Question:
Nancy, if we can just start off by you spelling your last name for the record, Ferrell. I want to start by getting some background information from you. Tell us, when did you begin working as a mediator or a conciliation specialist at CRS?

Answer:
I started in September of 1985.

Question:
What was your title?

Answer:
Conciliation specialist.

Question:
When did you leave the agency?

Answer:
I left in October of '95 and then had a contract during all of '96, with the church burning task force.

Question:
What were you doing prior to joining CRS?

Answer:
For 5 years prior, I was a private consultant doing conflict management training in business. I had developed a "managing conflict in the work force" curriculum, and was using that and doing training as a training consultant.

Question:
Were you involved with any other civil rights activities at the time?

Answer:
No.

Question:
What attracted you to CRS?

Answer:
I was recommended to CRS because they were looking for someone, but I wasn't intially interested. Then, out of respect for the person who recommended me, I talked to them and was very impressed. From the very beginning, it was the CRS mandate in the Civil Rights Act. When I read that, my feeling was if this agency really is doing that, then it would be an exciting thing to be a part of. My skepticism was, are they really doing that? I didn't have time or interest in just being somewhere where that wasn't happening, so the mandate itself is what attracted me to it. Because I was working on a PhD and doing private work, I had the freedom to try it; I pretty well figured on spending 6 months checking it out. Once I got into it, though.... I doubt that I've ever done anything that I've felt more matched for skill and interest wise, and I never felt more privileged to be able to do anything than what I did with CRS.

Question:
We want you to choose one particular case and sort of walk us through the process. How the case came to your attention, who the parties were, what the conflicts with the mediation process were.....walk us through as if we don't know anything about conflict mediation. Choose a case that typifies your work. I know we use that word, "typical,” lightly, but something.....?

Answer:
A couple come to mind that would be more interesting. One is a university situation; the other is a community involving the police department.

Question:
Let's talk about the university one.

Answer:
Ok, that one I became aware of through news articles. The Klan was distributing flyers at a state university in Oklahoma, so there were some demonstrations and counter-demonstrations on campus. Our mandate allows us to initiate contact with parties, and I might say that's probably one of the most critical elements of the agency’s mandate. I think it's the only federal agency that can initiate contact with a community or citizen, without first being requested to respond to some event or some violation. So because we had that freedom, I made contact with some of the student leadership that I was aware of; some of the black student organizations, a Hispanic organization, and a Native American organization. I'm going to have to back up, because the real impetus was a fraternity party and it was an event that had occurred every year for a hundred years on that university, called the Plantation Party. The fraternity boys would go to one of the matching sorority girls’ houses, and they went in black face and they went as slaves or with nooses around their necks. It was very egregious, and yet from their perspective it was a common event that had occurred; a tradition that had transpired every year for a hundred years.

Question:
What year are we talking about then?

Answer:
This would probably have been '90, '91 somewhere around there. So, that was what hit the paper, that the Klan was distributing flyers supporting the fraternity. The students obviously demonstrated against what had happened at the fraternity and sorority. The minority groups wanted the fraternity banished immediately. Since this was a traditional event that occurred, that had not caused any reaction for a hundred of years, the university was saying, so, what happened? What's the deal? Why did somebody get upset this year? Why didn't they get upset last year? It was an event where a minority had the courage to say, "I'm upset. This is not right. There's something wrong." So that raised the awareness and the consciousness. So the entry was the media being aware of that. I made contact with student groups and with university officials. The Vice President for Student Affairs and the Vice President for Academic Affairs were both very open to our intervention. They wanted to do whatever they could to make a change. They didn't have any resistance as far as them trying to say it wasn't egregious or that they didn't need to do something about it. It was very positive. Part of our approach was that you go to the highest level for entry and so I needed to talk to the President to find out if he was open to us going in.

Question:
When you say you go to the highest point of entry, that's something that CRS requested that you do, or that was your own sort of idea?

Answer:
It was a part of the working style of Region 6, so that's the way I was trained. Whether this was agency wide, I'm not sure. Now the reason is very good. The reason is: If I go in and I work with the Vice President for Student Affairs and the Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the President is never brought into it, we can work for 6 months and come up with a really good agreement. But then the president can say, "What is this? I don't know anything about this, and we're not going to support it," so you've wasted time and you've frustrated people. The people you've been trying to help are even more frustrated now and you've probably created more conflict than you've helped resolve. So, I went to the President and met with him, and it's a good example of thinking on your feet, having a way of helping an institution understand their best interest. I learned that anytime I work with an institutional representative that my approach could not be like, "What's the just thing? You know what the right thing is, it's the thing that will cost you if you don’t do it," because they're ready to hear that; they're not ready to hear, "You ought to do the right thing.” They're very open to "What's it going to cost you?" So, when talking with the president, I had to be aware of the fact that he had a board of regents who probably wouldn't see anything wrong with what had happened at the fraternity, and probably would be upset with him if he gave it much power or much interest and that's a reality. So his first response to me was that bringing in the Justice Department is just going to make it look worse than it is; this will blow over, things get out of hand but they'll die down, it's no big deal. "If you come in here, you're going to make it a big deal." That was a common response for an institution, whether it was city government, state government, or IBM, any institution’s first response is that outside intervention is just going to make it worse. I told him one part of what we do is voluntary; you don't have to participate with us. I said, "But I do have an obligation to make our services available to you. Because, if another incident occurs here and there's some other problems here, somebody in my agency is going to call me up and say, ‘Nancy, did you offer your help?’ I need to be able to say, ‘Yes, I offered my help but the president really wasn't interested; he thought he could handle it himself.’" But you had to use the kind of approach that let him see what was in his interest, and he saw a really big public relations faux pas, if something else happened, and here's this agency who had offered to help and he resisted. So, all of the sudden he was open to our help. That's all I needed from him, so he couldn't back out later. So, that was an interesting entry kind of a situation. From then, we went to the Dean of Academic Affairs who was not that involved except to support the Dean of Students. The Vice President of Student Affairs became the focal administrative person; he was as committed to the task as I was. So that was one of the big advantages, because you don't always have somebody that committed to it. The challenge from the minority community and the minority students’ perspective, was that they didn't see any value or benefit in working directly with the administration. They felt the administration was not trustworthy, the administration wasn't interested in doing anything to be helpful, so, "What good is it going to be to even engage in that process?” So again, what's in their best interest? What can I say to them to convince them it's worth engaging in the process? And one important thing is whatever we do is not going to diminish your right or privilege in the future to take some other action. It's not going to cost you anything in terms of legal recourse, it's not going to cost you anything in terms of any other response you want to make. The other is that we do bring twenty years, thirty years of experience to this and maybe we can help bring a different outcome. The other kind of stark awareness for them was, is this institution so bad that it should be destroyed?

Question:
This institution, meaning the fraternity, or the university?

Answer:
The university.

Question:
Was that a concern of the minority community?

Answer:
Well, it was my ultimate response to them not wanting to involve themselves with the administration because the administration wasn't trustworthy. And again my task at that point was to help them see that the administration, regardless of what they thought about them, had a legitimate position. Everybody has a legitimacy. And unless the institution is in such grave violation that it needs to be destroyed, you have to honor that the institution has a position. It will try to protect that position and part of that protection involves their regents and the people that fund them. Everything that impacts the administration has to have legitimacy and if you discount that, then you aren't going to come to the table from a reality perspective. Unless it's so bad you need to wipe it out and start over. So if you agree it has legitimacy, you have to at least honor its reality, and its reality is all of these parties and constituencies out here. So that helped them come to the table with a little more reality about what was going to happen.

Question:
Now where do the sorority and fraternity come into this?

Answer:
The sorority structure became a party to what we were doing. What do their by-laws look like, do they have discriminatory practices and policies and then how is that impacted by the national fraternal organizations? The first response from the minority student groups was that the fraternity should not be a part of the resolution. My response was that they must be a part of it. Even if the fraternity is kicked off the university, they still needed to be a part of the solution. There needed to be some awareness around the table of where that came from and how it felt and the whole deal So, when we put the task force together there were probably twenty people; also it involved faculty representatives. I spent probably three months doing interviews. The other thing, in terms of the regent response, is we always went toward systemic change. Once we responded to any kind of immediate danger, we started looking for systemic response and not just fixing the incident, but looking at the systems that were there and how we needed to deal with those. So, one of those representatives was president of the fraternity that had initiated the incident. We also had all the student representatives from all the ethnic groups, the Student Body President, faculty representatives, the Dean of Students and the Vice President of Student Affairs, and any other interest group as far as the community was concerned, but mostly it was confined to the university environment. We worked over six months, meeting twice a month, and then went to meeting once a month, hammering out a really long memorandum of changes in the institutional environment. It concerned how the student government would relate to the minority organizations, how more minority representation could be brought into student government at large, how the fraternities responses to the inclusiveness and exclusiveness would be dealt with in the future, how their policies and their documents for organization would be reviewed with an eye toward that anti-discrimination law. We looked at teachers and the way they graded. There was one teacher in particular that was notorious for marking minorities down and this was an interesting insight to me. Everyone around that table, including the students, said there was nothing we could do because that professor has tenure. I said, "Duh, he broke the law." Tenure doesn't mean that you can break the law and yet unclear that grand illusion of tenure, everyone all of a sudden assumed that there is nothing you can do about that.

