Chris Wilde '88
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- Willa CollinsWilla: 'Kay, go ahead.
- Chris WildeChris: Okay! My name is Chris Wilde, or Christopher Wilde. I currently live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I am a member of the Grinnell College class of 1988.
- Chris WildeChris: So... I'll go down the list of questions and see, 'cause I-- I think there were actually some really good... good questions... 'Why did I come to Grinnell College, and what is the first memory of campus?'
- Chris WildeChris: How I ended up being a student was kind of interesting. I had.... My goal when I was in high school was to graduate early. My-- one of my sisters had done that about ten years before me, and I really just-- I was in a rural high school, no college prep.... just-- There was-- there was really nothing for me there and I kind of wanted to move on in life.
- Chris WildeChris: One of the colleges I was interested at first was... it's a college system around the world, that's called the United World Colleges. And I... went through their interview process and applications... The fact that they were sort of a global college: they have.. I don't know what-- at the time it was probably, I think, like, seven different campuses around the world.
- Chris WildeChris: And I... I don't know why, but I just picked their location in Italy, because it seemed like I wanted to be in Europe, and I wanted to do something. You know: learn a foreign language, and those sorts of things.
- Chris WildeChris: So I went through their interview process, and in filling out the application, there was a section that came back to haunt me. There was a... '1, 2, and 3, rank choices out of their global campuses'. And the strategy I probably could have used would have been jsut write in one college only at the top of that list.
- Chris WildeChris: I filled out three, and when they were parsing out their accepted students, I had-- They flew me from Minnesota to-- where I was living in northern Minnesota-- to Chicago to do the interviews, and... They had told me that I was one of the best people that they'd interviewed and that I would get a place in their upcoming class.
- Chris WildeChris: When they made the decision and let me know, they told me it was going to be one of the campuses that was like second or third down the list. That campus was in New Mexico, and me, being kind of naive and having never been to the Southwest before, I thought that, "Oh, New Mexico is a desert. Why would I want to go to school in the middle of the desert?"
- Chris WildeChris: I... and there were-- there were some other factors there too. They had.. they had sort of sloppily told me that, also, part of why they didn't choose me for that particular campus was that they wanted a gender balance, and... So, that was also a part of how I was eliminated from the Italian campus.
- Chris WildeChris: And.. I was kind of upset about the whole thing, and I ended up turning them down... because I just didn't wanna do the school in New Mexico. There was also another factor: because I had no college prep classes in high school, the... the-- one of the contingencies of acceptance was sort of, taking a class to bump up math skills during the summer, and I had-- again, living in a rural area, I had no access to that sort of prep.
- Chris WildeChris: And.. so, turned that down. The next day in the mail comes the "Hey! We're Grinnell College and this--" you know, "We love--" thing, you know: "We'd love for you to consider us!" And I quickly skimmed through the material, saw that there was an option for early admission.
- Chris WildeChris: Now this was April of... 1984, so this-- I, technically believe might have even been past the-- sort of the standard deadline. I come from an academic family, so my father is a professor, his brother is a professor, educators all throughout the family tree. And so I-- I guess I just must've gone ahead and decided to apply anyway, even though clearly it was, kind of past that deadline.
- Chris WildeChris: And I-- like I said, I was really... Yeah, yeah. I had sort of psyched myself up, and my school was sort of prepped for me to be gone that next year. And then I did. I was accepted and then.... I actually still have the little, like, certificate of acceptance, and it's dated July 3rd of 1984.
- Chris WildeChris: So I didn't know until... just under two months before New Student Days, that I was going to be here in the fall of 1984.
- Chris WildeChris: And then speaking, then, of my first memory of campus: My parents-- we drove-- because of where we lived. We did it in a two.. like a two day trip, so we drove... At the time I live... I'm not sure how many miles it is, but due north from Duluth, Minnesota. In those days, at 55 miles an hour, it was an hour's drive.
- Chris WildeChris: So we drove to Minneapolis and we stayed with... That's where I had grown up, and we stayed with our old neighbors for the night, and then the next day, drove to Iowa, and I'd never been to Iowa before. Didn't come-- you know, obviously hadn't seen the campus or done the prospective student tours or anything.
