Interview with Betty Schmitz

Betty Ann Schmitz #97 (1976)

LS: This is an interview with Betty Schmitz, a graduate student in the French Department. The interview is being conducted on June 11th, 1976. Laura Smail is the interviewer, and the subject is the TA strike of 1970. On June 11th, 1976, Laura Smail is the interviewer, and the subject is largely the TA strike of 1970. Yes, um, well, tell me about yourself to begin with, would you, where you were born and --

BS: I was born in New Jersey, lived there until the age of 12, at which time we moved to North Carolina because my father, who was a mechanic, decided he was going to become a philosopher and was going back to school. So he went to University of North Carolina and from there to South Carolina. My father's first teaching position was at Converse College, Spartanburg, South Carolina, where I 00:01:00went as an undergraduate.

LS: I see.

BS: And I was a modern language major, had a Fulbright Grant, went to France after I graduated.

There I met a woman who was in the French Department here at the University of Wisconsin. And she's the one that talked me into applying, and I received --

LS: Who was that?

BS: Susan Savarin, who is now teaching in Los Angeles, has finished her degree and is working out there. So I was, my first year, I was on a fellowship here, and that was '68-'69 when I came. My Fulbright year was '67-'68. The second year I went on to, became a TA, and that was prior to the contract status. That was --

LS: That was in September, it was '69?

BS: Yes, September of '69.

LS: That you started, that you became a TA.

BS: I was a TA, and it was a one-year basis back at that time. So you didn't get a four-year contract. It was before -- and, um, I remember, I didn't know too 00:02:00much about the TAA at that time. My first year here, I was not involved very much with the other teaching assistants because I was a fellow, and I, you know, stayed most of the time in the library. I didn't discover I had an office until second semester.

LS: I see, yes. Were you active in any of the campus --

BS: No, I admit. I don't, I just remember, you know, hearing about, you know, the Dow things. And I remember also the Block Studies thing, and sort of being, sort of concerned, but not, I was just very busy studying all the time, and I wasn't active in anything. I had never been active in any of the war, the antiwar demonstrations, or anything.

LS: Was this just because you weren't thinking, or were you --

BS: I think it was because of the conservative background, having been brought up in the South.

LS: Oh, I see. So you weren't particularly sympathetic with the --

BS: No, I wasn't sympathetic at all. I just didn't think about it. I was sort of apolitical at the time. I, you know, just worried about my education, and I was, you know, even apathetic. And, um, the French Department turned out to be quite active. I remember my roommate was the steward. I wound up rooming with this 00:03:00woman and found out later that she was in the TAA, but it didn't really occur to me. I guess I sort of joined, I joined, I did join because I thought it was, you know, I didn't make a distinction between TAA and graduate students, any kind of an organization at the time. And then things started --

LS: When is that now?

BS: This was --

LS: When you joined the TAA, you didn't, still didn't think of TAA as being particularly --

BS: I didn't think of it as a radical organization or anything, which later, I mean, which a lot of TAs did later. They were concerned about joining the TAA because it didn't fit in with their image of what a graduate student should be, and it seemed like a very radical organization to them. But when I first joined --

LS: And when was that?

BS: That must've been, because that was the, that was that year, '69-'70.

LS: But, I mean, you became a TA in September, and do you remember --

BS: I don't remember. I think I just joined because my roommate was a member, the other two that, I was rooming with two people actually, were both members, and I just one of those things that seemed the proper thing to do at the time, 00:04:00and it didn't concern me that I was, I never went to meetings or anything.

LS: Oh, I see. Do you remember how you joined? I mean, what was the process?

BS: It was just a card, there was a card to sign.

LS: Yeah, and you had to pay --

BS: And dues were going to be taken out of my salary.

LS: Do you remember how much they were?

BS: They were $1.40, I think, it wasn't anything, per month. I believe, I wouldn't, not really sure because they've changed so much. But I, it wasn't very much.

LS: Just something like that, yeah.

BS: It was to come out of your salary each month. It was, you know, check-off, you know payroll check-off.

LS: Hmm. Now tell me again the name of your roommate.

BS: My roommate is Jo Ann Oliver.

LS: Oliver.

BS: Oliver, yeah, she was the steward for the French Department.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: And the other roommate was Pamela Weir. And we all ended up being picket captains.

LS: Pamela --

BS: Weir, it's W-e-i-r, and she's in Australia now. So you won't be able to talk to her.

LS: How many TAs were there in the French Department?

BS: There were quite a few back then. I think there were about 80. Now I don't, as I say, I wasn't the steward. I don't know how many of them were members of the TAA, but there were quite a few of us. We were a large department.

LS: You didn't, did you meet as TAs?

BS: In the department.

LS: Meet with the French TAs at all?

BS: Not really, no, not until things started moving with the strike, and Jo Ann was trying to organize. And we were having meetings. And I remember at one point, which was much, I'm not going to be very clear about the chronology. I haven't been able to go home to look up, I don't even think I have anything.

LS: Well, I could, I could fill you in on that. But I just, one reason I asked when you joined was that there was a membership drive in October and November, I guess, so The Cardinal on November 4th, announced that the TAA membership had suddenly increased to 1,000 from something like 60, and I wondered if you were aware of that drive.

BS: It seems like I was probably because of that because I had not, it had not occurred to me to join of my own, you know, I don't want to say free will, but I, it's not something I did at the beginning of the year when I became, but it 00:06:00seems that it was in connection with a membership drive. It was in the fall.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: And I think it must've been Jo Ann said it was important to join at this time. So I was very docile and did what she thought. It was very --

LS: But you still weren't interested in the, in getting your rights as a TA and --

BS: Well, I think it was important to me that I was assured that this was not anything connected with a radical, with any kind of radical movement.

LS: Now how did you convince yourself that it wasn't?

BS: Well, Jo Ann was talking about, it was put in, they were very good with organizing with people like me. It was put in the context of the whole labor history in the United States, and that this was, you know, something that was very American in a way. You know, it was just a labor issue, and it wasn't connected to any of the antiwar things or anything else. And, uh, you know, and I was, people just, there were so many so-called horror stories back in those 00:07:00days of things happening to TA's cases that, you know, were cited to us.

LS: Being thrown out?

BS: Yeah, that raised your indignation, and you were started, I think one of the strongest points was that I know within our own department, at the end of each year, it seemed unfair that the people that, the people were cut off. The TAs were the ones that were doing the work. They didn't have as much time to devote to their own studies because they were teaching. They sometimes had lower grades, and therefore, when cutbacks were made, they were the ones that were booted out. And people that had been on fellowship were then given the support, the TA contracts.

LS: Yes, that would be, uh, cause for anger.

BS: Those sort of things, you know, just the idea that we had a right to a contract, we had a right to a grievance procedure, and all sorts of things that I had never thought about. You know, you seem so thankful when you come in as a graduate student to have any support at all.

LS: Yes.

BS: It was hard, it was an identity change, thinking of yourself as a worker rather than as a student, sort of submissive to the faculty and doing what they said. And it was a gradual process for me, I think to, but I just got indignant 00:08:00at some of the things that were happening. [pause in tape]

LS: Did you, uh, talk to faculty at all about, about the TA, or did you have any, were you friendly with members of the faculty?

BS: Not at that point, I wasn't. I went to my classes. That was still before I had decided what I was going to, you know, what my specialty was going to be. I didn't, I had an advisor, but he just, you know, consulted with me twice a year, and I had to friends on the faculty. Some people --

LS: Really, you didn't, seems strange.

BS: Not, I don't know, I'm not, I was very intimidated by it, and courses were all in French, of course, in the French Department, and it sets up this sort of barrier that was hard to break down. Some people were friendly with the junior faculty, but this, as I say, it was my first year. And I think that came from being TAs more than from being a graduate student because they were there working. As I say, my first year, I was very isolated.

I just went to my classes and came home. And this was the beginning of my second year, and I still hadn't had much contact with the faculty other than the few people I had in class. And I was very intimidated by them. I didn't go see them for other reasons than just class work. And there was a, um, an uncomfortable situation in the Department. There was a lot of, there were a lot of departmental politics at the time, and, you know, fighting.

LS: What about, do you remember?

BS: I just remember, well, Richard Switzer was the chairman at the time, and he subsequently was resigned, in connection with something that happened with the TAA strike. He had, the faculty had decided at a faculty meeting while we were, right after we went out on strike, that they were not going, for the duration of the strike, they would not furnish information to the administration of their own accord.

They were going to remain neutral, which meant they weren't going to go around and spot out who what teaching. Later they would assist, when the strike was 00:10:00over. They would, you know, provide the information that was needed, but they, and apparently, Mr. Switzer had cooperated with the dean. This is hearsay, behind the backs of the faculty, and he, but even prior to that time, I think there was a lot of animosity between the way he, you know, treated the faculty and his relationship with the deans. That was my impression. I just knew that there were problems, and there were sort of different factions in the Department. I was sort of wary of, you know, getting too involved with or siding with anyone at that point.

LS: Uh-huh. How many classes did you have?

BS: Oh, I had three each semester.

LS: Does that mean, and how many sessions?

BS: Oh, you mean, as a TA?

LS: As a TA, yes.

BS: Oh, I thought as a graduate student. I, at that time, I was, that was another thing. I was teaching two separate courses, and I was TA-ing for a professor, where I met twice a week with, so it was like a quiz section. And the other I had full control of. It met five times a week. So I had seven contact 00:11:00hours, those in the classrooms. No, it was four, that's right, four and two, six hours a week I was in the classroom. Now I had two preparations because I was teaching two different courses. I was getting paid less than my roommate, who taught two sections of the same thing, and with only one preparation.

And that's another thing that started bothering me, that there wasn't really equity in the way we were being paid. I was being paid on, less because I was teaching four hours of first year, which paid less, and she was teaching two sections of second year. So there was a lot of, you know, inequity in the appointments in the French Department at that time, which now have been ironed out. But throughout the strike, I think without that [Phone rings.]

LS: Throughout the strike, you were, you were teaching the whole time, were you --

BS: No, no, no, I think I was beginning to say something about the, seems like I 00:12:00was going to say something about the support of the faculty through the, I think we had a unique, um, situation in the French Department because we were one of the strongest departments, and there was a great deal of solidarity among the teaching assistants. By the time the strike began, nearly, about two-thirds of the TAs were going out on strike, everyone that was a member of the union.

LS: I see, so that gives us an idea of how many members.

BS: Uh-huh, and I think we were one of the pivot, one of the pivot departments in a way because we were a large department, and we were, as I said, very strong internally. We supported each other, you know. It pulled a lot of people together and we also felt that we had the support of the faculty, and there weren't going to be reprisals. And I think that, within our department, and that helped a lot.

LS: That made quite a difference --

BS: Because the University was talking about firings, and the interesting thing about that is too, it was the time, the first time in my life that I really 00:13:00evaluated things and decided that something was more important than, than my education here. And that was that my rights --

LS: And your job, yes, that was --

BS: My rights, and I was willing to forfeit all that for the cause of the strike. And I, they could talk to, once I was out on strike, they could say, the University could say anything. And I wasn't going to take threats. You know, it was a way, standing up and not being intimidated by the system. And that has been very --

LS: And you really believed you might be fired, and you might be thrown out of college. I mean, I suppose many TAs didn't really believe that they, weren't really worried.

