Kit Chalberg Part 1 of 2

Kit Chalberg worked for about 10 years as a Conciliation Specialist in the Rocky Mountain (Denver) Region, and then became Program Director for Program Development Training and Evaluation at CRS Headquarters in Washington D.C.

There are 2 parts of this interview: Part 1, and Part 2. This is Part 1.

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https://youtu.be/2a2yZ6AUca0

Grande Lum (00:05): Okay. So this is Grande Lum, and I am interviewing, Christopher Kit Chalberg for the Civil Rights Mediation Oral History project and Kit. I'll just start by asking a few questions and we can go from there. Sound good?

Kit Chalberg (00:20): Sounds great. Yeah.

Grande Lum (00:21): So what was your background kit, before you came to CRS?

Kit Chalberg (00:29): So, my sort of first professional job right out of college was in, actually in mental health. So my wife and I worked at a residential treatment facility for kids, in Billings, Montana. And so I, kind of got my start in the conflict resolution world, not in a more, not in a traditional way, but in a more practitioner kind of way. Really working in really more in kind of crisis situations and, you know, using deescalation techniques and different ways of working with folks who were, you know, experiencing, you know, sometimes, you know, really...strong mental health crises or behavioral issues. And it was really there where kind of the seeds of mediation were planted for me was, was in that work, was, there was a lot of conflict intention in a lot of these units and using what I would call now mediation, but just sort of like, how do we get people together to have a conversation really kind of took root for me.

Kit Chalberg (01:27): And so, I, at that same time was... Applying to law schools and was really looking at ADR focused law schools. So, at the time it was places like Pepperdine and University of Missouri and some of those... programs that I was really interested in. And I ended up getting into some that I was excited about, but I decided my 21/22-year-old self wasn't ready for law school. So I took a year, actually about two years off to work in this mental health field that I, that I was explaining to you. And then at some point I was like, I... need to do something else. I had to go back to grad school. And then, then that's where, I went to the University of Denver to get my master's degree in conflict resolution. And I, and I really focused in on this intersection, that would become the perfect intersection for CRSI was focusing in on, you know, where where does the ADR, the civil rights and the community work, where do they intersect? And was fortunate enough to stumble upon an unpaid internship at the time, and found my way into CRS from there.

Grande Lum (02:31): So you had an unpaid internship with CRS while you were getting your master's?

Kit Chalberg (02:36): I did. Yeah. So I started as an unpaid intern, at the Region Aid office in Denver. And I served as an unpaid intern for about six months, a give or take. And at the time, the regional director there, and some of the senior staff, um, saw something in me. And at the time, there was a person who, Silka Hanssen, one of the very veteran experienced, conciliators had been in this office forever, and she retired, I think it was that November or December of 2006. And at the same time, Philip Arreola, who was the regional director at that time, wrote a very glowing and positive recommendation that I still have to this day <laugh> to have me transition into what was called at that time, the Federal Career Intern Program, which is now called the Presidential Management Fellowship. And it's essentially a track for folks who are, you know, coming out of graduate law and law school programs to get their foot in the door in the federal government. And,but yeah, so that, that was my hiring track was, was through now what's called the, the PMF Program.

Grande Lum (03:44): That's a great story about how you replace or you follow Silka Hanssen, into CRS.

Kit Chalberg (03:52): Yeah.

Kit Chalberg (03:52): Yeah. And, um, it, it really was 'cause I had got to work with Silka a little bit as an unpaid intern. I got to do some of the, you know, more Denver based types of cases she was working on and some of the outreach that she was doing, and really got to see her do her thing and do her work as well as, who had become my, one of my mentors later on Grace Sage. Also got to work with Grace for almost 10 years, almost, almost every single day, and learned an incredible amount from her as well.

Grande Lum (04:23): Great... Kit, I wanna go back and talk, here a little bit about what was helpful about the master's program at University of Denver. What were the classes and the professors that had an impact on you?

Kit Chalberg (04:42): Yeah, great question. So the, the classes that I think had the most impact on me were, was one conflict assessment. You know, it was, I think the foundation of this work in the, in the ADR field, whether it's in multi-party work, or whether it's in one-on-one mediation work, having a really strong assessment is critical. It's... the driver to the intervention. It helps the mediator really figure out, right? Like, what are the issues? What are the interests? What are people saying in the words that they're saying? What are the things they're not saying in the words that they're using? And, and use. And so that conflict assessment piece to me is still something to this day, was incredibly valuable. So that, that was one. The other was kind of your standard ADR certificate, mediation training types of courses where you went and actually practice.

