Sasha Aslanian '90
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- Kathryn VincentKathryn: Start with your name, city you're currently living in, and class year.
- Sasha Aslanian & Kathryn VincentSasha: Mhm, sure.Kathryn: So whenever you're ready.Sasha: Okay. I’m Sasha Aslanian and I live in St. Paul, Minnesota and I graduated in the Class of ’90.Kathryn: Right.
- Kathryn VincentKathryn: And, do you wanna go through the questions, or I can ask you the questions, whatever...? Sasha: Sure-- well maybe, just as a quick warm-up can I answer question number one and then I’ll go into my three stories?Kathryn: Yes.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: So I came to Grinnell as a prospective student and I remember my visit came the first day after kids were getting back after the January break and I wasn’t excited to check out Grinnell. It was a small college in a small town in Iowa which didn’t seem very cool to me at all.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And so I came to campus and kids were just getting back from the Soviet Interim Tour. Kids were getting back from doing these exotic things around the world and I got a sense that this was a really worldly place where people went out and explored all kinds of things and brought those things back to this Iowa college.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And when kids were talking about being in Moscow for January term, I just thought, "I’m gonna’ do that! That’s where I’m going!" And so when I showed up for Grinnell, I told my advisor, like: "I’m gonna’ be an English major. I’m gonna to study abroad in Paris, and I’m going on the Soviet Interim Tour," and I did all that! So, I knew what I wanted pretty early on.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: The advice that I never forgot from a Grinnell professor came very early on. Sandy Moffet was my Tutorial professor, and Sandy was in the Theater department and the Tutorial was: "I know I like it, but I can’t tell you why: Articulating Sensory Experience".
- Sasha AslanianSasha: So it came time to turn in the very first paper and I wrote it and I had been a good student in high school and I wrote a very dutiful, conscientious paper and turned it in. Sandy called a meeting with me, handed me my paper, slid it across the desk and said, “You tried to write an A paper. It was boring! Take risks.”
- Sasha Aslanian & Kathryn VincentSasha: And I never forgot that, that it wasn’t enough to just write the grade-grubbing, safe, A paper...Kathryn: Mhm.Sasha: That I needed to take a risk. I needed to interest my audience, and that advice has stood me in good stead because I now write for a living.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: In terms of the town of Grinnell, it was like a fantasy land living here and being able to bike down Main Street by myself, y'know, home after midnight, so I felt a real freedom living in a really safe community, didn’t lock our doors at night when I lived off campus...
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And one of the things that I remember was a great kindness that was extended to me: when I was really sick with strep throat and I hauled myself down to Cunningham’s Drug Store and I had six dollars in my pocket and the pharmacist put together the prescription of the antibiotics that I needed for my strep and he said, “Oh, this is kind of an expensive prescription. It’s gonna’ be 30 dollars.”
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And I looked at him and I said, “Well, I don’t have that…” and he says, “Well, you just pay what you can and bring around the rest when you have it.” So I gave him my six dollars and then, I think I brought the rest of the money the next day because I wanted to show him that his trust had been well placed and that I would pay him back...
- Sasha AslanianSasha: But I never forgot that compassion and I felt like that was really emblematic of the kind of place that Grinnell was.. that it was a place where people were really kind to their neighbors.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And then my last story is: I did marry my Grinnell boyfriend, Leif Larsen, Class of ’88 and Leif was somebody who I really looked up to on campus.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: He was the Concerts Chair. He was on the Film Committee. He had the best show on KDIC, and one Friday night I was listening in my Norris Hall dorm room and Leif was on the air and he mentioned on his radio show that he was hungry and I saw my opportunity.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: There was a special dinner going on in Cowles Dining Hall where they had given us chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne, and so I smuggled that up to KDIC and he was very happy to see the champagne and strawberries materialize, and....
- Sasha Aslanian & Kathryn VincentSasha: So we were having a very nice time and then his actual girlfriend showed up and didn’t seem so.. amused, but that was the beginning of a flirtation that eventually turned into my great love and we got married 12 years later in 1999. And we’ve been married for 14 years and hope our two daughters will come to Grinnell. So I think that’s it!Kathryn: Okay.
