Interview with Yolanda Garza, November 7, 2013, Madison, Wisconsin

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HEREDIA: You started La Mujer Latina awhile back; do you remember what dates and what your role in it was?

GARZA: Sure, um, I want to say that it was our first conference was in 1993, and um, I was a cofounder, or a founder, of La Mujer Latina at the time. Um, so it's still going strong.

HEREDIA: What type of issues did Mujer Latina tackle?

GARZA: Well the first, uh conference was solely, um on health issues relating to 00:01:00Latinas, that's how it all got started actually, Mujer Latina. And then as the years went on it depended on what was going on at the current time. Uh, so we expanded it from just, getting away from just only health issues to other issues.

HEREDIA: Do you remember who was part of La Mujer Latina when it started and who helped found it?

GARZA: Sure, um so it's a tricky question for me because what happened was there was a group of Latinas from the university, mainly from the university, um but a couple of community women who we would meet and it just turned out that everybody was dealing with health related issues so we just decided that that's how we wanted to do it. But there were also a couple students; one was a law 00:02:00student, and Susan Colorado, who was my graduate intern student at the time. So, um mainly we tried to have a small committee comprised of academic staff and students and a couple community people helped organize it.

HEREDIA: When you guys decided to start this organization it seemed like it was mainly focused on health, do you remember what other important issues, uh (Yolanda: you mean for the following years?) Yeah for the following years

GARZA: Yeah I remember the second year we had to deal with politics, you know mainly focused on the political climate that was going on at the time and how it was affecting Latinos, but Latinas in particular. And then the fourth and fifth 00:03:00conferences really dealt with current issues. But we always agreed that no matter what the theme of the conference was we were always going to have at least one issue that dealt with health. And that still remains true today. So it might be a mental health issue impacting the Latinas, it might be diabetes, or heart disease, so that element is still a part of the conference. But the additional topics would be like, body image is one, how to deal with stress is a very popular issue, and um immigration is very prevalent when we talk about 00:04:00border issues. So a lot depends on what the committee decides and how we get it, what themes we want for the following year, or what topics people want in particular, is based on what people are saying on their evaluations plus what the committee is hearing, whether its from students, faculty or staff, or community people, whatever the issues impacting them at the time, who they would like to bring to the conference.

HEREDIA: Could you recall some of the difficulties that arose from starting it or just from participating in it?

GARZA: Well, I would say one of the issues we had to work through is that this was a Latina conference. So, what does that mean? Ok, well first of all this had 00:05:00never happened on our campus. And so that meant that some of our men were not happy that we were only focusing on Latinas. Also identifying women out there, not just in Madison, but we wanted it to be national, we thought that one day we could do a national conference. So identifying women who could address the topics that the committee wanted addressed. Funding, you know we wanted this to be a free conference, so that meant that we had to go out and try to find money to secure that this would always be a free conference.

HEREDIA: It seems that there was a little backlash from the male community when 00:06:00you just spoke about that right now. Was there any other backlash from the community or fellow students, scholars?

GARZA: Yes, because the issue was because we were getting funding, especially from the university, it required that we had to invite mainly university faculty staff and students. So that was an issue that we had to take on. How do we get the University to understand that we wanted our high school students to learn and be inspired by some of the Latina role models, the presenters? And how do we invite community without breaking any of the policies? So it required that we had to try to get exceptions to the rules, and we were able to accomplish that. 00:07:00It didn't happen over night but we were determined that we were going to do everything that we could to expand our community. And that included the Madison community in particular. We also wanted to invite Latinas from the UW System schools, so it wasn't just a Madison campus. And so that required again going back and getting permission to open it up. So that meant a lot of time and energy. We had to go to every funding source and asking them for an exception, we had to go to administration, we had to go to legal, we had to do all these other things that people never hear about in order for this to happen.

HEREDIA: Do you guys think you did a good job with that, with expanding it off of campus?

GARZA: I do, I think, you know we open it up to everybody's invited, and um we 00:08:00don't have to go through those layers anymore, so that's nice. That was half the battle, getting people to understand, everybody benefits, it wasn't just for Latinas, you know, anybody could come to the conference. By law you can't discriminate, you know, even though it's addressed to deal with Latina issues, anybody could participate.

