Karen Rosewood Hooper is currently the Associate College Administrative Officer at Kresge, but for most of the 1990s, as she nightly roamed Upper and Lower Street: the pacific, sympathetic, and charismatic Kresge Night Proctor. I spoke with her on April 21, 2002--Linda Rosewood Hooper
When did you start working at UCSC?
Nineteen ninety-one, I think it was, in the summer, part time.
And your job was proctor?
It was Relief Proctor.
Who was the Senior Proctor?
That was Dave Christiansen. He is now deceased. He died on Sequoia's first birthday,1992. [Sequoia is Karen's daughter.]
After 1992 you became the Senior Proctor?
Yes.
How long were you the Proctor?
I don't know, about eight years.
What do proctors do?
They work at a college, at night time, and they walk around through the college and talk to students and watch over the community at night. They help students with their problems and take care of trouble spots that brew up, and problems in apartments. They enforce policies--drug policies, alcohol policies, guest policies, university policies--all kind of policies. Keep things contained and calm so people can sleep and study and work and live.
Do you think there will ever be another lesbian proctor?
I don't know.
Has there ever been one, besides you?
No--well, there was one that came after me over at Stevenson. She became the proctor for a while but she didn't last very long. I was the only one [Senior Proctor], the only one up to that time and the only one since. There was another relief proctor, Lynne, she was at Porter for a while. We became friends. There aren't very many female proctors at all.
Is it because they don't have the life experience necessary?
No, I think there is a sexist barrier to women being hired into that job. I think that Dave Christensen liked me in the interview and Carol Harper liked me. I was a little rough, probably, coming right out of the Sheriff's Office. Carol probably liked that, and Dave was probably intrigued, from an intellectual perspective.
You mean he was intellectually interested in hiring you just to see how it turned out?
Yeah, more or less. And I think also that he saw that I was skillful in the interpersonal skills and certainly in policy enforcement, coming right out of the jail. I think that he saw that that was real strong, but he was also curious about how it would be to hire a female proctor.
And then he passed away suddenly, right? And you stepped in a fulltime proctor. Did the students have any problem accepting you as a lesbian and a female proctor?
Not at all. Once again it was the same thing as working at the jail. Women are successful in those kinds of roles. More successful than males because they don't have the control issues, the power and gender-relationship issues. They are just there to do their job, they usual have a pretty good balance of nurturing and being able to set limits. I think women excel in those kinds of areas, but they're not hired into them very often, because they are still dominated by men. It's a shame. There really, really need to be more women in those roles. Especially working with college students.
To your knowledge has there ever been a gay male proctor?
No, there hasn't been. Not that I've known of in the ten or eleven years I've been here.
Is that because they weren't hired?
I don't know if any applied. It's not generally a field that attracts gay men. People see the role as, "you gotta be a tough guy and stern."
But you never saw the role as one where you had to be stern.
No, I saw the role as one where you had to be firm, and you had to know where the boundaries were, and tell them that's where it is. But you can always do that in a kind way, or usually.There are the exceptions where you have to be more aggressive, when people are aggressive with you, but generally not.
I think about how it would be for a student now to need to talk with somebody at night and I don't think they are as inclined to go to a man. I don't think women or men are as likely to talk about issues personal to them, like sexuality. I think they are more inclined to talk to women.
Did you come out as soon as you started working? Were you ever closeted as Proctor?
No, I was never closeted.
And so the students knew you were a lesbian.
They knew because I always told them; it came up in conversation.
You told them about your daughter and your partner.
Yes.
It was in the context of your family or was it in other ways?
Sometimes in that way, or other ways too. I might stop in at some student's apartment and talk about what was going on. It just came up in conversation some times when discussing issues. It's an educational setting so you have a lot of conversations about social issues.
Do you think that being the proctor at Kresge is different than being proctor at other colleges?
I think it was in my tenure, absolutely. The proctor, when I was proctor, was seen as somebody who was an asset to the community. Someone who helps students, was friendly to students. Kind of an adult who was supportive of them, even when I had to tell them to stop doing something they were doing, which was often-- close down the parties, get rid of the alcohol. The proctor had a big role in those days, and was liked by the students; wasn't feared, but was liked and seen as a helpful person, not just someone who was out to break up the parties or bust them.