Question:
If I could just back you up, before we can get into the fine details of how that process worked. Out of all those groups that you mentioned, were there any parties who did not want you to be involved in this conflict?

Answer:
Probably the only real resistence was from the President from the administration, through the President. After that hurdle is crossed and of course the President buys into it, then you pretty much have carte blanc with the institution, like the faculty. The faculty needed to be sold a little bit, because they were concerned about things like, was this process going to give the students too much power? Was it going to reflect negatively on the faculty? So there was some kind of territorialism there, in that sense. But we got into the documents for the institution as far as its compliance with civil rights stuff.

Question:
Now did you give them prior notice before you went to the university to let them know that you were coming?

Answer:
Yes, I called and made appointments with students, student leadership and administrative leaders.

Question:
Was that typical procedure of calling before you went?

Answer:
Yes.

Question:
What kind of questions did you ask in these interviews?

Answer:
I asked them where they believed that the institution was discriminating. What kinds of things would be helpful? One of the things that became obvious was that the minority population was diminishing. What was the cause of that decrease and it turned out to be lack of support from faculty, but also lack of support from other students. The student government process had pretty much excluded minorities from it. So there wasn't any place to be and you were very much a minority.

Question:
What percentage of the students were minorities?

Answer:
I don't remember. I have that and could get it for you, but my guess is maybe two or three percent. The Native Americans were the most resistant in that they don't verbalize their problems much, and you have to really spend time with them. So they were a player, but they weren't as significantly involved as the black and Hispanic students were.

Question:
Were those meetings, or interviews private, or did you have all the groups at the same time hearing their grievances? How did you do that?

Answer:
I did both. I interviewed individuals, and I also went to group meetings. I would go to a faculty meeting and then I would interview individuals by their choice, or by being selected by the group to come. I did the same thing with the student organizations. I met with them at their regular meeting and then I would have a schedule when I met with people individually. The group meetings were more to create trust with me. They would know me, they knew that I was really interested in what was going on. Interested enough to know what their group was about and spend time with them. I guess the one thing that I came to believe, was that trust is really the only commodity that we have. If you don't establish trust with the parties, and that's all the parties, if you can't establish trust with them, you don't have anything to offer them. Part of that was establishing that connection and that sense that I really do care about what is going on and I'm going to listen and I haven't come here to fix you. The trust issue, I think, is a critical element that is hard to teach. Somebody could be very trustworthy and yet if they don't project trustworthiness there are some people who will look at them and go "I wouldn't trust them." It's hard to do mediation because it is the only commodity that you have.

Question:
What else were you able to do to help build and sustain the trust over a period of time other than the group meetings, or attending those group meetings?

Answer:
One of the things that I tell people is that, "I have as much responsibility to protect your interests as I do my interests.” That if I violate anybody in the process then I'm not holding up my end of the bargain. That if I do anything to diminish the institution, the students, the faculty, anybody, if I do anything that diminishes anyone then I have violated my commitment to you. And if you see that, or perceive that, then I want you to tell me. If it's occurred, I respond to that in a way that says I need to fix that, I need to do something about that. For example, if you've told someone that you aren't there to investigate them and it shows up in the newspaper, or the Justice Department shows up to investigate university’s treatment of minorities, well that can take away your trust.

Question:
Did it happen?

Answer:
It happened a lot. The media always wants us to investigate, and no matter how often you tell them, "We aren't investigating,” it shows up in the headlines that Justice is there to investigate. You have to respond immediately back to the institution or the minorities, or whoever is involved and say, "I know that's happened and I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do about it, but this is what I told them and this is still the reality." I guess the other part of that is learning not ever to become defensive. If someone challenged me on something, then I try to respond to that in terms of if they believed that was the way I was acting, then I would respond to that and make changes. That was part of the dance, or knowing where the parties were, and were they ready to move on to the next step? Were they ready to sit down at the table and begin to negotiate, or did they still need to vent more? Did they still need to say that the administration was useless, or that the students just wanted their way, or were they prepared now to sit down and talk?

Question:
Is that how you gauged how much trust they had in you and the process, by when they were ready to sit down and move forward?

Answer:
Yeah, because there was no reason for them to come to the table if they didn't trust me. Coming to the table could be dangerous for them. You've got students sitting there with the faculty and the administration, who have complete power over them. You've got administrators sitting over there with somebody from the Justice Department. They always felt like there was this potential for investigation, no matter how many times we told them, it still had its own power. If they agreed to come to the table, it generally meant they trusted that I was going to be able to protect their interest within that context. For example, not let the students just chew up and spit out the administration without any real benefit to that. Or allow the administration to just dump on the students. But that there was going to be some mutual respect and dialogue going on, and certainly there would be some venting going on, but it would be within the context of, "How do you feel about that?" "What was your response to that?" ...and not assassinating people or ticking individuals off. If they trusted me with that, then they would come to the table.

Question:
How were you able to get them to trust each other?

Answer:
They had to trust through me. That's why I say trust is the only commodity you have. And you were the one that would have to build that trust between the parties. My experience and the experience of others at the table, was that it took the President of the fraternity about four months of meeting, before he really understood what he had done, and he was horrified. And if we had never done that he would have never known and he'd have never been horrified. And that to me is the beauty of what we did. Ninety percent of the people in this country are good people, a bunch of them don't understand what kinds of horrible things are happening. And they never have the kinds of experiences with different ethnic groups to really engage with that, and feel that, and know what that means and the pain that's involved in it. He became the champion of change in the whole fraternal system. In terms of their policies and their approaches and what was going to happen in the future. So we had to hold out to get the group to agree to let him be on the team, and they eventually did. But the only reason they allowed us to go ahead with it, was they trusted me at that point. It was the right thing to have that guy there. They saw the healing occur, in front of their eyes, and it also helped the minority groups have a different sense of what was going on in the fraternity's mind. So as much as a document that came out of it, it was what happened around that table where they began to trust each other.

Question:
When you proposed that people come together at a table, what was the purpose that you laid out? How did you lay out what would happen?

Answer:
It was initially the mediation of the response to that fraternal group, what would happen to them. The vice president of student affairs could have summarily made a judgement, he had the authority to do that. He agreed to let the group work through that and come up with the response to the fraternity. I guess that could have been the end of it. But more because of our regional response and we have rapport, we have trust, we have entry, we wanted to see what we could accomplish here. I spent over a year in and out of there. If you want, they gave me permission to share the document we came up with. It's beautiful, it's incredible. The kinds of things that became institutional change and long term response. They created a long term process for responding to incidents on campus. That became institutionalized in and of itself. In some regions it's their style, and their philosophy was to deal with that incident and move on because there's too much to do. Ours was more, there is too much to do but we're here and we're invested in this, so let's see what kind of an impact institutionally or systemically we can have. So unless there was a violent incident that occurred something that would draw us away from that we would see it through. The first priority was always the level of violence, but then it was how broad of an impact can we have. I know that was different from region to region, but I preferred that. Something that I really enjoyed was to be able to spend the time and see institutions and communities change. I think that was probably the biggest joy, to see people who didn't have hope begin to see each other in different ways and realize that not only have we walked through this together and come up with a good solution, but the next time something happens and it will we have a way of responding that's built on trust.

Question:
When you were meeting with the groups and hearing what their issues were, did it appear that the issues that you felt were most important were the same as what the groups felt was most important?

Answer:
I'm not sure. One of the things I tried not to do was to put value on it from my perspective. When I did my first case on my own in Oklahoma, I went into a small community, and it was a police situation. Allegations of excessive force. I have always had pretty strong opinions. If somebody hired me as an arbitrator I would do a pretty good job, because I know the answer. So my first instinct when I went into this community was listening to the stories, then thinking I know what the answer is, I know who's telling the truth and I know who's lying. I thought, now how can I deal with this process that requires me to be neutral in terms of outcome, with any integrity, if I have such strong feelings about the parties and their interests? I knew that if I didn't make that leap, I couldn't do it, because my integrity would be in question. It would obviously show, but just personally I couldn't do it. Because I feel that strongly about being honest about where I am. What I came to believe and be absolutely committed to was that regardless of my personal advocacy or personal interest in a particular position, what I had to offer with that advocacy was a tenth or less of what I could offer them as a process person. Bringing a process to them, to help them come to their own solution. So my advocacy or my bias for myself in a particular position was insignificant compared to what I could offer as a person with a process that worked. It was the ability to take in everyone's interest and the ability to say with integrity to that police chief, that I have as much responsibility to protect the interest of this department as I do the interest of the community. No less, no more. If I'm doing my job, I'll be protecting the interests of both and the outcome is better than anything I could do as an advocate for either. And I believe that. I really came to believe that the process that CRS uses has infinite value for communities and individuals, and my advocacy role or my biases were of no value to them, so I could easily set them aside.

Question:
Let me play the devil's advocate here for a moment. Say you are dealing with the police chief who thinks that the interests of the department are to keep out minority officers, or treat minorities differently then they treat whites, and this chief gives you a story about how this is in the interests of the department. Is it then your job to protect those interests, or help him see that maybe there's a more enlightened self-interest?