HEREDIA: Well it seems that La Mujer Latina is still going strong now, do you still play a role with them or are you involved at all?

GARZA: I am. So when I retired in 2011, one of the things I did before I retired was make sure I could identify some strong Latina women to help the students. 00:09:00Because originally this was not a student conference, it was mainly academic staff, and then we had a couple community people, we had a couple of students. But eventually we wanted to make sure that we would get students more involved and then it would hopefully become more of a student conference, with guidance from staff. So prior to me leaving I tried to make sure that we had some strong Latinas to help the students. So identified Sylvia Garcia and Africa Lozano who are both staff people on campus.

HEREDIA: Did the issues and topics that La Mujer Latina face help you shape your future activism more, and if so in what way?

GARZA: For me personally it was one project, I don't like to call it a project 00:10:00necessarily, but it was something to strengthen my activism, but it wasn't the only thing that I was doing. I just loved it because it was the first thing, on campus anyway, that really solely dealt with Latina issues. And I felt, many of our women, we have a lot of experience, many of us are hard workers, and yet our voices were never heard. This was time for the Madison community to listen, stop and listen, to our issues. So, it just kept me going. And I was really happy to 00:11:00see students get involved. Because, you know, when they first would start they were shy, but by the end of the conference the growth was there, you could see it, how much they bloomed and they learned so many important skills, you know not only how to get along with other people but how to accept other perspectives, how to put budgets together, how to present to the Vice Chancellor and to the multicultural councils in other organizations to get money. So at the end of the day they came out learning so many important skills and were so confident about their abilities.

HEREDIA: Would you say you had an attachment to this organization on a personal level?

GARZA: This was my baby. I'm sorry. I got to see it go from the birth of it to where it is now. It's running, and um, this is the 18th, will be the 18th year. So it's got a long history here. We did not have the conference one year I believe, only one year, it might have been two but I know for sure one. And that's because everybody was so busy and it was really a difficult time. But aside from that, you know I mean, if you go back and do some research you'll find that there's not another conference going on that deals with Latina issues.

HEREDIA: We found that you did some work regarding sexual assault and violence. 00:13:00Could you talk about what type of work you did in that field?

GARZA: Sure, um let's see. In the 1990's I asked if I could take on working in women's issues. It was one of the areas that I did not have substantial experience in and I wanted to try to learn as much as I could about all the issues in student affairs. So I initially started to work with individual students who were victims of violent crimes, whether it was a sexual assault or a dating and domestic abuse. So when I asked to work on women's issues, it wasn't just the fun stuff like Mujer Latina, but it was also the hard stuff that 00:14:00our female students had to deal with on a daily basis. So I worked very closely with the Rape Crisis Center and the Domestic Abuse Intervention Center in Madison. Because the reality is is that you can't do this work alone, you have to partner with the experts and that's what I did. So I was required to do not only advocacy work on the behalf of our students but I also was required to do the Federal and State reports for the campus. I also had to do disciplinary work related to violence against our students, so I had to work with the perpetrators 00:15:00as well, who happened to be students.

HEREDIA: It seems like it started for the sole purpose of students. Through your partnerships did it expand to the community or the larger scale?

GARZA: Yes and no. Because I worked in the Dean of Students office, I was required to work mainly with students. But it wasn't uncommon that I got a phone call asking that I would meet with the faculty members. One of the things that I will mention is that I was instrumental in forming a Rape Crisis Center on campus. And the reason I bring this up is because the center is not only for students, its for faculty, staff, and students, so that it was more accessible 00:16:00to our students so that they didn't have to go far off campus to the Rape Crisis Center, that we would try to alleviate a barrier so that they didn't have to worry about going off campus it was right on campus. So even though my primary target group was students, because I worked in the Dean of Students office, I did work with faculty as well.

VILLANUEAVA: Can you talk about being the Committee Chair for Sexual Assault on campus and your involvement with the commission on sensitive crimes?

