Seventh Meeting 04-14

Today, it was nice to see Elodia again. She was late again, but that was fine because of taking care of her pregnant daughter. We did not have a long session. We spoke a little about how my trip to New York went. I told her a little bit about it, but I did not want to go on and on about it because I know she has not had opportunity to travel hardly at all. I felt like it would be rude to discuss a lot of the trip because of being able to go on that trip. Elodia would never say anything but sometimes I almost guilty about the opportunities that I have had. We also talked about her daughter, who is pregnant with a baby boy. She had the baby shower for her last week and said it went really well. She talked about all the presents her daughter got and how good the shower went. I know she was glad it went well, because I know Elodia did a lot of planning and preparation for it. Her daughter is actually going to be giving birth this upcoming weekend. She has a doctor’s appointment on Thursday. I told her how exciting that was! Elodia said her daughter is just tired, huge, and wants to have the baby. Still, I can only imagine how excited her whole family is.
We talked a little bit more about her family and her grandchildren and then we began to read an article from the Skiff. Elodia chose the Living Learning Communities article after I explained a little bit about what they are. I think this article was difficult for her because it was written in a way that referenced people speaking earlier in the article towards the end, and had a lot of difficult vocabulary. As we read, some of the quotes given by interviewees were clearly hard for Elodia to understand and I found myself explaining a lot. Even I had to read the quotes and statements over a couple of times, so that I could explain what they meant properly. The article gave both sides of the story. I basically gave the background about how the media had portrayed the LLC’s as a separation of certain groups from the rest of the student body and how the administration felt that, that was an intentional doing. We talked about the committee that Provost Nowell Donovan is heading up and how they are going to create guidelines for the new LLC’s. I told Elodia that this committee has been met with backlash from some students in the LLC’s because the committee will be forwarding their recommendations on to the board of trustees and students feel like the people making the “guidelines” have no interaction with the on-campus community, therefore are unhappy. I explained both sides. Elodia said she understood the rules needed to be in place but could also see both sides of the story as well.
We finished the article and then she talked a little bit about how her team got better cleaning equipment but the team has to haul this heavy machinery between buildings. She talked a little bit about the politics of the team and how they decided who would haul when. Elodia also said that people on the team were trying to take vacations on their week to haul the machine between the buildings. I think the politics of the student body and the administration regarding the LLC’s made her think of the politics in among her staff. It was very interesting to hear her perspective and her view of people’s perspectives.