Shekinah Samaya-Thomas [Joan Granander], Oral History Interview (2014), Part 1

Shekinah Samaya-Thomas [Joan Granander], Oral History Interview (2014), Part 1

Social life

Same-sex relationships

Campus life

Interview with Shekinah Samaya-Thomas in the Carl B. library on October 10th, 2014. Topics included the changes to Concordia since 1986, as well as memories from her time spent at Concordia.

Samaya-Thomas, Shekinah [Granander, Joan] (Donor)

Concordia College Archives

2014-10-14

Samaya-Thomas, Shekinah [Granander, Joan] (Donor)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribut ion - NonCommercial - No Derivs 3.0 Unported License

Oral Histories

English

Moving Image

HH0096OH

1982-1986
Moorhead, MN
20th Century
Red River Valley
Concordia College (Moorhead, MN)

Favre, Jonathan

Shekinah Samaya-Thomas
[Granander, Joan]

Carl B. Ylvisaker Library (Moorhead, Minn)

Jonathan Favre 11/13/14
Jonathan Favre: Are you here to share a story?
Shekinah Samaya- Thomas [Joan Granander]: I’m here to share memories. And I was just thinking about the campanile, the campanile wasn’t here when I was here. I came, I think it was here for my fifth reunion, I do remember being on campus to see it and I have not been back on this campus since 1991. So there you go. Stories, a couple things have come to me just since I’ve been walking around and seeing the difference, seeing what the same is and what’s different in the past couple of days. One of the things I remembered is when we were in school there was no such thing as personal computers, the internet, the web, laptops, cell phones, anything like that. We were excited because we were some of the earliest classes to get actual phones in our dorm rooms. Like, “woohoo we have our own phone, yay!” that was so exciting. And, I was thinking of computers, and over here in the fishbowl is where the first computers were put in, and these were computers that had no hard drive, you would go in and do word processing, this was the old DOS operating system, there was no Windows yet, I really am more ancient than I look, and we would go in and we had these big three by five floppy drives, they were called floppy drives because they were floppy, you may have seen some of those, I don’t know, and you would put them in and that’s how you would store your documents. And I had a psychology professor, I had to think about that for a minute, named Dr. James Alness, who gave us, whatever class I was in, I believe it was psychology and religion, one of my first ones my sophomore year, not psychology or, or psychology of, but psychology and religion, it was a really cool class and it really set me on my life’s course in many ways. But that professor gave us extra credit if we would do our papers on the word processor in the library, in the fishbowl because he said that computers were the wave of the future and we were going to have to learn how to use these things. I think computer science was just starting to become a subject offered and taught, it wasn’t something I ever took. So we came over here and kinda had to line up and take our turn using these big old honkin things in the fishbowl. And I remember, maybe it was the next year I’m not sure, I had one religion class where I had to write probably a twenty page term paper on one of those floppy drives. And when you went in and out of the library here you had to go through the magnetic thing, and it wiped out that floppy drive, and I didn’t know it, and I ended up having to do this three times! I was not a happy student. (laughter) I had to write that thing three times, so we’ve come a long way, um I don’t know what they have over there now, so I’m kind of excited to come in and see that they still call it the fishbowl. I looked over, another story. I looked over into the main area of the library and I saw the second story of stacks and things up there and the iron gates between looking at the gates that direction [West] and I don’t know if y’all ever heard of the full moon of 1986, did you hear about the full moon of 1986? Well this was a senior prank, the full moon of 1986 shortly before graduation was that several of the men, and don’t do this again, they got in so much trouble I think, several of the men in our graduating class shortly before graduation came in and provided a full moon (laughter) in the library, they all just kind of lined up at a certain point and dropped trow and provided a full moon service, full moon view, to all of the students on campus who happened to be studying in the library on that particular day. And honestly I had not thought about that in years, I just walked in and looked in that direction and all of a sudden I was like “oh yeah! The full moon of 1986” (laughter) I wasn’t a part of that but I knew several of the guys that were, of course they were the more popular athletic guys that were on the various teams and you know weren’t really going to get in a lot of trouble no matter what they did, they probably got a good talking to but we were all about to graduate and I don’t think anybody really cared. Another thing I remember, I and a friend of mine caused a bit of controversy, I don’t know what it’s like here, now, but at the time there was much less tolerance for people of same orientation sexuality to the point where a statement was made by an administration official that because this was a Lutheran college, and to be gay or lesbian is not really approved by the Lutheran tradition, then therefore there was no one on this campus that was gay or lesbian. Now that was a bunch of crap, we knew that was a bunch of crap and a friend of mine and I decided to address it in a letter to, do they still have the newspaper?