Answer:
The one constant was the civil rights law, so I wouldn't have had to deal with that. It wouldn't have been that blatant. Another criteria I use, another standard of operation is if it's not on top of the table, it doesn't exist. I could tell you what their real interests were, but they would tell me their interest was to do the right thing for the community, protect all of the community. They wanted to abide by civil rights law and when they told me that, I held them to that. I didn't let what I knew to be their underlying biases affect how I related to them. I related to them from their best image. And I didn't allow that other to become part of that public dialogue. I had one police chief that was never going to meet with these people. He thought those people just want to break the law, they just want to get away with breaking the law. I understand that chief, but what's going to happen if we don't do something? Talking about what his interests were in the community and all that. Same kind of thing. But the exciting thing was that in six months he was saying, "I've got to go meet with my community group." And he meant it. That to me is the beauty of it. It's that young college junior, who was a white boy going from never having any experience with what it meant to be black in the United States saying, "My God, what have I done?" And the sheriff or the chief referring to my community group. People really change. There's a difference in the way they relate to each other after that. That young boy will carry that experience into everything he does. I believe it'll have an impact on how he relates to minorities the rest of his life. In a positive way. Maybe some of those minority students will have changed the way they interact with the Anglo world or the white world, because of having sat at that table and experienced that together. Those "ah-has” are the payoffs for me. You can get people to comply with the law, but to be able to have the time to spend with people to really begin letting them see where people's hearts are, their hurts are, their interests are and that they are legitimate. They have a legitimate interest that needs to be heard.

Question:
I've been avoiding asking the whole time, but what is the university?

Answer:
It's Oklahoma State, in Stillwater.

Question:
How big is the student body?

Answer:
It's pretty big.

Question:
Again going back to what you were telling people before you brought them together. You said that you wanted to mediate the university's thoughts on this incident, but did you tell them at that point that you had a broader interest too, or did you bring that in later, or did it just happen naturally?

Answer:
Well again, it was as much a part of our regional interest as my propensity. My propensity was to let that open itself up wherever it went. Generally people will say, that's just the tip of the iceberg. That's just an incident. The real issue is that we're isolated on campus, we don't have any opportunity to serve our student government, we have professors here, and it just comes out. So you either say, "well that's too bad, good luck with that, but we're going to deal with this incident with the fraternity" or you can limit what they say, and just limit the discussions to that. I went into a small community in Texas and I can't even remember what the triggering incident was, probably police use of force, I'd have to look back. When I got there we were in a community center and there were about fifty people there. I said, "Just talk to me. What are your concerns?” Within about an hour, I realized there were people there who were concerned about the school district, the police department, there were four different interest groups, and I just divided them up in the room. Everyone that's most interested concerns in the school district, go in that corner. Everyone that's more interested in police here, city government here, contracting here. And just divided them up and it turned out to be a five-prong community conflict resolution kind of thing. So we were dealing with just about every major system in that city. But I didn't know that when I got there.

Question:
Were you handling this all by yourself?

Answer:
Yes.

Question:
So then how did you deal with that?

Answer:
I was in and out of there for about three years, going back and forth. I began letting each group come up with the primary issues that they wanted to deal with, and identify a three to five person task force that would work with me and the institutional parties. I created that kind of a network where I could work on two or three different things on one trip. That depended on who I could get appointments with. I just managed it as five different cases, or four different cases that happened to be in one community. I didn't know when I went there, that it was going to develop into that. But I think that was one of the things that was exciting about it to me. I was able to let them define what their issues were and what their needs were. Because of our philosophy, I was allowed to then respond to that over time rather then just saying, "We'll deal with this police issue but then I'm going on." The perception that the administration just doesn't want to respond, most of the time wasn't correct. Most of the time they did, they just didn't know how. Given the opportunity and given an environment that expects it of them, in a positive way, they responded. Another good example of that was the difference between what happened in Orange, Texas, when the Federal Government went in there and tried to impose housing integration, and a case I did in Grand Selean, Texas I was in there by myself, and I gave the community and the housing authority the opportunity to do the right thing. The biggest difficulty there was keeping the federal presence out so that they didn't come in and cause them to back into a corner. Because they are just like everybody else, if you back them in a corner, they're going to become defensive. But if you go in and say, "Here's the higher good, and what's it going to look like if your community does this? But what would it look like if you do this and rise to the occasion?” There was a public pride in saying, "We're going to do the right thing,” and they kept the trouble-makers out. They made sure that the property was safe. There are occasions when that doesn't happen -- when people really are not of good will and that's why we have law enforcement. But, my experience was that most people want to do the right thing if given the opportunity, and it can save a lot of money and a lot of lives.

Question:
Let me bring you back to the University case. How did you get people to the table?

Answer:
We defined the players, the different interest groups like the minority groups, the black student group, the Hispanic group, and all of those groups then self-selected their representation. The fact that we were committed to a broader review of the institution was very appealing and it gave them some sense of value, legitimate value for having an impact on the whole institution.

Question:
And the administration felt comfortable with that?

Answer:
Yeah, one of the things that made it work could have been more difficult if the Vice President for Student Affairs was not so committed to what we were trying to do. He didn't know exactly what to do, but he was in, he was there all the way. Once we sold the President and he bought into it, he was free then to do what he wanted to do, and knew it was the right thing to do, but he knew he couldn't do that without support. So, it really made that part of it easy. Again, the next hurdle was the faculty and the faculty's perception of potentially losing some power or influence. But they did come around and there was faculty representation from the general faculty and also from minority groups within the faculty on the task force.

Question:
Now how did you bring them around?

Answer:
Which, the faculty? I met with their whole group. I talked about our process. There's always the unknown and they wonder, "What's the person from Federal Government doing here?” But I have to project, "I'm not going to undermine this institution, I'm not going to undermine the faculty, nothing is going to be diminished if we rise to this and cause something better to come from it.” If it doesn't work then we'll refer it to someone else, and again if the group doesn't rise to that, you can always refer it to somebody who can enforce something. You're giving people an opportunity to rise to a higher level and when they see that and they trust that you can take them there, most of the time people will go with you. Now here's the thing that I was beginning to sense the last 3 or 4 years I was doing this work with Justice. Of the people who did not want to rise to that -- or as I just described it, didn't want to come to the table in good faith, there were two different profiles. One was coming from the establishment perspective, saying, "My influence is going to be diminished if this process is put in place because when a broader base of people is in power then individual power is diminished,” if it's an authoritarian kind of power. So, those people are intimidated and threatened by what we do. There were minority people whose power was based in the fight, and if the group begins to rise to a higher level with everyone really working toward the best interest of everyone else, those individual powers will be diminished and they would try to sever ties. So, that became an interesting phenomenon to me in the last 3 or 4 years, seeing that as more and more mediation or conflict resolution or consensus-building or multi-culturalism became a part of the fiber. These individuals began to say, "I'm losing control, I'm losing influence, I'm losing power," and there began to be a push to keep the thing from working. My response to that was usually to go with the group, whatever group they were a part of, and talk about that in private and say without naming any names that there seems to be some sabotage going on. "Can you help with that? Are you interested in helping with that? Because either that person's going to pull the group away or the group will have to move away from that person.” But, I never tried to engage those people. I would try to bring them to the table, I tried to get them in the midst of it and hold them to their higher words.

Question:
Did that ever work?

Answer:
Sometimes.

Question:
Did you ever run across a situation where a group was engaged in a legitimate protest activity that might have been undercut if you started some sort of consensus process?

Answer:
I'm not sure if I could think of an incident. I wouldn't try to stop a protest. The protest is what really gets the establishment's attention and gives me an opportunity to say, "So what happens next?" If you do nothing or what you've been doing resulted in this, is it worth trying? Give me a chance, maybe I won't do any better but what's it going to hurt to try? So the protest in many instances was the impetus to get the establishment to go for it. If this woman thinks she can do something, send her out there. So generally that protest is the catalyst and this is where my integrity and my trustworthiness would have to come in. If I went to the establishment and I didn't believe that there were some people there who really wanted to do the right thing, it would be my responsibility to tell that group this needs to be referred out. I wouldn't bring them to a table with somebody that I didn't believe was honestly trying to work through their concerns. I've stopped a process before because I found out at the table that they had come there under false pretenses. I said, "Are you going to talk to the parties or are you just going to intimidate?" and it became a trial kind of environment. The parties really couldn't answer him, and I said "You all need to go and talk about that," because if the attorney (for a school district) is going to continue to interrogate witnesses, (which is what he was basically doing), I said that's not what we're here for. The court can handle that. This had been referred by the court but you told me that you came here because the school board was willing to talk to this group of citizens and that's not happening. So, they go off and talk and they come back and say "No, the attorney's going to continue," and I said, "Okay," and I just got up and walked out with the community people and left. It was turned back to the court and our response was not ever to give any kind of biased response one way or the other, but just to say to the court the parties were not willing to negotiate and that's all that it took. I mean the judge was 10 times harder on them than the community wanted. The interesting thing about that was that particular attorney had practically every school district in the metroplex. But, the next time I came along he listened to me. Because he finally thought what we were doing was better for him and the school district than if he ended up back in front of the judge.

Question:
Well, once again going back to the University, tell me about the dynamics at the table?