Kit Chalberg (05:32): You know, you would, you'd have, set up scenarios and case studies and people, and you would come in and act as the mediator, and then you'd, you'd get coached by your professor or an experienced person to give you real, right on time feedback that was really, really valuable. So the... program, I think, did a really good job with marrying sort of the theory with the practice. In ... a way that, that I think was probably pretty unique for the time. Maybe now it's done a little bit more, but at the time it felt really unique to me. I didn't ever feel like in that program that I was just reading books and writing papers. I felt like I was reading books and writing papers, but I was also doing close to the type of work that was happening out in the field.

Kit Chalberg (06:16): And so those were two definitely that jumped out at me. And then some other ones that I took that were, I think a little, at least customized to, to the things I was interested in was some environmental conflict resolution courses. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> That had this really interesting intersection of CRS type work. It was, you know, American Indian tribe. It was community members and it was a coal mine and a power company, right. As... this sort of... the parties in a case. And using those, using those sort of fact patterns and then using those key players in learning about the conflict, how it unfolded, and then proposing interventions, you know, really trying to dig in if, if I were working this case, if I were ever to be so lucky to work a case like this, what would I do?

Kit Chalberg (07:03): What would I propose? What do I understand about the, the assessment, um, and, and the path forward. And so that was another one. And then in terms of professors, her name is Tamara Pearson de Astray. She had been out in George Mason. She comes from Harvard. She was my thesis advisor. She just was somebody who had been in the field for a really long time, sort of looked at it from a social psychology lens, so understood very deeply the theory and practice of contact and the importance of contact and how, you know, getting groups together for, you know, an overarching goal or project or whatever that they can then use, in, in a way to develop relationships that then can turn into problem solving and problem solving turns into solutions and impact. And so, and there were, there were other great professors there as well, but Tamara really jumps out to me as somebody who was, you know, impactful for my time there.

Grande Lum (07:54): Got it. Thank you. I think that's helpful in understanding what you learned at a dispute resolution program that then serves you well as a CRS conciliator in terms of assessment of a conflict, in terms of what to do, when you are actually with people, actual situations, learning from environmental, dispute resolution about the types of situations that have multiple parties and often right. Could be different groups like American Indian Tribes and a and a, whatever it might be, a public utility or whatever, the situation might be. And thinking about, from a social psychology perspective, from, there as, as well, what did you have to learn the job that the master's program may not have provided as much for?

Kit Chalberg (08:45): Yeah. What I... It was figuring out a lot of things that I, that I did not know. So being, you know, a 25-year-old person who started at CRS, you know, I felt like I had a good grounding in some of the theory and practice, but I hadn't gone out and done it in the types of situations of course, that CRS finds itself in, which are high tension. Right. You, you've got, you know, history and legacies of conflict, let's say, between communities of color in a police department. And, and, and how you really navigate that, I think ... how you become good at navigating that is you go and do it... You get the, you, you're not gonna read what CRS does Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, in, in a book that's gonna give you sort of the fine points and sort of the nuance behind the work.

Kit Chalberg (09:32): And so, some areas, I think for me, where I was particularly challenged is, one, I was young when I came into this, there's no way around it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I looked younger than I do now. I had way better hairline. Two, I was a, you know, I was a white male. I was a white guy working in this field where, you know, where I would have to go and work with communities of color who, you know, see a person who presents like me, who also comes from the government. There's, you know, there's some hesitancy, there's some concern about is, is this person really here to do the job that they say that they're doing? So there's a lot of identity management I think that goes into that. There's a lot of, um, of really trying to center relationships in what it is you're doing so that people do trust you, that you do.