So students both gay and straight and questioning, they confided in you over the years because you were seen as a helpful person who could be trusted.
Well, because I was always out about my sexuality, the students were very comfortable talking to me about their sexuality and issues that would come up around their sexuality regardless, if they had girlfriends or boyfriends, or just thinking about having a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever; they would ask me or come talk to me about problems.
I remember there was the first student who came out while I knew him, and I went through that whole process of him coming out publicly and then pursuing a love interest and all the emotional rollercoasters, rejection, all the first relationship issues. He walked around with me every night--every single night--on my rounds. He was worried about his feelings, and how it felt to be a Chinese person who came from a very traditional Chinese family. How it was going to be to come out to his family, and how he knew he would be rejected--and he was eventually by his father.
So they talked things through with me before trying it out on a parent.
Did you have someone older than you when you were coming out?
Well, because I was never exactly "in" the closet, when I knew I was a lesbian I had adults around me -- I'm not clear what their sexuality was with all of them, but I had older women -- they were older, they were 18 to 20-- that age range --who always supported me, who I could talk to about things.That was way early, early in the 70s.
I remember the friendship I had with an older female who had taken me under her wings. I was fourteen, but I remember her at that time telling me that it was just normal. She didn't call it gay, she said that is normal to want to be affectional with your girlfriends that way. So I figured she knew. She was a very free spirit--a hippie, I guess--and had lived in communes and traveled around in a VW bus.
So I guess I always had adults supporting me.
And then you became that adult to a lot of Kresge students over the years.
Yes, I did. I feel really lucky to have had those. To me it was kind of normal to have older girls or women-- they seemed older. There was Margaret, there was Mary Ann and there was Star. They were five to fifteen years older than myself and all three of them, for some reason, took me under their wing.
So I guess I have become that to students. I don't really think of it that way, but I guess that is what is going on. I want students to have a place where they can feel safe talking to an adult. Either because they are already out and have issues about relationships and sex and are thinking about what kind of relationships they want to have. So they ask me about mine and the kinds I've had over the years. What was the first like, and where am I now. How is it different, and what kinds of experiences I had to go through to be from there to now.
Because I think they have some fears. I think they wrestle with different issues than I did. Like AIDS. There are different diseases that they can contract that I didn't think about growing up. Those worries are real present with them. They are much more aware of safe sex practices that I ever was. I wasn't. They talk about it, women as well as men. I think they also seem to have a real pride in themselves, a real assertiveness about who they are as young homosexual people that I didn't have. A lot of students at the college come from all different places, and those that get here and are already out, they seem to be self-assured and brave in who they are and brave in being artistic and creative and happy in their youth. It is such a good time to them.
Is that because, unlike when you were 14 or 18, there is a community that they are part of? Is there less homophobia?
I think there is less homophobia. I think part of the reason why they come to UCSC and Kresge College is that they have a sense through reputation, or other students, or on the internet that it is a community that is friendly, that welcomes gay people, lesbians.
In particular Kresge college?
I think so. I get around to the other colleges and I see the students that go there and just yesterday at BSSF [Banana Slug Spring Fair] I looked at a lot of those students who are touring and their eyes pop open when they get to Kresge. Those students are probably lesbians and young gay men.
What do they see at Kresge that makes their eyes pop open?
I think it is a lot of things. The artistry of the college, the architectural artistry. They see the students that are out there walking around in the spring weather and they are roller skating and they are playing frisbee, and playing guitar, and they are looking for something to look for and they find it here. They see the same things here that I see. They see women who are probably lesbians or at least open-minded-looking people. Arlyn [Osborne, former residential life staffer] said something on the phone the other day that kind of reminded me of Kresge, and that is "they have a life in their eyes" and you can see it. I see it with a lot of students here, they are more free, more free in their clothing, they aren't just wearing big tennis shoes unlaced and levis hanging down off their butts. They are wearing colorful fabrics, men and women, and probably they have dreadlocks and short-short hair, or no hair and tattoos and piercings. The smell of incense is constant.
