00:00:01.750 - 00:00:09.110

Delightful. All right, Alexis, take it away. All right. Well, hi, it's great to meet you. We were very excited for this. Just want

00:00:09.110 - 00:00:20.050

to start with what's your name and pronouns? Oh, Trey Fromey, pronouns he, him, his. Great. Thank you so much.

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One of our first questions is why did you choose to get involved with this particular project? Was there maybe something you wanted to share?

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it just sounded interesting uh it reminded me how long it's been since i was at the university of delaware and reminded me of the it was i found it gratifying that

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someone was interested in what we did way back when i guess that was way back when um and um how it affected the university of delaware and i also wanted to learn

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a little more about what was going on now oh that's really cool so we know that during your years at ud you studied plant science and ornamental horticulture and you're part

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of the honors program could you say a little bit more about what you studied both within and outside of your major and how what you learned shaped your approach to activism

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sure i was technically a dean scholar so my i don't i don't know if they still do that but my um my professor and i pretty much if he approved it i got to study it so i did a

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lot of cultural geography um art architecture history those kind of classes but it wasn't other than the cultural geography most of what came out of the influenced the activism

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what i was reading on the side for fun um i had a older friend who was a graduate student he was very we were very into post -structuralism deconstruction and all post-modernism

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back when and it was so we were reading a lot of cultural and literary uh critical theory and uh a guy who's dating at the time was obsessed with it too so we just were

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like oh well let's see if we can do something with this um honestly we were also a little bored because unless newark delaware has gotten more exciting we didn't really have a

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whole lot to do um so it was something we could do in our in our spare time and most of it became a lot of it became social does that answer your question definitely yeah Davey

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talked a little bit about how reading theory was like a cool thing to do at the time and we just like didn't really understand so I think that makes more sense about like

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kind of on the side reading it and talking about it socially oh yeah it was at least in my group my uh guys dating and a few friends it was like big i mean there was feminist

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theory of course and there was some crazy stuff going on there and uh you know there was a lot of deconstructive theory happening throughout there was a lot of cultural theory

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and beginning to get post-colonial and all that other stuff so it was it was really quite fascinating to try to figure out how it could do something in the real world rather

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than just be academic and we also learned early on that the school had a little problem responding to us when we were actually using academics against them we were you know we

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were quoting Foucault and Derrida and Leotard and Pogyard and all those people and they were like oh so we weren't just like these bratty little activists we actually had a

00:03:36.610 - 00:03:51.190

whole we had a program behind what we were trying to do intellectually which seemed really cool at the time in the 90s and we're obsessed with madonna and she was doing a lot of

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really interesting things at that time period in terms of gender and sexuality and all you know just getting in people's face and being activists it was also you know we were

00:04:04.010 - 00:04:15.750

coming off of act up the creation of queer nation so there was a lot of that going on and we wanted to kind of be part of that but we were in Newark Delaware so it wasn't

00:04:15.750 - 00:04:26.150

like you know we could we weren't in DC we weren't in New York so we were trying to adapt it for Delaware for the University of Delaware and give it a theoretical underpinning.

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We kind of ask similar questions that we had planned later on about um renee if you wanted to go ahead and skip to that or we can jump around a little bit something

00:04:38.670 - 00:04:50.790

about like activism connecting newark to what was going on yes um okay well to answer your question earlier about if newark got any interesting no it hasn't not really not

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not much has changed but um i was interested that uh how did like um you like how did your campus activism connect with political action happening, whether that was

00:05:02.550 - 00:05:15.630

locally in Newark or on the East Coast or just like in the news or in like on the government level? Was there anything that really like inspired you or pushed you or

00:05:15.630 - 00:05:27.290

motivate you about for your activism on UD? Well, definitely ACT UP. We really loved how ACT UP combined aesthetics with social protest and generally

00:05:27.290 - 00:05:37.450

intellectual theory behind it and then the in your faceness of that and then Queer Nation of course was getting even louder and more in people's

00:05:37.450 - 00:05:47.670

face but I think part of what appealed to us was the whole aesthetic project, the agitation propaganda, the posters the social theater that we would be doing

00:05:47.670 - 00:05:59.890

I loved writing memos I could write a memo about anything in fact we did memo because i was back when before email you actually had to do all even know distribution

00:05:59.890 - 00:06:11.590

lists and memos in like like you know internal mail yes we wrote a lot of papers that we had to then highlight people's names and send them through the campus mail to get to

00:06:11.590 - 00:06:26.190

get any attention um but nationally we didn't really connect with anything heavily there was one time the student the national student newspaper that did an insert in all

00:06:26.190 - 00:06:38.030

the colleges newspaper local newspapers did a piece on us or a queer nation um so that got i mean my sister called me from texas a &m and like hey all my friends are talking

00:06:38.030 - 00:06:50.490

about you um so but i think that was the most we ever really got outside of delaware because we we were many of us were resident assistants we were studying so we had we had

00:06:50.490 - 00:07:02.750

some time but not a lot of time um and we never really connected um there was a time we did call the aclu to try to sue the university that didn't go anywhere but it started

00:07:02.750 - 00:07:14.330

looking like it was going somewhere then summer happened and i wasn't there to follow up okay and you did touch like like very briefly on like the aesthetics of it and making

00:07:14.330 - 00:07:28.710

posters so very quick question on do you remember creating any like explicit posters oh god yeah oh the more explicit we get the better um really i have generally in our

00:07:28.710 - 00:07:43.690

period of heterosexual society shoves all these images down our throats and dining halls in the commons everywhere we go so tough on other people's throats um so yes we we

00:07:43.690 - 00:07:55.570

tried to get as as in your face and explicit as we could in fact at one point we created a splinter group called clip which was creating lasting independence today and then

00:07:55.570 - 00:08:08.030

we created one called oh shit you fuck university faggots united in creating chaos that was a one-off to to celebrate when um oh what's his face the president we hated bush

00:08:08.030 - 00:08:18.470

when bush lost the election we did a whole poster campaign briefly um but yeah we really knew the aesthetics the cleverness of it we were all trying to be fairly witty i

00:08:18.470 - 00:08:29.690

was reading a lot of oscar wilde we were you know we were watching absolutely fabulous it was just you know it was aesthetic bitchiness i'm very glad to hear that so if i

00:08:29.690 - 00:08:47.170

show you this poster you might remember it right i might if we did it okay is this oh can you see that oh um no i don't think we did that one really no we did some that we

00:08:47.170 - 00:09:02.090

borrowed from so we did some very explicit greek uh vase paintings of homosexual activity at one point that was with lgbsu before i got too radical for that group um And

00:09:02.090 - 00:09:12.410

then we did a bunch, we did some really, I have them somewhere, we did some pretty crazy posters. That wasn't one of them, though. And then occasionally people would poster

00:09:12.410 - 00:09:23.690

back at us. That was for social media. So there was sometimes wars on the bulletin boards going on, which was entertaining. Oh, okay. Thank you.