- Chris WildeChris: Part of the strength of it was: my grandmother is originally from Iowa, and her family has roots back to 1850 in northeastern Iowa. And also, I just-- actually, on this trip to reunion, discovered that I have... some of the roots are even more local than I'd ever thought before.
- Chris WildeChris: My first memory of campus is pulling up, the dorm that I was assigned was Rawson, so... My parents-- was it.. Park Street, I believe is on that side. So we-- my parents... I think we-- Registration would have been at the Forum, where you picked up everything..
- Chris WildeChris: But the distinct first memory I have is my parents pulling up and parking outside of Langan, which is the next dorm to the south of Rawson, and... somebody had their windows open and the stereo was blaring the Who song Bobba O'Riley, that has the refrain "Teenage Wasteland".
- Chris WildeChris: And I... that's-- That is my first memory of, "Oh my God, I've arrived." And... also, too, I think was the... just, the exciting realization that this was it! This-- "I'm on my own now."
- Chris WildeChris: And.. I was also-- at that time I was 17. I turned 18 the next month. In school, I'd been held ba-- not really heldback a year, but.. the kindergarten registration in my school district at that time, the cutoff was September 1st, so I was actually put with a class, technically, sort of behind where I would've been.
- Chris WildeChris: So I was.. at that time, was one of the older people throughout, sort of, public school, and then when I went to Grinnell, I was actually... you know, sort of more appropriately... I was, you know, kind of somewhere in the mid-- more toward the middle of that class.
- Chris WildeChris: So I wasn't too far out of place in those terms, but just academically, I was really... kind of in over my head.
- Chris WildeChris: Well, let's see.. So, question number two: Is there a professor, student, or staff member with a particularly strong influence on my life? Well... that could be a whole hour's interview right there.
- Chris WildeChris: I think-- I think one person I want to talk about, as she passed away a few years ago, is a German professor I had named Petra Perry. She... I-- I think that first started taking classes with her maybe jun-- my junior year.
- Chris WildeChris: And I-- I think she was relatively new to teaching here at Grinnell, but had already had a career teaching elsewhere. And she-- I think, why she sticks out to me, and.. you know, I had lots of amazing professors the whole time I was here --was that she was really genuinely interested in, not only just my academic work, but just holistically, she cared about what I was doing.
- Chris WildeChris: She, you know, encouraged me to come to office hours, and I had felt kind of burned previously by... the professor I'd had... I- I 'd sort of gone through like, a series of German professors, and the one previously... I just did not quite see eye-to-eye, and... I just-- I wanted to keep trying in German, but wasn't going to take it with these other people.
- Chris WildeChris: So when she came along it was an opportunity to, you know, try to, you know, work with somebody new, who was not-- wasn't-- already hadn't been part of the department or anything.
- Chris WildeChris: The most outstanding thing that Petra did for me personally: my senior year I wanted to do an internship, and I found-- as a History major --I found an opportunity to work with the Bureau of Historic Preservation, which, part of the Iowa Historical Society, and that was in Des Moines.
- Chris WildeChris: None of the History department would sign off on the internship, because they didn't feel that it was academic enough, even though internships in those days, and probably still, you structure what you're learning, and... you know, you write up a plan, and you, you know, you do all this prep work to do that.
- Chris WildeChris: And... Petra, being the caring, and listening to what's going on in her students' lives, overheard me talking about how the History department wouldn't sign off on this, and she was-- She was kind of mortified and angry, actually.
- Chris WildeChris: And, you know, like, "How could they do that? How could your department not support you in what you wanna do?!" You know, "This sounds like a good plan," and we just had, you know, had this conversation and she... offered her services as my advisor for the internship, even though, you know, it wasn't-- It wasn't a, you know, it had nothing to do with German.
- Chris WildeChris: But technically the rules were that it was just a.. you know, someone from.. any, you know, any faculty member could be the advisor, and... she worked really well to... you know, make sure that I-- I-- And she did, actually, you know, make sure that it was, you know... It has academic worth, which the-- you know, the History department didn't think it did.