People are happy looking. They are just happy looking. New students look around and they see that and they just instantaneously know that that is where they want to be. It is welcoming.
Do you think that the apartments-- as opposed to dorms-- and the fact that the students have to have Apartment Living Agreements is part of why Kresge builds that kind of community?
I think it is the architecture and the winding path through the college and the winding roads really do make it feel more like a small town. I guess the thing is that it is supposed to be like a mediterranean village. I don't know if it might be, but it definitely is like a small town where people wander the pathways and talk to people sitting on their stoops. Sitting out smoking or relaxing in conversations. People stop by and talk with other people. It feels like you're right in the redwoods, and there is little town winding through the trees and it has a small town feeling.
People say that a small town is where you have to escape from to come out, because everybody knows your business in a small town. In an anonymous, urban place--like Merrill, which has always seemed urban to me with those big five-story dorms--that would be a place where it would be easier to be deviant from what you were or deviant from other people.
Well, that's the thing, I think that people who come to Kresge don't feel deviant. They feel they are who they are. It is a place that embraces people's uniqueness. You live right there with your neighbors very closely at Kresge and pretty much everybody knows everybody's business and it is a place that inspires. Just living at the college inspires people to want to experiment and to try different things and think differently than they have thought before and feel different that they have felt before.
Most people don't live there for more than two years, so it must be something in the environment that inspires that, because it does continue generation after generation.
I do think that a lot of it is the apartment living that is very different from dorms. No dining hall; they cook in their homes; they eat meals together. They eat and discuss and they live their lives like they are at home. And they are. They develop a home base in their apartments. A lot of very personal and intimate things go on in their apartments that I don't think are possible in dorm rooms.
A lot of people who leave their apartments after one or two years, sometimes when I talk with students who come back a few years later, they are still in touch with their roommates from their apartment. They stay in touch because they did develop a family with those people.
I'm thinking about what draws lesbians and gay men to Kresge college. Because there are a bunch of them. There's just a bunch of them. I have to think about that a little more. One thing, that is important, is seeing people who are lesbian and gay, like when you come to BSSF. There are several people on staff who are lesbian or bisexual and it's obvious. They are confident in their sexuality so when people come up to look at the campus, they also see adults who are obviously lesbian. You have to let students see that there are others like them there. That's why, it's little things. I wear my rainbow keychain for a reason, not because I'm one to wear triangles and things. I wear it as one little subtle thing that a student can look at and say, "Well, this is a little clue."
How would anyone know anything about each other, unless we gave some kind of clues out, that say "I'm this kind of person." I notice those kinds of things. It is those things that we do, not just having the "this is a safe space" placard. That has been so overdone that just about every single window has them whether it really is a safe space or not.
Every space should be a safe space.
Yes, that's right. It is important to come see things that give you clues about an environment that says that there will be lesbians and gays there. And then getting there and finding them. It is just like the question of which students of color go to which colleges. Do they come to Kresge and automatically feel comfortable because they see a lot of people of color? No. They go to Oakes or Merrill or somewhere else. And it is natural to do that.
The other day at the chancellor's thing about the future of the colleges, just in my little table the students bought up the stereotype of the different colleges. I asked "Well, what are they?" They said Crown is the geek college, Stevenson is the nerds. Porter the art college, Kresge the gay and lesbian college. Eight is the "math" college or something like that. Oakes is the ghetto college.
The students say that themselves?
The students do. I wouldn't call it that, the students call it that themselves. It is like the people of color college.
Regardless of what the administration tries to do, ten or fifteen years later, they are called the same thing that they were called years ago. Even though there is all this administrative effort to change the stereotypes of the colleges, they maintain themselves. The students are attracted, I don't know what it is exactly. I think it is the staff at each of those colleges, and the curriculum.
Do you think that the women's studies department being here has anything to do with women coming out or being more comfortable being lesbians here?
I know that there are a whole lot of women's studies majors at the college so, it probably has something to do with it.