00:09:23.910 - 00:09:39.090

Oh, you're welcome. We, yeah, it was fun. um there is a question that we did have that um we wanted to see like the difference in like the student units you were a part of

00:09:39.090 - 00:09:53.030

uh since you did mention very kind of briefly that you got too radical almost for lgbsu um and i think uh i think asia has that question yeah so as someone who was involved in

00:09:53.030 - 00:10:03.010

queer campus lgbsu and student alliance for change what were the main differences between the groups did they have different goals and approaches to activism yes lgbsu at the

00:10:03.010 - 00:10:18.090

time wanted i think wanted to be more of a social organization and work with very calmly on things um at the time queer campus we formed just be really do whatever the hell

00:10:18.090 - 00:10:29.290

we wanted without having to worry about it and we had a group of people who were mostly straight identified actually um who were willing and they were you know smart people and

00:10:29.290 - 00:10:37.550

they were willing to like do this with us in fact we got straight well they were straight at the time who knows um we had kissings but we didn't have enough gay guys so the

00:10:37.550 - 00:10:48.970

straight guys agreed to kiss each other which was kind of nice um and supportive but yes we um we we did that group to be more radical and kind of do whatever we wanted to do

00:10:48.970 - 00:11:02.130

and push really push the limits and then student alliance for change was we were really annoyed with the student government because they were so stodgy and stayed so some of

00:11:02.130 - 00:11:13.250

us formed the student alliance for change and we were kind of trying to maybe overthrow the student government in our own way um but it that was our way of trying to bring i

00:11:13.250 - 00:11:23.390

think it was like we brought together the ecological group whose name I can't remember, members of the BSU. I think the BSU came to that. They didn't want much to do with queer

00:11:23.390 - 00:11:31.750

campus, but I think Student Alliance for Change was one of those groups that you kind of had to go to because it was safe and it would have been weird not to have joined. That

00:11:31.750 - 00:11:44.080

didn't last too long because I think the student government started doing some stuff. So that was the big difference. That was more of a coalition group and it wasn't radical

00:11:44.080 - 00:11:55.750

um I think what we with the people on it I think the university was afraid it was going to become radicalized so we got the attention we needed so we were kind of leveraging

00:11:55.750 - 00:12:09.470

some of the groups against each other okay um okay that's really interesting because I know like a few weeks ago we had like uh we had someone from our archives um that

00:12:09.470 - 00:12:18.370

would handle like archives come to our class and show us like the type of stuff that was being posted on the bulletin boards like either like event flyers or posters which is

00:12:18.370 - 00:12:31.150

where I got the other poster from um and you could see like the stark difference between like queer campus and lgbsu because lgbsu's posters seem to be very much like trying

00:12:31.150 - 00:12:41.930

to gain community almost like there was a lot of events that were going on that tried to invite people while queer campus was as you can see um had like the very explicit

00:12:41.930 - 00:12:51.770

very much like well we're here you can't really do anything about that type of approach which I honestly appreciate I think was very it was very funny going through the posters

00:12:51.770 - 00:13:03.650

because some of the language um that was used back then you don't really see it much nowadays or you do see it but it's um it's perceived differently so that was also very

00:13:03.650 - 00:13:15.090

interesting to see throughout the posters and you did mention like the leveraging um from different like almost like purposely making like the student using go against each

00:13:15.090 - 00:13:26.070

other um outside of that or even within the groups um was how did you guys like handle like almost like harassment from like hate groups or like if anything were to happen

00:13:26.070 - 00:13:35.370

especially since you said like the student government almost trying to fight against you guys different through student alliance we um there were several things we did fortunately

00:13:35.370 - 00:13:50.830

the editor of the paper was very supportive um about us so that was helpful um i fortunately was so visible i rarely got direct harassment every now and then i would but

00:13:50.830 - 00:14:04.810

it was usually people other people and we would we would respond accordingly uh we would harang the university to do something we would um think we'd talk about how to handle

00:14:04.810 - 00:14:14.270

it in the groups we would in some cases you know bite back in fact i did an editorial at one point when we started queer nation called it's time for queers to bash back it was

00:14:14.270 - 00:14:25.750

i wrote it at a dance club one night in my head but anyway that was another memo festo um and so that's how we dealt with it but sometimes like one thing we did we were very

00:14:25.750 - 00:14:36.100

annoyed with homophobic graffiti that was all over the restrooms on campus so we brought it up to the university and they said well we don't know where it all is so we formed

00:14:36.100 - 00:14:49.650

we did a scavenger hunt and documented every bathroom on campus and well the grad student friend of mine he knew how to use analysis software and crap so we gave them this

00:14:49.650 - 00:15:02.470

report it said you asked for it here it is clean it up so we tried to get clever about our responses particularly if they didn't think we do something we that was good now

00:15:02.470 - 00:15:15.610

there was one time we were going to do some big thing for ROTC it was a national get ROTC off campus thing but I was kind of I had allies who admired of what I was doing,

00:15:15.610 - 00:15:24.770

I guess, and weren't afraid of me. So we ended up not doing anything at the ROTC because it fell apart. And then we got more credit because they were like, oh, they were so

00:15:25.030 - 00:15:31.290

restrained. That was really a better way to approach it. So we were like, well, that was a win. But we wanted to do something more in their face.