Answer:
I was the facilitator. They each had an opportunity to express their opinions about what we needed to be dealing with, as far as bringing the issues out to the table, and then validating that with everybody, because we couldn't deal with everything. Prioritizing those issues and building a consensus around the table about what issues we were going to deal with, so from the very beginning I was teaching them what I do. The next time an issue came up, they had been through the process and I had basically facilitated, but coached and modeled that behavior as we went along. The main thing is keeping the environment safe for everybody, so that nobody was diminished and that was always one of my ground rules. They were obviously able to create other ground rules that they felt like were important once we validated the issues and began hammering out responses to it. In terms of faculty, one of the responses was that the research division was going to do a statistical analysis of grading practices and that was going to become a matter of record. There was an ongoing task force that established its membership. They identified how the members would be selected each time, and how complaints would be channeled into that. For example one of the biggest concerns the students had was, "I'm the only minority student in that classroom, how can I possibly file a complaint that my teacher has control of my grades?" So they built in some safeguards for them. The same thing went for any kind of complaint in housing. Building in safeguards, we developed a brochure about race relations and anti-discrimination policy and procedure on campus. The fraternal system was looked at and the whole process for evaluating their documents that they have to have on campus, organizing documents or whatever they have. A process was put into place to review and look at that for complaints and charters. There were some specific steps for the student government to bring in minorities into representation under the student government. More multi-ethnic activities were generated out of that.

Question:
Was that all done by the group working as a whole, or did you break into test groups?

Answer:
No, we did it together and the group stayed together. We had about 20 people, and almost always, everybody was involved.

Question:
How often did you meet?

Answer:
I want to say once a month, once we got going. I was up there probably once a week at the beginning and then once every couple of weeks as we began to settle in. Then just based on scheduling and everything, about once a month, we had a set meeting, like the 4th Tuesday of every month.

Question:
How long did this last?

Answer:
I was up there over a year. In and out.

Question:
You mentioned coaching. Did you coach everybody together, or did you coach some groups individually?

Answer:
In the initial contacts, part of that would occur with the individual groups, talking to them about what's going to happen. Certainly you have some rage, certainly you have some interest in sharing that feeling that you have. But what is it going to get you? You need to be very clear about what your concerns are and they need to be definable. They need to be stated in a way that they can be resolved. Saying you're angry at the administration because they're not responding to you, doesn't tell the administration anything and there's nothing they can do to respond to that. So coaching them to really clarify what their concern is. That's definable, something you can respond to. Not being treated fairly in student government is a valid concern, but what does that mean? You can't be elected because it's always at large, so you can't have representation at student government, that's specific. So I coached them in being prepared to sit at the table. I think that's always a big part of it. Not diminishing someone, is making sure they are prepared for what's going to happen. If you put somebody there and they're not ready, then they feel like they've been put down by the other parties that can talk more easily. The other party is more prepared with the response, then you haven't done them any favors. My coaching there would be getting them ready to come to the table and feel confident. The student had as much power at that table as the vice president of student affairs. There was no power and no rank. And that was part of my process, my responsibility. And everybody had to agree to that, the tenured faculty included. They had no more influence on the group than a student did.

Question:
Did you do any coaching of the faculty or the administration?

Answer:
Yes, the same kind of thing. Sometimes from a different perspective of being able to hear and listen to the students or listen to the other group without becoming defensive. It was that whole issue of helping people understand that being defensive is not helpful and it doesn't help resolve problems. It just entrenches people. So the coaching may be different, sometimes not. Generally it was more from that side of, you do have the power, but what's going to happen to you if you don't have the students. What's going to happen to you if the community believes that you are this kind of institution. You're more likely to be appealing to their public relations image than anything. Coaching them in that sense would be more geared toward listening and not being defensive. It was hard for an administration or an institutional mind set to listen to things that they believe to be completely contrary to what they were doing. They believed that they were doing the right thing. For somebody to attack them with the opposite, it was hard for them to hear that. I could coach them in saying that community or the student's perception is that they're treated unfairly. Now if that's not true, don't you have an interest in helping them understand why that's not true? If it is true, then you should have an interest in helping them figure out how to change that. So either way there's a response. I never went in and tried to get an institution to say they were wrong. That would just be wasting time for one thing, and I didn't have to get them to say that. The only thing I had to get them to say was that things could be better. That's another one of those little keys, that if you go into an institution, or a minority group for that matter, and say, "Your system is deplorable, and if law enforcement people came in here they'd take you to court and everything's terrible." If you go in there like that, why should they listen to you? Why should they come to the table with you? But if you go in there and say, "this is what the community believes, this is how they feel about it, now if that's not correct, then you have an opportunity to help correct that perception. But even if some of it's correct, can your institution do better?" I've never had anybody say they couldn't do any better. And it's amazing what that one little thing will do for any kind of mediation. If you try to make the respondent say, "I was wrong," then it's a hurdle you may never get over. But if you can get them to say, "Well sure, we can all do better," then I can help you. So that was the dance to me. It's moving with them, where they are, and not trying to drag them somewhere. You dance them into the place where you want them to be, but if you don't keep the rhythm, then you're pulling and dragging, and they're not ever there in good faith.

Question:
You have referred a couple of times now to "the dance”. You've had a really nice description of mediation as a dance that you're now referring to but haven't put on tape. Do you remember how you put it before, can you tell us again?

Answer:
I came up with the imagery in the middle of a mediation one time, sitting around a table. Because of the dynamics of what was going on, I realized that I was kind of having to move back and forth with the parties with where they were with their anger and frustration, with the establishment's sense of indignation, and trying to move with them and keep them moving toward the goal that I had. That goal was for them to begin to talk to each other. I realized that when mediation and conflict resolution is really working well, the mediator can go in with the skills he or she has, but listen to the parties and move with them on their level of info, frustration, indignation, whatever that is, empathizing with and understanding them, whatever their mood or tune, or dance is at that time. If you're not willing to dance with them, they're not going to trust you. They'll play my tune later if I've danced with them. But if I haven't been willing to dance with them they're not willing to play my tune, they're not going to go with me, when I want to take them somewhere. I think that kind of movement is what captures me when I'm thinking about mediation. It's exciting. You go in, and some people are just doing the tango and you've gotta go with that. You're trying to get them to some harmony, maybe a waltz. I don't know music that well, which is kind of interesting that I use that imagery, but it just fits so well for me. When I teach mediation, I use that imagery with new students, you have to be willing to understand where the parties are. Think about it in terms of being willing to dance with them. You may not enjoy the rumba, but if that's where they are, you're going to have to start there and then move with them and get them to where they trust you enough to take the rhythm that you've got going for the mediation.

Question:
What does that imply about your thought process before you go into a case? Do you have any kind of a plan laid out, or do you go in with pretty much a blank slate and just wait to see where they are before you start coming up with plans?

Answer:
I learned after ten years that I did have some ideas, but I tried to protect against going in with those expectations. Or going in with a plan. I really believe in the power of the parties to resolve their own problems. My greatest gift to them is the process to help them do that. That's what they're missing. Like I said, in ninety percent of the cases, people want to do the right thing, and given the right environment, they'll rise to that. That's the gift I bring. If I go in with a solution, I may miss the real issue. Like the university case. I would have missed all of the other things that really were more important to them than the fraternity party was. That fraternity party was a slap in the face, but had they been treated fairly on that campus and felt like they were a part of that campus, that wouldn't have occurred or they would've gone to someone and said, "What is going on here?" So to go in there because of my preconceived notions, limits their environment, and the ability to really get at the core of their issues. Sometimes it's hard. Because you've seen this situation before, you think you know what you need to do. The power of that is that you do have some things to say, there is hope. I've seen people work through these things, and I've seen good things come from this. Here are some things that have helped in other situations. So it gets them thinking, but I very much try not to go in there with a preconceived plan. It's like the city that I went to and we ended up with five groups that night. I'd never done that before, but it seemed like the right thing to do at that point, because it's what they needed. I guess that was one of the most important factors for me, trying to respond to what they needed. It was critical to try and keep an open mind about the situation. I was always surprised. Hardly ever did I go into a situation where what you expected to be the most important issue actually was.

Question:
Now did you generally try to move people toward mediation, or was that open for later determination?

Answer:
It was later. I think probably as far as sitting down at the table, if it looked like it would be a good tool in the long run, yes. If not, no because it was so time-consuming. We worked territories, generally, and I had Oklahoma and Northwest Texas. I may be in Stillwater, and then I'd be back in Stillwater again dealing with the school district, or the police department, and some of the same players in all of those situations, especially with the community. So maybe we could deal with the university and you ended up with formal mediation, but you're dealing with some of the same players with the local school district and you really don't need to go that far. They've already been through some of that, they already know some of the process, and it's just a matter of helping them focus again to use the process themselves. Sometimes the parties weren't willing to sit down at the table, and the best you could do was to try to minimize the tension and the potential for violence. That's all you could accomplish, so a lot of things would be a factor if you ever got to a table. I guess the driving interest for us in region six was, is there an opportunity for a systemic change? Then we would move there, whether that resulted in a formal mediation or not. We may still get some sort of document where they change the way they recruit teachers, even though we never sat down and had a formal mediation. But we made a systemic change. So that was more of a driving thing than the mediation.

Question:
In the university case, did you have any problem getting the individual groups to work together cohesively? I mean, were there conflicts within the minority students, within that one group, or between different faculty members that caused problems in the ongoing negotiation?