- Chris WildeChris: And.. you know, continued, you know, sort of that support and you know, kind of signing off on all the paperwork and everything else, which, you know, again-- because I think at that point.. I might've been taking- still taking some of the higher level German classes with her.
- Chris WildeChris: But she went really above and beyond in support of my desire to do that, and... it turned out that the internship, you know, I... I saw what a practical application of a history degree could be. It wasn't where I was going in life. There were other things going on, and I didn't want to be... desk-bound historian.
- Chris WildeChris: Even though the work I was doing was fascinating, and... I actually learned, even, things about... historical things about the campus that otherwise, like, a lot of people either didn't know, or... was so far back in history that, you know, it wasn't really talked about.
- Chris WildeChris: So... that's her as, you know, the outstanding professor, and that's... She's one of the people that I really respected, and like, and when she passed away, it was kind of like-- kind of a shock. She was younger, and I think she'd been in ill health maybe. That was kind of sad for me, but..
- Chris WildeChris: Tryin' to think if there were other... folks. Even in my own department, in the History department, Tom Hietala: I shared kind of a common-- he had roots in the same part of northern Minnesota where I had been living, so he, eventually-- It was funny. I don't know how I got into conversation with him, and he was like--
- Chris WildeChris: And at that time I didn't know him well, so I didn't think he even knew who I was-- and he was like, "Of course I know who you are!" And I'm like-- "Why haven't you taken a class with me?" It's like, nobody else in the History department said things like that to me, so I was like, "Okay! I'll--" you know, "I'll take your class."
- Chris WildeChris: And... so I think it was either junior or senior year that I did his African-American History class. And he was a... an incredibly engaging professor. Very smart, liked to talk a lot, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't... And, yeah, he was another one who, you know, took a good, personal interest in students.
- Chris WildeChris: And... you know.... Like, you know, talked-- didn't talk down. I think-- I felt a lot of sort of hierarchical constraints sometimes with professors. Like, that they were-- and I certainly wasn't the most-- you know, I didn't have the most academic prowess in those days.
- Chris WildeChris: And, you know-- In some ways you get out of things what you put in, and I think that, looking back, I wasn't prepared to... do a lot of rigorous academic work, and I think, if I had a do-over, I would probably be much better about going to office hours and meeting professors, and-- you know, and sort of engaging.
- Chris WildeChris: Oh! Actually, yeah, now I-- Then-- this is why I love oral history projects and interview, free-flowing questions. I had a professor... And, this is, I think, is a good, like, the liberal arts aspect. Again, being a History major, I wanted to take the electronic music class.
- Chris WildeChris: In the 1980s, what that consisted of was a lot of... old, sort of, patch-cord equipment from the 70s, like.... I'm trying to remember what.... Oh...
- Chris WildeChris: I don't remember the type of synthesizer, but there was one that was sort of a suitcase style, and you did all the patch cords to ma-- to connect the different modules.
- Chris WildeChris: The barrier that I had to the class though, was that Jonathan Chenette, who taught the class-- and I don't know this to be true, becuase I didn't ever go in and talk to him about it again, being the reticent student I was --I had just understood that he wanted more, like, students with performance or read music background, where my... music abilities were innate, and I could barely read music...
- Chris WildeChris: I didn't play any instruments at that time... And I had taken a... sort of like, Music 101 class with Terry King, who's a very awesome guy. So, I engineered to... one semester-- no, it was a year that Mr. Chenette was away, and they hired this really amazing guy, Phillip Schroeder to take his place.
- Chris WildeChris: And that's-- I used the fact that he was gone to sort of engineer applying for the class, and it backfired on me because first semester, I think only two people had signed up for the class. And there were-- they needed a minimum of... probably five people.
- Chris WildeChris: So he cancelled the class, and I was screwed at that point, 'cause I, you know, I was banking on the fact that I would get those four credits. So I quickly figured out that I could structure an independent study class to fill that credit gap, and... I went to him, and we talked it through, and...