I see students when they come at Move-In Day and I look them over really carefully. Then it is not long when they start in the core course and start their course work--where a lot of them are women studies majors--because of the exploration of gender and sexuality in the core course I think that that first quarter changes people because it makes them start thinking of things from adult perspective, not a high school kid-child kind of perspective. You are an adult, here's all this new way of looking at things that you always just thought you knew about before and let's discuss it. Let's talk about it. What is gender? To be able to talk openly and freely and go back to your apartments and talk more about it and smoke weed and drink beer--it creates an intimacy that does give people a freedom to be themselves.
In all of your conversations you've had with students, did you talk to women who were upset that their roommates were lesbian or were coming out?
No. I haven't really had that experience. I've had a lot of people talk about that their friend or roommate came out. I haven't really had problems with girls people being uncomfortable. I think most girls don't really have an issue with their housemates being lesbian. I've had more young males being uncomfortable living with a gay male, not housemates, but roommates, and some of the homophobia that has been expressed over the years and things written on flyers are generally involving young men.
We were talking earlier about when we were younger we had the experience of being in a "just lesbian" space and just getting together with lesbians, but that students now have never had that.
Right. Generally, no.
Why is that? They don't seek it out?
I don't think they seek it out as much. The ones that I talk with grew up more in more of a youth culture, where they might get together through music or raves or different things that was kind of a mix of people. One student I remember was telling me that students this age grew up without a parent at home, without adults in their lives, because all the adults are working a lot. So then they seek out other youth for their families. Because all youth have been left by their families at daycare and then afterschool care. When they get to be teenagers they group up like family units.
They group up like daycare.
Like daycare. So like when they are sixteen, fifteen, whatever, they are hanging out as a family unit, they see each other as a family. They feel safe and protected, and so in some ways it doesn't matter if they are gay or lesbian or straight or whatever they just sort of hook up.
...because that is their safe space.
That's their safe space. I'm sure there is a lot that goes on internally in those years that I don't know about. A lot of those students that I work with have talked about, in [residential staff] training, talked about issues of sexuality and the GLBT training that we do every year. The thing that comes up every single time, from somebody in the group is, "We don't care what somebody's sexuality is, we either like 'em or we don't like 'em, and it really doesn't matter." You can hear this from a straight person, or from a young gay person or young lesbian girl, but it always comes up, that they feel that past generations have limited themselves sexually by labeling themselves and they are into non-labeling behavior. That's their thing. They say "We don't want to label ourselves or other people. That is not inclusive. If I call myself this thing and I only hangout with these people then I'm not inclusive." It is a kind of a world vision, and world view.
So do they think that it is odd that you call yourself a lesbian?
No, I don't think so.
Not for your age group?
For my age group. And not that they don't call themselves things, they do label themselves because if you pin them down and say "Well, so what are you, do you define yourself as just 'human'? In your language do you not use the word 'gay' or 'lesbian' or 'bisexual'?" They say, "No, we do." But they don't have the same need for space. Like lesbian-only space, or women-only space--certainly not women-only space.
Do women ever want their own apartment?
Sometimes yes, but it's not a feminist thing. They say, "We don't feel comfortable living with men." But there are certainly lesbian apartments where they prefer other lesbians, but they are also usually ok with some of their guyfriends, their buddies.
What else do young people say about lesbians your age. How do they see you?
I don't really know how they see me exactly. I think they see me as someone who has wisdom. Someone who has integrity and is frank and honest. And doesn't pull the adult card on them, saying that there are certain things that I won't talk with around them because they are 20 and I'm 45. I don't ever do that with them. If they ask me questions about anything, I talk freely with them. I'm not inhibited with them, but I think that they sometimes see lesbians from my generation as not having lived. Because we were feminist, and we spent time in women-only space, they see people of our generation as people who were not inclusive; people made a separation between people that was not good. If I want to live in a women-only household or lesbian-feminist household, they would see that as being shallow somehow or not fully humanly developed. If we are all humanly developed, it doesn't matter who we live with, their sexuality is, what gender they are. They are hoping for a better world, where all people live together very successfully and happily regardless of sexuality or any other self-identifying characteristics.