Kit Chalberg (10:21): Mm-Hmm.<affirmative> have an opportunity to develop rapport with them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then I think another piece of it really was once I, once I figured out the work, right? Some of the, the facilitation work and the dialogue design and some of the programmatic things and the training things that we were doing is just being able to speak confidently and, and clearly and then customized enough to the situation to where the people that you're speaking to buys into Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> what it is you're selling them. 'Cause you are selling it, you're selling yourself and you're selling the agency. That then they are willing to say, okay, that sound, let's do that. Let's, let's go down that road. Let's, let's pursue it in the way that you're recommending. And so those are all really on the job types of things. And there's probably hundreds more if, if we were to, if I were to think about it more. But those are definitely some of the ones, it was the identity management piece for sure. Yeah. You know, it was, it was really trying to center relationships and being really intentional on that. And then it was just being more familiar and confident with the work and in myself that I could deliver on the things that, that the agency is, is responsible for delivering.

Grande Lum (11:32): Great. And I think what I'd like to do, maybe a little bit later in this interview is talk through some of that because you headed training, and you thought a lot about that. And I think that might be different from some of the other folks that, that we've interviewed in this project. But let's come, I do wanna come back to that and let's mark that because I think that's, that's an, an important issue for CRS always. And especially at a time like now when they are hiring a lot of new folks and a lot of folks have left, you know, CRS. So, next question. I'd love to a ask just to get a better sense of, you know, what your involvement has been. You've been... you were at CRS for 17 years. What positions? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what positions did you hold within CRS?

Kit Chalberg (12:15): Yeah, so I started, as a conciliation specialist here at the Denver region, at the region aid office. Was in that position for about 10 years. I mainly worked in Colorado and Montana, although, you know, as a small agency, you end up kind of working in all the states in your region, and then a whole bunch of other places as well. But I really focused in on Colorado, and Montana. 'cause those were the states that were assigned to me when I came. And so I just kind of continued to work those states for the most part. And then, I was for a short time while you were director, I was on a detail, working on more training and programmatic pieces for headquarters. And then was eventually hired full-time into that position. The... title changed a couple of times while I was there. I think, I think when I left it was, I was the, the program director for program development training and evaluation. And so we had different buckets of work under the umbrella of program development at the time.

Grande Lum (13:14): Okay. You, you talked about you started at CRS relatively young, here as compared to some other people who joined sort of a second career type situations. And you, you know, we, you, you answered the question on what did you have to learn at CRS that you didn't necessarily get in dispute resolution a master's program here. And you mentioned you worked with Grace Sage for, for about 10 years. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I'd be curious to how others with CRS were helpful as mentors, coaches to you, in your development as a conciliator.

Kit Chalberg (13:49): I mean, so many people, honestly. So, so many people, grace, I would say even to this day, I have, grace and I have a very strong relationship. She's somebody who I just care deeply about. Somebody that I, that I greatly respect. Maybe one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. American Indian woman who, finished a PhD at the University of Montana and raised kids and is an incredible grandmother and just done so many really cool things in her career, in her life. And I, so Grace was at definitely at the top of that list, but there were, there were so many others. Um, Philip Arreola, who was the regional director here at the time, I, between he and Grace, I tried to steal as many of the things I admired about them and that I could reuse as a conciliator.

Kit Chalberg (14:35): I stole as many things as I could from them. The other people I stole things from was Tim Johnson. Tim Johnson was, a senior conciliator in, in Philadelphia at the time. Had been with the agency for a really long time, and just a really, probably, if not the best, definitely one of the top five trainers I've ever seen. He would, he just had this really mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, amazing way of working with groups in a training setting. And I'll never forget, he was coaching me one time and he said, you know, as a trainer, you, you don't have to answer any questions that they ask. It's your job to put it back on the adults, on the adult learners in the room and see if you can tease the answer out of them, because I bet you more than one of them have the answer here in the room.

Kit Chalberg (15:21): And I still use that to this day, and it really hasn't failed me. So I continue to use that as a technique. Another person, Ben Liu, who was also a conciliator, in Philadelphia, was, was a great coach and a mentor for me. And then there was others that were...more of like my contemporaries. You know, James and I have always James Williams III, in LA have always had a, had a strong connection and just liked to talk the work. We would just, we just would talk the work and, and, you know, challenges that we had, things that we thought really went really well, things that we thought we, you know, bombed and, and what we could have done differently. Mm-Hmm. Rita Valenciano is another person, another person that that, that I greatly admire and consider a mentor.