Christie Kullman: The Concordian?
SST: The Concordian, so we wrote a letter to the Concordian that set about a whole bunch of controversy, my friend and I at the time. And basically we said that’s a bunch of crap and we know a whole bunch of people here that for a lot of really important reasons are not able to be true to who they are and its time that we stared to address it. And shortly after that some of those very brave people including someone at the time who was very very prominent in a number of student activities, was part of the student government, was part of the music program, big leader in the music program he came out and was like, “yeah! By the way I’m one of those people it’s time we start to address it,” and we didn’t know at the time, well we knew he was gay, but we didn’t know at the time, or he didn’t know at the time when he did that if he’d even be able to graduate, you know he could have been expelled at that point in time, this is probably two maybe three months before graduation so that was really very brave of him very brave of him and we started a conversation I don’t know what is like now I don’t know what it’s now, I know then it was a big deal, and we were kind of tired, we were tired of people we love being unable to be honest about who they were and the classes you now the classes that we had the professors that we had the mission statement of this wonderful wonderful place that essentially talks about being people of integrity, to ask people to deny such a huge part of who they were and still put these messages out of being people of integrity well that was you know, talk about a cognitive dissonance so it was an important conversation and I think it began to change some of the attitudes on campus over time. And you know that was my senior year and I left so I don’t really know what happened after that almost thirty years later I don’t know what it’s like here, I left the Midwest not a whole lot later than that it’s very different where I am now but those are some of the memories that I have of being here.
Another one that I have was a very fun thing. Well there used to be a restaurant called Sherry’s where I think the Courtyard Inn is now, I’m staying up there, that whole area, unless its across the freeway and I don’t know, it was a restaurant called Sherry’s, it was a 24 hour place, it was a great place to go when you needed a late night early morning snack. They had, that’s probably why I gained a lot of weight while I was here, they had these cinnamon rolls that were this big [makes gesture with her hands] I’m not exaggerating, they were the whole plate great big sized plate, we all probably gained a whole lot of weight, I’ve never seen a cinnamon roll so big. So we would go there late at night and sometimes a friend would call, call over to our dorm in the middle of the night and just kind of utter the words, “Perkins” or “Sherry’s” and you know off we would go to study cause you know sometimes you just need to get off campus. So those are some of the things I remember and I don’t know that’s probably more than you’ll ever use so there you go. Do you have any questions? Anything in particular you would want to know about from the mid 80s late 80s?
CK: The hair!
SST: Big hair! Big hair! Lots of product, moose and gel and hand held hair dryers. Big big hair, yeah don’t miss it. (laughter)
JF: Question, our previous interviewee said how they couldn’t dance on campus and women had to wear pants.
SST: Oh they must have been a lot earlier
Kristie: About 20 years earlier.
JF: So was any of that around when you were going to school?
SST: No I’m pretty much dressed the same as when I was in school and we had dances, we had lots of dances, in fact we had concerts we had dances I remember the Ramones performing her in Memorial Auditorium, the first time I ever heard of them and saw them was here and my roommate at the time we were right up in front of the stage and one of the guys pulled her on up and she got to dance with them on stage but no when I was here the biggest controversy that was here around those kinds of things when I was here was the intervisitation policy. And my understanding is that that has just finally changed this year.
Kristie: Yes that was abolished
SST: Thirty years too late as far as I’m concerned
Kristie: there are certain floors in each of the dormitories where the top floor still has intervisitation for people that would like it but most people (??)
SST: I think that was a long time coming and probably took too long to change and I think it’s a great idea to have things set up in such a way so some people can choose to participate in it and those that don’t want to don’t have to cause honestly there was a lot of noncompliance, a lot of noncompliance! And there were people like me who were at the time like, “oh you gotta follow the rules, you gotta follow the rules,” and there were most people that were like screw the rules you know and you get in trouble and whatever but that was the big thing, intervisitation was only allowed on weekends and only then only up until like midnight or something like that on the weekends and not at all during the week, that was a big controversy at the time but we no we had dances we had all kinds of fun, couldn’t drink, I’m pretty sure you probably still can’t drink and that’s OK you don’t need to not to say there wasn’t a lot of drinking going on right, we had societies not sororities or fraternities, is that the same?
