00:00:00A.B.: I'm Amy Brainer. I'm an associate professor of Women's and Gender Studies, and I coordinate LGBTQ Studies here at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
00:00:09F.B.: I'm Francine Banner. I'm a professor of a sociology here at UM-Dearborn.
00:00:15A.B.: You were director of WILL, Women in Learning and Leadership, now WILL+, from 2017 to 2020. Does that sound right? [See the index for annual reports and other materials from Francine's time as director.]
00:00:24F.B.: Yes.
00:00:25A.B.: Tell me what you remember about how you became the director of WILL. For example, was this a position you volunteered for or were asked to do?
00:00:34F.B.: I had definitely heard of WILL and was very actively part of the Women's and Gender Studies affiliate faculty group, so knew a lot about the organization. The way I came to direct WILL was that I was invited out to drinks by Suzanne Bergeron and Lisa Martin.
00:00:56A.B.: They gave you drinks and then asked you to do something. [Laughter]
00:01:00F.B.: Yes. They bought me drinks at Aventura Tapas in Ann Arbor and asked me to take over the position of directing WILL.
00:01:11A.B.: How did you feel about that?
00:01:13F.B.: When I first arrived at UM-Dearborn, I really found Women's and Gender Studies to be like a warm blanket in a very unfamiliar place. I had been teaching in a law school. I had never been to Michigan before. So I felt very fortunate to be able to be as involved in Women's and Gender Studies as I was, and to find the faculty there as warm and welcoming as they were. Because I find, not just in Women's and Gender Studies, but in general, there's a lot of disciplinary gatekeeping in my PhD in Justice Studies, which is very interdisciplinary. Especially coming from a totally different disciplinary area, I was concerned moving mid-career that I wouldn't really find a home. Being asked to direct WILL was really an exciting affirmation of being very welcomed, which I loved.
00:02:07A.B.: Tell me about yourself. What did you specifically bring to the role of director? It could be your academic background, your personal background, or something else.
00:02:18F.B.: I'd say when I take on a commitment, I never do it half-heartedly. Honestly, I think some of what I brought was not just an enthusiasm for the mission of Women's and Gender Studies and for promoting women's leadership, but also just kind of an organizational stick-to-it-iveness. I was going to make sure if students were enrolled in this organization, they were going to have the best experience that they could. It was a time when I was doing some work in the prison system as well, and so a lot of my work was not campus-based with that. It would be a lot of outreach in the community, looking for events, going to different presentations at other universities or meeting with other faculty. I think I brought that into WILL and would look for places to go and places to volunteer. It was a time that was during the time of the Women's March, and during the time of a lot of, you know, the MeToo movement and organization. So there were a lot of opportunities to participate in different types of activities, and I think my own being new to Michigan and the university and really engaging in that type of outreach probably brought that to the organization.
00:03:44A.B.: What expectations and goals did you have going into the role?
00:03:48F.B.: In retrospect, I wished I had more. At the end of my tenure as WILL director, towards the end, I was asked to be a part of a set of interviews for an edited volume on leadership. As I was being interviewed by the PhD student who was putting together this volume, I realized I had no leadership philosophy. [Laughter]
00:04:12A.B.: I don't know. There's something attractive about this though, Francine. I feel like it's like you had no attachments going in, right? You also were just open.
00:04:24F.B.: I mean, things worked out. I think we did a lot of really exciting, fun things that benefited students, but some of it was just kismet, like accidental I feel, and not necessarily planned out. In terms of expectations going in, I won't say that I had too many. I think as I was being enticed to this position over cocktails, there was - I think people would - at the time, I think our provost was Kate Davey, who was very affiliated with Women's and Gender Studies as well. I think she and other people would say, "Oh, this is a good stepping stone." But I realized even before I accepted the position that, in fact, I don't think the WILL director position is as appreciated as it should be on campus. Certainly [it] was one of many service obligations on campus that didn't really count in terms of what would help you get tenure or what would really be appreciated. I knew that in addition to this, I would still have to be on the curriculum committee and be the sociology discipline coordinator and do all of these other regular tasks on top of it, because I do feel like Women's and Gender Studies wasn't necessarily appreciated. My expectation wasn't really that I would - like for me professionally, that I would have any sort of credential or anything like that from it.