00:15:32.350 - 00:15:46.990

So yes, harassment, we tried to push the system to respond because we did have death threats oddly enough to a heterosexual female friend of mine who was like the people were

00:15:46.990 - 00:15:59.050

like you're they were anti-lesbian um verbal harassment we're like she's not a lesbian and you shouldn't every man on campus probably knows this because she's seen every man on

00:15:59.050 - 00:16:09.090

campus but anyway um she was great um but yes so we did try to push back whenever that was happening and we we would regularly go to the administration or every now and then

00:16:09.090 - 00:16:22.410

with lists of demands we loved lists of demands they were fun to make then we did we did a um we did a campus protest walk i think at one and then we got harassed by the construction

00:16:22.410 - 00:16:35.290

workers on a building so then we had to protest that there was just a lot to deal with it was again it was fun um i i going off of what you said with the construction

00:16:35.290 - 00:16:47.570

workers um we had a protest recently done by the key of david on campus that was very it was very against everyone they had a lot of like anti-queer sentiment in their protest and

00:16:47.570 - 00:16:56.870

i wanted to know if during your time on campus if you had any of these like sort of like protest or like anti -queer moments from like external bodies like outside of campus

00:16:56.870 - 00:17:11.810

maybe other than just the general individual homophobia most of what we dealt with was heterosexism i guess we would now label it rather than direct homophobia um though we certainly

00:17:11.980 - 00:17:24.970

got that i mean i had at one point i kept a cassette of all the anti-gay uh voicemails i received while i was at the university um and they actually we would laugh about

00:17:24.970 - 00:17:36.210

them they were a little kind of creepy but um so yeah there was some of that it was more just a general feeling i think we were just really getting annoyed we

00:17:36.210 - 00:17:44.470

were doing with the lgbsu they were very you're right renee they were very social oriented and they were also educationally oriented so there were these

00:17:44.790 - 00:17:55.330

programs we did in the dorms where people would show up and ask us questions about what's it like to be gay and i think after a year or two of that we a bunch of us were just

00:17:55.330 - 00:18:09.110

annoyed that it was not really our responsibility to teach heterosexuals anything about anything and they needed to figure it out themselves that's interesting i feel like so

00:18:09.110 - 00:18:21.290

you guys had like no like i guess like again like external like anti -queer like protests that would happen on campus at all it was mostly within the student body yeah it was more

00:18:21.290 - 00:18:31.150

just i think general homophobia heterosexism anti-queer sentiment we were getting and then of course the they of the women in our groups would get sexism that was not going

00:18:31.150 - 00:18:46.070

away anytime soon either um yet not really we never had a group i think protests the bsu kind of left us alone sometimes the fraternities would a fraternity every now will get a

00:18:46.070 - 00:19:00.470

little sassy but nothing really bad um no i don't remember there being you know except for that um it was more of omission rather than a sin of commission it wasn't as active

00:19:00.470 - 00:19:13.790

as i think it may have been in other places okay because i know like for the last few years that the few of us have been here uh there has been like this church that goes around

00:19:13.790 - 00:19:24.850

like different like Delaware campuses and will protest like whether that be like anti -women or anti-queer or like literally anything honestly and they would take the time to

00:19:24.850 - 00:19:34.830

like protest like in areas where like the police can't really do anything to them because it's free speech and for a lot they do it like every single year like Alexis just said

00:19:34.830 - 00:19:46.090

we had one um last week and every year it's like the same issue like they'll come on campus they'll protest they'll harass people they might get break into fights the cops will

00:19:46.090 - 00:19:58.150

come and be like oh you can't be here and then they'll go to a different part that's basically this in the same area but one that's owned by Newark so the campus police can't

00:19:58.150 - 00:20:08.930

be like well it's free speech now so we can't do anything about it so I don't think the homophobes really that organized honestly i mean we were just getting radically organized

00:20:08.930 - 00:20:19.950

on campus um and then i'm not sure how you know we used to joke that like we weren't really sure how creative they would be and how they would design posters um like the kkk

00:20:19.950 - 00:20:32.510

did a march once and we all went out and protested it but down i mean god it was downtown newark and it was so sad because why and then because they misspelled their posters

00:20:32.510 - 00:20:42.890

which was just embarrassing um and things like that that was the only and i think that only happened once because everyone was kind of like you're really annoying oh and they

00:20:42.890 - 00:20:55.370

were from what's that place in maryland oh maryland had the like one of the most active kkk groups in the country at the time Elkton, Elkton, Maryland, right across the border.

00:20:56.210 - 00:21:05.530

That's where I live. No way. Okay, Elkton was, yeah, they were the, that was the bastion of the really unfortunate KKK people.

00:21:05.530 - 00:21:19.410

They didn't seem even really bad organized. I think that was part of the surprise of what we were doing is we were very organized. speaking of organization um it seems like

00:21:19.410 - 00:21:31.330

just from what we've talked about in the past couple minutes like your organization and the activism on campus seems pretty different um what do you think that student

00:21:31.330 - 00:21:42.130

activists should be doing now to be more like like as impactful as you guys were You know, I'm not even really sure because I don't know

00:21:42.130 - 00:21:52.770

what's going on on the campuses. And back when there was a little more of a rate, there was a little more of a differentiator between us and

00:21:52.770 - 00:22:05.150

them. So the activism was a little more obvious and easy to latch onto, whereas there's so much, as I gather it, fluidity and this and that, and

00:22:05.150 - 00:22:15.830

things would become very overlapping. And it's like, back then it was like, you were L or G, and then we added the Bs, and wow, we thought we were like, you know,

00:22:15.830 - 00:22:27.390

really cool. um and what i think my first year we added the bees and then queer nation was just like anybody we're just not going to differentiate but before that but we had

00:22:27.390 - 00:22:40.390

it was very you know it was still i don't think the heterosexual or normative culture really understood or had gay we were still working on gay visibility this was before

00:22:40.390 - 00:22:50.550

will embrace this was before there were gay characters on tv this was before there were like gay characters in movies um so this was you know we were just trying to get

00:22:50.550 - 00:23:02.430

visibility in the message out there um there seemed to be from what i understand a lot of messages going on in campuses and in social society today we didn't have as many

00:23:02.430 - 00:23:15.370

we had the bsu dealing with racism we had take back the night and the woman you know women's group, and then we had our group. And those were the big, I think those

00:23:15.370 - 00:23:24.160

were the big groups. There may have been an Asian student union, but I don't know if they were very active. I think there was less, smaller

00:23:25.390 - 00:23:33.870

communities doing things. So it was easier to actually get attention because no one else was really talking about the stuff we were talking about.

