Michael Haynes, May 11, 2021

Michael Haynes May 5, 2021

Samantha Brenner: Ok. My name is Samantha Brenner and I am here with Michael Haynes to talk about this experience at Muhlenberg College. Our goal is to collect our oral histories of people's unique experiences during their years as a student, to preserve the information for future generations to access. The oral histories are an integral part of our course. The history of diversity and inclusion at Muhlenberg College. We are meeting on Zoom on May 12th, 2021.

So thank you so much for your willingness to speak with us today. To start, can you please state your full name and spell it for me.

Michael Haynes: Yes, Michael Haynes. M-I-C-H-A-E-L H-A-Y-N-E-S

SB: Thank you. Will you please share the year you graduated from Muhlenberg?

MH: Yes, I am class of seventy-nine, 1979.

SB: Thank you. Do you consent to this interview today?

MH: I do.

SB: Do you consent to having this interview transcribed, digitized and made publicly available online in searchable formats?

MH: I do.

SB: Do you consent to having this interview be stored in the archives of Muhlenberg College?

MH: I do.

SB: Do you consent to Muhlenberg College and researchers using your interview for educational purposes and other formats, including film, articles, websites, presentations and other formats?

MH: I do.

SB: Do you understand that you are not receiving any monetary compensation for your time today and you are not required to participate by Muhlenberg College?

MH: I do.

SB: So to start the interview, I'd like to turn to your early life and ask how you became interested and sought out the college experience? Who are your major influences and how did you know you wanted to attend college?

MH: Well you know, I think at an early age I was influenced by my parents directly and their parents, their colleagues indirectly. I grew up in an environment where a lot of my parents, friends and colleagues went to schools. Many of them went to HBCUs. And so at a very early age, since I grew up in an environment where I was surrounded by people who went to college, it was almost a foregone conclusion that that was something that I would do. And I was-- I was very interested in attending college.

SB: Thank you so much for that. And I guess describe to me what it was like 00:03:00entering Muhlenberg. In what ways were you involved in social or curricular activities?

MH: Well I was taken by Muhlenberg, which was the first-- the second part of your first question. And I'm embarrassed because I'm not going to remember the right street names, but I remember that on the brochure, they they took you down the main-- the main street there, and you're coming down that street with all of those wonderful renovated older homes and the trees and and then you pull up in the circle and you see the what used to be the library. Now it's the administrative offices. And so I was-- I-- that, that first impression was a lasting one, just seeing the campus that was that was you know, I remember that 00:04:00vividly as my first experience.

And then I also think that while I visited other schools where, you know, we had student tour guides. I think Cardinal Key was the-- was the organization that handled that responsibility back then. The students, I don't know, they were, I think, a bit more engaged and-- and their-- their description of what-- of the Muhlenberg experience was much more heartfelt I thought. They weren't just kind of going through the motions and so that kind of-- that kind of energy resonated with me.

And then at the time, I was-- I was up in the air about my major. I was-- I 00:05:00ended up being a psychology major, but I also had an interest in biology and as you-- as you all know, Muhlenberg has a strong background in the sciences. And then I was also looking to be reasonably close to my parents. I'm an only child. Muhlenberg was, you know, an hour and a half, an hour and 45 minutes away. So if I needed to get back to my parents, or at least that's the rationalization I had right at that time, if I needed to get back to them, to support them, that I wasn't that far away. I didn't want to depend on, you know, like a plane or anything like that to get home. And so I kind of like, you know, drew like a five hour circumference around my home. And that's kind of where I landed.

And I was also very interested in going to a smaller school because I wanted the opportunity to get involved in a number of activities if I elected to do so. And I felt a smaller school environment would allow that as opposed to going to a large university. In terms of my activities, in no particular order, I was a student advisor for two years. I think it was my sophomore and junior year. I was a member of the Cardinal Key Society.

So I did participate in those tours. I was a-- I was part of Psi Chi, so I was an honorary psychology student. And then, I think for me, one of the more-- one 00:07:00of the fondest activities and memories I have is of being a fraternity brother at Tau Kappa Epsilon.