Kit Chalberg (16:04): Carol Russo, Silka Jennings. You, I mean, there's so many, like, I would've never made it as far as I did or had the, you know... the pieces of success that I had if it weren't for the people that were willing to sort of like, walk with me in that CRS journey, because it can be a very heavy set of issues that you're working on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And because the agency is small, there isn't a lot of sort of like, team aspect to the work. So you kind of feel like a one person show a lot of the time. And so, having those people sort of walk with me on that journey was incredibly important for my success. But there were also external people. There was a professor at the University of Northern Colorado named Priscilla Falcon, who I will never forget who I developed a strong relationship very early on, because she was leading a lot of the immigrants rights work and Latino community work up in Greeley.

Kit Chalberg (17:05): Learned an incredible amount from her. Another person named Tony Barrio, who was at Johnson and Wales University. We were doing a campus spirit. So we were doing a spirit ... at a college campus. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And when I brought the model to him, he's like, what do you think if we changed a couple of these things? What if, what if, what if we added some different guiding questions? What if we broke these groups up a little bit differently? And in my mind I'm like, well, I gotta follow the script. 'cause that's, that's the rule. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But, you know, wink, wink, what we did was we customized it to work for that community, and it worked out way better than if I would've just tried to, you know, jam something down their throat. And so, others like Diego Sanchez from PFLAG and folks at, at GLSEN and, NCTE, I had so many opportunities to work with those folks, not only as a conciliator, but when I was in, you know, more of a programmatic kind of leadership role at headquarters to interact with those national organizations that I learned a ton from those folks.

Kit Chalberg (18:09): Like, you know, when we were developing the transgender program, when you were still the director, and then we revised it, you know, four or five years later. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, every time we got that group of police officers and trans folks together to talk through that program, they taught me something. Yeah. Easily, every single time. So, so many people have been an important part of, of my CRS journey.

Grande Lum (18:28): Great. No, thanks. Thanks for that. Now I'd actually like for you to talk through one of your cases with us. You know, one of the more interesting or challenging cases. And if you can give us sense of what happened, what you did, what resulted from your involvement. So, is there a case that you think might be worth some time delving into a bit here?

Kit Chalberg (18:51): Yeah. So the, the one that jumped, there's two that jumped out to me, the one, but the one... That I'll talk about was a case, in Greeley, Colorado at the University of Northern Colorado. Very public case at the time where the university, president and provost and dean of the, I think it was the social science department or something like that, had decided because of low enrollment in the Mexican-American Studies program, which they called MAS, M-A-S, they were going to essentially put the program on probation with the idea of really shutting down the program. And if you take a step back and you know, the history of Greeley, you know that there is a, a very strong, many, many generations of strong Latino leadership up there. Chicano leadership. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And because of my work in, in previous kind of cases up in Greeley, I knew a lot of the people, and I knew a lot of the players.

Kit Chalberg (19:56): And so when this happened, one, it made the news, students started walking out, protesting on campus. There were, you know, some, some other kids that decided to drive by with confederate flags and throw stuff at the, you know, the, you know, Latino/latina kids that were, that were protesting the program being put on probation with the idea of it being shut down. The university hosted many town halls, which I always advised against, don't ever do a town hall. Not in the way they were doing it. So they did a bunch of town halls that just descended into a total disaster. 500 students showed up and people were yelling at one another. And, you know, the university police had to come and escort people out, so on and so forth. And so I paint that picture because the tension was very high. The tension was very, very high.

Kit Chalberg (20:43): You know, national Latino organizations were getting involved, threats of lawsuits and the whole kind of thing. And... the key to this case was previously established relationships was what got me in the door. You know, when you work at CRS lot of times you're making cold, cold calls, right? People that don't know you, they don't know the agency, and you're having to explain it in a way that they can understand it. You have to give examples that are relevant to them, which is a very different way to enter a situation than if you know everybody or, you know, most of the critical players who then essentially will vouch for you and the agency that like, look, this person knows what they're doing, trust me, kind of thing. And so I had that in, in, in this particular case, because of other relationships and works that I had done up in Greeley for, you know, probably the better part of the 10 years that I was, um, working as a conciliator.

Kit Chalberg (21:36): And so I came into this situation knowing that, I needed to have individual meetings with everybody. So I met with the president's office. I wanted to get a sense of why this decision was made and what opportunities there were for, uh, for negotiation. You know, to bring it back maybe, you know, like, what could, what could we do? Also met with the provost, which does more of the academic side ... of the university and the dean. And then I met with the faculty from the Mexican American Studies program who were, you know, they were the ones teaching the class. And then I also met with students at the Cesar Chavez Center. And then I met with community advocates as well. And so, you know, you take a step back and you start looking at all of these stakeholders that have an interest in this situation, and what can I do to bring them to the table and sort of facilitate a process ... to move this conversation forward.