GARZA: Yes, so for the first time in the history, that I know of at least, at UW-Madison, I put together a group of faculty, staff, students, and community members to serve on this committee. And what we did, our main purpose as a 00:17:00committee was to address issues impacting the university community in particular as it related to sexual assault and domestic violence, dating domestic violence. So at the table we had a representative from the District Attorneys office, we had a representative from Rape Crisis, from Dating Domestic Abuse Intervention so that we could work together, and the right hand knew what the left hand knew. And it was a wonderful way of addressing issues. It saved us tons of phone calls, tons of time and energy, because we were dealing with these issues together. What affects one victim, affects all of us. We cannot, again, do this work in isolation, so that's why I was really interested in creating this 00:18:00committee, and it was strong. I don't believe they still have it because there's some issues with time commitment, but it worked when we were doing it.

VILLANUEAVA: Could you talk about your involvement in the Rape Crisis Center?

GARZA: Well again I worked really closely with them, you know so when we worked together, my first day that I was told this was part of working on women's issues, I went over and met with the staff at the Rape Crisis Center, I introduced myself to them. And it was the first time anyone from our office had done that. So it meant that we had to build trust, these were important issues so I picked their brain they picked my brain, we had a really good working relationship.

VILLANUEAVA: Could you talk about your involvement in the Rape Crisis Center?

GARZA: Yes, so I worked very closely with the Rape Crisis Center. I was actually a member of their monthly meetings, they would have monthly meetings, and they would have a representative at our meeting. So we did partner together not only on individual cases but we presented together jointly, or I would present at a workshop and they would present at a workshop. We learned from each other. One of the areas that they had to better understand was our student judicial process. They were very familiar with the criminal process but they didn't quite understand in totality the student judicial process. So we learned from one another, all on behalf of student victims.

VILLANUEAVA: How did culture play into these issues of sexual assault and domestic violence?

GARZA: You know that was probably one of the most important issues that were misunderstood. The reality is when you take a look at our students of color population, for example on our campus, its small. If a student of color was a victim of sexual assault, it was hard for that individual to come forward. I had to take a look at what were the cultural issues impacting that individual and how can we as an office address these issues, and as an organization, the Rape Crisis, what can they do to start to address those cultural differences. So you have a student of color, concerned that if she came forward and said she was 00:21:00sexually assaulted, the whole community, student color community would learn about it even though it was confidential. So breaking down that barrier, having that individual understand that we would never tell anybody that they were sexually assaulted. We obviously couldn't control what that person said, to whom they said to, but as an office we would never, ever, share that information. The second thing is, what did it mean for the family? Many victims don't tell their family about what happened, especially students of color, the reason for that was because they were afraid that their father or mother would make them go back home. It's very easy to understand why parents might feel that way. Their loved 00:22:00one just got violated and they want them close to them. So just trying to understand those parts, it is difficult; it's difficult for any victim. Then you have these additional barriers that would impact a student of color victim or international victim. When you have students of color who were involved with another person of color, for example, there was this misunderstanding that automatically they were a student, the perpetrator, and in many cases they were not. Then we had our men of color who wanted to beat the crap out of the perpetrator, and just trying to get them to understand that even though they mean well that wasn't helping the student victim. And just giving that student 00:23:00victim the space they needed and the support they needed to go through a very difficult time. When it related to international students, both sexual assault and dating domestic violence became even more difficult because we had the student judicial process to go through but we also had the criminal process. Sometimes friends, mainly victims would go and tell their friends, and their friends would want them to do something that they wouldn't want to do, and then there was a polarization that took place. So there was a lot of tension going on, but when you think about a student of color going through the criminal process, who was going to support them? So many times the student of color 00:24:00wouldn't want to go through the criminal process or the student judicial process, because their not easy, they are not easy. But, we had to figure out a way to try to help them. So I would go, for example, to court with them. And I would help them through the criminal process, and then we developed a process in our office so when one was working with the alleged perpetrator. And then we would try to do presentations to students of color, organizations. I went and talked to students of color about what our services were, what we could do, what we couldn't do, just to reach out to them, so that they knew that they could trust us up in the Dean of Students office.

VILLANUEAVA: You talked about a polarization; can you expand on that a little bit?