BS: Uh, I thought about it, but as I say, a friend, it had a lot to do with friendship and solidarity and feeling that you were in the right. And the things that the University started doing just sort of, you know, made us feel we were right. You know, and I was worried about not being able to go back, but I sort of accepted that. I figured, I'll just have to pick up the pieces if I can't, you know, come back here. I'll have to go somewhere else. But everybody else was just so --

LS: Now do you think this was because of somebody, one of the TAs in the French 00:14:00Department, who was responsible for making it evident to you, all of you, what a good case you had, or --

BS: I guess that was part of it, but I think it was also the leadership of the union.

LS: Oh.

BS: Um, I remember being, when I started going to the meetings, I remember being extremely impressed with what was being said. Jim Marketti, Bob Muehlenkamp, they were all extremely good speakers, extremely convincing, and I believed it. I believed what they said.

I told my roommate, you know, if Bob Muehlenkamp said I should jump off the top of Van Heise for the cause of the strike, I probably would've done it at that point because he had a certain charisma that inspired you. And he felt, as I said, they were extremely intelligent men. I say men because I have a recollection that we were being led by men at that point. And this will probably come out really [word unclear] my recollections of what the women were doing, 00:15:00but --

LS: Do you remember when you started going to meetings?

BS: As soon as, um, I realized that it was quite possible that we were going out on strike, and we had general membership meetings.

LS: January and February?

BS: It was after, it was second semester because, as I said, I'd always been such a serious graduate student. I mean, in a way, I'd gone overboard on my graduate studies, and I didn't go to very many meetings of any kind. I was, when I wasn't teaching, I was busy studying, and I believe it was second semester that I, as I say, my chronology is weak. I don't remember --

LS: Well, the strike vote was March 3rd. Would it have, did you start going before then, much?

BS: I think it's at probably the beginning of second semester I started going.

LS: Uh-huh. And negotiations came to a halt in January. And there were about two months when there was no negotiating going on. And there were meetings then frequently, once a week or month or --

BS: Well, see, I, Jo Ann would go, my roommate Jo Ann would go to the steward's 00:16:00council, and on Sunday nights, and I would usually get reports through her of what was going on. I don't remember specifically, but she would talk to me when she'd come back. And so I sort of would keep up with what was going on. And I don't really remember how many general members.

I remember doing a lot. I was even, even started trying to recruit people within the French Department, which was really out, a new role for me, convince other people. And I think they considered me a good person to be talking to other people because I had been very, people thought of me as very conservative.

LS: I can see that, yeah. Uh-huh.

BS: I can remember that, and, whereas, Jo Ann had been, you know, dubbed as a radical, and people were sort of put off by her. And --

LS: Did you succeed in persuading people to join?

BS: I think so, yes. I can remember, it was just a matter of, you know, people sort of being very upset, and we were arguing with each other all the time. We were still very close, even if people were still on the other side and didn't want to go out on strike. They were very, people were concerned about their students. That seemed to be the most common argument. I owe, you know, myself to 00:17:00my students. I can't walk out on my students if there's a strike.

Other people thought that it was just not dignified and didn't fit into, you know, what, we should be using reason. We shouldn't be using force, you know, as a means to, you know, deal with the University. And we owed them a lot, and this sort of thing and sort of developed techniques for arguing, which, you know, is sort of interesting. But little by little, you know, we picked up support, and I can remember being very excited when a good friend would decide, um, it was time to join the union and consider going out on strike, and, you know, it fortified all of our, you know, resolves that this was the right thing to do.

LS: Yeah, positive feedback.

BS: Yeah, right.

LS: Where were the meetings?

BS: Usually just the departmental meetings were in the TA offices, in other words, within our department.

LS: No, I mean, the, the whole TAA meetings.

BS: In various buildings on campus, it varied, which, you know, B-10 Commerce, a couple times we met in Attic Hall, and the same thing during the strike when we 00:18:00were having meetings, it would just be, you know, different rooms. It was a great deal of paranoia, I remember. We'd always worried about, you know, people from the University listening in. I had this feeling we were changing, I think that was just, you know, if they wanted to infiltrate, they certainly could have. You know, it was silly to worry about the room that we were in.

LS: Oh, I see. That's why you changed. You thought --

BS: I thought that's why we were changing rooms because they were afraid that --

LS: It does seem improbable that they wouldn't find out by listening.

BS: I don't know. That was just something that people used to talk about, you know, used to talk about, you know, listening in, the University listening in. And I don't know whether, as I say, they certainly could've sent someone in to listen to the meetings, although, we were checked at the door. We had to show our cards.

LS: Oh, I see. Well, now I understood that you didn't, people didn't have to be TAs to --

BS: To be a member of the union, you could be a research assistant or a project assistant.

LS: But you had to be one of them.

BS: But you had to be on payroll.

LS: I see.

BS: You know, you had to be on the payroll. You couldn't just be a graduate 00:19:00student to be a member.

LS: Hmm.

BS: Yeah, so that was my understanding, and I believe you could, um, be a member for a semester after you had been a TA, but not just a graduate student.

LS: Yeah. How many people, when you started going to meetings, do you remember about how many were there?

BS: I, it's very difficult to remember. I have, I get them all confused now in my head whether they were during the strike or prior to the strike. I know, when it was time for serious decisions, we were, I remember being in B-10 Commerce, and the place was packed. That was the night before we went out on strike. It must've been, you know, 600-700 people in the room.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: But prior to that time, I don't think, there might've been about 250 at, as momentum [word unclear] yeah, as momentum increased, more people were coming, more people were concerned. And, um --

LS: Now this interests me that you speak of Muehlenkamp and Marketti as being good speakers and persuasive. They were thought of by the faculty as extremely 00:20:00radical, especially Marketti. And you said yourself that you and others were concerned, and you didn't want to be swept into a radical movement. Did you cease worrying about being in a radical movement, or did you not think that their radicalism was important here?

BS: I, when we were having our meetings, we were talking about the issues at hand and the TAA and the University. And we weren't talking about other things that might've concerned me. Um, I didn't think of them. I stopped thinking about that. I think it was just the people I was involved with, the fact that my friends were there with me, that there were a great many TAs from all over the University that were involved in this thing, and I stopped thinking about what kind of a movement.

I can remember the first few days out picketing, I got sort of concerned because Mother Jones was marching around with signs and pamphlets about the TAA and world revolution. And I was, I started wondering what I had gotten myself 00:21:00involved in, but I do remember, there seemed to be, you know, an effort on the part of the leadership to, to put it in the context of the labor history of the United States, and that this was a labor dispute.

LS: Yeah.

BS: Which it was, and not to go beyond that context. I --

LS: Yeah.

BS: I started to say, I remember towards the, when we came back from spring vacation, we had a meeting to decide whether to step up tactics and whether, we had, we'd had very conventional picket lines. They, we just marched around, we hadn't tried to forcibly keep anyone out of buildings. We tried being militant just by being loud and having a lot of us there, but not, and to talk to people, but there hadn't been any violence. And we were talking about whether to increase tactics. And that started, it concerned the French Department in 00:22:00particular. We were very concerned about that.

LS: You didn't want to.

BS: No, I mean, you know, putting it in any kind of, any kind of destruction of property or anything like that, some of these things, these probably aren't the kind of things you should talk about on tape. But things were --

LS: [Word unclear] no, this is history. This isn't going to be broadcast or put in the newspapers.

BS: No, I know, but it was, certain things were mentioned that could be done, in fact, forcibly trying to keep people out of buildings. And there was a split at that time.

LS: Well, that's, I knew that, and I would like, wondered if you were aware of it and what --

BS: Well, I remember that, I remember too, we were in Ag Hall at that point. There's a balcony in it, and it's an older building, and I remember, there were people that were talking, and in a way, I think it was the radical caucus that was, that was pushing, you know, stepping up tactics and, and suggesting that things could start happening, and around on campus. And this would be one way of, you know, forcing the University to, you know, bargain more seriously. And I remember at that point, that the French Department was very concerned.

And Jo Ann took sort of, you know, we caucused and decided that we would not 00:23:00support this sort of a thing. In a way, it was sort of we were still talking and arguing this point out, and it was perhaps premature. But I remember Jo Ann stood up and announced that if the TA voted as a group to step up tactics, that the French Department would no longer support the strike. And that was, in a way, I think she was blackballed for a period of time because it was thought that this was not the proper thing to do at that time. And she was, the leadership was sort of shunned her for a period of time.

LS: Really? And you were the only department that expressed yourselves on this?

BS: Well, it was, and as I say, it was very early in this discussion. And it was the sort of thing that, it was one of the first times that we realized that we had this division, this really strong division.

LS: And actually, you solidified it by you guys saying [word unclear].

BS: It solidified that there was a silence, and people realized that without the French Department, you know, one of the major departments supporting the struggle, a solid department where everyone was sticking together, you know, that the whole thing was going to collapse. And, uh --

LS: But, in fact, it might've had some, uh --

BS: That might've been her --

LS: -- some effect then, even --

BS: Uh-huh. We didn't, we didn't vote to, um, we immediately pulled together again as a, as a group. That was one thing that was amazing about the TAA.

LS: TAA, the whole --

BS: The whole group, I mean, we started, you know, we talked it out, and in effect, did not vote to, I don't know, I, maybe my recollection is, I mean, I don't think we would've been voting as a group on record to step up tactics because you don't want something like that --

LS: No, but somebody was talking about --

BS: But that's what we were talking about.

LS: Yeah.

BS: That's what we were talking about.

LS: Do you remember who the people in the radical caucus who were speaking about this were?

BS: I don't remember very many --

LS: They weren't the leaders of the TAA, were they?

BS: No, yeah --

LS: I got the impression that they were sort of a --

BS: They were just people sort of suggesting other things, as I say, that might happen. But I don't believe it was -- one thing that I always admired, especially in the leadership, was that they let the, they let the rank and file iron things out. They, uh --

LS: They chaired committees, yeah.

BS: -- were non-directive. The chaired the meetings, and they gave these 00:25:00suggestions, but when things got going, and they let, they let us work it out with minimum of, you know, direction.

LS: Uh-huh, that is [word unclear].

BS: Because I think they believed that it had to be a group decision, and --

LS: Now who do you think of, you mentioned Muehlenkamp and Marketti. Do you think of them, those two, or are there, is there a larger group that is --

BS: I think, well, it's one of those things where there's so many images of so many people. It's just, you know, when I think back on it, in a way, it's one of the, you know, one of the most exciting things that happened in my life because it was such a feeling of solidarity and community. I remember also Ira Shore, who was our parliamentarian. I don't know if anyone's spoken --

LS: No, that's a name that I hadn't come across.

BS: Ira Shore, absolutely fantastic --

LS: S-h-o-r-e?

BS: Yeah, and who's been involved in radical politics for a long time. I believe he was in history. I believe he was in the History Department, but I'm not sure, or English. But he was just a fantastic speaker too, and he was the parliamentarian. He just, he was very good with humor and coming up, you know, 00:26:00he would always be standing up in the middle of the meetings to, you know, to clarify a point of order, and it was quite amusing. And then there was Bruce Vandervort in history, who was also, again, all these people were such, very good with words, and I remember --

LS: I was going to say, I wondered if the quality of debate was higher than you might expect it to be in that sort of --

BS: It was, and there were other things. There was a man. I can't remember his name, but he was a lot older than the rest of us and had come back to school. He must've been in his 50's. And he turned out to be one of the most radical people, and he was ready to throw everything away and, you know, sort of telling these young people that they had to go out on strike, and they had to stand up for what they believed in. And it was these sort of people that, you know, that made you believe in what you did.