- Chris WildeChris: We structured an independent study that combined sort of, the history of technology-- so it took my knowledge and love of history, and applied it to electronic music.
- Chris WildeChris: So I did a lot of.... listening research... He was one of the first professors to.. meet-- he's like, "Oh! Just come over to my house. I don't feel like going to campus." Alright, I don't think he said "I don't feel like going to campus", but..
- Chris WildeChris: You know, "I'm not gonna be on campus today. Come over to my house." And also it was easier to listen to his record collection, too, at his house as opposed to in his office.
- Chris WildeChris: And he was-- he was really good. He was just a one year, like I said, temporary replacement, and... Again, someone very engaged, very willing to work one-on-one.
- Chris WildeChris: When second semester rolled around, he offered the electronic music class again, and that time we got a-- we got a good core group of people together, and... A couple of my friends were in there, a couple of other, like, pretty wild and crazy students, and it was a-- We had a lot of fun with that class.
- Chris WildeChris: But Phillip Schroeder was.... yet another. And I think of that, that was one of the things that-- I glommed onto a lot of the folks who were visiting, and only like, shorter-term hires.
- Chris WildeChris: That's-- when I first declared my major, in fact, the gentleman who was teaching the European History classes that year was-- I think his first name was James Pringle, and I declared with him as my advisor, and then about a month or two later he's like, "Well, I haven't been re-hired."
- Chris WildeChris: And I went to the department chair, who happened to be Don Smith, and that's why I ended up with Don Smith as the advisor, because I-- I didn't know any other faculty and I'm sitting right in front of him, so... That's how we did that.
- Chris WildeChris: Let's see... 'Best memories from time at Grinnell'... That-- that would be too long. 'What did my dorm room look like?' 'Cause I've been talking about that a little bit.
- Chris WildeChris: And I actually have... there's only one of my rooms that I have photos of, and I took-- It was my senior year. I lived on Haines 3rd in a single that faced the street side. I think... and I went up there, too. I think something-- 2318 was the room number.
- Chris WildeChris: And by that time I had figured out what-- you know, what the creature comforts were, and I brought all sorts of... I think I had a rug. I had this sort of... orange colored, sort of, swivel, over-stuffed chair, a lot of Beatles posters.. I was big into Beatles, and...
- Chris WildeChris: Also, artifacts from previous years, so like, posters for different events, or relays, or things like that. And also, too, like, different posters from places that I'd traveled or things that I, you know, sort of liked, or had gone to explore or visit in the previous few years.
- Chris WildeChris: I put my bed on the floor. That was the huge thing for me, is I didn't like the... the bed, the bed frames, and there is a great picture in that-- that particular room is sort of an 'L' shape, so I was able to put the mattress in the, sort of, foot-end of the 'L', and also, the heating radiators were around it.
- Chris WildeChris: So it was all kind of nice and warm and cozy in there, and... Ahh... From a previous room, I had a-- what I call the "Purple Paisley Curtains". They were some awesome fabric that I picked up because... and this was one of the sort of adaptations that a lot of students had been making. I lived on North campus one year, but then South campus for the final three years.
- Chris WildeChris: And most of the rooms, you come in, you enter in the room, and there are-- in particular doubles in the case of this story -- so the closets are right there, and then... So that's like a vestibule and then you come into the main room, and a lot of people were doing curtains over that bit.
- Chris WildeChris: So you could kind of leave your door open, but the curtains would give you a little bit of visual privacy. So that's where the purple paisley curtains came in. I was in... Cleveland 2nd my... doo-doo-doo... junior year.
- Chris WildeChris: In the.... It would be... Was it-- the southeast corner of that floor. So I was facing the street, and it was in the corner room. So I took those curtains for the next year and put them up in my room in Haines.
- Chris WildeChris: Also, I had a floor lamp, that-- I looked at the pictures. I'm like, "Why didn't I keep this lamp?! It's really awesome!" Ha,ha! So that, yeah-- That was one of the things. And a stereo. I mean, that was-- I think that was also the-- the sort of... you know, big, important creature comfort.