So is that what they are doing at Kresge?
I think they try. I think that some of them are pretty darn successful, to tell you the truth. They seem to be. Not that they don't find space for themselves because they do. In talking with a young gay man recently who just came out, I know that it is his desire to have time without a lot of women around, because he has told me so. He would like the time to be with males, but not straight males. To be with gay males and to be able to have that energy. Now all his friends are women, and there is a desire to be with what he considers to be his own kind of people.
When I was 20 or 18 whatever they are, my generation had hopes for the world that were big and broad and very hopeful. Back then it was to end the VietNam war. I think we talked a lot and went to a lot of parades about pacificism, hoping for an end to war and for people loving one another. Those were the issues of that day. I think that we're all talking about the same thing.
Do young people feel like the people that came before them were talking about the same things that they are talking about now?
No, I think they see us as naive. Well, partly they see us as naive, because the world was more naive when we were 20 than when they are 20. They are confronted with things on a whole different level than we were in their day-to-day life. I didn't grow up on MTV and watching gangster rap, people talking about shooting pigs, and whores, and whatever; all the stuff that young people watch every day of their lives. I think they have had to learn to discriminate in a lot of ways that I never had to as child. I felt a safety that they don't feel. So their perspective is going be different.
Do you think that Kresge is going to be able to provide to that same nourishing environment that it has for the last 20 to 30 years for the next 20 years?
No, I think that with the move towards putting everything on the internet so that students have all self-service, their college experience is where they will never have one-on-one contact with a person. No, I don't think it's going to be the same. I think that a lot is going to change. Staff want to roll in and out of jobs, because they aren't happy here anymore, and they are not valued. They don't feel valued. They leave their jobs every year or two. You will lose the continuity.
There was a student who came back the other day, he came back from 1991. He recognized me and later Darien [Rice, the groundskeeper]. He left in '94, that's why he came back, to see people he hoped he would remember. We talked about his apartment and his life then, his roommates and people he still remembered and I remembered. If you don't have that kind of relation with staff because there is too much turnover ...
and the staff don't have enough time....
They don't have time and their priority is not in developing relationships with students any more as it used to be.
What is the priority now?
The priority now is in efficiency, in economic efficiency. That is what they call it anyway.
One thing that was different about the proctor, is that the proctor seemed to have a lot of time. You can make and appointment with preceptor or advisor, you have these adults who are available during the day to you to talk to during office hours. But the proctor is always there. You could go find the proctor.
That's right. and I guess you still can, but who that person is, is critical.
Do you think the role of the proctor is changing too?
Yes, I do. I think with more emphasis on controlling alcohol and drug consumption the proctor's role has become enforcement-based, rather than community building, which it was when I was a proctor. That was the intention of the role. Policy enforcement was kind of wound up in that job, but it wasn't the focus of it, and I think it is more now.
There is more pressure coming down, from other sources, that dictate that is the thing that they want. They want the statistics for UCSC to be lowered, so that means there has to be somebody out there cracking the whip about drugs and alcohol.
Do you think there will be less drugs and alcohol use?
No, I don't at all. I think that students find ways to maintain what they need to do in their college years and part of that is to experiment with drug use and alcohol consumption, and how it affects them and what they can and can't do under the influence. They need to learn what they need to learn. Not all students, but a majority, need to learn what it is like to live and learn under the influence. It's just a part of life. I don't think it's going to change at all, even if they make it a dry campus.
That reminds me gay youth and alcoholism. Gay youth had high alcoholism, but maybe now that students don't have so many pressures about coming out they will drink for other reasons.
They also use substances to conceal their pain. When people were living in closets they had a lot of pain to try to conceal and live with. People who feel like they have to hide from themselves will try to anesthetize themselves more. Alcohol helps free them up to get the courage to do the things they want to do. And need to do.
You've also meet students whose parents are gay. That's probably something new.