It's very interesting that I don't have impressions of women from the strike, I think, of women speaking as much as the men. And I think, I remember, you asked me on the phone if I could, um, give you some information about what the women 00:27:00were doing at the time. I remember that there was a women's caucus, and that I didn't know exactly why there was a women's caucus. And I have one very vivid, um, recollection. I think it was the same meeting that I was talking about earlier with the problem of, you know, stepping up tactics. Joyce [Telsrow?], I don't know if anyone's mentioned her name --

LS: No.

BS: -- who has subsequently died of cancer. She was in the Comparative Literature Department, stood up in back of me, and again, was talking about the problems of the women and the, you know, the structure of the leadership, and that, you know, the women had no say, so they were expected to, you know, be making the coffee and cleaning up the TAA office. And I can remember thinking, why are the women always complaining? You know, I just didn't understand, you know. And Jo Ann, you know, just sort of shrugging, and --

LS: And she was, and she was not yet on that, on that --

BS: She was, but not, not that much either, for both of us, it was, you know, we started thinking about things and noticing things. And --

LS: It was felt that this was interfering with the main, main business, such as the strike.

BS: Yeah, that's what I felt at the time. We have enough problems. We're trying to, and I know, I mean, I remember now, you know, with thinking about things, you know, in retrospect, that what the women were complaining about was, in fact, that they weren't, it was the power structure --

LS: Yeah.

BS: -- that they were complaining about. They weren't in the decision-making, you know, the higher, they weren't in the leadership. They complained a lot about democracy in the union and having a broader base and --

LS: They did?

BS: Yeah, and they also, I think there was something to do with, you know, insinuations that, you know, I think they were talking about at one point pulling out as women if they didn't get what they wanted already at that point. And I, as I say, I don't, I don't know what the dialogue was because I wasn't involved with the women's caucus. But I know that I was concerned that women were talking about not supporting the TAA and pulling out for their own personal 00:29:00gripes at that time.

LS: Hmm. Now this was during the strike?

BS: This was during the strike, sort of they could get changes in the structure of the union by not supporting the strike.

LS: Yeah, yeah. I understood that at one point, the women spoke, oh, Ed Young made an offer on the 15th of March, and it was turned down. And I'm not sure this is right, but it may have been the women who were opposed, whose vote was the, uh, the thing that turned, that turned down the offer. Do you remember anything about that?

BS: I don't remember. As I say, I just remember, um, in other words, the women as a group had --

LS: Yeah, that they in a sense may have been more radical and may have been unwilling to accept something that the rest of the group might have.

BS: At that early, we did not want that contract. When we signed, that couldn't 00:30:00have been possible because when we --

LS: Nobody was, yeah.

BS: Even this contract we took, we weren't satisfied with. The last contract vote, I remember I personally voted against it.

LS: Oh, you did?

BS: I was, I was ready to stay out longer because the final, the final contract was not what we wanted.

LS: No, you said it really wasn't.

BS: So prior, March 15th, that was prior to spring vacation. I believe it must've been.

LS: Uh, yes, probably. It's funny, I don't know exactly, but I think it was a little bit better than what you finally got, the thing that you --

BS: Perhaps, I just remember that --

LS: Nobody was prepared to accept anything at that point.

BS: No, I, and I remember one of the problems with the last, the last contract vote was a lot of TAs, who had, I don't know a lot, but at least a couple people I know in the French Department, who had not supported the strike, had told everyone they were resigning from the union, did not resign from the union, 00:31:00showed up to vote for the contracts in an effort to end the strike, which we thought was, you know, betrayal because they had not been in on the strike, and they were voting for something that they didn't have really any right to be voting for. In other words, they --

LS: Can you assess how many people might've done this? I mean, were they --

BS: I know there were three or four within the French Department. I don't know whether this was a campus-wide thing. But a lot of people were voting at that point to accept the contract just to see the strike ended and had not been out on strike.

LS: Yeah.

BS: There were a lot of [words unclear] like that. But the day we went back, I remember, was quite, uh, was quite something. I believe it was a Friday when we went back into Van Heise after three weeks, and there were the colleagues that had not gone out. And it, the divisions remained, you know, forever, I think, until the people left, you know, those who had been on strike and those who hadn't. And it built a whole new community.

LS: Yeah.

BS: I'm, in a way, very happy that I had this, this experience because I know people all over the, the campus now, and I only knew people in the French Department prior to this. And I think too, in the early stages of the strike, it was a terribly exciting going to the rallies at noon and hearing that we were getting support, support from the teamsters and support, the Brooklyn librarians sent us a telegram, I think, in the early stages of the strike, you know, cheering us on and things like this it seems, you know.

LS: I didn't know about that.

BS: Things like that were just --

LS: Did you get other messages like that?

BS: We did from, you know, all over the place. People, you know, we would cheer, you know, they would read --

LS: Do you remember any of them?

BS: That's the one that stuck in my mind, the Brooklyn librarians sent us support, but, you know, those are the kinds of things, and they were very good at running, you know, the leadership was very good at running the rallies too. And Carol [Riffel?], you know, in our department was the one sort of in charge of the songs. I remember that too.

LS: So there was a woman doing something.

BS: There was a woman doing something. She was, you know, had her guitar, and, 00:33:00you know, move around with a little group of people and we'd, you know, teaching the songs, and we'd sing at the rallies.

LS: Now this was during the, during the strike.

BS: During the strike, and then all the meetings, we'd sing our songs, and --

LS: Were these songs written for the strike?

BS: No, these were, these were union songs out of American history.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: Solidarity forever, and we were writing our own words for the song with Chancellor Young's name in them and Krinsky.

LS: Yeah. Tell me, were you aware of the faculty who were on the bargaining teams, and did you think, did you ever go to any of the sessions? I gather you could have.

BS: Um, did I go to the, not during the strike, and in subsequent years, I went.

LS: Oh.

BS: When there were, there was another contract, I think it was two or three years ago, I remember going to some meetings at that time, and the women were bargaining with Krinsky. The women had, there were a lot of women on the bargaining team. I think this was three years ago I went. But during the strike, I didn't. I was too tired. I was too busy picketing, and I wasn't, I just 00:34:00remember hearing chants, hearing Krinsky's name a lot.

LS: He wasn't, not then.

BS: Not then, and that's my, that's because of recent years, yeah.

LS: No, it was Neil Buck, who was one of the, and Gustafson.

BS: That name is familiar, but I never went to any of the bargaining.

LS: But you didn't think of them as, as people, or didn't know them, or didn't feel one way or the other about them?

BS: No, I just thought the University and the bargaining team as enemies in, you know, sort of a vague, general way but not specifically. I, I seem to rely very heavily on what the leadership, the bargaining, the union bargaining team was telling me about the bargaining.

LS: Yeah, now that was Marketti and Muehlenkamp. What about Haslach, do you remember him?

BS: Yes, I remember him. I remember him specifically because in the early stages, it must've been beginning of second semester, we had a party at our house as a part of the membership drive within the French Department, and 00:35:00Haslach is the one that came to speak to the group. And that's how I know him.

LS: Was he a good speaker?

BS: Not as good as the others, but also a very, he was very good on the issues and very convincing. They were all very convincing.

LS: And what was it that Marketti had, you said Marketti had charisma, or was it Muehlenkamp?

BS: Muehlenkamp had the most, but Marketti also, um, they seemed like terribly honest people. And they just had a way of reporting the, the events and the things that were happening. I think there was a lot, I think later, a lot of us felt that, when we thought about it, in, you know, later years, that in a way, they were all in, a lot of them were in industrial relations. This was --

LS: Marketti was.

BS: Yeah, well, he was, and I think there was Schramm, Carl Schramm, who was the head picket captain and a few others that, in a way, it had been sort of a 00:36:00laboratory for their studies. We thought, you know, we thought about that with, I don't know. There wasn't really in bitterness, but I think a lot of it came from, a lot of the confidence came from the fact that we thought they knew what they were doing because they were, you know, they'd been studying this sort of thing.

LS: Yeah, you weren't just innocent babes in the woods. You actually had some, had some labor people, who, yeah.

BS: Yeah, yeah, uh-huh. And they've all since moved into, you know, working with unions.

LS: Yes, Muehlenkamp left that year.

BS: Muehlenkamp, Marketti, I guess, I've heard, I mean, what we hear is, you know, Muehlenkamp is in Baltimore with hospital workers, and Marketti is working for the Teamsters. And this is what I have heard through, you know, people I know in Madison.

LS: But you didn't know either of them personally.

BS: No, I never knew any of them personally, just as leaders of the union.

LS: It's a very different point of view, I [word unclear]. I'm just looking at 00:37:00some of these other names [Buress?] did you know him?

BS: Who?

LS: Buress.

BS: No.

LS: The two girls, Ann Gordon, I think it was --

BS: Oh, yeah.

LS: -- and Ann Tierney, do you remember them?

BS: I remember Ann Gordon.

LS: They were the head of the women's caucus, I guess.

BS: Yeah, I remember them, but as I say, I think, I think this is very significant that I don't remember them as well as I remember the men and what I was thinking about and what I was noticing at the time. I didn't think women's issues were important at the time. And that's, I think, why I wasn't really listening when, it was almost like, as you said before, you know, why are they bringing this up? We have, you know, more important business to talk about.

LS: Do you think if with your present view of women's, the women's position, if you were back then, you would be more sympathetic, or do you still --

BS: Definitely, definitely, I would probably be very, very aware of power 00:38:00structures. I wasn't aware of power structures back then. I would've been aware of, you know, the dialogue and what was happening and within, you know, the meeting, the group dynamics a lot more than -- I was aware of the sense of community and things like that, but I wasn't aware of male/female power or even, you know, a hierarchy of power coming from the leadership down. I just sort of accepted what the leadership told me and didn't worry about it that much.

LS: Do you remember, you know, United Faculty seems to have played a rather fuzzy role in all this. Were you aware of them at all, or was anything said about them, do you remember?

BS: I remember being aware of them and feeling that they were, um, sort of a radical element in the faculty and ready to support us but not a broad-based faculty group.

LS: I see. But you felt they were definitely sympathetic.

BS: Sympathetic, yeah.

LS: Well, uh, do you know anything about the Grievance Committee in the TAA, did 00:39:00you have anything to do with that?

BS: No, no, I don't really remember, I don't know much about that either.

LS: Would you want to talk about the final strike vote? Do you remember that, the night that that was held, and --

BS: The final strike vote, I don't remember.

LS: Well, no, excuse me, the vote to end the strike.

BS: The vote to end the strike, it was when, it was on a paper ballot, I remember. We had to go down to Brook Street, the Y to vote, and it was a process that went on all day. I don't remember, I don't have a recollection of the final meeting. We must've voted to have a paper ballot.

LS: That must've been rather hard to control. How did they prevent people from appearing twice?

BS: It was a check-off, there was a check-off when you voted.

LS: Oh, I see, ah.

BS: They had lists of all the TAs that, you know, members of the TAA. It was 00:40:00very controlled. All the paper ballots were -- but I, I seem to have a recollection of the meeting, that I think when we voted to have a paper ballot, it was a very depressing meeting. The meeting that I remember is, the best is, the two meetings I remember, the final one, with everyone, before, the voting to go out on strike is the one, and I remember the one where we had the issue about stepping up tactics. The other ones all seem to be sort of blurred in my mind.

LS: Well, if you can say anything more about them --

BS: I remember the meeting, um, in B-10 Commerce. It was just packed. There were people standing up, it was just, sitting all over the floor, and we had to wait for the, the leadership to come back with the final report from the bargaining team and what had happened. And they came in, and, you know, they were very indignant about the fact the University hadn't moved, and they put all, they had it up on this, you know, big screen, so we could see what the proposals were. And they were reading them off one by one.