00:23:35.330 - 00:23:44.490

And I also learned if you wear a skirt at the University of Delaware, you get a lot of attention. Alexis, do you want to talk about your

00:23:44.490 - 00:23:53.350

experience with the Lavender Programming Board? I know it's kind of on the spot. I would love to. As Asia said, I'm currently the

00:23:53.350 - 00:24:05.430

Director of Communications for the Lavender Programming Board, which is, I believe, the current version of LGBSU. I want to say we've kind of kept with the

00:24:05.430 - 00:24:16.610

theme of doing more um like educational like discussions like we bring in more a lot of topics uh between like a lot of different like groups like we recently had a conversation

00:24:16.610 - 00:24:29.070

on clearing death and its relation to the AIDS epidemic but I want to say uh organizations on campus have gotten like a lot more involved like we now have the CIE which

00:24:29.070 - 00:24:40.270

is the Center for Intercultural Engagement which has a bunch of like identity-based student groups like we have APSA which is the Asian and Pacific Islander Student Association

00:24:40.270 - 00:24:51.900

we have a version of BSU I still on I believe still on campus we have OLA for our Hispanic students we have uh I think we have a specific group for like queer grad

00:24:51.900 - 00:25:02.610

students we have like a lot up there and a lot of different resources um like a lot of effort has been done since then but I feel like we should go back to our roots of like

00:25:02.610 - 00:25:13.010

queer campus and like doing more with protests like I feel like that would be really interesting and we don't see a lot of that today oh that's interesting um and I don't think

00:25:13.010 - 00:25:26.790

we saw a lot of it till we until we were really pushing it in 80 when was I there 89 through 93 um and it was kind of the same group of us that were you know trying to do

00:25:26.790 - 00:25:38.710

that and the other group that was really crazy at the time was the uh the environmental group um and i can't remember their acronym or their firm name but they were pretty

00:25:38.710 - 00:25:51.170

active as well in fact one year their president ran for student body president and i ran for vice president we had a whole ticket um which was again more about visibility

00:25:51.170 - 00:26:06.830

than actually trying to win anything i mean i rushed a fraternity just to make a point um to you know first of all i had the highest gpi on the sign-in sheet and then you know

00:26:06.830 - 00:26:16.190

it was just being it was a safe fraternity i knew some of the guys and they were nice but yeah the point was to like do that kind of show up places didn't people didn't expect

00:26:16.190 - 00:26:28.530

us to show up like we did at home coming we did a cheer thing i don't know there was a cheer competition or some sort of stage we did a cheer queer nation for campus did we

00:26:28.530 - 00:26:39.730

threw condoms to the crowd crazy shit like that with the lgbsu we we came up with the condom awareness week coalition one year which spelled cock but the university didn't quite

00:26:39.730 - 00:26:49.630

get it so we were like well that's pretty cool acronym um anyway so we tried to and in that case we turned we took a big blue condom graphic it because i liked graphic

00:26:49.630 - 00:27:00.210

design we took a big blue condom graphic and turned it into the blue hen with this reservoir tip as his uh rooster thing and you know we wanted the slogan to be put a

00:27:00.210 - 00:27:12.690

sock on that cock but the university nixed that so i can't remember what we went with but yeah they didn't catch the condom in the rooster which was entertaining but yes we

00:27:12.690 - 00:27:21.710

we had some allies in the administration, which was useful. President Roselle, I wouldn't say was super supportive, but we annoyed the hell

00:27:21.710 - 00:27:32.610

out of him. So he kind of had to respond. Interestingly enough, after school, I worked at Longwood Gardens and went to an event at Winterthur, and he was there and he looked

00:27:32.610 - 00:27:48.530

at me and said, you're not wearing a dress. I said, oh, no, I'm not. And it was a skirt but anyway um yeah roselle was forced to be i think supportive at a time um i i don't

00:27:48.530 - 00:27:59.010

know what the president or the university administration is like it wasn't the most open but we had a good student dean of students at the time who was very open and supportive

00:27:59.010 - 00:28:13.970

and understood what we were trying to do um can't remember his name it's been forever but madonna was i should go back madonna was a big part of this for us um you know

00:28:13.970 - 00:28:23.510

vogue then express yourself we're like oh she's deconstructing everything she's post-modern you know ever there were academic conferences about madonna i mean now of course

00:28:23.510 - 00:28:36.460

i've accepted taylor swift as my savior but back then it was madonna um so we even did an award ceremony i think lgbsu we called it the madonna's and we got little um plastic

00:28:36.460 - 00:28:48.170

statues of madonna and spray painted them gold and gave them out to people we tried to do weird things the paper liked that the newspaper because nothing a whole lot wasn't

00:28:48.170 - 00:28:57.210

going on that was really interesting to cover um so it would even give edit like when we did something in queer campus it would give the editorial something to get

00:28:57.210 - 00:29:12.110

negative about and then we could respond and at least it was forcing a dialogue of sorts. I know we oh you go Asia you're good. Oh please go ahead it's okay.