Kit Chalberg (22:33): Probably met with 20 or so people, something like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and really from there proposed a plan and, and offered to them to do formal mediation. And, and the reason that we decided to do formal mediation in this case was, we kind of, kind of two things. One, the community and the faculty wanted something in writing. They, they wanted a commitment in writing from the president, from the provost and from other, executive leaders at the, at the university to have that whatever their agreements were, whatever the path forward's gonna be, that it's there, that it's memorialized, everybody gets to sign on the dotted line and there's some accountability. So that was one part of the other part of it is they wanted it to be closed door. They did not want media involved. They didn't want groups coming and going.

Kit Chalberg (23:20): They, you know, they, and they knew that mediation, everybody would agree that if we're gonna go into mediation, it's gonna be closed door. And so, after we went through all of the steps around pre-mediation, you know, ground rules and, and recording and all the good stuff that you would normally do in pre-mediation, people agreed to it. And then I convened, in, in these, in these rounds of meetings, I think think that lasted probably the better part of six to eight months. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, The president and her chief of staff, the provost faculty members, one or two community people as well. I think we had, I think there was probably 10 people ultimately at the table. And what we did is ... we went through sort of methodically, How the, the program, how the MAS program got to where it is, why enrollment is bad.

Kit Chalberg (24:14): Everyone agreed enrollment was bad. That was not, you know, a, a numbers game. It was, it was apparent. And from there, got commitments from the university to really lift up and elevate the value of the Mexican American Studies program as an, as a, as a critical component, not only to the college that it was in, but as a service to the community at large. And to the legacy... of the university. And so there was a lot, there was a lot there to go off of. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And through this process of, like I said, many, many mediations sessions, we eventually came out with, it was probably a 20 page MOU or something like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, where we laid out, a two year plan broken out by, by. So every three months for two years. What were the actions that the group was, was going to take together around, some part communications, right?

Kit Chalberg (25:12): How do we bolster the messaging so that people know about... the MAS program? How do we do more intentional outreach to get students know that it exists? You know, how do we make sure that these materials, if they need to be, are translated? They didn't have them actually even translated at the time, which is really interesting. 'cause these are a lot of first generation folks who English is a second language, so getting them translated. And then the other part was, was bolstering. So there was a comms piece to this, but there was also this other part around, how do you bolster just the academic strength of the program? So how can we build it into other certificate programs in the business school or in the nursing school or in the music school, which are all really popular, programs at UNC and really strong programs.

Kit Chalberg (26:00): And then how do we recruit and retain really, you know, really well-regarded faculty and bring them into this program in some way to raise the ... the visibility around research and just strengthening the academic side of the program. And so there might be other areas we focused on, but those were the two big buckets was this comms communication piece and, and the strengthening of, um, the academic side. And at the end of it, the result, which is what I think ultimately matters the most, is after these sessions of meetings, they reinstated the MAS program. And even as, as, as, as, like, early as last summer, as late as last summer, I don't know how you say it. I received a, a call and talked to Priscilla Falcon, who was, you know, like I said, the professor who really led this and who was the director of that program, and their enrollment has, has steadily increased.

Kit Chalberg (26:58): They're getting scholars that they want high profile folks. And so, for the community, and I think for the, for the campus community, it was, we didn't have a program. Some people went through this process, and now we have a program. They don't care about the details, but now they're like, now I have a program. And that was one of the highlights of my career was, was definitely that. And it was successful, like I said, because those relationships were pre-established. They knew me. We had gone through, Grayson and I, had worked up there for years and gone through many, many meetings. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, where UNC was sometimes a key stakeholder and sometimes like a secondary stakeholder because of community work and so forth. But because we had those relationships and had already done that work previously, the door, you know, there wasn't any sort of like trying to push the door open, the door swung wide open, and they were like pushing me through the door. So, it very different than, many, many, many other cases that I worked at CRS, where the, the door was barely cracked. And if you could try to sneak in somehow, you, you, you might, you might be lucky.