Answer:
As I remember, there was more friction among the faculty ethnic groups than there was among students. All the minority students probably felt so isolated, that they were more able to cooperate with each other. The faculty groups had created more interest and identity groups for themselves, and it seemed to be more difficult to get them to see themselves as a union. They did not want to lose any power or influence. So that, as I recall, was more of an issue than the students. The hardest thing with the students was to get the Native Americans to engage. They would rather have not, I think.

Question:
How did you do that?

Answer:
I just continued working with them and tried to get them to see what they would add to it. That their voice was important. It would be diminished by not having them there. The others were ready and prepared, ready to be engaged. And theirs was more of a cultural tendency not to speak out.

Question:
How did they feel about it at the end? Do you know?

Answer:
The Native Americans, I couldn't say, I don't remember thinking anything different about their involvement.

Question:
You didn't get the sense that they felt like they were forced into doing something that they didn't want to do?

Answer:
No. The outcome was so broad-based, that it really involved everybody and there was some sort of a ceremonial ending, and they bid me farewell. They sent back reports for several quarters on things that they had done.

Question:
This was the same group that you had constituted?

Answer:
Part of that group became the first task force. Then they had in place the criteria for replacing themselves over time. Because the students would have to rotate. But they put in the document, ways for the group to replace itself as time passed. We did the brochure out of the group. We had it designed and printed up out of that process.

Question:
And what is the task force's purpose?

Answer:
There was one overwhelming interest that came up. That was the minority students' lack of anonymity when they needed it, when they felt they were being discriminated against. So part of it was to create a buffer between them and the complaint in the classroom or housing or whatever. So that they had a place to go to deal with the problem, and then that group became part of their voice. Obviously they'd still be identified, but here's this task force group looking at it, so that the faculty member or housing authority or whatever is not just dealing with this student, they're dealing with this task force. And the task force is made up of a cross section of the university, who says discrimination is not appropriate. So it gave them some buffer against the majority because you can't create an environment where they can be anonymous, when there's so few. So how do you create a place where they can be safe? So that was the purpose. The other was to try to be pro-active. Looking at additional ways where we are not meeting the needs of our students, where we are not encouraging minorities to stay here, and be a part of the campus. They looked at things dealing with handicap access, housing, the systemic kinds of things that affect students. The different programs that the university has, why are there no minorities in this particular program? They had the two goals, as I remember. One was to create this safety net for the individual, and the other was to be pro-active in proposing and recommending change for the institution to continue to do that. I think they called themselves the multi-cultural action team. They wanted to be sure that "action” was a part of their title.

Question:
I might let you go home and confirm the documents and I'll give them a call and see if they still exist. Going back to the internal conflict with the faculty, is that something that you worked with them to try to help them resolve or did you let them deal with it themselves?

Answer:
I really didn't deal with it that much except to try to get representation. I guess that was one of the things that didn't become part of the process, because one of the limiting factors was student relations. So I didn't really get into faculty relations that much. I remember talking to some of the faculty individually about some things they might try, approaches, but not making it a part of the formal process.

Question:
Did representation ever become a difficult issue? "Why's he at the table and I'm not?” or vice versa?

Answer:
More, "Why is that fraternity here since they're the perpetrators?” Because they were self-selected out of the groups. If a group was a party, then they self-selected their representation to the table. Now they could've had two or three choices maybe, but generally any group in the student group population, I believe, had two or three representatives at the table. But they were self selected, so that was part of the way they were not competing with each other. They'd already taken care of that. If we left a group out, that might become an issue. Why wasn't this group represented there? A lot of times the parties will want to leave out the most outrageous groups, and we try to make it clear that those are the very people you need at the table. They definitely need to be a part of that environment of discussion, where they see that people are trying to reason, and that their approach is not the acceptable approach. Sometimes they'll drop out once they see that they're not going to be able to dominate. But at least they need to be invited.

Question:
Were there any groups like that in this case?

Answer:
No. There weren't.

Question:
How did you deal with confidentiality in this case? Were the discussions around the table all confidential?

Answer:
Everything except what became written documents was considered confidential. Anything that was the workings, the process, the exchange of dialogue was considered confidential so that it didn't become gossip outside the room. Any contact with the media was directed toward me until it was over. As a contact person, my response was always, "We're working. We're not investigating, but we're working toward some solutions." Again, part of the ground rule setting was how we would deal with the media, and how we dealt with confidentiality. Part of the end of each meeting was generally, what do we need to report back to our constituency groups? So there was reporting back. Part of that is keeping the constituency groups with you. One of the things that is a real danger, is that the group comes up with a solution, but all the constituency groups are still out here fighting and they don't buy into the solution. So part of the real process is keeping the constituency groups informed, and feeling like they're part of what's happening. That's part of the coaching too, helping them understand the value of that, making sure you report back to the group, get input from them on what they think. "Here are some things we're working on. Do you have any suggestions? What do you think we could do to make this work?” Keep that dialogue going so you really have all of them coming to the table.

Question:
Did significant changes get brought in from the outside, from the constituency groups?

Answer:
I'm not sure that I would be that aware of it. The ideas would be brought to the table by individuals.

Question:
There's another way to phrase the same thing. Were there any major changes in direction, when people went back to their constituency groups and found out what they were doing wasn't going to fly, and came back to the table and said we need to do something differently?

Answer:
I don't remember it in that case. I do remember that sort of thing would happen, and I would define that again as the dance. You've got to be prepared for that new tune and incorporate that into the process. Again, if you believe in the people having their answers, you have to listen to that, you have to hear that. Because you don't know how it's going to read out in the end, you don't know how the Board of Regents is going to respond to that. You need to know that. You need to know if we go this way, the university could lose funding for this.

Answer:
Before I was in consulting, I was in the ministry. I was a Baptist minister. I was doing student work and mission work. A lot of the people were from ministry-related backgrounds. So, it was interesting, the kinds of people who became a part of that.

Question:
I've just got a couple of other questions, still about the University case. How did you decide when you were done?

Answer:
We had the document. Once we began writing it up, we spent time clarifying the issues that we were going to deal with, and then took them one by one to develop a response or a remedy. Part of the technique there was that each time at the end of a meeting, I had drafted what we had done as far as issues and remedy. I brought that back to the table at the next meeting with the draft working paper and that's where we started each time. The problem with not having something like that is that you keep backing up. If you don't keep a consistent group, you have to start all over again. So the consistency was critical, and we did have consistency. Each group had an alternate that was available, who came to all the meetings. That was part of the reason for having more than one representative. So that we had the consistency and could keep moving forward. Once we had all of these issues addressed and some remedy proposed, we checked a couple of things, institutionally or legally. We would have to check to see if they were viable. If they were legitimate, within the context of either policy or law or whatever. Once we had all those things cleared up, and everybody agreed, we had a document. We got everybody to sign off one, and then I was finished. They were just beginning, but my role was finished. I went back a couple of times just as a kind of a courtesy, but also it's fun to go back and work with the group on a issue or something, or an educational thing. I went back one time and did one of the trainings that they had proposed in the document for the students or for the faculty. I think I did a faculty training on multi-culturalism or something like that. So it is that kind of interaction. I was in town for other things with other issues in Stillwater but from then on, it was really theirs.

Question:
Were there any provisions in the document that addressed what would happen if any of the provisions weren’t followed, any enforcement mechanism?

Answer:
Generally, I would say yes. I can’t remember specifically on that document. We always had the "what if’s," and our agency was a recourse as far as calling us to come in and help interpret and redefine or help the parties begin to implement. The things we did, like the task force, became recognized groups under the president, and reported directly to the president. So they had their own legitimacy and recourse. Any violation fell in under existing policies and procedures. So it wasn’t outside the system. It was just creating this place where people were focused on ethnic relations and discrimination and helping these people who were pretty much isolated get redress. The remedy was available there; it just wasn’t being exercised, because people were afraid to seek remedy.

Question:
Were they less afraid once the committee was formed?

Answer:
Yes. I think it was a significant step. The interest to the institution was partly that they needed to keep minorities on campus, so their interests were being served in different ways by the whole process.

Question:
How did the president feel about this?

Answer:
Good. I think his fears were similar to what most institutions’ fears are. He was afraid that they were going to be diminished. It was looking like they would have to get somebody in there to do their job, and that was part of why this worked. We didn’t take credit, and that's why the CRS organization has such a hard time selling itself to congress. You can’t sell the fact that we avoided a riot. You can’t sell the idea that we now have students on this campus who feel like they have redress. You get lots of money flooding into Los Angeles when there’s a riot. But it’s hard to get them to appropriate money to avoid a riot. Then the commitment of the CRS mandate was that we would do this as low-profile, and it wouldn’t work otherwise. If we were showboating and taking credit then the institutions would have to worry. Their interests wouldn't be protected, and they wouldn't be as forthcoming. But if we really are there as an instrument of change, with everyone’s interests at heart then you have power to make things happen for them. If your interest is to get credit, then their interest is diminished and the next leader is not going to let you in. It's really a catch-22 and I'm not sure what the good answer is.

Question:
I think you've already answered this question, but I haven't asked it overtly. How do you measure your success?