- Chris WildeChris: This was also the era where... CDs were sort of 'the newfangled thing'. I still remember the first-- it was, I think 1986 --and a friend of mine had a Sade album, so that was the first CD I ever listened to.
- Chris WildeChris: But, my room in Haines: I had a CD player because, for the first time, in 1987, the price point for CD players dropped to like, around a hundred dollars. And I-- for my birthday in September, I'd gotten some money, and was like, "I'm gonna buy a CD player!" Just kind of an extravagant thing.
- Chris WildeChris: I came from.. I came from this really skewed background. My father was wealthy, but he didn't raise me, and had nothing to do, other than legally mandated child support. So I had to-- I had no support from him. It was a-- it was a tricky thing to navigate with the College.
- Chris WildeChris: But I-- my home life was working-class, and my parents were old school. I was... my mom had me when she was 34. They were kind of part of the silent generation, where I'm generation X. And they didn't understand, like, why-- "Why would people want stereos? You can just listen to the radio. And you shouldn't even be listening to the radio, you should be studying." you know? Kind of those sorts of things.
- Chris WildeChris: So, having the stereo is.. it was super important to me, and then, 1987 and that room was where I started my CD collection, so... that now has like over 400 CDs, and now in the days of digital audio, I couldn't imagine-- like, if I parsed out all the digital files I have, what that would translate to in terms of compact disks, but I-- probably wouldn't fit all into a room...
- Chris WildeChris: "What kind of clothes did you wear every day as a student and on special occassions?" I'm looki-- I've been looking back at a lot of the photos, and the 80s were, like, sort of loud colors, and... I had a lot of... there were a couple pairs of shorts that I had that had lots of... sort of bright patterns and things that I don't necessarily know that I would wear.
- Chris WildeChris: One of my favorite clothing stories is from my sophomore year. There used to be a JC Penny's outlet store in town, and... went there one day with my friend Julie Palmer, and for some unknown reason-- and this would've been the original version of these: the Air Jordan high-tops.
- Chris WildeChris: Those things in those days were, you know, $70, or whatever, like, extravagant amount of money. And I also am-- I'm not into sports, so this-- It ended up being this really weird. Why the hell would I buy them? But they were red and black, so of course school colors, dada-da--
- Chris WildeChris: And they, for whatever reason, had been marked drastically down, down, down, and they were $26. So, I bought them, and those shoes ended up being sort of a... you know, kind of one of the things that people, "Oh, yeah!" you know, "That guy has Air Jordans! Dada-da.."
- Chris WildeChris: And my senior picture in the '88 yearbook, I-- the shoes are in the-- that picture, as well. Yeah, it was-- I think of, definitely, like, fashion-wise, we were... We were still do-- rocking tie-dye and things. It was very much like 60s in the 80s, and... casual, and sandals.
- Chris WildeChris: Lot of-- a lot of people I knew were big advocates of going barefoot. I-- and that was also something that I loved to do. I don't think that I did it as much here.
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: And then on special occassions, we would, in those days, have waltzes twice a year, and that was the--Willa: We have that still.Chris: Oh, cool! I thought so. I've heard of it every once in a while from... I've been meeting more, like, students who have been here in the 21st century, like, "Yeah, we still have Waltz!"
- Chris WildeChris: And that was like, the big thing, to be like, you know, go all out and dress up, and.... Some of the photos I've seen this weekend: I completely forgot about this sort of maroon-colored velvet, sort of-- My partner told me what it-- felt like a-- It had four buttons on the front. It didn't really have a collar, because it's sort of buttoned over this way.
- Willa Collins & Chris WildeWilla: Like a cummerbund?Chris: Not a cummerbund. I wanna say it's like-- it's not double breasted, but...Willa: Oh..Chris: But there's a style where you button down here, and then it's more open, and it doesn't have--Willa: Right.Chris: It didn't have collars, that was the thing that he said.Willa: Okay.