00:05:58A.B.: Yeah, I want to kind of bookmark that. I think there are some other questions -
00:06:00F.B.: Maybe I'll edit that out. [Laughter]
00:06:01A.B.: No, I like - well, you can edit out anything you want, but I think that's important. And I think some of the questions later on might bring us back to that point. Did your expectations and goals change at all as you did the work?
00:06:15F.B.: Yes. I definitely, from year one to year three, realized - partly maybe because of this interview I did - that I could be much more strategic. I think WILL's - and maybe we'll talk about this too - I feel like the composition of WILL or what WILL is really changes based on who the students are in a given year. That's what's exciting about it. I think once I knew who the students that I was working with were and what their expectations were, I was able to plan a lot more strategically in terms of what their needs might be, or what types of things I thought might be particularly exciting or enriching for them. Then what kinds of guidance they needed too.
00:07:03A.B.: Tell me about an aspect of the work that mattered a lot to you.
00:07:09F.B.: Definitely, I would say two things. From an academic perspective, introducing students to taking the lead and being autonomous critical thinkers in different ways about different topics was really exciting to me. One of the things we did while I was a director was Lisa Martin and I had planned a full day event around MeToo on campus, and as part of that, WILL students invited a popular author of the time to come to campus. [See the index for an announcement about this event.] We were able to secure a $10,000 grant to support this so that we could pay a more highly named, well-known speaker. Students had a book club. We were able to buy them copies of the book. We would meet and read the book in meetings. Then when Morgan Jerkins, the author, came to a campus, students were able to host her. They were able to talk with her about passages in the book, to talk about the process of becoming an author. To ask sophisticated questions, and to see that really come out was very exciting.
00:08:15F.B.: They did a lot of terrific things with Take Back the Night in terms of opening the event up to more people with disabilities, because it's march focused, and thinking more about ways to video different aspects of the presentation or make it flow differently so that it would be more accessible. Thoughts about is it political? How politically engaged in it is it? We had Senator Stabenow, at the time, come. We had different people -
00:08:45A.B.: Yep, I remember that.
00:08:46F.B.: - Debbie Dingell. They would interact with these very professional political figures. Students would learn how do you engage with email, but also, when they arrive, how do we think about parking? How do we escort this person? How should I interact with them? Training students to be able to take the lead in those kinds of things was really exciting. Then I think the second exciting thing was being able to foster students having an environment where they could get to know each other and really have that bonding experience where - I really felt like the organization was a success when I would plan one thing, and then they would plan two other things. And I wouldn't go to those; I wasn't part of it. But they'd say, "Yeah, we went an ice skating on our own." And I still have students that are in touch with each other and are still support systems now, and that's great.
00:09:42A.B.: Yeah, that's really the best outcome you could hope for. Did you feel like there was an alignment between what mattered to you and how you spent your time as director of WILL?
00:09:53F.B.: Yes, for the most part. I think it's an organization where directors could bring their own strengths. I remember talking with Georgina Hickey, who had been a former director, who also had a young child when she directed WILL, and she said, "Bring your child," and I did, even though probably it was not allowed on a campus at the time. [Laughter]
00:10:20F.B.: My daughter came with me. I think she was about seven when we started. I think my hesitation is that WILL met on Sundays. I didn't ever think about altering the schedule. I was told, "Oh, here's this prepackaged thing. This is when they meet." I was relatively new in my career at UM-Dearborn, and so I really didn't think to question the given structure. I really did make my life fit into the structure that existed as opposed to thinking I could shape it more. So you know, that was giving up - because I live about an hour away - an entire Sunday once a month with my daughter, which was not what I wanted to really be doing. But I put her in the car and brought her with me. In those ways, maybe not entirely [aligned].
00:11:11F.B.: In other ways, for sure, because the types of events you could plan are very much, for the most part, what you want to do. I was engaged in prison reform or working with formerly incarcerated people and so students could be involved in that, too. I like to do activities, so I would always make sure to do something fun. We did a paint and brunch thing where they all painted whatever, a little picture. We went ice skating. We went bowling. We did more fun activities, too, and I could bring my family, too. That was really good. I will say, I think it's - WILL is deeply, deeply engaged in Take Back the Night. It definitely aligned with my values, but maybe wasn't something I would have been necessarily - that was both my - maybe my favorite and least favorite part of directing that organization.
00:12:10A.B.: The event.
00:12:12F.B.: Yes.
00:12:13A.B.: Planning a big event like that particular one.
00:12:14F.B.: Planning a big event, and then a big event tailored around sexual assault.
