country. And, you know, again, people are dying like every single day. And so that needs to be addressed. Um. And I’m going to hold anybody who is in office accountable for that.
Madison: Absolutely.
Heather: So, yes, anything else Maddy?
Madison: Now just a final question. Is there anything that we didn’t go over that you want to share, that you want to add to this?
Heather: We are in a historic moment, very rarely, do you get to know that you’re living through history.
Madison: Right.
Heather: Um. And we have a responsibility. It’s not just, again, what we get from being a member of a community. How important trust is, how important community is, how important. Building relationships is when it is so hard to do that right now and us trying to figure out ways that we can do it, um whether it’s through mutual aid societies or whether I mean, it’s just it’s. Um. We have to empower people to be able to make differences in their community, unless we do that, um we’re going to be dealing with this for a long time. So um, the importance not just of education, but the importance of having people you care about um and caring about people you don’t know, I think it’s something I’m going to be really focusing on because there is something to be said about the lack of empathy people have these days. Um. And again, I’m not talking about being a good person. I’m talking about being a responsible person, a person who understands that sometimes you have to, that by making decisions and supporting the most vulnerable, we are stronger as a society. So it’s not just altruistic. I’m not just doing it because, you know, it’s the right thing to do. I’m doing it because in the end, it’s beneficial to everybody um to have people not slipping through the cracks. Um. And, and legitimately, you have people losing their jobs, people losing their houses, people losing their apartments, people dying, you know. Um. And just the inequity of it all, like I guess one of the things I would say is I’m going to end with this story. So a friend of mine um worked in a senior care center, um before the pandemic started, and she told me the story about what happened to her, which was in early January, they started seeing patients in their eldercare center who had this cough and this um fever and they couldn’t explain it. Um. And the senior care center was um encouraging um them to accept these patients. Um. And she remembered specifically being like, this is weird, like what’s going on, um and they accepted those patients and then people started getting sick. Her boss got sick first. I mean, the people in the nursing care facility started getting sick first, her boss got sick, her boss got covid-19 and she was the assistant at the time. And they’re like, you’re going to take over her position. And she asked well am I getting more money. And they’re like, no, you’re the assistant, she’s gone, and you’re going to be in her place. She gets covid-19. A large percentage of the patients in that elder care facility died from covid-19. Um. She went out on um sick leave. Um. She got downsized. Um. She lost her job. Um.She didn’t get disability because um they didn’t um necessarily weren’t getting disability for covid-19, she went six months without a salary. Um. She gave Covid her partner. It took, she’s still recovering from covid, seven months later. She’s like one of those long fallers. Um. There’s nothing she can do for having her employer put her at risk for catching covid or giving her covid. There’s nothing those families can do for having their um loved ones um be exposed to covid and die from covid. Um And this is happening everywhere. Um And this is… Going to have repercussions for a long, long time when we look back at how we handled this, and again, not elected officials, how we as people handle this.
Madison: Right.
Heather: I always I think about the Holocaust. Right. And, you know, when you grow up, they teach you about the Holocaust and you think about the soldiers who did terrible things, worked the camps and, you know, the the the people who are in charge who made all these plans. You don’t think about the people who lived in the communities who were you know, were going on with their lives while this was happening and doing nothing. And I think about that a lot right now that we have. It’s not just the people in charge. You know. Everybody is responsible, so. Um. And and again, that we’re responsible for helping and supporting those people. Um. And that’s beneficial for everybody. I mean, it’s pathetic, it’s pathetic that this is how a first world country responds this. It’s pathetic that the US wrote the playbook on how to respond to covid, other countries implemented and did well and that we did not. Um. We are all responsible for this. And that’s what I mean. It’s like you don’t say that Donald Trump is responsible for all of these deaths. We’re all responsible for these deaths. Um. And the other thing I would say is if we do not understand our history, we’re doomed to repeat it and especially with um marginalized communities’ contributions to our our country. Um. Like, there needs to be like if you ask me what I would want to do if I was in charge, South Africa, had a Truth and Reconciliation Committee Commission, right, where they had they had to recognize that apartheid was happening in their country and they had to move forward. The United States has not recognized as a whole that racism exists and our country was built on it, until there is a recognition that that is not someone’s opinion. Right. That that is part of who we are. Um. We can’t address it. We can’t. And I’m telling you, this is not over. I was driving around my county um yesterday and there was a truck with a huge Trump flag you know, on it. This is not going away. We’re going to have to deal with that. 70 million people voted for Trump. Um. That’s a lot of frickin people. Um. And unless we address that, um we can’t deal with these other things. Um So that’s pretty much that’s it, I talked a lot, sorry Maddy.
Madison: That’s OK. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your stories.
Heather: Well, you know, I’m I’m very much looking forward to seeing how your project turns out.
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