- Chris WildeChris: It was like, "Oh, we didn't have collars, and it's [blank]," and I forgot the name. Ha,ha! But, that was-- I think, that was the, you know, the most, like.. you know, 'dress to impress' as they say. And it was-- it was always really fun, because you got to see what-- how people interpreted that.
- Chris WildeChris: 'Cause over the years some people would just show up in their regular clothes, or they'd put on like, a tuxedo shirt. You know? With the printed tuxedo thing. And then, some of the women I know would just be in a be-- all-out formal, and.. You know, just this-- gorgeous, or they'd still have a high school prom dress that they'd get one more use out of.
- Chris WildeChris: One of the things that we had, and... I look-- I would've misinterpreted it until, thankfully, I'd written on the back-- it was a Valentine's Day dance in 1987 called the "Debutante Ball". And I cross-dressed for that.
- Chris WildeChris: There's a-- wonderful woman who was a Theater major named Julia Willis. I think she was probably class of '90, and she was tall. She was like, over 6 feet tall, and I'm 5'6". But, for some bizarre reason, she had this bright yellow, floor-length dress that fit me perfectly. Ha,ha!
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: So, I wore that. I got my friend Paula Rudd, and she did the suit and bowtie thing. And so that-- that was probably, you know, one of the more.. fun and outrageous, and.. Drag really wasn't... some of... I met up with other gay men from my class who... We were talking about how, you know-- and now, I guess there's, what? A drag ball like, twice a year.Willa: Yeah. Did you do like, Mary B. James then?Chris: Yeah! Yeah!
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: The-- in our day it evolved from... I have a t-shirt that says "Mary B. James Erotic Games", which I think would've been '85. And then it evolved into something that I remember being called "Mary B. James, James B. Mary Cross-dressing Ball".Willa: Right.Chris: And I think that--Willa: That-- that's what we do, and then we have Drag Show twice a year.Chris: Okay.
- Chris WildeChris: Mary B. James, the dance, is once a year, and then Drag Show is a separate thing.Chris: Okay, yeah, and.. Like I said, that, and that was late. So, when I was here early... you know, as far as the cross-dressing thing wasn't really-- you know, or drag wasn't really... You really couldn't get away with it.
- Chris WildeChris: There were-- and there were some, definitely some men who'd go around in skirts, and it kind of blended in with the sort of-- the hippie vibe, and sort of the for-- some of the, you know, sort of long-haired hippie Forum Beach folks. So, you know, some of those guys would occassionally wear skirts, and...
- Chris WildeChris: I can't remember if I did or not. It would probably seem like something I would do. But the-- yeah. I mean, so that's-- that's kind of a range of the fashion.
- Chris WildeChris: "What memories or images do you have of the town of Grinnell?" That-- that one's always... I've always wrestled with that one, because, as a freshman, I... signed up to work on yearbook. I ended up with the role of selling ads, and...
- Chris WildeChris: Me, thinking outside the box, I was like, "Oh! Well, I'm gonna go into town, and... just like, start going business to business. We need to get more businesses sponsoring, you know, the yearbook, and they can," you know, "advertise to students." And, you know, people would get-- I-- I don't know why I had those-- that thinking was very antithetical to the way I think now, but..
- Chris WildeChris: I, you know, took my clipboard and what-not, and went into town and started talking to business people, who... not necessarily who'd advertised before. I mean, generally, you think of, if they've advertised before, they're a soft target. You just go in and renew.
- Chris WildeChris: But I tried to expand that, and it kind of backfired, because... In 1966, so, here I am 20 years after that, there was this scandal with the yearbook. At that time it was... --and my understanding of it, and they've revisited the history of this a couple of times since then-- I-- and, I was part of in that... sort of first revival of it..
- Chris WildeChris: The yearbook had controversial photos. It was more of a like, photo-essay style. So Grinnell in the 60s was, you know, as lots of people talk about, wa-- you know, there-- as... in society, but there was this just... visible shift between, you know, more conservative... you know, shirt and tie, and dress kind of thing to like, the 'free love', you know, 'summer of love' hippie vibe of the late 60s.
- Chris WildeChris: And the yearbook in '66 was part of that, where they did more of, like, photo-essays, and... and sort of artistic style photos to look at student more realistically.