Yeah, it probably is. I remember one student, who had a gay father. He was fine with it. It wasn't an issue. Never had any concealment on his part. There is a young woman, my CA [Community Assistant] this year, whose mom is a lesbian. She never concealed it. Well, no; that's not actually true. She never concealed it with me. She didn't want to talk publicly in the group of the other CAs, for a while. I think before she came to UCSC, it wasn't something she was public about. I think a few friends from high school knew it, but it wasn't a publicly known thing. But with my talking about myself and my daughter, and how my daughter came to be born, I saw Mary gradually tell one person, and then one person more, and now when she talks about it, she talks about it to an open group very freely about being a child of a lesbian mother.
But I don't think she would have that freedom if she hadn't had a role model; if she hadn't had an adult showing her that it is all right to tell people who you are, even if it is a little scary, because you don't know those people yet. It was vital that she have an adult who modeled that for her, I know it was.
Since you started working at UCSC, more lesbians are in positions of influence at UCSC. Do you think that has made a difference for lesbian students at all?
No, I don't think that they are aware of them. Maybe that's not true. Maybe that administrators like Jean Marie [Scott] who attend functions at the GLBT center. I'm not sure who else is out there, but she's the first one who comes to my mind. I think a lot of students don't know a lot of administrators.
Do you think peer organizations like CLUH has had an impact on helping students learn about themselves and each other?
I imagine it has. I know that the last couple or few years our students haven't really enjoyed the CLUH [Challenging, Learning, and Undermining Homophobia] workshops because they felt they were too basic. Students already come with such extraordinary knowledge, from the high school educations from different areas, CLUH workshops seem too basic to them. Like a health class. "We already know what it means, we know the difference between gender and sex, and transgendered and transsexual." Actually, I think that the GLBT training we do, at the GLBT Center I think is the best training for student staff. The conversation is much more free, and not so focused on a training class, like workshop.
So this is a training to help the student staff help student residents?
If you are a RA or CA, [student residential staff] you think you know a lot, but you might not know some of the personal issues that your lesbian and gay residents might be dealing with or confronting--psychological, family, love interest. "How do I hook up with people here? Where do I meet them? What's here locally in the community? What local support network is here for me? How do I deal with a homophobic roommate?" That training is really, really excellent. Even though lately students have expressed that they would appreciate a "younger staff" at the GLBT resource center, or a staff that is a little more "clued in," as they put it. I think I kind get their drift.
Since you've been at Kresge the AIDS epidemic has really changed. What do students think about it now? Is it about politics? Is it just about their own personal fear of getting the disease?
In talking with students now I think that there are two groups. There's the group that always practices safe sex and always uses some kind of barrier protection --gay and straight-- and then there's those who don't use it at all, because they feel it was kind of a political exercise in terror and it wasn't maybe as true as we made it out to be; that we over-reacted. It was--and this is how they see us-- a generation of over-reactors to many things, including AIDS.
Did you know any students with AIDS?
Two. I've known two so far, both men. They were residents, under twenty-five.
Did their housemates know?
No, their housemates didn't know. No one knew.
But they confided in you.
Yes, they did and I don't really remember why. One just because I had known him for several years. With the other it just came up in conversation some how, I don't recall how.
I think that there need to be more staff who talk to students because faculty don't talk to students very often. They don't talk about the issues that are really confronting their lives on a day-to-day basis. They talk to them about issues of the intellect from an intellectual level but they don't talk to them about the day-to-day things that students need to be talk to adults about. You know those commercials on TV, "talk to your kids because they'll listen" --well, they will.
If we don't talk to them, then how are they going to know anything? They won't know our history; they won't know how they got to be fortunate to live in the times that they do, where girls embrace and kiss and make out on the lawn of Kresge and don't worry about their safety.
If adults don't tell them how they got to be where they are, then they're not going to know. It's like we were talking about the other day, they aren't reading the books that tell them about their history, or they are only reading them a class and they are generally not reading them at all. They aren't going to know about their history, they're not going to know a lot of things. They aren't getting the living histories from the adults. The lesbian and gay students don't have enough adults who are talking with them.
Linda Rosewood Hooper worked at Kresge for many years and met Karen while she was the proctor. They live together in Santa Cruz.