GARZA: Sure. If a student was victimized, their friend may say for example, "you need to go through the student judicial process and you need to get the perpetrator suspended" for example. Or "you need to go through the criminal process and have this person thrown in jail". But that individual, for whatever reasons didn't want to do that. What would happen is there would be a small group of people who would then be angry at the victim, instead of angry at what happened, and angry at the perpetrator, they were always angry at the victim for not going through something, for whatever reason. They're the ones who have to go through the process, not anybody else, and it created problems. You often saw 00:26:00that with fraternities, you know the fraternities for example. This is not a topic that, back when I started, that people were talking about, you just didn't talk about this issue. And so I'm hoping, with all the work I helped do and that other women continue to do, is to talk about this so that they are not afraid of pursuing the student judicial process or the criminal process. Fraternities and other student organizations, they're like cliques. They are loyal to their organizations all the time. Even within some organizations there was some internal conflict that would take place. It was not unheard of if someone, for 00:27:00example, wanted to go through the process, not only was she having some students from that organization start calling her and giving her trouble and threatening her. That if she reported this, or if she didn't go through the process, that there would be repercussions. So then we started looking at trying to educate others that if you are going to go through a process and someone is starting to harass you then we are going to go after that person if they're a student for harassment against them. Even if they were not the ones that allegedly perpetrated someone. They are a third party, what we would consider a third 00:28:00party, and they are victimizing someone and we did not have a problem at all going after them. So there was a lot of education that had to take place. But when I think about students of color and when I think about international students, I understood that this was even an additional layer that they had to deal with that many of our women of color internalized. And they walked around not getting the services that they deserved, and how do we break down that barrier. And for the women in the community, if there was a language issue for some of our international students coming here, they might now be fluent in English. So the issue there is that if we pursue this criminally, then for 00:29:00international women they were reluctant to do so because it meant at one time, if their husband or boyfriend was put in jail, they could have to return to their country, until we worked with that legislation to make some changes to make sure that that doesn't happen. And we made some progress in that area.

VILLANUEAVA: Considering all the issue that the Rape Center has faced, how affective was the Center in handling these unpredicted issues?

GARZA: I think we've made progress, I really do. I think, at least I saw that as a result of me talking to the student organizations that we started to get more 00:30:00students of color, women of color, reporting sexual assault for the first time ever, that that was not the case. The other thing is, you know, it's my opinion that if you treat someone with respect and you make them as comfortable as possible, you build trust. And if they have a good experience, if they feel comfortable, if something happens to someone else they know that person is going to refer them to you. And that's what started to happen. I want to say that I hope I made a difference in the lives, or at least putting it out there that we were there. I took a look at what were all the obstacles that women face, students faced. You were a student and you have to go to school and many students worked not only one job but two jobs and yet they were dealing with 00:31:00this. I helped them with contacting their faculty members in a very sensitive way, and nobody knew that they were sexually assaulted; we did it in a very discreet way. But no one should have to go through this alone. And I wanted to make sure that we were reaching out to our students of color.

VILLANUEAVA: What other kinds of issues did you work on to protect the students on campus?

GARZA: One of the issues that people didn't talk about for many many years was stalking. When I first started stalking was considered a misdemeanor. I worked very closely with two people, Robert Kaiser, who is in the District Attorneys office, and former detective Mary Lou Ridsecker, those two helped make stalking 00:32:00a felony. And that was very very significant in the state of Wisconsin, because unfortunately we had a lot of individuals stalking our students. I felt like we had to make this issue become public, we had to do more awareness on this issue. It's often misunderstood, what does stalking mean, not only from our faculty but our students and staff didn't quite understand what it meant. They thought that you needed to have what we would consider the most serious level of stalking in order to pursue it and that was not the case. So as a result of that we got 00:33:00together and started to do some more education on the issue for our students, but also faculty and staff on it. We started to see more students come forward with not only sharing that information with us, but we were able to refer them to the counseling center or wherever we needed to for them to get the support they needed at the time. I also accompanied students to the court system, if it was a student that was stalking another student, then we could pursue the student judicial process. But there were times where the perpetrator was not a student; it was someone even from a different state. With technology, you know, 00:34:00these perpetrators are smart, they're savvy, they know how to do this. We had to become smarter with how we inform our students that this is also an example of stalking. So I've had to work with some really serious cases, and it's a hard issue not only personally but professionally as well. I had professionally worked on an issue with two students where as a result of me trying to work on this issue and help the student, I was personally attacked. I just can't imagine what students have to go through, I was older than most of the students I worked 00:35:00with, but it didn't mean that I didn't have the fear, have the same kind of experience as anybody else that was victimized by this. I too pursued the criminal process, so going to court with students, I had a better understanding of the process than most students did, but it's an overwhelming process. As hard as it has been for me, because I still have that behind me I always have to have my guard up. It also made me understand more so what the students were going through. On a personal level, this person had to serve time for what he did to 00:36:00me and what he did to the student. And we were both at it together, and you know, the student and I we continue to stay in touch, it's been years, but it's something that I will never forget. So there's a price that you pay to do this work, both personally and professionally it's not easy. And so I applaud anybody who goes into sensitive crime issues, it's hard but we need people to do this work.