00:12:18A.B.: Yeah. Did the amount of time you spent on other things change while you were director?
00:12:25F.B.: No. I think I just added on more things.
00:12:28A.B.: You added, yeah. You just added a Sunday of work.
00:12:32F.B.: More early mornings and more weekends.
00:12:36A.B.: Yeah. You have begun to talk about this already. Did being director influence your life outside of work in any way?
00:12:45F.B.: For the positive, it brought me into places that I wouldn't ordinarily maybe have been and introduced me to a lot of organizations. Like, I had connections with Haven or First Step or different social services organizations, but these engaged them in a different way. One project WILL did with Vista Maria Shelter was a journaling project with young women in the shelter. I may have known about that or had contacts there, but to be involved with it more intimately was exciting because you got to see the insides of different organizations and really see what they did. For me, it really brought me, as somebody who wasn't living here before, didn't know anything about the Southwest Michigan area or Southeast Michigan area, it was an exciting thing to get to do.
00:13:39A.B.: You built your own networks as well.
00:13:41F.B.: Yeah, you can build your own networks as well, and then you're able to introduce students through those things.
00:13:47A.B.: What were some things going on socially, culturally, or politically that shaped the program during your directorship?
00:13:55F.B.: For sure, as I mentioned, Take Back the Night is a massive part of WILL, and planning the event is a huge task of the students. I would say during that time, there were definitely some changing rhetorics around victimhood and rhetorics of survivor supplanting ideas of victimhood.
00:14:26F.B.: One of the things that - WILL had always advertised Take Back the Night in different ways. They had been placing mattresses around campus because there had been the Carry That Weight mattress project in 2016. We had conversations about the space that people were in, in 2017, talking about sexual assault versus when that project - maybe 2014, '15. Conversations evolving around how differently to publicize the event. Another way they had publicized Take Back the Night prior to my taking over the organization was by having people wear makeup, black eyes around campus.
00:15:13A.B.: Yes. I remember that.
00:15:14F.B.: There was a large conversation around that and that being too traumatizing.
00:15:17A.B.: I remember that very vividly. Coming into class, I didn't know what it was for, and I saw my student who I knew really well, was very close with, sitting in the front row with what I thought was a black eye. After class I went right up to her and was like, "What - ? Are you okay?" She's like, "Oh, I'll never forget the look on your face when you saw me." Because I was close to that student, I knew about the conversations that happened afterwards. It's a vivid memory for me, too.
00:15:51F.B.: Yes. We had a lot of active debates because people were very attached to doing that. Then other people were - I would say, felt trauma from the very idea of it. You know, evolving discourses around how to raise awareness in a way that's sensitive. On top of that, the MeToo movement really started taking off in 2017, and so we, as I mentioned, we had done a large event around MeToo. Then there was also the Women's March in January. Where I did not lead a group of students there, but a lot of students went, and I had gone separately. We definitely talked about that.
00:16:34F.B.: Then I think just different - a lot of discourses around gender and around gender identity. Was WILL an organization for women? Who would be comfortable within the organization? The organization has always been open to women and allies, however that would be defined. The organization, I think because it's unique, there aren't a lot of - and on our campus, there just aren't a lot of opportunities for students to join clubs, period, I feel. It was trying to serve a lot of different interests. I remember, I think my first or second [year], there used to be an event in the University Center. I can't remember what it was - oh, it was called Feminist Coming Out Day, I think. The WILL students would have posters, and they would do different types of activities. One year they decided to have people write on a Post-It who is a woman you admire. The leadership of WILL said, "Well, that's not really inclusive. We should have it, who's person you admire." So they did that, and I - it's interesting in a leadership role, you don't know when to step in and how. Also, there's a massive age gap between me and Gen Z students. It's not my job to boomer them. I have to - I don't know - [Laughter]
00:18:08A.B.: Now it's a verb.
00:18:09F.B.: It's evolving, right?
00:18:10A.B.: Now it's a verb, to boomer someone. I love it.
00:18:14F.B.: Maybe more accurately Gen X them, right?
00:18:16A.B.: To Gen X them.
00:18:18F.B.: So I let this happen. But of course the types of responses you get are like, "My soccer coach Larry," or whatever. It's not the spirit of Amelia Earhart or whatever that you might have found with a woman I admire. And I remember another faculty member was incensed about this and gave me an earful about how this is not the roots of the organization and how you shouldn't have allowed this and blah.
00:18:47A.B.: Wow, that's so interesting.