And you had this sort of feeling that, that at that point, some people had the feeling that they were trying to withhold information and make it seem worse than it was so we would go out and strike. And I believe during that meeting, there was a feeling that the leadership was misleading the rank and file because they wanted to strike.

LS: Now when you say a feeling, you mean, for instance, among some of the --

BS: People stood up and said, it wasn't, no, but, you know, people were, you know, challenging the leadership on, on certain issues and, you know, there must be other ways. It can't be this bad. And it was some sort of, you know, discussion or debate about, you know, the leadership and, but, you know, that was ironed out, and we realized, I think people were really terrified that they, with the idea, that now we have to go out and strike. This is the next move. It is a strike. And people, you know, you thought about it, but it was the next morning.

This was a Sunday night, and the next morning, you were supposed to get up and go on a picket line. And you've never done that before in your life. And, you know, this was when you were going to walk out of your classroom and turn your 00:42:00back on everything. And people were very, you know, a lot of them were very hesitant.

Others were, I think there must've been a quorum of about, you know, 200 people that weren't, that were, you know, ready to support. But the rest of us, you know, were anxious about the, about the decision to go out and strike. And after we voted to go out on strike, I just remember, there was just sort of this silence.

LS: You voted to go out and strike even though you were anxious about it.

BS: Uh-huh.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: Because we just thought that there was no other way.

LS: It was a fairly, what, how big a margin, do you remember?

BS: No, now I don't remember.

LS: But enough to --

BS: But enough to convince, yeah, but I think we were convinced that we were all going out on strike no matter what the strike vote was, that we were all going to support the strike.

LS: Oh, I see, uh-huh.

BS: I mean, that, there wasn't any question that, you know, like 200 of us were going to show up the next day. You know, there was a solidarity, you already felt the solidarity. If we voted, you know, I knew that even if I voted no, that I would've gone out.

LS: Yes.

BS: I voted to go out. I actually voted to go out. But I think it was a substantial, I'm sure, you know, this is all probably in the, in the TAA files or somewhere. It must be maybe you can go and look it up. But I, these are--

BS: There wasn't any question that, you know, like 200 of us were going to show up the next day. You know, there was a solidarity, you already felt the solidarity. If we voted, you know, I knew that even if I voted no, that I would've gone out.

LS: Yes.

BS: I voted to go out. I actually voted to go out. But I think it was a substantial, I'm sure, you know, this is all probably in the, in the TAA files or somewhere. It must be maybe you can go and look it up. But I, these are the kinds of things I just don't remember.

LS: How long did the meeting last about?

BS: Oh, it was very, it lasted very late. It started, it must've started about 9:00 and I don't think we got home until about 1:30. So it was a very, you know 00:44:00late because the bargaining team didn't come back until late. It was, and the next morning, it was --

LS: Now that was Sunday night, wasn't it?

BS: It was a Sunday night. The next morning, I had the, I was a picket captain. I remember, I had to be picketing at 8:00 a.m., or quarter to 8:00 in front of Ag Hall. And I remember, you know, just getting up in the morning, like getting up just terrified. Not, you know, not knowing what was, I was convinced I was going to be arrested immediately because we knew it was illegal.

LS: Oh, I see.

BS: It was an illegal, I mean, this was sort of like the first time that I'm doing something illegal.

LS: That's right. One forgets from this viewpoint, but you wouldn't have known that these things weren't going to happen to you.

BS: Yeah. Well, I just, because that had been stressed that, you know, they could get an injunction. I mean, we were very well informed about all the things that could happen to us before we went out. I always admired the organization. We had a little booklet as the picket captain of what to do in, you know, in different cases of what might happen, and, you know.

LS: Do you think this might've actually fired you up, I mean, made it more exciting in a way?

BS: I think so. I'm not, it seemed my impression --

LS: I mean, if they had said actually you're not going to come to any trouble. It's all --

BS: I remember the thing that encouraged me was that as I was hiking over to Ag Hall, I learned that the campus buses weren't running and that we had, this seemed to me to, to say, okay, you're a real strike.

LS: Yeah.

BS: And the bus drivers are supporting you. It's okay. And there were a lot of people going, you know, trying to get to their offices, that were very angry because their buses hadn't been there. And people from Lot 60 were walking in, and we, all the people showed up for my picket line, and we started marching around in a circle, and everything was okay.

LS: Now at Ag Hall, you probably didn't have much sympathy for --

BS: No, we didn't. That was, we rotated around. I was at Van Heise the, after that.

LS: Oh, I see.

BS: I think it was, there weren't too many classes in there. The thing is, though there were a lot of, you know, the clerical workers going in, and you didn't expect support.

LS: You weren't trying to stop them were you?

BS: Because at that point -- no, we were just, you know, trying to educate and tell them what the strike, we asked everybody for the support, don't cross the 00:46:00picket line.

LS: Oh, you did? I see.

BS: Yeah, and I also remember, this makes me think of the fact that we were trying, there was talk of trying to unite with the University workers, at that point, and trying to get their support and begin organizing, you know, and try to get sympathy and get the, you know, the I don't know if it's Local 104, whatever, I forget the number, the University Union to go out and support.

LS: But they didn't.

BS: Well, see, we also, we thought it was sort of ironic to expect the people that have to, you know, clean up the floors in the TAA offices and clean up after us to all of a sudden, you know, walk out, and there had been such a split between the academic and the, you know, janitorial staff, and now all of a sudden, we should expect them to, you know, walk out on a strike. You know, so the elitism that had always been there was all of a sudden going to dissolve, and I --

LS: So you weren't surprised when they didn't.

BS: No, but there were a few, we didn't get much support at Ag, but there weren't too many classes. At Van Hise, you know, it was fun picketing because 00:47:00there weren't many people crossing the picket lines. Of course, the people that were crossing were in many cases your fellow, you know, students and -- I remember too, at one meeting, when we were talking about different tactics of the strike and how to convince students not to go to their classes and whether, you know, we were talking about the fact that students are not our enemy. You know, the TAs, the faculty, you know, the people that are teaching, and the people that are trying to take over your classes are really the, you know, we're not fighting the students.

LS: Yeah.

BS: And it's very difficult if, you know, we started, you know, in a sense being antagonistic toward the students because they were the ones crossing the picket lines. But a lot of the TAs had thought prior to the strike that they could continue to go to their graduate classes because it just hadn't occurred to them that, you know, they couldn't go in the building to go to their own classes, and that was another, you know, sort of barrier to get over, realizing not only were you not going to teach your classes, you weren't going to go to any of your graduate courses.

LS: You knew this presumably because you were --

BS: Yeah, I mean, you know, but a lot of people -- what do you mean? You know, it just hadn't occurred to them, and that was another thing. It just sort of, you know, horror of horrors. You know, I'm going to miss my class, and what's going to happen to my grades. And, you know, but how can you expect, how can you stand on a picket line and tell students not to go to their classes and then turn around and go to you own? So that was, there were a number of things like that, that sort of --

LS: Do you, do you, uh, were you aware that Nathan [Feitzinger?] was asked to mediate at, eventually? You didn't, it wasn't shared among the members.

BS: It might've been. The name is familiar, but I don't, as I say, I think my mind has been sort of, I've gotten it mixed up with things that have happened with the TAA, you know, more recently and the names. The name is familiar, but I didn't remember --

LS: Well, he's in the Law School and is, and did mediate, and evidently the TAA 00:49:00leadership asked him to because Neil wasn't talking to him. And I guess he was --

BS: I don't remember that being announced.

LS: I don't know how influential he was in actually solving it, but he was, it was rather an issue because I'm not sure the faculty really wanted a mediator since on the whole, it worked on the TAs side.

BS: As I said, the name is familiar, but I don't connect it with the strike.

LS: Well, you said at the beginning, that this was the beginning of your awareness of the, of the women's movement and that sort of thing. And also, evidently, you went on being a TA.

BS: Uh-huh.

LS: So do you remember how that process --

BS: I remember, all, I remember, of course, we had Cambodia right after that, right after the TAA strike. We went back in, and then May came, and there was 00:50:00another [word unclear] shut the University down again. And at that point, I realized that, you know, I was, it was a wider issue, that other things were involved, the role of the University in the, you know, the war and things like that. And it was really, you know, I realized that I had become more radical. I don't know how radical, but I wouldn't go teach my classes during Cambodia.

I went to meetings on campus. I, you know, I didn't run, I didn't follow the crowds in the streets, but I did go out into the community and talk to people about, you know, the war. So I, from the TAA strike, I got involved in the antiwar movement. Again, not in any violence because I hadn't gotten that far. I hadn't gotten into the, you know, destruction of property or anything like that. But I then left for France for the summer. I had an assistantship in France the following year, so I left right after that semester.

I remember the first thing I heard about when I got to France was on-the-map research. That was that August. And that, I started reading. I started reading a 00:51:00lot of the, you know, basic books, the, you know, I read Simone de Bouvier, I read Kate Millett, and when I came back the following summer, I, you know, I remember meeting, Jo Ann came to the airport, and I said, Jo Ann, all these things I've been thinking about, you know, they were right, you know. And I think it was, I had a year to sort of think about things and do a lot of reading when I was away from this campus for a year.

LS: It wasn't, it wasn't the atmosphere in France that influenced you. It was already starting. It just hadn't had, were your, were your parents, uh, following you along all this time?

BS: My parents would always get concerned when they'd hear of Madison on the news. And my -- the first thing they heard about was the Peter Pan, when I was up here, was the Peter Pan, the nudity on stage, and that was the first thing they ever called me about --

LS: Oh, yes.

BS: -- while I was here, and, um, I -- my father is a, you know, college 00:52:00professor, and the way, he would listen to me when I would call him about why I was going on strike and seemed to support that, you know, it was for quality of education, which he's for. He wasn't, I never really explained all of the issues, and sort of --

LS: I meant to ask you how you felt about the planning issue, whether you felt that that was the most important.

BS: I thought that was important. I thought it was important, yeah.

LS: So you were very disappointed when it --

BS: Yeah, disappointed, yeah.

LS: And did the French Department make any, any effort to --

BS: We, see, we didn't have the problems that the other, the departments had. We always had, the way the structure is in the French Department, we really are the teachers. There's not the same thing where you're TA-ing for somebody. There were a couple courses that were structured where like you were really, you know, a lackey to a professor and having to do, you know, just grading papers or doing quiz sections. But we handled the first year courses.

The faculty, that was when we had a lot of graduate students, and they were teaching the upper level and the graduate courses and were happy not to teach 00:53:00first-year French. And this was obviously where, it was the best place for us to be trained and the easiest courses to teach when we were studying. We wouldn't want to teach literature because it's, you know, preparation's a lot more difficult.

LS: Yeah.

BS: So we had, in a sense, control of those courses just because we were the only ones teaching in them. And, uh, there were, you know, this is not --

LS: But you were allowed to use your own methods, which --

BS: Well, that's not quite, there was, you know, one, one of the first-year courses, um, we had pretty much, yeah, we could use our own, what we wanted to do in the classroom. There was guidelines from the faculty. You know, there was a faculty, you know, chair for each course, and there was a specific method being used in the first-year program. But you were in the classroom with your students.

There were faculty, the faculty still prepared the exams, and then, I guess, in a way, that there were more things coming to mind that bothered us at the time. Now things are ironed out, as I said before. But there were -- the exams were prepared by the faculty, departmental exams, and, but, oh, and the other thing 00:54:00that used to bother us was we could be visited at any time without prior notice. We would have a visit, you know, that would go down in our record without --

LS: Did you ever have them?