- Chris WildeChris: And they depicted... oh, people were smoking pot, or... "Oh, my goodness!" you know, "They're picturing a man and a woman in the same dorm room! Oh, scandal!" because of the gendered campus at that time with North campus being male and Suth campus being female.
- Chris WildeChris: So that yearbook got quashed. Like, it would-- never saw the light of day until 1986. And the people in town had a long memory about that one. And they were like, "Why would I advertise?" and, you know... You know, "Are they just gonna ban it again?" or...
- Chris WildeChris: I had all sorts of really weird reactions, and... those were the-- That, in some ways, kind of colored the tone of-- and really, sort of drew the divide for me of like, "Okay, this is what-- This is how people in town-- or, some people in town perceive the College, and us as students."
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: But on the other hand, I worked in food service all four years that I was here, and food service has a large support staff from town.Willa: Mhm.Chris: And I made fast friends with all the ladies who were working in food service, and saw a, you know, much more realistic side of... you know, what life was like in town, and... you know, sort of the social structures, and the cultures that existed outside of things within the... you know, sort of within town.
- Chris WildeChris: I was also fortunate that, as a student, there was a young man in town by the name of Kurt Faulk. He was a high school student, sort of concurrent to me being here. He was really big into music. He loved to listen to KDIC, and I think maybe even had a show. And I don't know in what-- in linear time what order this was, but..
- Chris WildeChris: He... dropped by the studio one day while I happened to be there, and that's how we met. And that was another, you know, sort of perspective about life in town. Kurt was... you know, definitely squarely... you know, like, grew up in town. His parents were from around here. He went to Grinnell High School and had that whole sort of social life with his peers, but then he also knew that, like, "Hey, those college kids are cool."
- Chris WildeChris: And he was also friends with a lot of faculty kids. And, also, one of his friends was some... his family were refugees from Cambodia, so Kurt already, you know, sort of had cross-cultural friends, even though he was growing up here in rural Iowa.
- Chris WildeChris: So he also brought, like a perspective of, you know, what life in town was like. And I-- had a more-- much more appreciation, you know, knowing those groups of people, like the women from food service and him, to where I really, you know, kind of... had a nice respect for folks from town.
- Chris WildeChris: And I'm glad that... things-- things seem still a little more separate, but also, I think, a little more integrated. In the years that I was a student here it was customary for people, if you were walking at night, to yell "FAGGOT!" out the window of the car.
- Chris WildeChris: Or... I had one instance where I was crossing 6th, which is a, you know, four-lane highway, as it still is, and somebody in a vehicle like, you know, deliberately crossed lanes to swerve toward me, and I don't think they would've hit me, but I think they were trying to scare me.
- Chris WildeChris: I also --and I was retelling this next story to some folks-- I got followed from town by a young man and young woman, who probably only a few years younger than me, but high school students, definitely. "You got drugs? I know you've got drugs; you're a college student!"
- Chris WildeChris: And would not leave me alone to the point that I.. like, you know, very... and luckily had, you know, sort of, personal safety training so I knew what to do, that I went back and found a crowd of people, and they were able to like, get these people disengaged from harassing me, and, you know...
- Chris WildeChris: That-- that ended it there. But, I mean, that was just an isolated thing, but... For me, it kind of illustrated that.. folks in town-- if we as students could have misperceptions about folks in town, they certainly had some about us, and...
- Chris WildeChris: It was awkward for me, because I wasn't the rich, east-coast kid that a lot of my peers were. And I'm like, "Hey!" you know, "I'm just a regular old kid from Minnesota! Not--" you know. "I don't have access to a lot of things."
- Chris WildeChris: My-- I actually had to leave my car here over winter break my sophomore year, and it got vandalized while I was away. Probably punched a hole in the gas tank...
- Chris WildeChris: You know, so they were, you know, really random things like that, and you'd kinda think, "Oh, a small town." you'd be safe, but... you know.
- Chris WildeChris: But overall, I don't... you know, I never-- never felt insecure and goodness knows we could wander around drunk at two in the morning and not get into too much trouble.