Answer:
For me, the biggest success was that awareness was raised around that table about people's feelings; what it feels like to be black, what it feels like to be white, what it feels like to be a faculty member. That awareness was genuinely raised for everybody there and there was some empathy created across those lines. That was a personal success and that's something that I'm glad to be a part of. The professional success is in the changes that occur for the system. I don't know if any faculty member was ever sanctioned for grades. I don't know that, but I know there was a study in place to consider that. And that was the first step, but that's not acceptable. Maybe the faculty simply knowing that the study was going on could have some long term impact. So I felt professional success most often when we could create institutional change. Personally, it was when I saw individuals raise their awareness. Once I had a banker in a community, a little tiny community, make some offhand comment about, "There's no reason for us to have another park. We have a nice park, this city's not that big. Why do we need another park in the minority part of town?" I said "Well, these kids would have to walk across town. It's about a mile away. Would you let your children do that?" "It's not that far." But then he had the courage to go drive to the other part of town, which he hadn't been to lately, and he thought about his children walking that distance. He said later, "You're right. It's not fair." He gave the land for the park in the other part of town. Those are the personal successes because that was the beginning of several leaders in the community, black and white. I don't know that there was any other ethnic group involved. After a hundred years of knowing each other, they began to really talk to each other and value each other and honor each other. In that instance, a situation occurred about 6 months later that would've been disastrous had that process not occurred 6 months before. Do you want to hear this?

Question:
Sure.

Answer:
There was an incident and the local NAACP president was a part of the group and then the president of the bank was the other major leader. I mean, the group was bigger than just those two people, but they were a part of it. The police chief was, too. It had started over police stuff. Six months after the incident with the banker, a young black man had come home one afternoon and told his mother that someone had kidnapped him and tried to hang him. They went to the police department and the police chief couldn't find anything to support what the boy was saying. But he also knew he couldn't go to the community and just say, "I don't have anything." He had established a rapport with the president of the NAACP and had established a trusting relationship. He went to him and said, "You've got to help me, I don't know what to say. I can't find any evidence and I know we're going to have another problem if I just come out and say that I can't find anything to corroborate the boy's story." So the NAACP president went with him, and they went to talk to the boy and the mother again. The short of the story was that the young man had lied, that he had skipped school and he knew the only thing that was going to save him from his mother's wrath was a really good story. Well, that wouldn't have come out if the police chief didn't have rapport with somebody in the black community, someone who trusted him, someone who knew that he wasn't trying to cover something up. Because of that trust, that incident didn't become an incident. But you can't sell that. That success is long-term. That's where the success is, as far as I'm concerned, because my hope is that there's instances like that all over Oklahoma and Texas where people are going to each other and avoiding incredible hurt and disaster. Hopefully they've learned they can trust each other. That was one of those things where it confirms that it was worth the 6 months I spent there.

Question:
Initially there are 20 people who are sitting at the table, developing these trusting relationships, developing a mutual understanding. But the goal is to eventually get the whole community to develop a more trusting relationship. How do you transfer what's learned at the table to the rest of the community?

Answer:
I think the critical element is who you have at the table. Most people follow values of particular leaders. One of my techniques is to try to identify not only position leaders, but also personal leaders in groups. There were always people who had personal power over and above position power. If some of them won't sit at the table, you can still keep them in the loop if you know who they are. As long as you can keep them involved in the process, it will spread because most people are looking for someone to give them direction. In one instance, I went to a housing authority meeting every month for four months before one woman finally stood up and said, "You're not going to go away, are you?" I said, "No, not as long as I think I can be helpful." And that's when they started working with me. So if I earn the trust for myself, then they can easily transfer it into the community. We saw it over and over again. In Tulsa, we began to establish trust groups. The police department had so much trouble and once the community began to relate to the police department, the housing people began helping police rather than avoiding them and/or not being helpful. It became safer for the police and it became safer for the community. Once somebody who is a personal leader says, "We can trust the police," then the group begins to cooperate. But when that person says, "They're not trustworthy," there's nothing the police department, or me, or anybody else can do to convince that group. So the key is finding those people. Who are the personal leaders? Position leaders are essential for institutional change, but to get change in community, you've got to find the personal leaders, the people who are really respected and honored.

Question:
Go back to what you just said about the woman in the housing authority, where you came into a meeting for 4 months. That sounds interesting. Tell me about what was going on in that case.

Answer:
There were allegations of the housing authority not responding to tenants, and Tulsa became one of the prime targets of the housing authority investigation. The housing authority was siphoning money and spending it on other stuff, so the housing was falling apart. The minority groups living in the communities had complained to us because by then some of the players knew me and asked if I would come in. But the housing people didn't know me and, people who lived in the housing areas didn't know me. Too often, people come in and do their little deal and say their little speech and they leave. They figured that's what I was going to do, so they weren't going to spend any time with me. Nor were they going to give me any time. They let me say my little spiel, but that was about all. I just kept coming back. What we were looking at there was the housing authority's anti-discrimination policies that were a federal law. Unfortunately, they were so but was so complex that nobody could interpret them without an attorney. So we were looking at a way of redrafting those into common language. As far as the really imbedded stuff with the corruption, I really didn't have any authority to deal with that. But from my perspective, there were people in the community who were beginning to deal with that. There were people who were getting board members elected who wanted to deal with that. There were 2 groups at the establishment level. One was siphoning money, and the other one was saying, "That's not right,” and they were beginning to act on that. So we focused in on the discrimination policy and on getting the community a form of redress. Again, the housing authority didn't want any public light shining on them, so they wanted to cooperate. We had to work some with HUD. I wasn't even sure we would have permission to rewrite the document, but that didn't seem to be a problem. It makes you wonder why somebody didn't do it before...

Question:
What kept you coming back to meeting after meeting?

Answer:
They hadn't told me to go away. I guess that was part of my nature. If they didn't tell me to go away, I kept coming back. If they did tell me to go away, I'd go away. But this group hadn't told me to go away yet and the community leadership had asked me to try to help. The people who lived there in the housing projects were the ones not ready to trust me yet. The community leaders still wanted me to try. As long as the people living in the housing projects didn't tell me to go away, I kept coming back to see what I could do. Eventually this woman, who obviously was the personal leader, stood up and said, "You're not going away are you?" I don't think she meant that in a negative way, she meant, "You really are here to help." I said "The only way I'll leave is if there's nothing I can do." I had one situation where I had been going into the school district and I could tell that the superintendent didn't really want me there, but he wouldn't tell me to go away. As long as he didn't say go away, as long as he kept opening his door, I kept going in. But I sensed that he really didn't want me in there. After about three or four months, we got a call in the office from a senator's office in Oklahoma telling me to leave the superintendent alone. So I had to write up a response to show that at every point I had told him this is voluntary. The good part of it was that particular community group was more sophisticated than most. I felt that they were going to move ahead fine and would probably be more aggressive than if I would've guided them in. Within a year, the superintendent was indited for embezzling funds. So that's why he didn't want anybody in there.

Question:
Certainly not Justice Department.

Answer:
Right. People who are not people of good will are generally hiding something. They really did need to be investigated, so it's just as well that we moved out. It's just as well we get on out of there and let whoever needs to come in, get in there and investigate. That was always a big dilemma for me. Will my involvement be more helpful to the parties than if they went through law enforcement or court action? Is the outcome going to be significant enough to them that it's worth this kind of intervention, or is it going to short-change them? You cannot always answer that, but that was always a question in my mind. If I convince them to move in this direction, am I taking away from their right to some other action? That was always something I would try to consider.

Question:
If you came to the conclusion that they would be better off going another direction, what did you do?

Answer:
Refer. Our confidentiality wouldn't allow me to call that party or call that law enforcement group, but I could refer them. Sometimes it would happen because I didn't believe that the institution or the establishment was going to act in good faith. I would not bring people to the table if I didn't believe that.

Question:
Were there any other general rules that helped you make that decision, just like that one?

Answer:
If there's potential for violence or harm, you were just there. And you stayed there and did whatever you could. So without that, there was more to consider before making a commitment to long-term involvement. For example, I went into one community and found out that everybody in our agency, in the whole region for the whole history of our agency, had been in there and nothing had changed. When I went in there, the community still wasn't going to do anything. I did some training with the police that they asked for and I left. The community wasn't prepared to do their part, and that was part of my criteria. Are the parties willing to move into long-term and be involved? If they're not, my time and the resources of the country can be used better somewhere else. In one case, one of the remedies was that employers in this little town agreed to allow specific minorities time off to serve on grand juries and the police review board. That was a problem. They couldn't get time off and they couldn't afford it. Most of the people on the juries and review board were self-employed lawyers, house wives, or people who had their own income. So it excluded the minorities. So some of the business leaders agreed that it was like jury duty. One of the things that I had to make sure of is that the community people would be willing to really serve. I said, "You're going to really do yourself an injustice if we set this up and then none of you are willing to serve. The establishment people will say, ' see I told you.' You're going to be worse off than if we never start this." So that was the other thing. If what you're going to do is going to make them entrench in their biases more, then leave it alone. You're better off just to leave them where they are, don't reinforce their current biases. There was always a cry from the establishment that they could not get minorities to serve on boards and commissions. Then there was a cry from minorities that nobody ever asked them to serve on boards and commissions. So if we put in place a resolution, they're going to look to you for referrals, that you've got to have those referrals ready. If you're not prepared to make those referrals every year not just this year then you're going to do yourself more harm than if we'd never had this conversation. So the commitment to work for a long time was another issue for me. Again, you're never going to have the whole community, but if you've got enough people, you can make a difference.

Question:
Let's talk about what you do when you see a potential for violence?