Grande Lum (28:01): Yeah. As I'm listening to it, that sounds critical, that you had had a 10 year sort of track record, that they knew your work, that they were very comfortable for you. And that makes it easy for all the parties to accept, ... and as you compare it to, to other situations. So that's, and it's great. It's good to hear about, you know, what, that the program today is still going. It has grown. I'd love to ask a few questions about the process. So was it hard to figure out what parties should be at the table? What parties should not be at the table? And for those who are not at the table, how it would be reported, the progress as you went along?

Kit Chalberg (28:41): Yeah. The only group that I would say had sort of like a secondary role was, or members of the community. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, like not the UNC community, like the Greeley community who, you know, who are very interested in obviously the program succeeding, had very strong relationships with the faculty and so forth. And so ... when I met with them originally, they were pretty strong on we want to seat at the table. But what became clear to me as I was doing the assessment was where we were gonna have to, the conversations that we were gonna have to have at the table, were gonna fly over the heads of just sort of regular community people pretty quickly, you know, it was university policy and procedure. We're talking about, you know, the board of education having to approve things, very bureaucratic, sort of technical in insider stuff.

Kit Chalberg (29:39): Yeah. And so what I decided to do is I went to those community leaders ... and I said that to them. I said, you know, this, this really feels very technical, and it really feels like, you know, you, you, you have to be in it to really Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> know what folks are talking about and to really add value. And they didn't like that. They didn't like that coming from me. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So what I decided to do sort of as a, a little bit of a ... last ditch effort, sorry. I went to Priscilla and I said, here's what I think we should do, and, and here's why. And luckily she agreed with me. And so she went to them and essentially asked them if there is anything else that they would be willing to do to support this, but not be at the table officially.

Kit Chalberg (30:23): And so what we ended up doing was calling them observers. And so they were observers in the room. And when, at the end of each meeting, what I would say to folks is, is there anything from today's meeting that we want to communicate out from here? Right? Who, who else needs to know this information? And as... you know, the parties at the table agreed on, we want this to go out. This isn't ready. We gotta wait on this. But the things they did, they did want to go out. Having those community observers there in the room added a ton of value because they go back to their constituents and say, we were there, they're making progress, Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the university is there in good faith. Give them, you know, give them their space, give them their time. And we think if we stick this out, that we're eventually gonna get some of the things that we want.

Kit Chalberg (31:11): And so it wasn't intentional, it wasn't done by design. It sort of happened that way. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And, I just got lucky that the folks that were in the room really listened to Priscilla. Like, everyone listens to Priscilla. So like, when, when she's like, you know, when she walks in the room and she asks things of folks, they generally happen. And so because of my relationship, I was able to go to her and be like, here's what I think we should do. The other parties agreed. And then ultimately we, we called them observers.

Grande Lum (31:41): Couple things I pulled there. I mean, someone like Priscilla, it's clear to me at CRS work, this both when I was director, and, you know, when I wrote about, a lot in the... in the CRS book, America's Peacemakers, there are going to be critical stakeholders in the community. May not, they may not be the official mayors or official leaders, but they, they are a trusted person, key person to allow a mediation to succeed. Because they have credibility, they have authority, they have respect here. And it sounds like she played that role. I, and I do like the second point of how, especially in a closed mediation, it's important to consider what the outside world hears about it, especially if it's one that has been a public dispute where a lot of people know about it. And there's a, like in this case, the Greeley residents who they care about the outcome. They've been hearing about it, that they were able to play this observer role, and that they played a role in what does need to be communicated out. That just strikes me as useful in these type of disputes and conflicts.

Kit Chalberg (32:49): I, yeah... I 100% agree with you. I had a, in a different situation, in a different case, had a very similar, sort of, sort of process for the communication piece. Because what was happening is, is that in, in, in this case, at UNC, everybody knew that we were meeting, everybody knew that I was there. The Greeley Tribune was trying to get into meetings, which is their local paper, you know, that kind of thing. Everybody knew it. But, what we didn't want to do was we wanted to have it closed doors, of course, because we have to, that that's the nature of this work to be successful, or at least a part of it. But we also knew that we wanted to make sure that the information that was being shared out was, one, it was agreed upon by everybody.