00:29:12.390 - 00:29:23.890

I was gonna say I know queer events on campus have gotten like a lot bigger in recent years like we are currently working on a lavender programming board does an annual like

00:29:23.890 - 00:29:35.350

big like large-scale drag show every semester and we're also currently working on one with the crew which is another student organization for this weekend um very like

00:29:35.350 - 00:29:52.710

mainstream queer but also like really putting it out there being like here oh that's good yeah we drag wasn't really a drag wasn't back then what it is today it wasn't like

00:29:52.710 - 00:30:02.110

we almost have a do -it-yourself culture of drag queens now throughout the country back then i don't even think there were there were probably a few drag queens in newark or

00:30:02.110 - 00:30:11.890

at they probably went to what was the bar we used to the renaissance in wilmington delaware was where we we would lgbsu would do dance nights and stuff but we didn't really

00:30:11.890 - 00:30:27.090

do a lot of dances and stuff on campus we always go up to upenn upenn did the lgbsu student dances and stuff back when um and then we would go to Wilmington either it wasn't

00:30:27.090 - 00:30:39.630

like that or Philly it wasn't like New York's not a hot spot no I think the current bar that's big with drag queens is Crimson Moon in Wilmington okay definitely in the

00:30:39.630 - 00:30:51.830

area okay no and then there was a when I was living in Wilmington there was Excalibur they they came and they went so But the ones in Philly seem to stay pretty consistent.

00:30:54.240 - 00:31:01.570

But, you know, they were their own community, so it wasn't like they were going to support us down in, you know, Delaware with money or anything.

00:31:03.250 - 00:31:15.850

I'm not even sure. Oh, part of the LGVSU worked because we had several female members worked at Kinko's. So we got a lot of posters free on neon brights, which were extra

00:31:15.850 - 00:31:33.670

charged back in the day. The female members used to joke that they were sublimating their reproductive urges into making copies. So you talked about, just to change

00:31:33.670 - 00:31:46.570

the subject a little bit, sorry. Right. You talked about the 80s and Madonna. And I wanted to ask about the impact of the HIV AIDS crisis on campus in both activism

00:31:46.570 - 00:31:59.270

and just like what you saw on campus. you know that's an interesting question we we didn't really directly other than condom awareness we you know the get condoms out

00:31:59.270 - 00:32:13.730

there dental dams the what was going on back then we weren't really doing a whole lot with hiv um on campus to my in to what i can remember i mean i think it was all something

00:32:13.730 - 00:32:27.350

we were like a little scared of every day but um i don't remember us really organizing around it and maybe that's because knowing our age was hiv positive or or was not

00:32:27.350 - 00:32:39.470

that community that we knew of maybe i mean we were in our 20s i'm sure there were probably older lgbq people in newark who were you know living with hiv but you know we

00:32:39.470 - 00:32:51.410

didn't necessarily know them i mean we were I mean we looking back we were pretty naive I can't believe we got I can't believe we did some of the things we did and thought we

00:32:51.410 - 00:33:04.210

were going to get away with but um that that was part of the fun I guess okay um I know you briefly like you talked a little bit about your time up here in Newark and in

00:33:04.210 - 00:33:17.070

Wilmington and how um the activism looked at both in like the bars and on campus um and since we know that you have moved down to florida since uh was there any activism that

00:33:17.070 - 00:33:27.310

you took from your time in delaware that you brought to florida whether that was like immediately like as soon as you came down here or like throughout your life since um

00:33:27.310 - 00:33:37.890

you've been there that's an interesting question after the university of delaware i went to the university of georgia um and briefly was involved with their lgb uh i

00:33:37.890 - 00:33:50.770

think it was just lgb group back then but then i got caught up in grad school and reading and thinking and working on my thesis so was was less involved but so i started

00:33:50.770 - 00:33:59.790

doing things like you know i wore a skirt and nobody at the university no man at the university of georgia wore skirt um not to the school of forestry at any rate

00:33:59.790 - 00:34:13.390

um so things like that but it was more just living my life And then once I started doing my jobs, I just stayed buried out. You know, even back when, when

00:34:13.390 - 00:34:21.830

I was working at Longwood in the, when was it, 90, late 90s, taking my boyfriend with me to one of the employee dances was still

00:34:21.830 - 00:34:34.830

like edgy for people at the time. Fortunately, the director was very supportive of really all non -majority people, fortunately.

00:34:36.150 - 00:34:49.150

So that but that was really what I've done since, because being, you know, being out in landscape architecture is not always expected or hasn't been.

00:34:49.150 - 00:34:58.010

And then public horticulture, which I'm in other LGBTQ people everywhere. So that's a whole different situation. It's pretty much run by really strong, sassy,

00:34:58.010 - 00:35:09.490

intelligent women and LGBTQ people. and in the I think the straight men there have just been beat into submission by everybody else in public horticulture at this

00:35:09.490 - 00:35:23.110

point but it's plants I mean yeah I mean that's like marginal right there for you know most men's sexuality okay so mostly your most of the activism was more about

00:35:23.110 - 00:35:36.110

being yourself being out there and like not necessarily like being outspoken or like like like like not like like how i want to word this like the type of activism

00:35:36.110 - 00:35:46.650

that you did on campus but more about so living your life without any like worry about someone what else someone else might have to say for you yes generally that was

00:35:46.650 - 00:35:56.810

what it became um as you know and then when i met my part my husband well we weren't married back when but you know then you know we were just very out and you know we

00:35:56.810 - 00:36:09.770

just decided to live our lives that you know as open gay people and you know that was still shocking for some people back in the whenevers but um you know fortunately it

00:36:09.770 - 00:36:22.830

we never really had any serious issues which was great um but we did i did learn at university of delaware that being especially out in vocal is a certain protection because

00:36:22.830 - 00:36:34.340

if someone had like beat me up the university would have had to have done something and it was always like hot guys that wanted to beat me up and i was really couldn't

00:36:35.210 - 00:36:50.030

couldn't you know very wondering why but it was a strange it was it had some strange times but it was fun i mean i think i think we i mean you know we learned a lot

00:36:50.030 - 00:37:05.270

from queer nation which had kind of burst onto of the scene but they were really an outgrowth of act up so as far as I remember and you know the jackets and white t-shirts

00:37:05.270 - 00:37:13.050

and combat boots it was it was you know good hair it was kind of cool to be like that kind of activist at the time and we would go to Washington for marches on Washington

00:37:13.050 - 00:37:27.910

and pride in Philly and stuff like that so how did you end up at ud and did you go into it knowing that you wanted to be part of these groups was it what you

00:37:27.910 - 00:37:39.490

expected it to be i did go in knowing i wanted to get involved with lgbq groups in high school i got kind of started my gay activism i was at an all-male prep

00:37:39.490 - 00:37:52.150

high school So fortunately, they were mellower than I thought they would be. So I was ready to kind of just do it when I got to college and got away from my

00:37:52.150 - 00:38:05.050

mother and my family and just, you know, could do stuff and meet like-minded people. But I think we always thought it was really about the intellectual and

00:38:05.050 - 00:38:13.630

aesthetics as well as the social change we were very interested in. We were really into Barbara Krueger's work. She did a lot of these. She

00:38:13.630 - 00:38:21.730

did the early ACT UP posters. We, you know, designing logos. You know, it was all part of that whole, I guess, what people now call brand.