Answer:
It generally involves police departments. The best thing to do is to create as much public awareness as possible about what's going on. The more light you can shine on this community issue and make everybody aware of what's going on, the less likely that violence is going to occur, regardless of where it's coming from. The first thing is just to get everybody out there and talking about what's happening. Then you try to create response systems that include the community. For example, one situation was in a park at night where there was a lot of violence involving black youth. The police were trying to deal with it and one of our recommendations was to get the adult male pastor to come into those parks and help. The police were more likely to cause more violence to occur. So our suggestion wasn't the answer to the problems, but it was a way of working with the current situation and trying to diminish possibility of violence right then. We try to find people who have influence with the people who you fear might cause the violence. Again, those personal leaders. I used to tell school districts, "If you want to stop trouble in the hallways, put some other kids or parents in the hallways." A generation of school administrators cried "We want the parents out of the schools." Same thing in a community. You can't hire enough police officers to police the community. We have got to get the community involved in policing. It's amazing our presence, whether it was me or any of us, could create calm. There was a calming effect. We are good talkers, we can create hope. They don't have to take one particular route, there is an alternative. That takes us back to the Indians as a good example. The potential there was violence. The potential was that the people inside had guns.

Question:
Start at the beginning.

Answer:
Okay. This was a situation where two different people in an Indian tribe claimed to be the chief. But they both claimed to be elected. Being chief of the tribe means having control of a lot of money. So there was interest in being the chief. The person who was in the compound said that he was the chief, and the people around him agreed. Another man in the community said he was the chief, so he took his friend and guns and took over the compound. I called in from Lubbock, Texas. It was routine on a Friday afternoon to say, "I'm coming in, is there anything going on?" "As a matter of fact there is. This chief in Oklahoma said that he won't do anything until you get there. Will you go talk to him?" "Okay." I had to drive to where this is. It was noon on Saturday by the time I got there. When I got there, people were parked all along the highway. I parked and walked up to where the gate of the compound, and all law enforcement at both the state and federal levels were there. Bureau of prisons, state police, local police, sheriff's department, highway patrol, everybody. So here I come, walking up, going in to talk to these people. Law enforcement thinks, "Yeah right." About that time, one of the Native Americans comes out, gets me, and takes me in with him. I was pretty new in this; I'd probably been with the agency for a year and a half or so. The building was like an elementary school, it had the same kind of layout. I walked in the front door with this fellow, and this was one of those potentially violent situations. I had called ahead to the compound and talked to the chief. He had agreed not to do anything until I got there. Also the police and law enforcement had agreed to stay outside until I got there. The very fact that we were coming gave law enforcement an out for not going in. It gave the people inside an out for not escalating this thing. The fact that this person is coming who doesn't have an interest and who doesn't have a gun gave everybody an out to back off. Otherwise their tendencies move toward violence. I get there, the guy walks me in, there's nobody else around except him, walking me in.

Question:
Which side is he on?

Answer:
He's inside the compound with the guy with the guns. I don't see anybody inside the building. He takes me down the hallway. It's very dark, and I'm beginning to think, "Alright, what's he going to do?" I could sense people on both sides of the hallway, I could sense there were people there. It was dark and I was following this guy. I turned to the left, down the hall, and went to a room where the chief and another person were. I started doing the interview and asking questions about what their issues were. What occurred to cause them to take these extreme measures? What was it going to take to resolve the situation? I'm taking notes, I'm getting everything down. They're telling me, "We should've talked to you a week ago. This wouldn't have happened. We're so glad you're here." Retrospectively, I realized that every now and then one of the two people would leave. But somebody else would come in. So I would start a whole new discussion with them. What do you think is causing this? What got us to this point? How do we now move ahead without the violence?" I was taking lots of notes because they would leave and somebody else would come in. This happened for probably an hour, back and forth. Within two hours, I'm still interviewing people as they jockey in and out of the room. They're just so pleased I'm there and they think it's going to make all of the difference in the world. "We're just so glad you could come." So all of a sudden, after a couple of hours, I realized nobody had come back. One person had left, I'm talking to one, and then this person leaves. I sat there for about five minutes and nobody came back.

Question:
You're by yourself now?

Answer:
I'm in the room by myself. Not feeling particularly comfortable. I get up, look out and don't see anybody. I'm thinking this is really weird. I decide to venture out, back toward that hallway. The hallway's lit and nobody's around. I go through what would be the administration part of the school, back into where there's a little cafeteria and gymnasium. Still nobody was there. I'm the only person in that building. Now what? It's Saturday. I try to call our regional director in Dallas, but I can't get anybody on the phone. I'm thinking, "So what am I supposed to do? They're gone." I picked up my briefcase, marched out to the gate and told the law enforcement people, "Everybody's out." I kept walking down to my car and everybody along the street was clapping. I got into my car and went back to Dallas. I was their cover. They had everything packed up in that hallway, ready to go when I got there. When I got there, they knew that law enforcement people weren't going to come in while I was in there. They were jockeying back and forth different ones, getting stuff ready and getting out. The last two left in the last van and they were taking people out in the backs of vans. They had been letting individual vans leave, but didn't realize they had taken everybody out while I was in there. So we had accomplished what I went there to accomplish. They had a good plan. It worked. It was one of the funniest things.

Question:
Did you do anything further with their grievances or anything?

Answer:
No. They left and the other people came in, the ones who felt like they were the legitimate elected officials. Mostly it just gave them a face-saving way to get out of there. They were hotheads and got in there and didn't have a way out. We gave them a way out without knowing it. The interesting thing was, it was probably another three or four years before I had an occasion with some of the same players again. In that tribe, they all knew each other and nobody ever mentioned it. It was never brought up, but they started working with me after that on some other issues. It was a great story.

Question:
You said you didn't know what was going on at the time. Would you do anything different now?

Answer:
I probably would have screwed it up if I had been aware of what was going on. It was their deal and they had decided if I came it would give them cover. I did figure out a way of responding to their needs, but they already had it figured out. It worked faster than anything we could've done. No, I don't think I would've done anything differently.

Question:
Earlier, we started talking about building trust, being white, and being a woman. How did you feel about being a white woman and did that help you or hurt you in your interactions with other people?

Answer:
I think it's probably personality. Growing up in the mountains in West Virginia, I was pretty strong and independent. I don't think in the terms of being a woman or being white. I'm pretty self-confident, so I don't project that. I think that helps. People who didn't know me and didn't know what I was involved in, would ask, "Aren't you frightened?" My response is, "If I were overtly frightened by the job itself, I wouldn't be in the job." I tried not to be stupid. I tried to take precautions. A couple of time I've felt I was in danger. I would make sure I called back to the office and make sure that whoever I was around knew that people at the Justice Department knew where I was and who I was with. I tried to make sure I didn't stay in communities where I knew there was a threat to me. I would drive to another community to spend the night. I tried not to be stupid, but I wasn't frightened by the job and I wasn't frightened by being with people. I never felt uncomfortable about going into any community, but again, I tried to make sure that it was obvious, by the way I looked and by the way I dressed, that I was from the Justice Department. That was intentional. If I got to know people, I may not be so stark or so professional, but my first contact with people was always very professional. If they saw me coming into the community, they'd know that, "she's the one from the Justice Department." In terms of being a woman and doing the job, I think there were some hesitations about it because I was the first woman in the southwest region. I remember the regional director saying, "I used to wonder how you'd be able to handle some of the sheriffs up in Oklahoma, but then I saw this picture." One of the communities sent a picture to him with three or four sheriffs sitting around a table and me standing up telling them something. He said, "It looked like you were doing okay." What I discovered was that it was a disarming effect. When I came in, they weren't expecting a woman. I wasn't defensive about being a woman.

Answer:
People were especially open to talking with me almost to the point of confiding in me. I was somebody they could talk to. I think with a man, that wouldn't have been the tone of the conversation. It would've been more ego and positioning. They would confide in me things they wouldn't often tell any of the men. So I got more done because I was a woman. In the minority community, I never sensed that there was resistance because I was white. There might have been, but it wasn't overt. I didn't give it credibility. If somebody overtly challenged me, I just said I was there to help them and if I could not be helpful, then I would leave. My intent was to be helpful. In most instances, people don't really care once they trust the fact that you really do want to be helpful. Whether you're a woman or white or black, or green. If you're there to help and you've got some resources that will be helpful to them, they're willing to use that resource. I think the biggest thing for me, and it's been my personality all along, is that I'm not defensive about who I am. People perceive that and know that I'm comfortable with who I am. And I know my limits. I know that I don't know what it feels like to be black. I don't try to pretend like I know that, but I try to understand it, and I learned a lot. I remember thinking about some black men who talked about situations they'd been in. I thought about my brothers being in those situations and how they would've responded differently. Theirs would've been a different story. So I tried to learn how to at least empathize. I never pretended like I knew what it was like. I think people honored that. There was always a mistrust from everybody's perspective at the outset. "You're from the federal government, so you're here to tell us what we have to do. You're white, so there's no way you're going to be able to help us." So it didn't matter which group you went to, there was going to be a bias against you for one reason or another. That's part of the deal, that's part of establishing trust. You've got to be able to go beyond that and say, "Here's what I have to offer."

Question:
What did you do when parties were resistant to what you had to offer?