Kit Chalberg (33:36): And two, we were, we meaning like, I was there, they were controlling their narrative. So there was no, there was no spin going on. They were controlling their narrative. And at a couple of different points, we actually created, with the help of UNCs, public information officer created a couple of different press releases that went out Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that were very, very basic. Like, we've been meeting for three months, we're making progress, and all the groups are very eager to, you know, blah, blah, blah. You know, some, something very generic, but also signaled to the community and to others that things are happening. And, you know, we'll, we'll get back to you essentially <laugh> when we have something concrete to share.

Grande Lum (34:19): Yeah. Important, I think often involving the public affairs communications arm of the institution that's involved in the mediation, I think you laid out very well what the issues were around communications, around, around the program... and, and some of the outcomes of it. Since this is a focus on what the CRS conciliator did. I'd be curious, as you look back on this, what did you do that you think made impact? I'm, you know, I'm especially curious in terms of what type of ground rules you used, confidentiality. How did, were you the only CRS conciliator there? Did you have any support in, in that role? Because that, that can be hard if you're a single mediator and you have more than 10 parties in the room, and this is ongoing on for six to eight months. So I'd love to hear about what were the things you did as the mediator and a little bit more about, a little more, more background, so that folks know, you know, what is it that actually happened here, that allowed for this to be a success?

Kit Chalberg (35:17): Yeah. No, I mean, great question... To go to kind of like the, the meeting design pieces. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I really tried to lay those out early in the pre-mediation agreement, so that when, when folks were, when they were gonna give their time, right? And, and, you know, this is after hours and people are staying late and like, you know, so when people are giving two or three extra hours at the end of their workday, they, you know, like, I want to be really confident that I'm using their time, their time wisely. And so what I tried to do right off the bat was really lay out the process. And so as part of the mediation agreement, the things that we would talk about is, you know, , who's, who's gonna be at the table? Who are the alternatives in case somebody can't make it?

Kit Chalberg (36:00): Right. Who substitutes for the university provost if she can't be there? ... You know, so, so having some backups, I think, or some, some alternatives for folks at the table, I think is important. And then the things that we, that we use in terms of ground rules, were honestly kind of ... your run of the mill ground rules. You know, like I really wanted to make sure that everybody had an opportunity to be heard... I started off with not a lot of crosstalk at the beginning. I wanted folks to just be able to go around and kind of your talking circle style, and having people really express the importance of this issue to them. And so I would craft as a part of that guiding questions that I would have, you know, on my notepad or have in my hip pocket on, you know, really trying to have people share the stories ... of the critical nature of this program from their perspective, so that I could start getting some values alignment around the issue to the university ... of Northern Colorado.

Kit Chalberg (37:05): You know, the, the, the recognition around, English language learners and the legacy of UNC being a safe place for Latino immigrants and folks that don't have strong English skills. And so aligning these, aligning these values through using a kind of talking circle sorts of piece, I think really helps people see, right. It's the good old, we have a lot more in common Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> than we expected. And by virtue of a, of a good conversation and people coming there with the right mindset and the right intention, you can really get a lot from this process. And so I would lay out things like that, like, you know, that we want to start off every meeting, you know, in this Talking Circle style, you know... then I'm gonna ask, you know, Priscilla to kick off first where she would like to start in one meeting, the next meeting I might go to the university.

Kit Chalberg (37:56): So we have some balance. But really those ground rules, you know, the kind of the, you know, using the Talking Circle idea, you know, really, really listening to folks. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. I'm a big...mindset person. I think a lot of this mindsets are really critical. So coming to this thinking about, you know, giving people the benefit of the doubt, you know, the university president is not a terrible person. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and the faculty are not lazy people, right. They're none of those things are, are necessarily true. And so how can you come into this sort of shedding some of those biases or those perceptions and just owning this moment for what it is, and coming in with that mindset's really important. And so I don't talk about it in that kind of squishy way, but it's the idea behind, like showing up... and all thinking about the importance of saving this program is why we're all here and showing up with that mindset's really critical.

Kit Chalberg (38:50): And so that's what I would use for ground rules. The other thing that, that I like to do, and a lot of other conciliators adopted this as time went on, is I would always bring a laptop into the meeting, and I would have a projector unless they have one in the room, and I would have a screen behind me. So I didn't use chart paper. Mm-Hmm. Typically, I would literally have, a document that I would put together, and I, and I would type as I would go along where I would find agreements, where I would find areas that I wanted to explore more. It was right on the screen behind me. Folks could ask questions just a different way to leverage technology. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that isn't, you know, you're sort of, you know, can't read my handwriting anyway when I use chart paper.