BS: I, yeah, at the beginning of the year, the chair of the course came in and sat, just for about 15 minutes.

LS: But don't you think that was a good idea?

BS: I think it's an excellent idea, but I, since we get 24, they tell us the day before now.

LS: Yeah.

BS: No, I think, and it's very constructive in the French Department. The teacher-training program is excellent. We have a course, and we don't have any problems that way. But even now, the TAs there are regular teachers and have that identity, you know. And pretty, as I said, plan the courses too, we do what we want in the courses, and you really, in a way, it's sort of strange. I suppose we feel that the, as far as educational planning with student involvement, you want the students to tell you what they want as far as the 00:55:00kinds of courses they want taught, but the students aren't versed in foreign language teaching methods.

And so therefore, you feel this sort of input on the committee from the students is not going to be that, I mean, they have a right to be there. But on the other hand, until you've been trained in the methodology of teaching, you know, you really, it's hard to plan a course. I mean, that's sounding again like from the other side of the question.

LS: No, no, I, you're quite logical.

BS: I think we had different, a different policy. But it was important, I thought that TAs should have because they were so involved with undergraduate education, should have, you know, direct input and voting power on committees, you know, in the courses they were teaching. And students too, I mean, by analogy, too should be included. And the year after the strike, there was an effort to get student involvement. But since then, it's decreased. And students have not been as vocal.

LS: So you came back all fired up and then what happened?

BS: Well, I was still teaching here, and, um, well, I think, I'm trying to think of what I had been involved in.

LS: There was a, there was either one or two women in the, as who were officials of the TAA in the early '70s.

BS: But one of them is in the French Department, Karen Gorder. Do you have Karen Gorder's name?

LS: I, I --

BS: That's in recent, I think that's two years ago that Karen -- Phyllis [Carr?] was also in the French Department.

LS: Yes, she was one of them as a [words unclear]. And I rather understood that there was a, that the TAA declined during that period not necessarily because they were in charge. Is that there was this --

BS: I have that feeling --

LS: -- that there was a split?

BS: I have a feeling that once the very powerful, very competent leadership was gone, there was a general decline in -- we didn't seem, once we had the 00:57:00contract, I think everything, everything changed. There was less interest again. Membership dropped off. And now it's very hard to get the TAs going again because they have certain, they've always, the ones that have come in have always had certain rights because of the contract, that we didn't have when we went out on strike.

LS: Yeah, sure.

BS: I mean, even they have a contract, they have a grievance procedure. It might not be the best, but we didn't have any of those things. And it seemed a lot more important to go out. Now you just can't get, it seems like watching what's happened, I have not been a TA this past year, so I've just sort of followed what happened but was not involved in it. But they just cannot seem to get the support they need to, to, um -- plus, you know, the issues just don't seem as important.

LS: Well, things are very different now.

BS: Yeah.

LS: Many things.

BS: I mean, just, you know, they're going out on three or four issues, it seemed, you know, like they're talking about they're going to go out on strike because of like the difference between 21 or 19 in the class or a little bit better grievance procedure or, you know, salary, or and again, educational 00:58:00planning. But it's almost like we went out and had everything, everything to gain because we didn't have anything, whereas, now they have a basis.

But there was a whole period, you're right, where the TAA was very inactive and I don't think the leadership was not as, um, I don't know what the right word is. I want to say competent, but perhaps that's the word. But I think the issues weren't there either. It was always a matter of getting a slightly better contract and moving just a little bit. But you just couldn't get the momentum. And there's been a lot of retrenchment on all. People are more worried about their careers now and --

LS: Well, that's what I meant by saying so many things had changed.

BS: Yeah, yeah.

LS: It would be hard to get the same sort of spirit.

BS: Now that the war is over too now, and it's --

LS: Yeah.

BS: That's another thing, you know, you just don't have the momentum from, you know, of activities going on.

LS: But you didn't become active in the TAA in those years, did you?

BS: No, huh-uh. I think, um, at one point, I thought about the possibility of being a steward but just didn't want to put the time into it.

LS: Huh.

BS: I was, I believe I was asked, but I decided that, you know, I didn't want to do that.

LS: And did you get into any [word unclear] women's movement of any kind

BS: Oh, yeah, I mean, just out of, I mean, I follow the things that are, I followed the whole development of the women's studies program here. And I was a member of the, when I, for two years, I was a lecturer. I ran the French House.

LS: Oh.

BS: That was after my TA contract was over. I became a faculty member here, and, um --

LS: You ran the French House.

BS: Yeah, I was director of the French House for two years. And then --

LS: It's still functioning, is it?

BS: Yes.

LS: In spite of --

BS: Yeah, it's still --

LS: I think so many things have changed, it's surprising to hear that it's --

BS: I saw you turn, you talked to [Jermain Merciet?] at one point.

LS: Yes, Donna Taylor did.

BS: She, um, what was I going to say? Oh, when I was under the Association of Faculty Women, which has been involved with affirmative action and was involved in the Joan Roberts dispute. Just, I was in her course, the semester she was up for tenure, and the tenure decision, you know, followed that.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: Demonstrated when, you know, whenever there were demonstrations. So that's the issue that --

LS: You felt she should've been kept on.

BS: Excuse me?

LS: You felt she should've been kept on.

BS: I felt that the standards were not applied equitably, that if they applied the same standards, you know, if you're going to have, you know, an equitable, if you're going to --

LS: Either a lot of other people shouldn't have been hired, or she should've --

BS: Right, exactly, or she should've, but I also realized that, uh, when you come right down to it, tenure decisions are based on whether the faculty feels they want to have the person as a colleague, you know, that that's important. 01:01:00And I think, I mean, I think that's what, that's one of the prime factors involved, and that they can rationalize keeping someone, that doesn't have such a good record publishing or teaching if they really want that person, and they can not give tenure to someone who's got the best record in the world because they, they don't want that person.

LS: Do you have cases you can cite of that?

BS: Well, it's just a, just from everything I've looked at, you know, since Joan's thing, just sort of looked at the credentials and realized, you know, as far as what's happened within the French Department as far as -- I had the feeling as far as the Divisional Committee is concerned, you have to have a certain minimum to get the person through. But if the department is strongly behind someone, they will get through unless, you know, they're just, there's just no more room for tenured faculty, which seems to be the case right now. But I, I just know that when Joan's case came up, we looked at the credentials of 01:02:00everybody in educational policy studies, and there were a few people that had been promoted on less, a lot less publication.

But I had the feeling with that that they just, that the male faculty did not recognize the kind of research she was doing as scholarly. And specifically, she was interviewing, she had interviews with women going through change -- I don't want to say changes of life, but having problems making decisions about their careers. And she was going to write, she had over 300 interviews, 350-something, and she was going to do an article on this. And they didn't recognize that as scholarly research, you know, interviewing women and --

LS: Did she ever do it, do you know?

BS: Well, I think that was a problem. She was, you know, she was one of the few women working in women's studies, and she was, there were so many students that she was working with that she never really had the time to, to get all of her publications. She had a lot of things that were in process and, you know, 01:03:00submitted for publication that had not come out in print. And that was a problem during her tenure decision.

LS: Do you know whether since then she has?

BS: She, her books are coming out. Since she left here, she's gotten, buckled down, and I think she's felt she has to prove that, you know, she will be a scholar

LS: It's quite an incentive, yes.

BS: Yeah.

LS: To [words unclear]

BS: Yeah, yeah, her court case, you know, if the books do come out. But it just seemed that a lot, for example, the, the book that she wrote, that was, is sort of the classic in the field on urban education, they didn't want to count that because it came out in paperback when she was here, but it had been published prior to coming, so that couldn't count in her favor and things like that, which I thought were, you're looking at the person as a whole, and what that person has done.

And it seems strange that they, they found a reason for disregarding everything she was doing. She had done anthologies of women writers and articles by women with introductions, but they felt that that, of course, wasn't substantive. And that was the problem. It just seemed like everything she did, there was a 01:04:00problem with it. Although, there was quite a lot of work that she had done. That's probably --

LS: Well, no, I'm amazed at how long this is going on.

BS: -- vis-à-vis the University.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: Not so much the TAA. And, you know, the daycare thing is, you know, there are things that are still called specifically women's issues, although that's, you know, they're everybody's issues. So you still, they still have the women's caucus, and -- but I think that's because it's necessary because the University had not accepted the full equality of women, obviously.

LS: Yeah.

BS: So, but I haven't been to meetings or anything this year. Now that I've come back, and I'm a TA, I'm so tied up with my thesis, that I haven't gotten involved in any activity at all.

LS: Well, I was going to ask you, have you talk about what it's like or how it 01:05:00has changed, being a graduate student. I don't know, well, also about the department, the French Department.

BS: Well, everything, the French Department seems so terribly relaxed to me now compared to what it was like when I first got here, when everyone was, um, moving along at the pace set up by the University in a sense. You know, we had the Ford track, which was, you had four years to get through, and you had all these very bright students, who were very ambitious. And they were just, you know, plowing through and --

LS: This was for the graduate students?

BS: The graduate students. And now I have the feeling that everyone is just going along at their own pace. And the faculty is terribly relaxed, other than the fact that there are fewer and fewer students. And that makes people nervous. But the faculty has now dropped back down into undergraduate education and even beginning language because there are so few graduate students. But I know, myself, the effect that the strike had on me, once I had realized that, um, I 01:06:00could set up my own schedule for doing things.

There's something about having walked out on classes for a month and still manage to get through, I realized that I didn't have to abide by their schedule, and everything was going to be all right. And I relaxed quite a bit about my own education. And it's a whole pacing, and I know people now are just, in a way I think it's related to the job market though. People are not in a hurry to get through because there's no reason, you know, to be --

LS: Yeah, was the French Department on this Ford program of support for graduate students?

BS: Yes. And I don't believe there's much --

LS: That started in 1972.

BS: Yeah, that's stopped. There's no money, yeah, available now, but that was the big thing. You were on or off track depending on how long --

LS: Yeah, you had to be in order to get that money.

BS: To get the money, right, which was four years. It was a four-year program, which works very fine for, I suppose, some of the sciences and, but for students 01:07:00that have to take a year off to go to France, or even longer, then it was very difficult to get through. Very few people, I think, qualified for it.

LS: Well, how is, how are people getting money now?

BS: Well, fortunately, I have no explanation for this, enrollment is up now, undergraduate enrollment in French. And I see this, you know, as a way, as a sort of return to conservativism and elitism because maybe this is a naïve way of looking at it, but French was the major language. And then when we were going through all of the war years, we sort of became aware that there were other languages, and I think Spanish picked up quite a bit because of the consciousness of, you know, the Spanish-speaking peoples here.

But now all of a sudden, French is way back up, and it's old-style education, and we have just tremendous enrollment. So most of the people still in Madison are, I'm on sixth-year support now because I had used up four and a half years, and this is my, this'll be, you know, starting the sixth year of support.

LS: Well, when you say sixth-year support, what do you mean?

BS: Well, that means, in the contract, we're assured four years. Now the French Department has a commitment beyond the contract to provide if enrollment is up, a fifth year. In other words, you won't get knocked off. You know, you'll get your fifth year of support. Now there's, the enrollment is so high, that they're hiring people that are in their sixth year, only those that are near finishing. They're not hiring people that are around Madison. There are a lot of people that are, live here, they're married, you know, and this is where they live.

