Rochelle M. Gandour-Rood '02
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- Tamara GrbusicTamara: You can start whenever you feel comfortable.
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: (Whispered: Thank you.) My name is Rochelle Marie Gandour-Rood. When I went to Grinnell College my name was Rochelle Marie Gandour. I currently live in Seattle, Washington, and I am a member of the Grinnell College Class of 2002. And the question I want to answer is “Why did I come to Grinnell College?”
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: There is sort of a fun story here that is especially brought up at this particular reunion with the emphasis on the yearbook of ’66 and this giant cluster of people coming from the classes of like ’65-‘73 or 4, like this huge cluster. My mom would have been in those classes had she been able to come to Grinnell and she really wanted to come to Grinnell. She even visited campus when she was a junior or just after her junior year. She’s a little unsure when that happened.
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: And... Grinnell College was just a little bit too liberal for my grandfather, so- It was something about, there’s like, co-ed visiting in the dorms like one day a week or whatever and my grandfather just like, would not have it. And then my Great Aunt who lived in Connecticut at the time, so my mom’s aunt, my grandfather’s sister, read about Grinnell College in the New York Times. There was a newspaper article about the banned yearbook because there was pictures of people smoking pot and like, walking around at night with- y'know, breaking curfew, and more of that co-ed visiting business. And so she sent the clipping to my grandfather and was basically like, y'know, “Watch out, that liberal school! You don’t wanna send Jill there!”
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: So my mom’s name is Jill Kiecolt and she lived in Oklahoma City, and she wanted to come to Grinnell College, but between the co-ed visiting hours and that banned yearbook my grandfather just wasn’t having it, so she didn’t get to come here. So then fast-forward, y'know, however many years, a lot of years, like forty years, right? And I’m a junior in high school and I’m looking at colleges and trying to figure out what I want to do. And she wasn’t- she didn’t pressure me about it she just was like, “Why don’t you take a look at Grinnell? Y'know, I thought it was a great place and I wanted to go there." But she didn’t like, say too much about and of course I came here and I thought it was pretty amazing, and I ended up coming here, obviously.
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: Although that wasn’t a sure thing; I have another story about my admission to Grinnell, which I wanna share. I think I’ve got all the details of my mom’s story and her name, that was really important. And that is that- so, I visited five schools. I know- I think this is important: I visited Rice, Macalester, Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Grinnell. And I was really, super excited about going to Bryn Mawr, which is a women’s college in Pennsylvania.
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: And I got my acceptance letter from Bryn Mawr and it was really… I hope this is OK. I don’t really mean to be trashing Bryn Mawr, but my acceptance letter from Bryn Mawr was like, “Congratulations on your acceptance to Bryn Mawr contingent, of course, upon the successful completion of your academic year and a satisfactory health record.” And that was the first sentence of the acceptance letter, and then.. So I’m sort of staring at it and like, “Oh… ok…” Like...
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: So suddenly my enthusiasm for going to Bryn Mawr sort of waned, and then a couple days letter my acceptance packet from Grinnell arrived, and it was like, “Yay! We’re so excited! We really hope you’ll join us! We love you!” And there’s like tons of exclamation points, and like, at the very end it was like, “P.S. You to fill out this health form,” but it wasn’t like in the first sentence. And I just, at that moment I knew that like, Grinnell, with this like, just welcoming, inclusive atmosphere, and like, all that, I just knew this was the place I wanted to be.
- Rochelle M. Gandour-RoodRochelle: Plus, y’know, my mom, like... I think.. She was really good about not overtly pressing me into coming but I think there might have been some subtle, like, “Think about Grinnell again. It’s really great.” So, yeah, so I came to Grinnell and I did all four years of my undergrad here and my mom maybe lived a little vicariously through me while I was here, but yeah, it was great.
- Rochelle M. Gandour-Rood & Tamara GrbusicRochelle: So I’ve always wanted to tell that story about my mom, because even now, like, I’m coming back for reunion and she... she seems a little sad. Like, especially now that this cluster of students who’s here, would’ve been her classmates, and this would’ve been her era, and there’s such an emphasis about the sixties this reunion it feels like, and she's- There’s a little note of sadness, so I’m trying to like, share that with her as much as possible, and I promised her that I would tell our story- my mom’s and my story here, to have a piece of her live at Grinnelll, too.Tamara: That's sweet.Rochelle: So, that’s my story.Tamara: Thank you.Rochelle: Thanks.
Alumni oral history interview with Rochelle M. Gandour-Rood '02. Recorded June 1, 2012.