00:18:49F.B.: So that was interesting. Then the other really big thing was that there was an incipient strike of LEO faculty. And one of the big events WILL does is an equal payday bake sale. The cupcakes are sold to women more cheaply than men because of the cents on the dollar. They came together on their own and worked with the LEO organization to donate the proceeds from the bake sale to the LEO organization because a strike was potentially going to happen at the same time. Negotiated to, would they cross a picket line to hold this event? It was also deeply connected to these types of issues also.
00:19:27A.B.: Absolutely. They were able to broaden that idea of equal pay to think about labor rights in a bigger way. That's cool. It's interesting with the who - someone you admire [activity]. I can understand their impulse, but it needed more parameters still.
00:19:46F.B.: Yes.
00:19:47A.B.: Maybe what they were looking for was a gender minority. I think what they were probably trying to include was trans and non-binary people and queer people, I would guess. I wasn't there, so I don't know. But they didn't necessarily have the language to articulate what that was they were getting at.
00:20:04F.B.: And then to make that palatable at a table in the UC [University Center] is another layer.
00:20:09A.B.: It's interesting. Yeah. It's all really good that - I relate to what you said about being a mentor and then deciding when do you - you have your opinion, and you definitely want to offer guidance, but you also want to let them work it out and recognize that your way isn't necessarily going to be their way.
00:20:31F.B.: Sure. If the bulletin board didn't come out exactly the way they wanted, maybe that's the lesson.
00:20:37A.B.: Right, and they'll be thinking about that.
00:20:39A.B.: Tell me about the students you worked with. What were they like?
00:20:44F.B.: I would say a broad variety of students. There were definitely people, I think, attracted to the organization for the leadership part of it and the ability to plan an event like Take Back the Night or to engage and lead these volunteer activities. If people were able to learn about those through other people in WILL, I think some people did gravitate for those reasons.
00:21:09F.B.: I think WILL offered a very safe space for incipient feminists or people who were questioning maybe their own experiences, to come and explore that. We have such a broad variety of student body and so many first gen students, and then so many students who are maybe not even in the US for a particularly long time. WILL being primarily women and being in part a social organization, the academic hybridness of it, I think opened up a space where people who were maybe fearful of engaging or just hadn't had the opportunity to engage, maybe had taken a Women's and Gender Studies class, one class, and were thinking, "Huh. There's something here. There's an itch here that I want to a scratch." I think they found a space to be able to do that. I feel like WILL has always been deeply connected to the SOAR program [Support, Opportunities, Advocacy, and Resources for adult learners], and so has a deep connection to nontraditional older students.
00:22:19A.B.: That's right.
00:22:20F.B.: But the group that I took over started to trend pretty young, more traditionally, like 18, 19 -
00:22:26A.B.: Mm, yeah, really young.
00:22:27F.B.: - coming in. Then to be in WILL for maybe longer. I feel like for them, a lot of - we had a lot of different conversations around just coming to different issues. What are they? What is queerness? I remember a really extensive conversation about menstrual cups. Just like, what is this thing? One woman says, "This is miraculous for me." Then, huh. Then the curiosity. I had a student whose dad was very close with her. He was almost an honorary WILL member because he was very cautious about what she would do and the types of experiences she'd have. He would drive her to every Sunday meeting. He would come in with her to make sure everything looked [unclear audio]. I got to know him relatively well. I feel like it was a great success because she continues to be friendly with people she met in WILL. She was able to travel out of a state on her own with a group of WILL students for the first time because that trust was established.
00:23:36F.B.: I do think a place for that sort of investigation, a place for students to - with the planning side of it, to figure out who do we want to invite to our campus? What should our campus look like? How do I do that? I struggled because sometimes they would go off and do things on their own and say, "We're going to go volunteer here. I called the person." "I want this politician to come. I called their office." I'm like, "Oh, we should probably go through external relations, but okay." That was great. I will say -
00:24:09A.B.: You're like, "What did you say when you called them?" [Laughter]
00:24:11F.B.: Yes. There was a lot of that. Maybe a little too much motivation. Also, I would say, there were tensions between the older, more experienced students or the students further along in their feminist or queer journeys and the new students who were questioning and just starting out.
00:24:33A.B.: How did those resolve? Or maybe resolve's the wrong word, but how did they sort of work them out together?