And they probably won't finish or not any time soon. So they're not really committed to keeping those people on the payroll. But most of the -- plus we've had a few French students to come over who lived at the French House for a year. They were the ones that were in charge of, you know, sort of keeping up the French on the halls. They're sort of like resident hall directors. And one of those has stayed on because she likes it here. She's getting a degree, and she's being supported. And she's not even studying French. So that shows that there is 01:09:00a --

LS: Well, where does the money come from?

BS: Just the teaching assistant, the budget.

LS: Oh, I see.

BS: The budget, the regular budget. Now I don't know how much there is. There are a few University fellowships that we get. Money is down from any kind of exchange. Some students, you know, there are a few positions you can even apply still for like the Fulbright Program, teaching in France, but I think it's just --

LS: Is that the money you had for going to France, a Fulbright, or --

BS: The Fulbright was before I came to Wisconsin. I had a Fulbright, and the second year, there is an exchange program. Because we bring two people from France every year and guarantee them the positions in the French House, they automatically accept one of our graduate students, they'll place someone in a lycée in France for a year. So the second year I went over, that was the year after the strike, I was teaching in a, well, actually in college in France.

LS: In Paris?

BS: No, I was Clarmont-Ferrand, which is in the center of France. I had, I didn't want to go to Paris because I knew that if I went elsewhere, I'd get more 01:10:00of a taste of provincial French life and there'd be fewer, you know, Americans. Because, I don't know, I just wanted to get out of the provinces. But I'm not sure exactly how much money is fellowship and how much is TA, but I know we have a lot of TA-ships available here and few graduates students. I guess the contrast is that there are fewer people. That's why it seems like, I'm sure in sheer numbers of students, there's probably not as much as the heydays in the '60s. But because there are fewer graduate students coming in, it goes around further.

LS: And a higher proportion, therefore, of TAs.

BS: Yeah, yeah, in fact, it was so high last semester that I had halftime, which, you know, normally they've been third-time appointments. So I had a section and a half because they just didn't have enough people to teach. The chairman was dragging people off the street, I mean, calling up all the people that he knew in town trying to find people to teach.

LS: And this was all for beginning of first-year, second-year French?

BS: It was the language, the language. The other, no, I have to qualify that too 01:11:00and say that we've lost, a lot of faculty are away for one reason or another this year too. That's the other problem. It's compounded by the fact that one of our faculty members is doing the junior-year program, Alex Croft just died. Someone's just been assigned to, given a grant to the Institute, things like that. So there's enough money, and I think the dean has been very generous with teaching assistants this year because he doesn't have so many faculty salaries to pay in the French Department. So we're doing fine.

LS: And you're teaching, this year, you're teaching what beginning class?

BS: I'm teaching third-semester French, which is the beginning of the second year, which is a change because I'd only taught, well, mostly, I had taught first year. But --

LS: And you never get a chance to teach a literature course.

BS: We used to. When, when I first came, those that were past prelims and were, if their enrollment was big enough, if they needed people, they would be allowed to teach a beginning literature course. Now there are some undergraduate, there are some graduate students, teaching assistants, teaching, well, one woman is 01:12:00teaching a women's course because she's the only one, well, not the only one, one of the few qualified to do that. She's teaching in translation, French women writers in translation.

LS: Oh.

BS: I mean, qualified in a sense that it's from a feminist perspective.

LS: Yeah, and they allow that.

BS: The male faculty has been very hesitant to get in on the so-called women's thing in our department. That might be interesting to talk about that, the impact of women's studies in the French Department.

LS: Well, that's all part of your dissertation too, isn't t?

BS: Yeah, yeah. Well, my dissertation is on, I've taken the best, a sampling of the best histories of French literature, and I'm looking at criticism on them in writers, so it's in a sense applying a feminist critical perspective to literary history and criticizing it, first of all, from --

LS: Criticizing French women writers?

BS: No, criticizing what men have said about the French women writers.

LS: Yeah, that --

BS: That's just one aspect of it, sort of getting all of the negative stereotypes out of the way so you can then explore the women as they really are 01:13:00once you've, you know, alleviated the bias. But we've had, it's the same. We have a lot of radical, very radical women feminists in the department. We're just lucky. There's, it might have something to do with the fact, I don't know why the women are so, you know, so, so feminist in the French Department, but a great many of them are.

LS: Do you think they're more so than Spanish or German?

BS: I don't know. See, I've never thought about it. But we do have quite a few. And when the women's studies thing was going through, a lot of people were involved in that and tried to immediately set up courses in the French Department. And this semester, we have, well, actually there are three sections of French women writers in translation, and there are two women TAs that are working in that.

We have one of the faculty members is giving a poetry course just on women poets. And we've had, I guess, ever since, well, for the last two years, two 01:14:00women's courses every semester. And the faculty has, the male faculty has sort of just admitted, you know, to the fact that women have been ignored and that we have to study them, but they have assumed that this was the job of the women.

Although, that's not necessarily true. If you think about it, a specialist in 17th century, who was a male, knows the women of the 17th century as well or better as a woman who happens to be in the 20th century.

LS: Yeah, that's right, yeah.

BS: But the problems with perspective, and also at the point we were in women's studies, women students, mostly the students are women, are tired of hearing men talk about women. I hope this won't always --

LS: Most of the students are women, did you say?

BS: Yes.

LS: Your undergraduates, or your graduates?

BS: Undergraduates, not in basic language courses, but the ones that sign up for the women's courses.

LS: Oh, I see, yes, of course.

BS: Yeah, yeah, but, no, even in general numbers, the graduate students, French 01:15:00has always been a, you know, women's domain. There have been men, but many more women. And that's why it always looks funny when you look at the faculty. It's all men except for a few because it's completely reversed in the classroom situation. But the men -- you know, and it's the same, some of them are very supportive. Others, you know, you think that they're sort of stepping back and sort of let the thing run its course, you know.

I don't know whether, how long it will be before feminism has sort of operated its, the way, or achieved its purpose so that we can reintegrate. I'm not a separatist. I think we have to reintegrate your program. But for the time, it's like two separate, two separate studies. You know, you do women's studies, or you do men's studies, I guess, which is what we've all done. But, um, our women's courses are full, which is nice. We're attracting, I guess what the department likes about the translation courses, we attract students. It builds 01:16:00up the department's enrollment --

LS: Yes, I can imagine that, yeah.

BS: -- yes, I can imagine that, yeah, yeah, with the literature and translation, so that's nice.

LS: So if you have so many women graduate students, and they're all, most of them, are they doing, are their dissertations, do they have to do with the, with the feminist movement, so --

BS: A lot of them, again, I think it's, um, it's about half and half. And it depends on the person's commitment. Those of us that, you know, have a feminist perspective, have gone into that in a thesis. But a lot of people are just doing a, I don't know what to call it, a straight, a standard thesis, you know, which is good too. Because, you know, you're -- and in a sense, it's  I don't think anybody nowadays picks their topic in order to be shrewd as far as, you know, if you're getting a job, however, I think it would be more shrewd to do old-style scholarship than to do something with a feminist perspective if you're looking 01:17:00for a job other than in women's studies.

And that's one of the things that concerns me because my, I'm, I started out as a medievalist. And then I realized that, that being a medieval scholar entails a type of education that I never had, a strong classical background and knowing German and Latin if I was going to do serious research in medieval studies. And I wasn't going to go back and pick all that up. So I got out of that, and I was sort of looking around for a thesis topic. And I was going to do something with pedagogy because I had done a lot with language teaching and training in the department. But then they didn't want to accept that.

They wanted me to work in education. They were a literature-oriented department. So I turned out to be, you know, that they accepted this thing on women writers in histories of literature. It goes across the centuries. It's not in my specialization, but it's a topic I've had approved. But on my vita now, the work 01:18:00I've been doing in the last couple years is all very explicitly feminist, and I don't know that, if that is affecting in one way or another my being hired or interviewed for jobs. Because I know there are a lot of women that are working, but there can only be so many spots to be filled.

LS: Yeah, especially since they probably still take at least half men in every department.

BS: Right, right.

LS: You said that you, because you are working on that kind of topic, had to have Mrs. Cassidy as your advisor.

BS: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, Mrs. Cassidy is, um, I'm not sure when we started out with this women's study stuff in the department, it was sort of like all of the women were automatically experts in women's studies just because they were women, which was kind of -- it was sort of when we set up the Women's Studies Committee in the French Department, it was the women faculty, which means not very many people. But it was Mrs. Cassidy, Mrs. Culkins was gone. I keep saying Mrs., Janet Culkins, Helene Cassidy. Of course, I would never call 01:19:00Mrs. Cassidy, anything other than Mrs. Cassidy. But she was the one that sort of moved into take charge.

LS: What is her first name, did you say?

BS: Helene, it's --

LS: Okay.

BS: Yeah, and she, I think she was, for a very long time, she was refused a full professorship way beyond the time. She was kept assistant professor. I don't know what the dates are, but I know that she was one of the ones that suffered very greatly from the male dominated faculty in the earlier, you know, before I even came. She was kept out. She was not promoted from assistant to associate for a very long time. She, you know, had a very difficult time, and it was only four years ago, three or four years ago that she was finally promoted to full professor.

LS: Even though you say she's already how old?

BS: She's near retirement. She's, she will be, she's retiring, I think she's 61 or 62. She's, you know, will probably be retiring because she's very ill right 01:20:00now. But, um, it was just, as I say, it was just ludicrous. She was one example of the faculty, because they disliked her, and it was related, it was definitely related to the fact that she was a woman. They kept saying that it was because of her husband, who is in the English Department, you know, the nepotism thing. But I don't believe that had anything to do with it at all. But finally --

LS: They didn't keep him down presumably.

BS: No, exactly, and so she suffered a great deal. But I think when the department, um, opened up to women's studies, I believe she saw this as an area in which she could finally operate without being challenged anymore. She's an 18th century person, but there's also a male faculty member, Mr. Perkins, who operates in this. This is one domain in which, you know, she can be the [douin?] as we say in French, the one that is the highest one on the --

LS: Has she written and has she done research?

BS: She, not in women's, she's most of the research she's done has been in the 18th century. However, right now, she's viewing, she had, she did do a course on 01:21:0018th century women writers. That was one of the first ones that was, that was given. But it was just in her field.

LS: I was just wondering if that would be a reason they would have given for not promoting her, that she hadn't published --

BS: No, but see, that -- no, no, she had a sufficient publication. I don't know what all the reasons were, but, well, she didn't have a lot. I don't think she's, she did write a book I believe. But I don't know, not a great deal of publication, but compared to some of the people in the department. But now, she's writing a --

LS: So you could, yeah --

BS: She's writing, um, a short, one of -- there's a group of women [word unclear] in the French Department putting out an anthology of women writers, women writers that have never been considered, sort of to combat the exclusion from other things. And Cassidy is writing several sections for that on the 18th century women. So she is technically, you know, she does work in women's 01:22:00studies, but her primary specialization is 18th century.

But I don't feel that she has, she's a, in a sense, a feminist in the sense that I think -- I use the term feminist to mean anyone that's concerned over women's oppression. There are varying degrees of being, you know, she's sensitized to the issue. However, Mrs. Cassidy still believes very strongly. I wouldn't classify her as radical, whereas, I classify myself as radical, in that she believes in a certain, certain values and a certain hierarchy, which I don't accept anymore relating to power and authority as far as -- which I see as male values.

LS: In literature or in the University.