VILLANUEAVA: How did you go about creating more daycare centers for working mothers and college student kids?

GARZA: Ok so this goes back, way back when I first started my career at UW. I was involved, for a brief time anyway, working with the childcare committee. The 00:37:00childcare committee really took a look at what was available, in terms of childcare, on campus for our students, for our student families, for our faculty who had children, academic staff; not only what was available but understanding what was cheap. What kinds of financial support could we provide for our students especially; I would even go one layer further to say our single parents. I was involved in taking a look at what we could do to establish starting childcare on campus. Financially there was, and I think this still 00:38:00exists, a CTAP, which was some money, not a lot of money, but some money that was available to our students to help them pay for childcare. As a result of the committees work, they opened up a childcare center on campus. Every year they have a fundraiser to continue to support to pay these initiatives. My understanding is they were going to create a huge place to service childcare. I'm not sure if they are finished with that place or not, but I know that that was on the agenda to do.

VILLANUEAVA: What were some obstacles?

GARZA: What's hard about that is there's so many different issues going on on campus. Childcare was not on everybody's radar, it was for those students and those faculty that were directly affected by childcare, or lack of childcare. But, the average student, it was not really on their radar, and getting a lot of males to be open minded about this issue, it meant that a lot of people had to do a lot of selling of this topic. And it took a long time. Now I wasn't on the committee when they got to the point that they are now, but I know it took a lot of hard work to convince it. John Wiley, for example, was one fan of childcare. 00:40:00Once people like John Wiley, who was a former chancellor, but even when he was a Dean of Grad School, and other administrators, once they started to say yes we need to do this we need to help our employees, the committee on women I was involved with that committee for many years, once people started to make this issue more public, there was more by in to the topic, to this area. It wasn't just about childcare, but what happens when, a student for example, is in the classroom and she wants to nurse her baby. How does the professor handle that 00:41:00issue when some of the 18-year-old students might not like a mother nursing her baby? There were a lot of different issues as it related to childcare, I mean children.

VILLANUEAVA: Are these centers still open and working?

GARZA: Yes, there's one on campus and it's pretty significant from my understanding, and then there are some in the community that are still running. One of the issues again is that childcare is not cheap, and so this committee what they were looking at, ok what age of the baby was being served? Can we have a drop in service available? There's a lot of liability issues that people don't 00:42:00even think about, and it's costly. They're still running.

AGUILA: Given our course focuses on the U.S. and Mexico border, what are your perceptions of the border?

GARZA: I would say things are tough; life is tough on the border. I would tell you that part of it is my perceptions, what I see on TV and when I listen to the news. But also my personal experiences as it relates to the border. Personally I went to the border, I went to the state of Chihuahua so it's past the border. I got to see first hand, we flew to El Paso and drove to Chihuahua and I got to 00:43:00see the hardship that was taking place on both sides, actually. Life is pretty tough for the people that live on the border, but they persevere. I know that the violence is pretty significant; I have family that live in the Border States. I can't even go visit my father's family because the family there don't want us coming down because it's so dangerous. It's hard when you have loved ones that you want to see and you can't get there because they are concerned of your safety. I just learned two days ago that one of my cousins was shot at 00:44:00three times and another cousin who came in and walked in, they have a little store, a tienda, they stabbed him. But our people are hard working people; they want freedom. Coming from the south side of Chicago where violence is also significant. Living in Madison for me is like night and day. I can sleep at night. In south Chicago that wasn't always the case, you never knew about the gunshots. Even though I don't live there, I think I have a small sense of what 00:45:00life is like there. Our women get up early in the morning and they work and work and work and work; anything to provide for the family. Our men try to do the same thing. When I think about border, the first word that comes to my mind is fear, and what people have to live with. Fear is terrible for us; I mean it just kills us inside. And then they wonder why we have the health issues that we have.