00:24:40F.B.: I mean, I feel like WILL really when I was active, at the same time that Pride was really starting on campus, there started to be more spaces, thanks to you, for LGBTQ students. I do feel as though, as a queer person myself, I think the students that were maybe more - had been more comfortable with their sexuality, they'd been out maybe for a little while, at least out on campus or in relationships, or like at least feeling educated about issues around gender and sexuality - may have felt a little bit of dissonance with students that were coming in and not particularly educated. I really didn't see disagreements. I think there were definitely - like with the non-binary bulletin board thing, there were definitely, at that point, a bunch of students just who are quiet because they don't know what to say. Those are definitely different audiences.
00:25:54A.B.: Sure. Yeah. How were you supported in the directorship, and by whom?
00:26:02F.B.: I received, I think, a course release. Yes. No, I think I did not get a stipend, as I recall, but a course release through, I believe, the dean's office. It was written in.
00:26:20A.B.: Did you feel like you received any other types of support beyond the material?
00:26:27F.B.: Shockingly little. A couple of former directors would come to certain events. Really, not many. The Take Back the Nights that I was hosting were very big because we had these political figures coming. So the dean of students would come give a speech. We just had some very active students, so we had all of the fraternities involved, and they would come. They did a service where they'd walk people to their cars, and they would smuggle in water because we weren't allowed to bring water we didn't pay for. I think one year we had over 200 people there, but only two other faculty members came.
00:27:20A.B.: Yeah. How did you feel about that?
00:27:23F.B.: Initially, very stressed. Later, I just - I think it's disappointing. I think there is confusion around if you are a mandatory reporter, can you come to these things and that sort of thing. But I feel like it's chronic on our campus that we're just all too busy, and not having people live close by, people pick and choose what they are able to attend. I think I wasn't entirely surprised, I guess.
00:28:01A.B.: I think there is a thread in here, if anybody wants to pull it, with this archive. Whether it be mainly students who engage it or whether someone will do some research with it, I don't know. But I think there's an interesting story in here somewhere about shrinking bandwidth for events, partly among students, but also very much so among faculty, from what people had the energy and time to do in the earlier years of Women's and Gender Studies and WILL, and then gradually over time diminishing. I think that would be something interesting to contextualize and figure out why and specific mechanisms of that.
00:28:47F.B.: I think I might have taken over WILL at the end - and COVID probably had a lot to do with this - at the end of the preexisting model. In many ways, it was an exercise of trying to fit our current campus situation, for faculty and students, into something that had worked in the past. And sometimes it did. Sometimes the students would come together and be able to do something. Faculty much less so already. But I do remember to get ready for Take Back the Night, there were all these activities that should have been fun. Make posters and pins. One of them was paint the rock outside.
00:29:25A.B.: Yeah, painting the rock.
00:29:28F.B.: So we go through these motions, and I'm like, "Oh, is this going to get done?" "Yes, it's going to get done." Then, in the end, it turned out one person had painted the rock by herself.
00:29:38A.B.: Oh.
00:29:39F.B.: For her it was a sucky, sucky experience, right? I was just so disappointed. Not disappointed with anyone for not showing up. I didn't go. Because I thought that was really emblematic of how miserable to have - it's almost worse to have the fun thing be the thing you're doing by yourself.
00:29:58A.B.: Thank you for that. Concrete stories help to get a handle on it, and the image of someone painting the rock alone is -
00:30:07F.B.: Yeah, people walking by, "What are you doing?"
00:30:10A.B.: Yeah. My next question, I feel like we answered it maybe just now, but is there support you felt like you needed but didn't get?
00:30:19F.B.: I think always at our institution. [Laughter] For sure there's financial support. I was so lucky, I had - there was still, I think, two dedicated admins.
00:30:36A.B.: Oh, yeah. What a luxury.
00:30:39F.B.: I had an amazing admin that made me cry at one of the - I cried when we gave her a present at one of the end of the year events, Sandy [Frolich]. Because she was just excited about the organization. We were hiring people who were not going through the motions. She actually liked the mission of the organization. She enjoyed students. They had a dedicated space. They would go get the key from Sandy. Everyone knew Sandy. They showed up because she was there and enthusiastic. We started the practice of doing graduation cords when I was a director. She was the one who found the company, but also stylistically - "Oh, what colors are we doing? What should the tassel look like? Are these okay?" That kind of thing makes a world of a difference.
00:31:26A.B.: It really does. [Please see Francine Banner interview - part 2 for the rest of Francine's story.]