00:38:21.730 - 00:38:30.630

But trying to create a brand for the movement, which is a lot of what queer, actually ACT UP was doing and Queer Nation was doing. I don't think they talked about it

00:38:30.630 - 00:38:49.680

that way, but they were essentially branding queer identity for people to grasp. okay well thank you for answering that question we do have one um well we have maybe

00:38:49.680 - 00:39:03.040

possibly a few more but was there like any like um powerful like moment during your time on camp on your time at ud whether that like maybe like some story or like some

00:39:03.040 - 00:39:13.860

event that happened that kind of like possibly really impacted you or any decisions that you made your time in your activism in activism or even outside of that?

00:39:14.600 - 00:39:25.400

Hmm. I think there were just more micro decisions we made that were in reaction to things and possibly significant at the time.

00:39:27.620 - 00:39:37.000

Had to be an LGBTQ, there had to be a queer course and there had to have been one. So I can't remember who did it, but I think the person who actually

00:39:37.000 - 00:39:48.160

ended up sponsoring it was the professor who was in charge of the honors program at the time can't remember her name but we she was an ally so we kind of went through that

00:39:48.160 - 00:39:58.600

way but it was a demand we did for roselle i think i remember this meeting we had with roselle and i think he actually came in on a holiday with his uh with the vice

00:39:58.600 - 00:40:14.380

president and and weren't happy um and they usually they brought in head of housing in residence life she was a lesbian and a lesbian of color so the university um she was a very

00:40:14.380 - 00:40:25.700

supportive ally and presence because she was in the hierarchy school hierarchy and very out um but i think that meeting really triggered a lot we were like we need a queer

00:40:25.700 - 00:40:37.480

course we need this we need that and i think they eventually gave us some of those demands the other big moment was when we you all i don't know if they do this anymore anyway

00:40:37.480 - 00:40:48.960

the restaurant would do table tents um to advertise events and things do you know table tents are god i feel so old um pieces of paper that just folded over like an a and

00:40:48.960 - 00:41:01.520

then clicked on this on the bottom and you would put them on the tables and they would advertise uh events concerts you just things like that oh okay table tents yeah it was a

00:41:01.520 - 00:41:14.260

thing yeah it was a thing um and we just we wanted to do some uh coming out day coming out day was really big for us october 11th i'm not sure it's as big of a thing anymore

00:41:14.260 - 00:41:29.000

but it was a big thing for us we always had a table and you know posterings and all that it was very important to us um and so we we took these table tents and they had pictures

00:41:29.000 - 00:41:39.060

of two women kissing and two men kissing and this and that and the restaurant people said nope these are inappropriate this is you know this is inappropriate you can't but

00:41:39.060 - 00:41:48.800

they didn't say homophobic or heterosexist what they said was just this display of affection we're not we're not into this well then we pointed out that they were showing

00:41:48.800 - 00:42:01.620

soap operas all afternoon in the dining halls so what did that mean that led us to contact the aclu that was the first and maybe only time we actually tried to sue the university

00:42:01.620 - 00:42:12.040

um and i think i left for the summer so it didn't really and whoever was left who was supposed to run with it i'm not sure that happened um but they had shown some

00:42:12.040 - 00:42:23.440

initial interest in that but we were really we were like this is clearly a free speech issue they are you know they are not treating everyone equally and so that became a little

00:42:23.440 - 00:42:34.680

bit of a brouhaha too that we went back and forth with the restaurant people on that and we were sassy so you know we didn't just take no quickly we were like uh-huh whatever

00:42:34.680 - 00:42:45.340

we'll find some way through to round what you're telling us yeah we don't have table tents but i know in our one of the lunch halls like trabant uh we there is like a like

00:42:45.340 - 00:42:56.900

a stand where certain events or groups are able to like kind of post like kind of post up there and while people are going around like student um people from those clubs or

00:42:56.900 - 00:43:06.500

groups are passing out like flyers so they don't necessarily put the tents up but like they will like go out like they will like go around each table and passing flyers and we do

00:43:06.500 - 00:43:16.800

have coming out day um i'm not sure how necessarily big it is but i do know like we still have it there's people who still celebrate it they still try to advertise it they do

00:43:16.800 - 00:43:27.180

like a little mass email be like oh it's coming out day like and um um and you know give out some like information or like what the meaning of it and so on and so forth they

00:43:27.180 - 00:43:40.220

do that for like other days as well like I know they do it for like what is gender visibility lesbian visibility um again coming out and also during pride month so okay yeah

00:43:40.220 - 00:43:52.260

we we did a lot of there were a lot of bulletin boards on campus we were allowed to post on um and that was a big way of communicating uh to people um we would get up at the

00:43:52.260 - 00:44:01.920

crack like 4 a.m poster go to breakfast because we knew they were going to get torn down fairly quickly um and all that in fact i almost got dragged in front of student judicial

00:44:01.920 - 00:44:17.840

for illegal postering once because we stapled a poster to the door of a building where there were already a bunch of posters on it but the campus cops came after us um so that

00:44:17.840 - 00:44:32.920

was also an interesting event we were like yeah but we posted over a bunch of fraternity posters so are you going after them too um i know in going back to the um national

00:44:32.920 - 00:44:41.860

coming out day lavender programming board we usually throw where we try to throw big events for like we get people like interested involved like awareness uh recently we had

00:44:41.860 - 00:44:52.320

outside of trabant on like the patio area we had like a bunch of tables from a bunch of different groups um either in um on campus or in like the local area of like newark