AGUILA: Do you find similar issues with the work you do here and the stuff going 00:46:00on in the border?

GARZA: First of all I'm retired now. I still do some volunteer work issues. You know fear is fear, the bottom line is. You talk about the economy and how bad it is and health conditions and you think about how you are going to provide for your family not knowing what they are going to eat the next day. All of that is bad stuff, in my opinion.

AGUILA: Do you see any differences in the activism you have done in the Midwest versus the activism that is being done on the border?

GARZA: I have to be honest that my activism on the border is not as significant. 00:47:00I have done some work; I try to be a part of this project where we were opening up this health care clinic for the poorest of the poor of people in Dahuma (Indians), where they live in shacks and things like that. And then I did some work regarding violence at the University of Guadalajara. Helping university folks begin to address the issue of sexual assault and dating domestic violence but also in the community. We went out and talked to the women who were in abusive relationships in the community in Mexico, in Guadalajara. I had the 00:48:00opportunity to do that and it was amazing, it was really amazing. We were teaching them about services and resources, I took down some stuff from here. That was a very amazing experience for me. It grounds you, you know. In some respects UW Madison is kind of an ideal world that you live in. But I don't have to go to Mexico to find that, I can go to the south side of Chicago and feel like I'm in Mexico. Its good to remind yourself, you think you have it hard here 00:49:00but go out in the community where the people are poor, where poor people live or are trying to live from day to day. It reminded me how good I have it here. I remember my mom always saying, my dad, don't ever forget where you came from and who you are and how you were raised. But to go back to the activist part here, its equally empowering and equally amazing for what I was doing here. Not always easy, these issues aren't always easy issues. These topics were not topics people were dying to work on because they were so emotionally draining, and you have to learn how to balance; how do you balance some really really hard situations; how do you help a student who was violated. To know that there is 00:50:00help out there, that they will never be the same as a result of it. But they could survive, and we will help them. So I guess what I am trying to say is I feel like I grew up in communities where they were hard. Whether it's the violence, or whether it's the health issues. On the south side of Chicago and Whiting Indiana, which is 15 minutes away from where my family grew up. I grew 00:51:00up around still mills; a block away was a Nitrogen company. In the early mornings they would release all this chemical stuff. I think I share this story but I recall as a child when we would go to the ice cream truck and when we got our ice cream cone and walked away there were all of these black speckles on our ice cream. Well now we have these people who are trying to this coal is what it's called, they want to get this going again. And when you go online and do the research, there are three zip codes in the state of Illinois that had the highest levels of chemicals from 2005, and the south side of Chicago is one of them. Got the health issues.

VILLANUEAVA: What was your involvement with LFSA, the Latino Faculty Staff Association?

GARZA: Okay so when that organization first started, it started in the mid-80's, 1980's. I was one of the co-founders. That organization was called Latino Academic Staff Association, so it was LASA. But not until about five years ago the group changed it to include faculty. I was pretty active in that organization. The organization started because, you know we would get together, some Latinos would get together during the noon hour to eat and what was interesting was someone would always something about one issue and then another 00:53:00issue would come up and another problem would come up and another problem would come up. It was a nice support system for us, but it was clear that we had some issues that we were concerned about and we wanted to address them. That's how it got started.

VILLANUEAVA: What was the purpose of LAFSA?