And I participated in a number of, you know, intramural activities: basketball, football, soccer, softball. I mean, lots of intramural sports. I was also social chairman for a semester. And I am to this day, I am close to about ten to fifteen of those fraternity brothers. And we get together once or twice a year at least. I'm in the D.C. metro area, so I don't get up to that, unfortunately, 00:08:00I don't get up to New Jersey as often as I'd like, but I know those guys get together a lot more frequently than I do with them. And these are people who I've known for, I don't know, forty-five years and we still stay in touch. So I would say my, you know, my fraternity connection is, and that experience has really, really been, been good. So.

SB: Well, thank you so much for that. You just mentioned that you were a psychology major. Can you talk a little about your relationships with your professors and other faculty and any classes that stood out to you?

MH: Oh, that's a good question. You're testing my memory now. So you know, I 00:09:00would say that my memory of the psychology department in general, it was a very tight group of professors and I would say they were very, very supportive. And I guess the-- the best example I can use is during my senior year, I explored the option of doing an internship that year, and I worked with Dr. Lohr, who was the head of the psychology department at that time. I think he had some connections in the business community in Allentown. And I, and I ended up actually getting an internship with Mack Trucks. And he was very instrumental in making that happen and very supportive.

Dr. Maiser was-- there was a point where I was interested in clinical psychology 00:10:00and he was very helpful in helping me look at different grad schools to pursue that course of study if I, if I chose to. And Dr. Silas White. I have very fond memories of Dr. White because we-- often we would get together after, you know, after class and socialize. And one summer I spent the summer at my frat house taking a summer class and one of my fraternity brothers, Dr. White and myself went deep sea fishing. And so, so that's-- that's a fond memory I have.

But I would say overall, you know, the-- I think the psychology department was, I got a feeling that there is strong camaraderie with professors and that they really did, I know everybody says they have an open door policy, but I feel like they, you know, all of them were very supportive and very open, so, I don't know if that answers your question or not...

SB: It does. Thank you so much.

SB: So I guess, bringing us to contemporary times. Is there anything that you would do differently if you could start over? And do you have any regrets about your college experience?

MH: Hmm. Any regrets? You know, the only thing that comes to mind that I can 00:12:00think of is from a career standpoint. Part of me wonders, had I-- I had an interest in accounting, but I didn't really pursue that. And I'm wondering if the combination of psychology and accounting would have, you know, what kind of trajectory that would have placed me from a career perspective. That's a good question. Any regrets? I can't really. Nah, I can't really--I can't really think of any, you know, and as an aside, and maybe you'll get to this, but for many years, going back to kind of a college experience, for many years, my parents 00:13:00loved Muhlenberg. And so for many years after, after I graduated, they would come back to the Christmas service at the chapel long after I graduated. So they were-- so I had that level of support too, my parents were very, very enamored of the Muhlenberg experience. Maybe I could have, maybe I could have studied a little bit more, but... Isn't that always the case, right?

SB: Yeah, you're not wrong. I guess what-- in what ways has Muhlenberg shaped your life? I mean, you talked about how it gave you lifelong friends, but are there specific ways you can think of that you really credit Muhlenberg for?

MH: Other than I think what I-- I think what I can credit Muhlenberg for is 00:14:00giving me the opportunity to connect with people who have had significant influences in my life. And this goes back to those, you know, ten, twelve, fifteen people. You know, I have as a result of being in and keeping in touch with them, I've continued to grow and learn and I think you know, without, without the Muhlenberg experience, I'm not sure-- I'm not sure if that would have happened, you know, there are a lot of people you know like my cousins, for example, or other close friends, and they're just like-- They're surprised that I have that many people from my college days that I keep in touch with, they have one or two or maybe four or five, so. That's a good question.

You know, I do think. One thing that I can, one other thing that I can think of is my mother always had this saying about, you know, there's something special about a really good liberal arts education. And I think that, you know, over the years, you know, we've seen different things being emphasized at schools like, you know, MBA programs and, you know, getting-- getting very specialized in a-- in a technical career path. And there's nothing-- or a technical course of 00:16:00study. And there's nothing, there's certainly nothing wrong with that. And in fact, we need people with those-- those skills and sets of experiences.

And I also think that, you know, what my mother said is true, because I think if I think about myself and I think about those ten, twelve, fifteen guys, there's, there's kind of a-- I don't know what you want to call it. There's a well-roundedness about each of those people, even though some, you know, some of us pursued very technical careers, some of us pursued careers in finance, you know, some of us are educators. But there's-- I think the Muhlenberg experience helped us; helped us or, I'll say for myself, helped me be probably more well-rounded.