- Kathryn Vincent & Sasha AslanianKathryn: Hmm, if you were writing a history...Sasha: Uh-huh?Kathryn: Is there anything that you’d include from your years here? Any events or some of your favorite places, favorite things that you did? Sasha: Yeah, I don’t feel like I have like, a really great zoom-out big picture of my era. So I was here 1986 to 1990. I think it was a really, pretty happy and prosperous period for the College.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: I don’t think students had a lot to complain about. I mean, we did protest, got the College to divest from South Africa, and one kind of funny story about that for me is: y'know, I turned into a journalist.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: I was never comfortable in the protester role, but I experimented with that in college, and the Board of Trustees was having a meeting about whether to divest from South Africa, and... My dad was really good buddies with Wally Walker, who was the Treasurer of the College. He was very high up in the administration.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And so there I was out there protesting, you know, “Divest now!” and Wally comes walking out with the Board and he sees me and he says, “Oh, Sasha!” and he puts his arm around me and I felt like such a fraud. Like, here was the administration that clearly I was close to, but it was very sweet.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And then, you know, George Drake was the President and he was very well-liked and well-respected by the students and I remember the very few little flare-ups that we had. Like, there was some sort of protest about what the College was doing away with some sort of study program that the students wanted, and so the students had made toilet paper glasses to protest to say the College had tunnel vision and George Drake came out to address the protesters and he very gamely put on the tunnel vision glasses.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And then, because of Grinnell being where it is, you always get this incredible close-up of American politics with the presidential election. So, it was 1988 and I cast my very first vote down in Grinnell, and I remember I brought the French foreign exchange student along with me because I thought it would be very educational for her to watch the American electoral process.
- Sasha Aslanian & Kathryn VincentSasha: And so I brought her down and these were the really old fashion voting booths where you pull the curtain across and you have a-- if you want to vote party line then you just grab this big handle and flip it and, you know, you’re flipping, you know, whether you want to vote the straight party ticket.Kathryn: Mhm.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: So I grabbed it and I flipped it and I was out of my booth in about ten seconds and the French student said, “Well- why were you so much faster than everybody else?” and then I realized in my great zeal to cast my first vote, I hadn’t noticed that down the ballot there were all these constitutional amendments and these smaller offices that I should have been voting for, but, you know, there’s no do-over so I forfeited those.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And you know, of course, all the presidential candidates, I’m sure many people have spoken about this, but it is just pretty incredible, and I remember.. I remember going to hear one candidate, it was Jesse Jackson, and he spoke in Herrick.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And he really had the students, you know, in the palm of his hand and he gave a great political speech and I thought: "Well, I would like to hear a little bit more from him. I’m not certain."
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And so then I went to Des Moines to go to a political rally. Well, I didn’t really understand that a rally is for people who have already made up their minds and there were more television cameras there than people. You know, it was like CNN and all of the-- so the television cameras like, lined the walls of this Des Moines rally.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And then they handed out song sheets and they were saying, “Jesse Jackson, he’s our man. He’s going to take us by the hand. He’s gonna’ lead us to the Promise Land” and then Jessie comes out and says, “Bring all the little children on down.”
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And so it was kind of religious and there was this sort of fervent, you know, adoration and I felt just acutely uncomfortable because I thought: "I want to be sold on what your vision is for this country and how you’re gonna’ solve problems," and I’m not on board.
- Sasha AslanianSasha: And I think that’s where I found that I was much more comfortable in the journalist role and to be an observer than to be a participant, but I came back feeling really.... icky. Like, even less decided than when I went.
- Sasha Aslanian & Kathryn VincentSasha: So, I think that’s it! Yeah.Kathryn: Alright. We'll have you say your name and class year and then finish.Sasha: Sure! I'm Sasha Aslanian, Class of '90.Kathryn: Great.
Alumni oral history interview with Sasha Aslanian '90. Recorded June 2, 2013.