GARZA: There were about 5 or 6 reasons why we had this organization and what we worked on. One was just getting together, I mean back in the 80's there weren't many Latino staff or faculty on campus; there were a handful of us. It was a nice way to support one another. But we were also concerned with what was the campus going to do about recruiting more Latinos on campus. So we wanted to work 00:54:00on some recruitment issues, both the faculty and staff. And then retaining, what were they doing about retaining us. Because many times we were asked to go above and beyond, which we would do anyway, but whenever they needed a spokesperson to talk about a Latino issue they would call upon us even though that might not be apart of our job description. So we were really concerned about retaining us, we were concerned about the fact that many of us that were on campus, we weren't, people weren't, getting promoted. And we also took a look at, where are our staff, where are the Latino faculty and staff? Many of the academic staff were 00:55:00hired at an entry-level position, which are great to start off, but you don't have to be there forever. Most people want other challenges, and hopefully that would include promotions. Many of our faculty and staff were in ethnic specific employment positions, which is wonderful, we all start there at some point. But when we started looking at job security, and again lack of promotional opportunities, it was real clear to us that something needed to change. We were not in senior level positions, at one point I was the highest level Latina at UW Madison, which I was honored to be, but I was pretty lonely up there, being by 00:56:00yourself, so I wanted to get other Latinos in that position, in more senior positions. So we got together and started addressing these issues to administration, we started to hold the university administrators accountable. And we would have meetings with the Chancellor that was the nice part about it. Every year we would have at least one meeting with the Chancellor, and we would address these issues. We were watching the progress, or lack of progress on some issues. And it wasn't just faculty and staff issues, it was also student issues. So we were looking at undergraduate students, we were looking at graduate students; we were looking at financial aid for them. What about our graduate 00:57:00students and are they getting teaching assistant jobs, what kind of scholarships are they getting? And trying to address all of them.

VILLANUEAVA: What would you say is the biggest issue you tackled and what did you use to tackle it? Was it easy or hard when you look back on it?

GARZA: Well you know back then, back in the 80's no one challenged administrators at the time, you just didn't. And many of us grew up with this mindset that you're lucky that you just have a job, our parents taught us that. I never would have thought about negotiating. What does it mean to negotiate? Latinos, none of us did that, we took the job that they gave us. No. It just 00:58:00didn't have in our reality, in my life it never happened that way. We learned the hard way. So while we were getting these jobs, little did we know that our white counterparts were negotiating. We learned a lot from white men, actually, that it's ok to negotiate, a better salary or better benefits. It was not easy. Then we had to figure out what strategically would be most affective. So we had some people who were not happy that things were happening to other racial or ethnic groups and they were not happening to Latinos. And because I was a part of administration I knew that there were certain things that you just would 00:59:00close the door right away if you used a certain approach. And my thing is it's not about going in and talking with the Chancellor, why are you giving this group money and you're not giving us, but going in and saying these are our needs, these are the issues that we want to address with you, and disparity, it's about equality, and guess what, we're not a part of this equation. So what are you going to do to resolve that issue? For me that was the most effective strategy that we had; I felt very strongly because I knew that the Chancellors did not like you going in there talking about one group versus another group. We 01:00:00would say we are happy you are helping this group; we applaud you for doing that. We are here to talk to you about some of our concerns, and some of our issues. And how you can help, and how the other administrators can be a part of addressing these issues. So that's what I felt was most affective. In terms of the issues that I laid out, the retention and recruitment, you know, most of us have the heart and soul of doing things that affect our population. When I first started out I worked with Chicano and Latino students at UW Whitewater and I loved it, and I was a teacher, and elementary school teacher in a predominantly Mexican American community, I loved it, and I still love it. That is who I am, 01:01:00but that doesn't mean that we can't do other things. And we were at the point, for all of us to understand, that some of us will continue doing that throughout our life, and that's ok, there is nothing wrong with that because we need our people who are committed doing that work. But we also need Latinos to be doctors, to be presidents of universities, to be faculty members; we need them all over the place. And we are the ones that had to make that happen. So to go to administration and say, you know I am glad you have so-and-so in Chicana Latina Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, but guess what, we want to have a Latino Dean in the School of Medicine, and we have a couple candidates. So, that was 01:02:00one issue. The second issue was I knew administration was going to say, ok, you brought these issues to us, here are the things we can do, what are the things you as an organization going to do. And we were ready. We were ready and this is what we said, we said we would do these things, cause we want to partner. This is not lopsided, in other words you can talk the talk, but we have to walk the walk too. We work together, and the easiest thing is to point fingers and say you're not doing enough. And they're going to say well what are you going to do to help too? And we were ready for them. What we decided to do was, we decided to figure out a way where our voices would be heard, not just with LAFSA, but 01:03:00with campus wide. What we did to get our members involved in campus wide committees where major decisions were being made. For example with the School of Medicine, that I told you, we had a Latino candidate. I was on the Search and Screen committee. So I could say well how come you're not putting them there, but you know what I have a responsibility to do everything I can to be involved. It meant a time commitment, it meant energy, it meant work. So, some of our members were fairly new to higher Ed., we had not been in higher Ed for many many years. So what we started to do was we took two people, one that I would consider a seasoned professional, with a newly hired person, and we would co-chair our committee, so people would feel comfortable with being in that 01:04:00leadership role, with the idea that at some point in time we were going to get them to be on the university campus wide committees, committees that made a huge difference. So we had someone on the admissions committee, we had someone on the academic staff committee; I was on the committee on women. So we started to get our voices heard. Like on the committee on women, my goal was I don't want you to deal with only Latina issues during Hispanic Heritage month. It needs to be on the agenda every month that we meet. Every time we meet, you need to be addressing these issues. That was our goal. And I was so proud because we had women, Latinas, academic staff and faculty who served on these university wide 01:05:00committees where major decisions were being made that had a positive impact, not only for our students but for our faculty and staff.