00:44:52.320 - 00:45:03.940

wilmington um and we had a few like drag performances like we had jolene cuisine who is an alumni and used to be a part of lpb when it went by haven so we do we still try

00:45:03.940 - 00:45:14.200

to do um like a nice uh national coming out day we still have the old door that used to be used for national coming out day i don't know if you remember this yeah it's fallen

00:45:14.200 - 00:45:22.240

apart but it's still there because it was the keith herring logo we used on national coming out day keith herring had drawn the person coming out of the closet and that was

00:45:22.240 - 00:45:32.700

the the image we always used um at the time so i think back when there was a lot of now that i'm thinking about there was a lot more art and stuff theory and stuff related

00:45:32.700 - 00:45:45.140

to all of what was going on uh that was part of i think part of the whole protest um issue there was like you know the only films were really kind of avant-garde like derrick

00:45:45.140 - 00:45:58.220

jarman um torch song trilogy with harvey farstein and matthew brodick was like huge the fact that it happened um it was in theaters was like oh my god um we were more

00:45:58.220 - 00:46:12.880

excited when madonna was breathless mahoney actually and then avita but we had a definite madonna bias in that time period for sure does anyone even care about donna anymore we

00:46:12.880 - 00:46:28.900

don't okay okay okay i wasn't quite sure because she's she's not what she used to be um i do have like oh go on so no you go you go you're good

00:46:28.900 - 00:46:40.020

you're good no you go okay um um i did have like very one one more quick question um i know we already kind of talked about like decisions specifically like any

00:46:40.020 - 00:46:50.200

like memorable like choices that you made during your time but was there any like i guess like maybe almost like personal and you don't have to answer this too much but like

00:46:50.200 - 00:47:00.660

personal like powerful moments that you had during your time at ud that might have been related to the activism or moments that you sometimes like can't really forget that

00:47:00.660 - 00:47:12.900

this happened on campus or you know whether that's like really good really positive or negative yeah i i think it was more against smaller things that happened here and there

00:47:12.900 - 00:47:27.240

um you know like when we would respond to uh you know a fellow lgbtq or person who was harassed or we would do the we would it was more about instead of big in your faces

00:47:27.240 - 00:47:38.400

there was a whole incremental like the um graffiti scavenger hunt we did part of what i remember is just we were trying to be clever if you will about what we were doing while

00:47:38.480 - 00:47:48.320

you know basically working in the system while at the same time throwing the system in its face um because again there were a bunch of us who were resident assistants a bunch

00:47:48.320 - 00:48:01.240

of us were in the honors program we were all like 4.0 you know it was kind of like oh well we can't just kick them off campus for any reason so that was part of I think the

00:48:01.240 - 00:48:12.380

overall the overall persona and I guess environment we were trying to create for ourselves to do our thing and we always tried to outdo ourselves which was just probably us

00:48:12.380 - 00:48:25.040

being a little crazy but we were always like okay can we outdo what we just did um which was part of the fun I mean we had kiss-ins we had marches we did you know I don't know

00:48:25.040 - 00:48:35.440

there was some there was some parade or something so two friends and i just decided to dress in skirts and women's outfits not full drag because i was not in a drag i was

00:48:35.440 - 00:48:44.860

very much about men can wear women's clothes because women are wearing pants so why can't i wear a skirt it was kind of that deconstructing gender thing which interestingly

00:48:44.860 - 00:48:53.900

enough i started when i was taking a feminist theory class and the women in the feminist theory class were not very positive without me wearing a skirt so some of the things we

00:48:53.900 - 00:49:05.300

learned like that were memorable like okay you know the bsu didn't really want to be our friend but i remember someone telling us that the administration said to the bsu hey

00:49:05.300 - 00:49:20.560

the lgbsu is getting its act together you need to like get on it too and things like that um you know so we were always trying to be as active as we could while still

00:49:20.560 - 00:49:28.000

trying to have some fun and I wouldn't say it was fun all the time because every time we did coming out day it was nerve -wracking it was like you know are we gonna

00:49:28.000 - 00:49:39.800

get yelled at you know I I mean I should my first year in the dorms I had like anti-gay posters graffiti on my door and you know I guess I just learned to live

00:49:39.800 - 00:49:51.640

with that but it was a bit stressful. Thank you. I remember a few times today you mentioned Queer Nation, and I was just a bit

00:49:51.640 - 00:50:03.100

curious on how you found out about them. Oh, how did we find out about Queer Nation? I think just reading the, oh, the gay newspapers that used to be up in Philadelphia.

00:50:03.940 - 00:50:12.420

Crap, I can't remember what it was now. There were one or two. um and I think that's part of it and then you know we were as I mentioned one

00:50:12.420 - 00:50:22.120

of my colleagues who was a graduate working on his PhD he was doing a PhD in HIV related public policy stuff which at the time was you know very edgy so he

00:50:22.120 - 00:50:32.660

was very much on top a lot of that stuff I you know he was on top of a lot of the cultural theory that we were reading and trying to use and journal articles and, you know,

00:50:33.060 - 00:50:45.040

uh, things like that. Uh, but, you know, we also just tried to, you know, be obvious where we could. So like in English seminars, you know,

00:50:45.040 - 00:50:52.600

I'd write, I wrote a, I wrote a whole essay on spring and how men start wearing shorts again. It wasn't that wonderful, you know, just, so just things like

00:50:52.600 - 00:51:06.160

that we tried to do to show a different perspective um honestly just existing as an out gay man at the college of agriculture at the time was enough for these people

00:51:06.160 - 00:51:16.080

um they didn't know really what to do with me but i had the highest gpa in the college so they really were like oh good lord we can't you know they couldn't do a whole lot

00:51:16.080 - 00:51:28.290

uh but the college of agriculture was i don't know if it's a better more loving place but it wasn't exactly liberal at the time um so even just doing that was something

00:51:28.290 - 00:51:39.120

i mean some back when if you just wore your pink triangle pin that was something um back back then you know well now people don't use the pink triangle anymore but i

00:51:39.120 - 00:51:52.680

think the rainbow is it the rainbow now the rainbow flag still like the pink triangle but you know i'm i'm old-fashioned that way i want to say the color of agriculture has