- Willa Collins & Chris WildeWilla: We're at about 40 minutes, so..Chris: Okay.Willa: If you can just think about what you want to prioritize. We do have some other people who wanted to come in today.Chris: Okay.
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: ...Hm. Let's see.... Are there any questions that.... that a lot of folks haven't answered? 'Cause I kind of like-- I look at these and like, I think, probably everybody has an answer for some of these.Willa: Um... you know, I don't have a copy of the sheet. Let me look?Chris: Here you go.
- Willa Collins & Chris WildeWilla: I think most of these are pretty well-covered. We've definitely gotten a lot of interesting answers to descriptions of student and campus life. The... question 6, "What book influenced you most?", people have talked less about.Chris: Mm.Willa: Just... 'cause that doesn't tend to spark as much memories...
- Willa Collins & Chris WildeWilla: Not as many people have addressed what they would have done differently, so there's that.Chris: Yeah, actually, that might be a good segueway, because one of the things that is important to me, is that I identify as queer, or genderqueer.... and I-- when I was here at that time, it was part of an evolution toward what's here now, and it's...
- Chris WildeChris: That-- and, that, I think, might tie into like, you know, sort of what changes I've seen over the time, and... In-- during the time that I was here, we were able to... have the College establish what they call the "Human Resource Center".
- Chris WildeChris: My understanding, and I don't know if it's apocryphal or not, that the College, or certain people within the College administration, didn't want the words "lesbian" or "gay" attached to a student center or any... or any sort of description of services that they would provide for students who identified as such.
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: And you notice, bisexual and transgender: not even on that map. So, that was one set of protests and getting that instead of the "Human Resource Center" established, and I think that quickly evolved into the Stonewall Resource Center.Willa: Mhm.
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: And then, there was also a housing protest during that year too, where same-sex partners did not receive the same access to married student housing room draw.Willa: Mhm, mhm.Chris: And, a lot of it was thrown back at us as, "Well, you're both guys," or, "You're both women. You can just go through regular room draw together and get a room," kind of thing..
- Chris WildeChris: Where, the idea behind, you know, the preference and also the separate ability, was that if you were married, you-- maybe your housing needs were a bit more unique, or-- as partners.
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: So that's a thing that I think has been really encouraging, and I got to meet a lot of current students who identify in, you know, all forms of queerness, and it was great to see. I went to the Stonewall Resource Center, and, you know, got to see, you know, what... sort of...Willa: Mhm.Chris: And, it was awesome because they had gone and photocopied some of the newspaper articles about the Human Resource center, and the protests and things, and...
- Chris WildeChris: It was this awesome sort of reflection, of like, seeing a piece of my self in that, because I was a body in those crowds of people protesting.
- Chris WildeChris: And today, the work that I do, I... Nine years ago I co-founded a website called "The Queer Zine Archive Project". So I... And we're collectively run, we're no... we're not a non-profit. We're not any sort of organization, but we digitize print material related to LGBT communities, and provide access to them in an educational and archival mission, and provide that free of charge.
- Chris WildeChris: There's no financial barriers; no access barriers. These are PDFs that are available to download on the Internet.
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: And, definitely, I think that.... I-- I explored ways of coming out through, sort of, androgyny, which was awkward because I had facial hair, and, you know, sort of things like that, but..Willa: It could work.Chris: Yeah, yeah! You know? Tag drag, or whatever!
- Chris WildeChris: And... that's one of the kind of, exciting things, to see that. And I hear that reflected-- like I said, I've met a lot of students from the 21st century, have graduated since... you know, since the year 2000, and that's-- consistently, the comments that come back to me is that Grinnell is a great place to be queer, and...
- Chris Wilde & Willa CollinsChris: You know, there--- "We have all these resources and everything else," and... it's a huge evolution. And I'm so glad to see that that progress has been made.Willa: Mhm.Chris: So, yeah... end on a happy note.Willa: Alright.
Alumni oral history interview with Chris Wilde '88 (1 of 2). Recorded June 1, 2013.