VILLANUEAVA: Being the minority group of faculty how did that affect your job and your place here in Madison?

GARZA: You know there was nothing easy about working at UW Madison, not initially. I was in administration, so I wasn't a faculty member, but I did teach or guest lectured from time to time. But I knew it was going to be hard, I knew. Thank god for my parents who sat me down and kinda gave me the heads up. You're gonna go out there, and sometimes you're going to be the only one. But I 01:06:00was raised right, you know, we are hard working people. And I just said, all I can do is my best, you know, work hard, love what I do, times are going to be hard. People are going to watch you; some people are going to want you to make mistakes. But you just have to keep doing what you believe in. My first couple months I had a very difficult time. I could say there were maybe 8 of us, close folks. We made progress because there are more, I see a slight increase in faculty and students and staff of color here. But times were not always easy. I 01:07:00always felt I worked hard, I got my degrees, I did everything everyone else was doing and I had every right to be here on this campus and that's the way I survived. And I said I will leave here when I am good and ready, no one will push me out. I just happen to be outspoken, and there's a price when you are outspoken. You may not get promoted, and you have to figure out what's most important to you. And for me, I wanted to be able to sleep at night, and I could go to sleep every day knowing that I went to work and did my very best. And I might have made some people upset because I challenged them, especially as it related to students of color issues. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't at 01:08:00least speak up. And that meant that you paid a price. But that's ok.

VILLANUEAVA: Who supported LAFSA and how did they show it? Was there any backlash within it?

GARZA: Yeah actually a couple things happened. So financially we were able to get some money, a little money, from the Chancellors office to help us. It mainly helped us to do a couple receptions a year. But we also took the initiative and said we are going to organize and do our own orientation for all new Latino faculty and staff, we did one. As a result of that, Human Resources asked if they could model our program and use it for the university wide 01:09:00orientation they have every year. That was a really great compliment to us; we worked really hard on it. There were some groups that wished they had what we had. I'm not saying that we didn't have our issues. The nice thing about LASFA is that we could agree to disagree. We could go in a room and not agree with someone's position on something, but we always had to be respectful. And if you had some issues that was going to interfere with progress being made, you could leave your issues at the door. That's how I grew up from the south side of 01:10:00Chicago. And it was something that I had to adjust here, because I couldn't understand at first when I first came here, where people didn't always agree on the issues, Latinos didn't always agree on it. Then I just kept saying, you know, nobody always agrees with the issues but we're never going to move forward. Let's come together and figure this out so that we can start making some progress here on this campus. I do think that there were some groups that wished that they had what we had. I know the African American population wanted to try what we were doing and I don't know if they are doing it now but I know they wanted to try it.