Kristie: We don’t have, we have a bunch of clubs but we really don’t have fraternities, we have one sorority though.
JF: I think they are partnered with NDSU
CK: Yeah
SST: Ok yeah we didn’t have anything like that we had these groups these clubs that were called societies they functioned pretty much the same as a sorority or a fraternity would in that you had to pledge to join it you go accepted or you didn’t get accepted they were coed they had a focus you know they had a particular kind of theme they were known for and stuff they were supposed to do and honestly they were a lot of drinkin, a lot of drinkin clubs is what they were and I wasn’t in them I didn’t participate but my roommate did, and so there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes like that there was stuff going on off campus like that because you know young adults are going to be young adults and it’s the first time that you’re kind of out in the world trying to figure out who you are and what you can do and what you can’t do and how to do it and push yourself a little bit beyond what your limits are both good and bad that’s kinda what college is all about so but nothing like that, we had fun dances. Yeah, 80s anything else you wanna know?
CK: Which dorms did you live in while you were here?
SST: I lived in East my first year, and that walk way let me tell you I would have loved to have had that walk way we did not have that walkway I hightailed my butt over here as soon as I could and I stayed here in Brown the rest of my time. That was a long very very cold walk in the winter you would be all bundled up and I live in California now ya know the weather right now here during the day and especially at night is what it’s like winter time for us so ya know and that’s too cold for me that’s too cold. In the winter time you would be all bundled up hats and mittens and gloves and scarves just to go to class you had to do that and sometimes you wouldn’t make it, in fact sometimes when we would have a real bad blizzard or a really bad cold snap they’d cancel classes because we couldn’t safely get from East hall over to our classes over here it was just too cold so that walkway is a really good addition. But I lived in East and apparently they have now turned what was our Grant Hall into the school of business so we were a fully self contained unit we had all of our dining stuff was over there. I remember David Letterman was just starting to get popular he was in his first maybe his second year of Latenight when I was here and we would gather in the group social area of Grant Hall and we would watch David Letterman and David Letterman is kinda to my class and my generation to maybe what Jon Stewart is now or Steven Colbert and he’s taking over for David Letterman at the beginning of next year so it will be interesting to see that but we would gather and we would watch communally watch the late night shows we would watch Saturday Night Live we would gather over there. I worked in the dining services both over there and here on this side of campus, yeah we were our own little self-contained unit for a long time, anything else?
JF: I can’t think of anyting else.
CK: I can’t think of anything, you covered a very broad spectrum.
SST: Broad spectrum broad spectrum, yeah I really haven’t thought about a lot of this stuff in a long time I live so far away now and my life is just so different but
CK: What made you decide to come back to Minnesota this year because it’s not a reunion year?
SST: No its not a reunion year for me, honestly I had to suddenly go to Michigan for my grandmother’s memorial service and when I realized the timing was such that I was going to miss, I was going to miss a week of work no matter what I did I had to take the train and it was homecoming weekend and I was going to be this close to the Midwest which I haven’t been in fifteen years and I haven’t been here [Concordia] in 23 I thought, well you know I could either take the same train the same route back and go back and forth on the same route or I could take a little different route and go right through Fargo and visit a place I haven’t been in a very long time and probably won’t be anytime soon, so I thought well when you’re in Michigan it’s not that far from Moorhead when you live in California so that’s what made me decide to come, just come right on through and see the place. I love this place I have a niece that I wish, it’s too far away but I wish she could have an experience like this because it’s shaped so much of who I am and so much of my life and I wish for all of the students that are here now that they have the ability to look back and remember the life shaping events because what I’ve learned 30 years out is that the academics, although very important is not what you hold onto, it’s the relationships and the character of who you become and who you are and how these experiences shape you to handle the things of life throws you curves, because the one thing that I wish college would have taught me is that life will throw you curves and a lot of times you aren’t prepared for it and it is not easy it’s just not easy but having a firm foundation of some sort of faith tradition, of a community of people that love you, and having a solid grounding in knowing who you are those are the things that will carry you through those curves, college helps shape that, the classes not so much but the experience as a whole does and that is what I would like to pass on and that I would hope is what students come away from here with. That’s a good note to end on.
JF: Thank you.

9:51

01:40 Changes since 1986
02:10 Full moon of 1986
06:30 Same-sex relations