I think you had-- sometimes I need to have my mouth run a little bit so my head 00:17:00can get engaged. So you talked about regrets. And I think the one-- the one regret that I have is I wish that-- what's the best way to say this? I wish I had been more involved in contributing to-- I don't know how-- how to say this, but like contributing to diversity back in that time period. I think I was probably, you know, enmeshed in kind of my own social world, for lack of a better way of saying it, on my own campus life at Muhlenberg, and I do think that, and while there, there was a African-American student union that I 00:18:00participated in as well, there's a very small group. I think there was, like, seven of us at the time and it was mostly informal.

And so I wish that I had been a bit more aware and mindful and maybe worked with administration to help with either recruiting efforts or kind of building or expanding awareness around the need for diversity. So I think that's a-- I think that's a regret that I do have because I've been, I think throughout my life, I've been a reasonably good bridge builder and you know, I played a little bit 00:19:00of that role in high school.

I'm getting ready to play a little bit of that role at work through facilitating some unconscious bias workshops. So I think that was probably a missed opportunity given my skills and experiences, I think that's a regret that I have, so.

SUSAN FALCIANI MALDONADO: Well, thank you for-- for touching on that and reflecting on that. One of the things that we've witnessed as we've been interviewing people, the earliest alumni-- that alumnus that we spoke with was a gentleman from the class of sixty-one. And then we talked to several people from, who were class-- the early seventies and then some who were later in the seventies.

I think so far you are the latest, most recent graduate that we talked to so far in this process. And it has been very interesting and I think dictated somewhat even by the times and the social, what was going on with the currents in the country, even in terms of how that impacted different people and their engagement with diversity initiatives, and part of what we're looking at is the nature of what the college was doing. That's part of what we're presenting in this course, in collaboration with our students, is, really, creating kind of a timeline that talks about the rise and fall of initiatives towards that. And 1984 was really the first time that they got a two-year grant to hire a minority recruitment admissions person to do that.

So the college, along with society, kind of rose and fell in that area. And so 00:21:00thank you. So you mentioned the student union, which was, that's one of the things we're trying to ascertain is kind of: we know when it was founded and then kind of it seems to have tapered off because they talked about reinvigorating it in the mid-eighties.

MH: Right.

SFM: Do you remember any activities that you did or, like you said, it was pretty informa;l what that might have been like?

MH: Well, we had, I'd say, we had some social activities and it was, I would characterize it as a support, group support infrastructure. There were a couple of African-American students who were more senior than myself that, you know, I felt that I could, if I had questions, issues, you know, thoughts, ideas or 00:22:00whatever, I could bounce them off of them. And, in a very kind of low key, clandestine way, they would kind of check in, make sure I was OK.

So but I would say that there, at least to my recollection, there weren't many formal activities. It was more like, hey let's get together in the student union. It's been a while. It's-- you know, there were occasions, I can remember a couple of occasions where we would go to Cedar Crest College because there was a--

Can you hear the background noise? I'm sorry. [long pause].

SFM: That's fine. I hear nothing, anymore.

MH: OK. Alright, so I would say that, you know, there were some events over at that college that we took advantage of on occasion. And because there was an African-American population at Cedar Crest as well. So, but most of-- mostly it was informal, social and supportive.

SFM: Do you remember there being any support institutionally from the administration or faculty or anyone who would check in, any kind of infrastructure there to provide support, at that point?

MH: Yes, I think there-- I would say that there were in terms of additional support. I say the answer is yes, I'm pausing because I want to make sure that I 00:24:00remember the names. I think it was, is it Richard Bennett? He was in admissions and he would definitely check in. There were a couple of people in the admissions office that would definitely check in. And I'm sorry, I can't remember their names at this juncture. But yes, there was, you know, and again, very informal, that kind of thing.

The faculty advisor who was part of, whose group, student advisory group I was in, her name was Dr. Wonsiewicz. And she was also someone who would check in periodically, as well as some of the psychology professors, particularly Dr. White, all very kind of informal. So I wouldn't say it was institutionalized, 00:25:00but there were members of faculty and staff who were supportive.