00:51:52.680 - 00:52:02.560

gotten a little bit more progressive i know lavender programming boards president is a plant science major so like fingers crossed okay great great it was yeah it was um

00:52:02.560 - 00:52:16.660

that's good i think i think i've seen a lot me back then probably would not have expected where things have gone today as i mean quickly i guess as they did i mean it didn't

00:52:16.660 - 00:52:27.760

seem quickly at the time but you know i think there was a certain time once we got will and grace and these things started rolling culturally there was a lot more people i i

00:52:27.760 - 00:52:38.740

think honestly back when i was there people didn't even know they knew gay lgbtq people i mean we were dealing with that in the you know and people still like meeting you and

00:52:38.740 - 00:52:48.460

then being like oh i can't be your friend you know we're you know stuff like that um you know it wasn't cool to have a gay friend which there seems to have been a time where

00:52:48.460 - 00:53:01.760

it became cool or especially if you are a radical lgbq person that was even harder at the time especially with people who didn't want to rock the boat or be associated with

00:53:01.760 - 00:53:15.920

that uh so that was a weird i think that's honestly why queer campus was more heterosexual members than the lgbq people well lgb stuck with the lgbsu and then us more radicals

00:53:15.920 - 00:53:33.320

you know went over the other direction those are all good questions well i i don't have any more questions at this time i don't think i might have one just

00:53:33.320 - 00:53:44.880

very minor one um when we were looking through the archives it was really interesting to see where the protests were um just because i think campus itself has physically

00:53:44.880 - 00:53:56.200

changed a lot so i was just wondering where your events took place um and maybe you could just give details specifically about like what the kiss-in looked like or something

00:53:56.200 - 00:54:08.380

like that because we just don't have anything similar today on campus well the old visitor center that dump of a building um i don't know if it's still there um we did

00:54:08.380 - 00:54:17.460

a lot in front of it that was because that's where everyone entered this isn't the the newer one that's further up and is attached to the church that came towards the end of

00:54:17.460 - 00:54:29.460

our time my time at university of delaware um and i guess it's before i forget the other thing we did was i tried to get on every committee i could and just be my out little

00:54:29.460 - 00:54:42.540

self so like i was on like the i was the student representative uh to the uh boards and grounds committee which so we tried to insert ourselves where we could and just be

00:54:42.540 - 00:54:55.180

like hey um I actually like I was collecting committees I thought it was kind of fun um committees were big back when um so I'm sorry what was the question I started and forgot

00:54:55.180 - 00:55:07.240

at my age no that's okay I this is this is separate but I think oh where did things happen that's it yeah they happened in front of the old college that Doric building with

00:55:07.240 - 00:55:17.660

the stairs that are not remotely wheelchair accessible um i guess it was the is it still the art school it was the art school at one point um i think so that happened in

00:55:17.660 - 00:55:30.520

front of there we were at the visitor center um or what was the visitor center then we would march around the score of campus so that was like the main axis with the old buildings

00:55:30.520 - 00:55:43.140

around the library and the administration building at the time um the post uh the the bulletin words well are were all over campus i don't think we hit we rarely went down

00:55:43.140 - 00:55:54.620

to the school of agriculture um for that sort of thing um then the big dining halls we would sometimes show up in um and i can't even remember what they were named rod well

00:55:54.620 - 00:56:04.960

no i was in dickinson my freshman year next to rodney do those still exist they were on the other side of the train tracks like literally i know who's a rodney is one of the

00:56:04.960 - 00:56:17.350

dining halls um okay i don't know yeah i can't remember the geography so we were mostly around the visitor center and then the admin building the old the old camp the access um

00:56:18.080 - 00:56:27.900

i can't remember those buildings but there were dining halls and dorms and classrooms along those um you know that's an interesting question because i hadn't really thought

00:56:27.900 - 00:56:38.240

about the geography of what we were doing and then i guess some of it focused around whatever dorm i was living in at the time because i lived on dorms my whole time there

00:56:38.240 - 00:56:52.460

so that was like a hot spot just because i was there um but most of the it was interesting most of the l queer in lgb lgbq people lived off campus there were a few of us

00:56:52.460 - 00:57:06.700

that i remember in dorms it wasn't always a very comfortable environment, the dorms. Yeah, I think there have been more recent pushes to make that

00:57:07.680 - 00:57:17.600

more accessible to queer people. I haven't lived in the dorms on this campus specifically, but I know going through the archives as well, there was a push

00:57:17.600 - 00:57:30.020

for not same-gender housing, And I know there's more open housing now on campus. But I asked because a lot of the stuff that we see is on the green.

00:57:30.920 - 00:57:40.960

Most of it is there. Or when there are protests that include people that are not students, it is in front of Old College, like in front of those steps right on

00:57:40.960 - 00:57:52.540

Main Street. So it's interesting to know. That was where they did the homecoming cheer competition. i do remember that but we were mostly around the old visitor center um if

00:57:52.540 - 00:58:01.160

i'm in front of it behind it i think behind it is where take back the night i think that was because the lgbsu had an office in there and there were meeting rooms that anyone

00:58:01.160 - 00:58:14.130

could just meet as a group i know queer nate queer campus met in one of them informally um it wasn't one you had to reserve I don't know what the spatial geography is like today

00:58:14.460 - 00:58:22.460

and then there was the library actually we didn't do a lot at the library interestingly enough or up in what's the north campus where

00:58:22.460 - 00:58:29.980

the towers are are those towers still there or did they finally get rid of them I think they're there but no one lives in them is that right

00:58:31.420 - 00:58:39.160

I can't remember their names oh god they were horrible it was like living in a Soviet block housing environment it.

00:58:39.640 - 00:58:53.320

But it had a computer lab where we could check our email. I think that's it for me. And we're at 630. So yeah. Oh, great. Yes,

00:58:53.320 - 00:59:02.840

my husband's probably got dinner ready. Well, this was enjoyable. Thank you for contacting me. Thank you for answering your questions. It

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was really fun. It was nice being able to see like the difference between like how campus was run back then and how it was run now and how it's developed over time.