Answer:
I think most parties, at the outset, are resistant because they don't understand what you have to offer. Like I said earlier, the approach was to try and figure out what their self interest was and appeal to that. I never, especially with the establishment, went under the illusion that I could appeal to their higher good. That may come, that might be what brings them along further, but it's not going to be what gets them to engage. The thing that's going to get them to engage is what it's going to cost them if they don't do this. What's it going to cost? Is it worth trying? At that entry level, I generally was very pragmatic, not idealistic. We talk about personal successes when I see those people understanding, and clearly knowing what they've done, and they feel horrible about it. That's very abstract, but that doesn't happen if you start there. My experience shows you have to start with pragmatism. People respond to that.

Question:
Did you ever keep on working on a case when a key party was not willing to work with you?

Answer:
No. I may continue in a different direction. One whole group may decide they may not want to participate, and you can't really address the problem systemically without them. But you can still coach or guide the other group through either helping them move toward a referral, or helping them develop a strategy to respond. For integrity's sake, I would tell the other group, "I understand that you don't want to participate, but I am going to continue doing this." I wouldn't do it behind their backs.

Question:
Does that bring people around sometimes?

Answer:
Sometimes. Sometimes they'd see what the wanted outcome was, that it wasn't an attempt to undermine the whole structure of the institution or destroy the city. Everybody had these huge fears about what was going to happen. When they realize that something good can come out of it, or at least nothing bad is going to happen and they're not going to end up on the front page of the newspaper, they'll sometimes change their mind.

Question:
Did you ever tell the administration or the authorities that you're going to be working with the minority group and then they thought that would make the minority group even more powerful, so maybe they'd better get you working with them too?

Answer:
Yeah, could be. They definitely don't want to be left out of the loop, nor do they want to be perceived as not being cooperative. And that's a plus. Again, they say they want to cooperate, they say they want things to be better. I'll take their word. Then the minority groups says, "They've been saying that for years, but they don't really mean it. I know they don't really mean it." "Well, I'm going to trust that they mean it. Let's see what happens. One of the biggest factors is, what could it hurt to try? It won't cost you anything, the government's paying me. You've tried and tried and tried. So the cost factor, what's it going to cost you if you do this. Give me a couple of months, you could still do anything you want after that. But is it worth one more try?" Again, most people say, "Yes, it's worth one more." On the other side, "Could it be better? Not that you're bad, not that you're the worst people in the whole world, not that you've done everything wrong, but could you at least see that the relationships between these two groups of people could be better?" "Sure they could be better." Okay, then let's see what we could do." So you're taking people at the pragmatic level. They have low expectations, but let's see if we can make things better. Again, I'm dancing them into a more intricate kind of process that has long term benefit.

Question:
Do you have any standard approaches of who you talk to first?

Answer:
Obviously if somebody initiated the contact, that would be easy. If it was a news report or some other way that I found out about it, I would try to contact the aggrieved group first to try to get some read on what the level of violence and tension is. Also, how quickly do we need to respond?

Question:
So you're doing this on the phone?

Answer:
Yes. Letting them know I'm on my way, if it's really a violent situation. If I get a sense that things are already started or getting ready to start, I would make a clear commitment to them that I am on my way, I will be there.

Question:
How do you find somebody to call?

Answer:
I don't know, it's kind of like being a detective I guess. You check the paper and you call groups that you're aware of. Sometimes you call the newspaper and find out if they have any names. A lot of times, in the minority community, the church leadership will know somebody that's involved. So you just have to ask around the first six months or a year and after that, I've created this file of people in every community. So I may even call one community and say, "Do you know anyone in this community?" Usually they do. But you begin to have a network. Once you've established those trust relationships and those networks within a territory you can do something with a phone call because you've already established the trust, you've already coached them through some conflicts before. You really do multiply your efforts when you create those networks and alliances with trusting people. I began to have people from the establishment call me, and that was a real benchmark. The establishment people were saying, "I think we've really done some things here which might be a problem. We're not sure where to go with it, could you help us out?" You just create a network like you would with anything else.

Question:
Did you ever just handle cases over the phone entirely without actually meeting?

Answer:
Yes, after a time. I'm not sure if I would've counted them as a case, but there have been situations where I could've been a consultant to an official or a minority community leader and then they say, "I think we're okay. Things worked out." I would've considered that just referral or consulting, not a case.

Question:
Did you always know all of the parties before you went down?

Answer:
Yes, if at all possible. You might not be able to get in touch with everybody, but the goal would be to get in touch with all of them before you got there. Whoever I talked to first, I would tell them that I'm going to be talking to the other party today. "Before I leave, I'll be talking to these people. Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?" That did two things. First, it broadened the network for talking to people, it began to identify some of those leaders. Second, it began to establish the trust that I was in fact going to talk to the mayor, the police chief, LULAC, or this person who's in charge of the demonstration. Everybody knew I wasn't trying to hide anything. Usually the next person is the chief of police who will say, "Why did you talk to them before you came to talk to me?" I would tell him I made the appointment with them first and I didn't try to go into that anymore. I knew there was always that feeling of, "Who did you talk to first?" One would always say, "They're just trying to con you." So I just say, "Everyone's trying to con me. It's part of the deal. Everybody tells the story from their perspective." I understand that it's part of the dance. "I understand that's a concern of yours." I'm trying to minimize any impact it has in a negative way. "I think we can be helpful."

Question:
Did you have these meetings mostly with individuals, or did you try to get a group together?

Answer:
It really depended. I remember several situations where I started with a community meeting and many where I started with individual meetings. It really depended on the situation. With the university, I had individual meetings with the administrators and group meetings with students. But a lot of times where there was a major incident, it would start with a community meeting. I would've had to talk to community leaders to get that community meeting together. But usually that was on the phone and I would make contact with them when I got there. They would've put the meeting together.

Question:
Did you do anything else to prepare before you went?

Answer:
It depended on the case. Sometimes it would be a housing issue, and I wasn't that familiar with the housing laws at the time. So I would need to research that. School district policy I would sometimes try to look at. I would often ask an institution for copies of some of their policies and procedures. Then I could find out if what the community perceived about the institution was real or perceived. Was this true that they don't have a grievance procedure, or is it that they have a grievance procedure, but it's not effective? Or, do they have an effective grievance procedure, but they don't implement it? It's hard to know how to help if you don't know what's in place. In a lot of the police departments I worked with, I was able to get them to do a written brochure that outlined how to complement or grieve a police action. That was a big step. So it was written and the police officers were handing them out. If you want to comment or if you have a grievance against a police officer, these are the procedures to do that. Again, we honored the interests of the police department. I made it clear that the community needs to be as aggressive in commending police officers as they were in complaining about them. That was part of my sense of balance. I had to honor both. The community had as much responsibility for one as the other. And the department had as much responsibility to respond back to the community.

Question:
Did the commending ever happen?

Answer:
Yes. A lot of people talked about good encounters, positive things with the police department. Again there was no systemic way of channeling that so that the police and the community realized they really were on the same page and really wanted the same thing. In the community I talked about with the young man that had been abducted, one of the things that came out of that community thing besides the city park, was an annual award banquet for the police department that the community put on. That was a real positive thing. I really felt good about that.

Question:
Did a party ever ask you to do something that you couldn't do?

Answer:
Yes. Their first response was that they wanted us to fix it. My response was, "I can't do that." The other thing is they want the police chief fired, they want this teacher fired. We were not into that. They want a specific remedy for a specific individual. We didn't deal with that. We dealt with community remedies. We might give them some referral information for getting their individual grievance dealt with, but it was important to let them know what our boundaries were. "We can't make you, the institution, or the establishment do anything." "So what can you do? What good are you?" So that's where the dance starts and you begin to talk about this being their problem. "What we have is a process that can help you find a remedy that's yours and which will be long term.

Question:
How much of a plan do you develop before you go in? How much comes later?

Answer:
Has anyone brought up the Annual Appraisal of Racial Tension?

Question:
No.

Answer:
When I first went to CRS, one of the skills which I brought that they were interested in was being able to write and design training materials and do research. One of the first things they assigned to me was to research with all the other conciliators what they did for entry. How did they know what to do when they went into a community? They were the first generation, then I came along, and now we've got some newer people. The first conciliators had pretty much learned it by doing it. Anybody that came in next had to be an apprentice with them. I was the first one who was going to try to codify and write that down. Every time, I would ask one of these veteran conciliators, "How did you know what to do?" "I just knew." "Well, how did you know?" "I don't know, I just knew." What came out of the interviews was that they had intuitively, over time, developed this whole perception that people who believe that the system will respond to their grievances, don't usually respond with violence. If there isn't a grievance procedure, or they don't have confidence in the grievance procedure and they feel that they've been mistreated, the more likely there's going to be violence. So when someone goes in on a school discrimination case, or a case involving violence in the school, they go in and ask questions like, "How many minority students do you have in special ed? How many minority students do you have on the cheerleading squad? How many minorities do you have in the Talented and Gifted program? What is your procedure for responding to grievances?" They look at the systems available to provide redress. If those systems aren't there, that will fuel the plan. If they are there and the community doesn't know about them, different plan. That was true in every institution, city government, contracting, or housing case. There are systems that should be in place to respond to people's grievances. Gill Pompa's theory really proved itself, that the higher the level of disparity and the lower the level of confidence in redress, the higher the potential for violence. High disparity, low confidence, that's the highest configuration for violence.

Question:
When you say high disparity, what