BS: Well, in literature and in university, now it might have something to do with the fact that she, um, had to work so hard to get where she is as full professor, and I, you know, question any kind of -- I, myself, would question any kind of distinction, any kind of ranks, you know. And so that's where we're 01:23:00very different. And some of, some parts of my thesis are radical. They're not just feminist. And they're they parts that we're in disagreement over.

LS: Well, why don't you say, describe that, what the problem has been.

BS: Well, um, the problem is that I, there's one section, she's very much in agreement when I'm quoting, I have, you know, chapters of horrendous quotes, what the men have said about the women, and I've presented an image of each major woman, major, that's their vocabulary again, but major woman writer, how she comes across in this histories, which is, in fact, the image that is given to all people learning about, all French children learning in the schools because these are some of the, the texts that are used in the school system. So it's what everyone is fed in France about women writers.

Now she's very much in accordance with that. But the chapter in which I deal with the underlying assumptions, I'm using French feminist critical theory now, 01:24:00which is talking about the fact that western culture, the patterns of thought in western culture are all dualistic. And they're based on an opposition between male/female, and it, there is a certain authority that the critic just, the critic is male. And the way people, the way you write about women, the very tone and the structures of the language you're using sort of, some of the patterns of oppression are imbedded in that language.

And I'm trying, I, what I'm concentrating on is showing that, which is very interesting, the French have a love affair, the French critic, literary historian has a love affair with the 17th century and the type of literature, great classical literature and the style and form that goes along with that, which is described as, you know, the most precise, the clearest, um, most 01:25:00rational type of writing, and they, for a very long time, especially in the beginning of the 20th century, the historians disliked romanticism intensely, and it was always pitted as the obviously, the opposite of classicism in France. Now when you look at the way they write about men and the way they write about women, it's the same thing.

When they talk about male writing, they describe it as classical. When they talk about women's writing, it comes across as the same characteristics as romanticism. So what I'm trying to show is that this opposition between classicism and romanticism, which is the way all French literature, literary history has been written, is what is keeping women down. Because when they think classic/romantic, I mean they don't think it consciously, it's male/female.

And she doesn't want me to take the step from classic/romantic to male/female, and what she has difficulty dealing with, there's a whole section, which I describe the context of the, um, the cours de literature. They were the, you 01:26:00know, the literature courses, which were the basis for the histories that were written later. And you have a group of men, um, sitting at the feet of the great master. And the way I describe it, she, she gets put off by I because she feels it's strident, that it's very obvious to her that I am a woman writing about these men.

And she doesn't like hearing the woman's voice, which, to me, is another point to be made, the fact that in certain types of writing, when you're writing a dissertation, you're supposed to be writing in a classical style with classical methods of research that came out of especially in France, the same people that I'm criticizing.

And anything that would be strident, that would fit in very well with the way the women are accused of writing, so that's my argument. If it sounds strident, so much the better because it proves that there are certain ways that you're not supposed to write. Although, I don't think it's strident. I think the men are strident. But it's just one section that she disagrees with.

LS: Has she finally accepted it?

BS: Well, she hasn't accepted it yet. I have to rewrite parts of it because, well, some of it is a little bit too repetitive. But she wants me, there are whole sections she wants me just to leave out. But I don't think I'm going to. So what it will come down to is just defending it, and the defense. And because she's accepted the rest of the thesis, she's not going to not take my thesis because of this one section.

And my viewpoint on it now, having thought over, I think when I saw you last, I was upset because I had just seen her, and she had told me she wouldn't accept it. Well, what I'm, the way I feel about it is, it is my thesis, and as long as it's well written, I have a thesis. It is my thesis, and that's what I, as long as I prove it and am consistent in my arguments, and have enough, enough to back it up, so to speak, then she can't -- she can disagree, but she can't reject it because it's a thesis.

LS: Have any of your, your fellow graduate students had trouble in their theses, theses with the, what they're defending and getting acceptance from her?

BS: Well, she, um, she's just had, recently -- she was very ill last year. She had, she now had no kidney. She's on a dialysis three times a week. So last year, she was, in the fall, no, in the spring, she was out the entire semester. So she doesn't have anyone at the point of finishing up now. She has one student that, he's a man though, and he's not anywhere near finishing, and he's in Tunis this year. But another, a good friend of mine, Diane [Crowder?], was working with her, and the problem there was, which is interesting, and I'll get this on tape.

When, um, Diane wanted -- she's working in the 20th century, but she's, again, 01:29:00it's a feminist perspective now. The person Diane felt was the most qualified to be her thesis director is Ann Cothran, who is a junior faculty member. I believe this is her third year. She's an assistant professor. The department, oh, the University accepts any legal faculty as a, as a thesis advisor. However, our department just on, they've always had someone with tenure.

It's just been the way they've done it so -- although, it's legal as far as the University is concerned, they haven't wanted that, to have any assistant professors directing. So they said they would not let Ann do it by herself. So the chair at the time suggested Diane find someone else. Well, the man that would've been the logical choice was Mr. [Ohes?], who is not very sympathetic to women's issues. And so Diane decided she didn't want to work with him, so she picked Mrs. Cassidy. Now the problem has been that, um, the kinds of critical 01:30:00approaches that Ann and Mrs. Cassidy have are diametrically opposed.

And Diane has written about three of her chapters, the theoretical part. She has to fill in sections. But for each chapter, she's gotten back from each co-director an entirely different idea about what to do with it. And it's because Diane's ideas go along better with Ann's. She's finally sort of, she went to see Mrs. Cassidy and told her that she didn't want to work with her anymore. So now the department is admitting that Ann can, in fact, direct a thesis. Now what is interesting about this is the fact that we have a junior male faculty member, who also does not have tenure, who is directing a thesis also, and no one questioned that at the time.

LS: Oh, really?

BS: But there still are, you know, things that seem unfair sometimes. So it's all take care of, but I don't believe Mrs. Cassidy has any other -- oh, yes, there is one more woman that's working with her, but I don't know what her topic 01:31:00is. I believe it's an 18th century topic. So I would assume there would not be any problem.

LS: Have you had any male reactions to your thesis yet?

BS: From men? Male, did you say male reactions?

LS: Well, yeah.

BS: Um, no, I just wasn't sure I heard you.

LS: Yeah.

BS: No, I haven't had -- I've had a good friend, who is a very well-known, well, she's now a feminist critic, but she's been working in French studies for a very long time. She's not here, but she's read sections of it, and I, you know, respect her opinion on some of the things. But what I have had as far as feedback is part of the section of the thesis I used in a paper at MLA over Christmas, and that was very well -- of course, it was again given to mostly female audience, but there were some in there.

And, um, I think the men that come to those things though have already thought 01:32:00it out and they accept what's being said. I gave it to my father to read, who is in philosophy, and he approved. So, but the paper was essentially on the same thing I was talking about, the, sort of the dualistic patterns. And because he deals in philosophy, he's used to this way of thinking. And he's already sort of thought himself, he's in the process also of thinking himself out of this, a sort of opposition-type of thinking and into other things. So it's very interesting. But, no, I haven't, um, had any real male read it. I don't know, male with a capital M, no.

LS: But in the department, you haven't had, yeah, yeah.

BS: No, I think women's studies has been accepted as a domain of endeavor, at least within the French Department, and even if they don't like it, they don't oppose it. They'll just sort of try to keep away from it. And there are, a lot 01:33:00of the faculty members are making an effort to, to use part of it and to understand it and to incorporate it. Again, and I think, I think it's because of the, the lack of graduate students.

I mean, you don't know what people's motives are, but I think anything -- they're much more concerned about the way students think about them now than they used to be when there were many, many students, and they had, could teach anything they wanted. They could offer courses and always be assured of having students. Now they try and incorporate anything that the students are interested in. They're, they meet the students' demands more than they used to.

LS: It's called voting with your feet.

BS: Right. So, but I think it's been an honest attempt in some parts to understand what's going on and see how to change their course material to incorporate women writers and also to see what could be used from the feminist perspective, not every, you know, not everyone, but some of them have been very receptive.

LS: You did say that you thought eventually this, this shouldn't exist, but do you feel at all ambiguous about it now?

BS: Well, what do you mean?

LS: Well, say proportionately, the number of French women writers and the number of French men writers, there must be a great many more, so --

BS: Oh, yeah, yeah. No, but I think you have to overemphasize in the beginning, and no one has looked at a lot of these women, so we don't know how good or how bad they are. And all of the criteria of judgment that have been used now are under question. You know, the fact of having a canon of great literature, you know, is even under question. You know, what determines taste? The selection process, you read what is available, and that's what forms taste.

So, um, no, I don't think, you know, in fact, one of the things I said in my thesis is that, you know, no amount of, you know, revision is going to give you a 50/50 split and still represent literary history. But what I meant by that was 01:35:00that when feminism has sort of achieved its purpose, then we should, everyone should have -- no, I think that what I meant before was that, um, the purpose of -- the way we're talking now, we're exaggerating the differences again between, which is what men have always done. But we're trying to do it in a positive light.

And once we have reevaluated, hopefully, we can talk about men and women as men and women, but basically as people in that we don't have to accentuate the difference because everyone will be equal. Now I don't, you know, a lot of people believe in androgyny. By that, they mean, you know, people can have human qualities now as long as androgyny doesn't become equated with male and with that male value system, it's fine. But essentially, that's, I think everything has to be reintegrated in that you can talk about, hopefully, some time in the 01:36:00future just men and women, men and women writers without meaning what you mean now when you say that.

LS: Uh-huh. Do you get together with other graduate students, women graduate students who are also working in feminist issues on campus at all?

BS: Oh, definitely, yeah, we've got a regular network of --

LS: Well, what is it?

BS: I just mean, uh, well, first of all, there's, there was a criticism, a feminist criticism collective that started, oh, four of five years ago, and it was in all of the languages, you know, and it was just women interested in feminism. And now, but out of that has grown, and it has something to do with this anthology I was talking about. A certain number of women in the French Department that are working on this anthology, plus there's a newsletter that's just come out now, that's being recognized across the country. It's called Breff, B-r-e-f-f, and it's a bulletin of research on French feminist studies.

LS: Coming out of here?

BS: Coming out of here, and it's in French. And --

LS: And who's putting it out?

BS: Christienne Makward, she's, she did have an appointment here for one semester. She had a seminar. Her husband is the chair of the African languages, and she's in Quebec for this semester, but because there were constantly in contact on various things, we share a lot of our work. And --

LS: Do you meet regularly?

BS: We don't meet regularly. It's not like there's a group. It's just that --

LS: You know who they are.

BS: Yeah, everyone knows, the work, the kind of work that everyone else is doing, and if you need to talk to somebody, you know who to go to, to talk to. And it's exciting in a way, you know, because there are things that are happening.

LS: And this is just among the languages, not, you don't take in history or --

BS: No, I know --

LS: English, do you take in English?

BS: Well, I know, for example, because of contacts, I mean, I know Annis Pratt very well. I know, you know, I know Athena [Bathrick?] in film. I know a lot of the women, Eve Beck, of course, in comp lit and German. I know who the, sort of 01:38:00the women are, working in women's studies in other languages and, um, again, if you need to talk to someone about something, you can -- plus, you know, at the MMLA and the MLA, I went to a lot of women's sectionals in all the languages, and, uh, saw what was going on. So that's very interesting.

LS: So there really isn't any, any organized --

BS: No, huh-uh.

LS: -- any group.