And then I would say that, you know, when I pledged my fraternity, the-- my big brother was the president of the fraternity. And I don't think that was happenstance. You know, I think that there was some thought put into that about making sure that I felt supported. We did-- were both psychology majors. But I do feel like, I think they wanted to make sure that I was supported as well, some.

SFM: Do you have, I think this was originally Samantha's question, but to that, to that point in this reflection and you mentioned thinking about if you had been engaged in different ways or perhaps more active at that time, are there any words of wisdom or advice that that you would offer to students of color now 00:26:00today in 2021?

MH: In terms of the Muhlenberg experience, going to Muhlenberg or . . . ?

SFM: Yes, I would say going to Muhlenberg but also college students in general who are-- who are facing the world today that we're living in.

MH: Hmm, that's a good question. You know, I would just say some of this is going to sound cliched, but I would say that, you know, be, be open to different opportunities. You know, Muhlenberg, it's much more diverse than it was when I was going to school, but compared to other schools, it may-- it's probably still not as diverse as other schools. And I think, you know, a place like Muhlenberg can provide a good college experience. And I think, you know, be creative about 00:27:00where you get your support from.

You know, I I'm just starting down this path around doing some reading or like around a cultural bias and, you know, like things like white fragility and Kendi's book on how to be anti-racist and, you know, literature like that. Some of what I'm struck by as well as some other posts in that kind of thing, is that, you know, it's again, this sounds cliche, but it's-- it takes all of us to 00:28:00ensure that people feel included.

And there are non-African-Americans who can be supportive as well and who are interested in being supportive as well as African-Americans. So, and I also think it's important to have a group of African-Americans who can support you through the process as well, so, whatever Muhlenberg can do to continue to foster that support is great. And I also think that, you know, people need to be open to the support of others as well. So.

SFM: Thank you. Does anybody else have any other questions?

KATE RANIERI: No, but thank you so much. I love your advice. I'd like to frame that.

SFM: And Muhlenberg definitely does continue to be a work in progress. We have, well, one of the things we've celebrated recently is we just had the first black student body president was elected a few weeks ago.

And so, he came and did his digging in the archives to find out if that was, in fact, verifiably true. And so, that was a small step of progress. The Black Students Association is actually getting their own house in the fall. That will be a first.

It's so funny because a lot of the reading in the research that we've done have shown that it was exactly 50 years ago, it was in seventy-one, that there was first a proposal to say this is something that would be great to have. And so it's finally coming to fruition this year and that there is one of several 00:30:00different avenues of more institutional support.

But it's again, it's a work in progress. So there, there are new initiatives. And again, I think in this conversation around anti-racism that so many of us all have been having on campus, that it is definitely a dialog that's happening and lots of uncovering of things. So, and that's what we're trying to do in this project is present, to give some context as others look at Muhlenberg, as Muhlenberg administrators and students to look at the college and look at where we are and how far we have or haven't come, where have we been. And so that's kind of what our little cohort here is hoping to make evident.

And that's why we hope to have-- we're building this website that gives these kind of timeline pieces of information that are useful to help others 00:31:00contextualize, but then also to have the voices of people who, like yourself, have been so generous to share these experiences. So that is, the site itself is something that we hope to have fairly polished up and published probably by the end of the summer. And having your interview as part of that will definitely be a thing. So we're going to be transcribing.

MH: That's a scary thought.

SFM: So we'll-- you'll have the chance, so we will-- it's going to take us a little bit to get it fully transcribed.But we will be sending you a copy of your interview and the transcript that you'll have, you'll have final approval on, in terms of, if there's anything that you would want to redact or so before it goes public, you will get a chance to, you will have a chance to see it.

And then the one final thing I would just say is back in our emails, I had sent a PDF that's kind of the signed release form. So, and I'd be happy to resend 00:32:00that. So if you could either drop a signature in there or something and shoot that back to us, that would, that would be great.

MH: That sounds good.

SFM: Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it tremendously. Thank you.

MH: I hope it was helpful.

SFM: Very much so. You have.

MH: Thank you for being flexible and patient, appreciate it.

SFM: Likewise. All right. Well, have a lovely rest of your afternoon.

MH: You, too. Take care. Be well.