BS: Other than the fact that Breff is sort of the group because they meet to put the thing, and the Criticism Collective, I think, stopped, it doesn't meet anymore because everyone is off in their own field right now. But I don't know what groups meet regularly at this point. Every once in awhile, we were meeting, or last year even, if something comes up, and people have a problem, they can, they'll organize a meeting to deal, you know. I remember last year, they met a couple times.

LS: So a personnel problem, you mean, something --

BS: No, no, I mean, just, it was still, the collective was still sort of around, and people, for some reason, they decided to meet. They wanted to look at a specific problem, and we met and did that, which was sort of interesting. But then everyone's so busy, that it's hard to, to read something outside and go and discuss it, and, I think the last thing I'd want to say, which I found very interesting, I had never been to an Modern Language Association meeting before, and I went because I was giving a paper.

And I thought I might have interviews, which I didn't. But, um, I went only to the women's meetings. And I had a feeling that I was in this incredibly exciting field, that there was so much energy and vitality, and it was so much fun. But then, I realized that after two days of going to these meetings all day and seeing practically nothing but women, which is, I [words unclear] of the, what the numbers are, but certainly not what the MLA is about.

LS: Yeah, yeah.

BS: I went to the president's address the first night, and it was like being, 01:40:00you know, being thrown into a bath of, you know, cold ice water, ice cold water when I realized that, in fact, from some of the ways, well, it was Northrop Frye, who was addressing the convention, and some of the ways that he was talking, and they gave a prize out to a book, which was described in terms of, I can't think of it. I used it in my paper because it was, it had to do with my paper, you know, the way it was described, you can tell, they used something like tough minded or solid, you know, again, this, the ways of talking about, you know, male literature.

And I realized, in fact, we had not had an impact on the main course of the MLA. We're still separate. We're doing our thing in the, and there's a lot going on. But how are you going to get all of that, and this is the structure you want to change. And we're not changing it. It's still  - it's operating, you know, full course, and here we are over here doing our thing. I heard an incredibly dynamic speech about the woman's -- it was called The Woman Scholar.

And a black woman, who's an editor at Random House gave a plea for the type of 01:41:00scholarship, making scholarship humane. And I was thinking, why is she saying this to us? You know, this should be delivered before, you know, a larger group, not before the women. The women that are there are already committed.

LS: Yeah.

BS: And it was a nice speech, but it was the wrong audience. I mean, you know, you can always be fed more of this, but that's the problem is changing the mainstream. We still haven't done that.

LS: Did you speak to any of your, the men faculty whom you know about it?

BS: That went to --

LS: Yeah.

BS: Um, no I didn't. I probably should have. But --

LS: It would be interesting to know what they think.

BS: Yeah, yeah. See the thing is though, the ones that were there, like that I saw came to some of the women's things. They're the ones that were interested. I don't know how many of our faculty were actually there. I know the chair, the chairman went just because he had to interview.

LS: Uh-huh.

BS: No just because, but he was busy interviewing candidates the whole time, so 01:42:00he didn't go to very many meetings. But, well --

LS: Yeah, that's very interesting, that, the meeting.

BS: Yeah.

LS: Do you have anything else to say about what it's like being a woman graduate student on a campus? I can't think of anything to ask you, but --

BS: No, I think I feel very, in a sense very secure as a woman where I am now because of the support system that is built up here, just the contacts and the women I know in French and, um, I don't know what it's going to be like when I move into another context. You know, I --

LS: Are you applying for a job now?

BS: I'm applying for jobs. The market is just incredibly bad right now. In fact, um, I think, I've only written 11 letters, which is not nearly enough. There are two more lists that are -- MLA job lists that are coming out, one in February 01:43:00and one in April. But just out, just to give you an idea, they announced at this session that I went to, the president's session or whatever, that the job list, this booklet that goes out, there are 5,000 individual subscriptions and 2,000 department of French or, and this is all of the languages and English, subscribing to this thing.

And there aren't, there just aren't that many jobs listed in the thing. So you figure, you've got a potential 10, at least 10,000 people looking at this thing. And perhaps, you know, a couple hundred jobs that are listed combining all of the, of course, I don't know how many are listed in English. Maybe it's slightly more, but, you know, the one job was announced here. For each job that's announced, they've got between 200 and 500 applicants.

So it's just, I don't know what it is that makes your name come out on top. And the thing is, they're very, you know, my friend, I have a friend at Dickenson College in Pennsylvania, who was sitting on a committee and seeing some, and she 01:44:00says it's just unbelievable the qualifications of the people. Everybody is excellent.

LS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BS: And there's no, you know, unless, I really think then, going back to the system, you have to know somebody, somebody that'll say, you know, look at this one in particular. I know this person.

LS: Do you feel you have any advantage from being a woman?

BS: Not anymore, not really. Um, because I, I think they're getting away from that. I think they really are hiring the most qualified person. Women are being considered. But I think a lot of hiring of women has gone on so that they, you know, if they're on a quota system, they probably manage to fill their quota.

I'm not sure about that, but it seems like women are getting interviews. But that -- and one of the things I noticed, which seems in a way surprising, is a lot of men get letters back saying that they're excellent candidates, however, they're going to hire a woman. Now I don't know if that's just, why they're saying that, but it's created a great deal of hostility about affirmative action. And I don't know that it's necessary.

LS: Oh, I bet it is.

BS: Yeah, I don't know exactly -- I'm not too up on affirmative action, where, you know, what's going on with that, but there are so many qualified people, it's hard to say how sex enters into the consideration these days.

LS: Well, um, talk about the French House a bit.

BS: Oh, the French House. That's one of the bleaker moments [Laughs.]. No, the thing that happened with the French House, you interviewed Jermain Merciet.

LS: Yes.

BS: Um, before I came in '72, '72-'73, there had also been graduate students running it. So prior to, two years prior to me, they had already sort of switched over from the image of, um, an older French woman, sort of matron, running the house and sort of representing La vie est France, you know, and 01:46:00everything in French.

Plus, at the same time, the, when I first came here, there were a lot of graduate students living there, mostly graduate students, very competent in French. When I took over the house, they were having trouble filling the house, and so they accepted people that weren't quite that competent in the language, and even a few that had, that promised to take French if they were allowed to live in the house.

LS: How to be [words unclear], yeah.

BS: So, and the initial problem that I had was trying to maintain the original function of the house. It wasn't --

LS: Tell me where the house is.

BS: Oh, the French House is over on, Francis, right on the lake, not far from here. So it's very convenient. It's a beautiful house. It's really for 30 people, and there's a men's hall and a woman's hall now, which is another interesting thing. Men have only been allowed in the last, I think four or five years. Well, it's not that they haven't been allowed. It's just that they had, there was not a demand before.

LS: Do they serve meals there? They do.

BS: Yes, and that's where the essential function of the house still operates. 01:47:00People come from the outside to speak French and, but it was almost impossible to maintain a French atmosphere because you had some people that just could not speak in the language, and it was very frustrating for people. Plus once they started accepting other, they accepted just about anyone I think, and it wasn't limited to French majors anymore.

They were trying so desperately to fill up, you know, this sounds elitist in a way, but not that people shouldn't be allowed to live there if they're not French majors, but a split was created between French Department people, who were basically more competent in French and non-French Department people. And it was a rift that I had difficulty overcoming because a lot of the people, they just didn't want to talk to the people that either couldn't speak well or didn't have the same interests, which seems strange to me because it seems like it would add balance to the house to have people in other fields. But that was --

LS: Unless the function of the house is to speak French, which I suppose it is.

BS: Yeah, and because that was the function that it was constantly, that we 01:48:00couldn't maintain, because of the level of French, of, you know, half the people was not that high. Once that broke down, there was no reason for this group of people to be living together anymore. And it became very difficult.

LS: So what did you, how did you handle it?

BS: Well, we just had to keep trying. It was, it was a struggle. There were good times, though, we had, you know, we had, it wasn't that difficult. That's just what I see as one of the, one of the things that has happened to the French House from the time of Jermain Marciet to now, is just the fact that, in a sense, now it's a nice -- it used to be a French House. It used to be, you know, a little, you know, culture island. Now, what it is is a very nice dorm, where you also get the advantage of being able to speak French from time to time.

LS: In other words, this, yes, there still aren't many graduates, or even fewer graduate students.

BS: Fewer gradate students.

LS: So you still can't fill it with French-speaking students.

BS: Uh-uh, no, and it's almost entirely undergraduates now, I believe. There are 01:49:00a few --

LS: Really?

BS: Yeah, there are a few graduate students, but mostly undergraduates. And there are a lot of French majors and people who are serious about learning French, but it's, I don't know if they're going to be able to maintain it. Maybe it'll change again because things are, more people are taking French again.

But I think it had to do with students not wanting to put themselves in that kind of a constrained atmosphere for a while. They wanted to live in apartments. They didn't want to have any kind of rules and regulations, not that you had rules other than having to speak French. But, you know, eating meals at a certain time every day, and --

LS: Were they good meals?

BS: Yeah, the meals compared to other dorms, I'm sure because one of the things is, you know, they weren't, um, it was sort of a -- it used to be, no, they used to have sit-down meals when we had lots of money. Now we have a buffet style, but they can eat as much as they want. It's not like, you know, it's, within reason, obviously. But there's, there's, you know, they can choose what they want, and they can usually have seconds, so they like that. And the food's been very good. The cook, the one that's there now, he was there my second year.

LS: Do you live there now?

BS: No. I, uh, I couldn't stand the hours either, being there at a certain time, you know, for dinner, and it was very difficult. But it had a good, its advantages obviously. I think all it was is I just, um, the problem with me not being French was that, and being young, that they, it was hard for me to maintain, not that I wanted to. I assumed that they were adults, but they wanted someone to be in a position of authority over them, and it was confusing. They 01:51:00were always getting double messages, I'm sure. Because on the one hand, I'm, I am the authority figure.

On the other hand, I'm their age

-- was that and being young. They, it was that, and being young, that they, it was hard for me to maintain, not that I wanted to. I assumed that they were adults, but they wanted someone to be in a position of authority over them, and it was confusing. They were always getting double messages, I'm sure. Because on the one hand, I'm, I am the authority figure. On the other hand, I'm their age, and I'm a graduate student, and I'm non-French.

So trying to, whereas, with, you know, someone like Mademoiselle [Verdun?], who was very, not that she was aloof, but she represented something, and she spoke French, and people were, you know, didn't come too close to her, and what she said was, you know, went. So I, you know, tried to set up a, you know, incorporate them into the way the house was going to be run and took decisions to them, but, you know, especially the second year, they didn't like the idea of having to make decisions. They wanted me to make the decisions and then they could complain about them.

LS: You mean about who would come to speak or --

BS: No, just a, you know if there was a problem.

LS: Or who would be allowed to live in there? Hmm.

BS: You know, if we were having a problem with one thing, and we would usually have a meeting after dinner and say, you know, how do you want to solve this? These are the options, or whatever. You know, whether it was a money problem, or a problem with the phones, people were, you know, talking too long on the 01:52:00phones. And should we, you know, make a rule about this or not, that sort of thing. But they preferred to have me just make the decisions.

LS: So it's pretty much a deteriorated --

BS: Well, that's the way I see it.

LS: -- institution, isn't it?

BS: Yeah, that's the way I see it right now.

LS: And do they still get speakers?

BS: Oh, yeah. The French Club is still active, and, well, see, now it's changed again. In fact, you might want to, if you're interested in the French House, get Michelle [Maisar?]. She's the current director of the house. Now she's French again, so I think, and she has maintained a certain distance from the students. And it might be going back the other way. Although, there still is a problem with level of French.

LS: Yeah.