Kit Chalberg (39:31): So... That's always really helpful. And so using that process, and then what I would do is I would take that document back, I'd clean it up, I'd send it back to folks to, to confirm like, is this what we talked about? Am I missing anything? Usually I'd get a, you know, a thumbs up response or maybe some wordsmithing that would come back to me. And then the next meeting we would jump in, wherever we left off of, in terms of kind of continuing to build out what would eventually then become the actual written agreement.

Grande Lum (40:00): Right. Really good stuff there. You know, things that struck me were, when you talked about ground rules and using the talk circle approach... the ability to, I call it sometimes the ability to slow down first before you, you move quickly. You can see how people coming to group want to jump right away to, well, let's start figuring out what the solution is here versus

Kit Chalberg (40:24): A hundred percent

Grande Lum (40:25): Listening. And I love how you talked about the history, what's been going on, what's the history of this program, what's the history in this community, to get people at the same page and for them to listen to each other. It just strikes me as that was probably incredibly, helpful there ... in moving them forward here. What were some of the big challenges you faced during this mediation, and, and how did you deal with that? And how did the group deal with that to move forward?

Kit Chalberg (40:56): I think one of the big ones, especially early on, was the external pressure that was happening. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the external pressure in a lot of CRS sorts of cases are partly why you end up getting the institutions at the table to begin with. So there's community pressure on the university to do something. There's community pressure on the police department to respond to an officer involved shooting. There's community pressure, you know, on the city manager to, you know, respond to an alleged hate crime or whatever it might be. And those external pressures are, you know, the media is a part of it. National organizations getting involved in this particular one, LULAC was involved to create, you know, sort of turn up the heat. So to speak, leveraging the media, local media and national media. And so those were the big ones was, you know, at CRS Conciliators, don't talk to the media.

Kit Chalberg (41:46): Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> Been a longstanding, longstanding precedent. And so, you know, there were times when I would visit the university very early ... in this case, where they were holding sort of your traditional town hall. And the media was there. And there was one particular night where I think it was either the president or the provost was ... up on the stage. She was doing her best to respond to questions. Students were just super fired up, super about what was going on. Some of them ... had alleged, like they'd been susceptible to violence by white supremacists because of this. And like, it....was getting really nasty. And I'll never forget, she, without letting me know she was gonna do this, she was sort of like, well, we're gonna ask, we're gonna ask CRS, we're gonna ask the justice department to come and help us mediate this.

Kit Chalberg (42:32): And he's here tonight. He's here, he is like right here. I was like, I don't know, like standing in a corner hiding or something, <laugh>. And, and so she sort of elevated it and I said something very, very briefly, like a CRS 101 or something like that. But my point being is, is that there was all of this pressure, even when we got into the meetings, there was still pressure from people to be like, why aren't you being transparent? Why can't the community be involved? Why isn't the media at the table? You're shutting us out, What are you hiding? Right? There's this skepticism, and I think fairly mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's this skepticism about, you know, why is there a lack of transparency? This is a public university. You're paid by taxpayers and you're telling me I can't show up. That kind of stuff. You, would come at us pretty regularly. And I, and I think that the group did a really good job, 'cause they did not agree on a lot of stuff, but one thing that they did agree on was that if we're all gonna go through this process together, it's gonna be closed doors and we are gonna stand firm on that. And we just need a better mechanism and a way to communicate out.

Grande Lum (43:40): Mm-Hmm <affirmative>.

Kit Chalberg (43:41): To hopefully then decrease the tension, the tension and the pressure. The other part of it naturally is over time, because people knew we were meeting, they sort of went on to other stuff. Right. Other things pop up and, you know, a new crazy thing happens in the news and they're off and running, chasing something else. And so I think time was also a benefit, but I would say that was probably the biggest challenge. And like I said from the beginning, this, this case was so unique. I, it, you know, five years earlier, 10 years earlier, the challenge would've been, can I get the university to the table? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think that was, that, that would've been a toss up for sure. Like, probably not. Yeah. But, but maybe,

Grande Lum (44:24): Yeah, it's striking, you know? Right. The, that's what pressure leads to that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the institutional representation comes because there's been external pressure placed by advocacy organizations to be at the table. So there has to be some sort of leverage too, that exists... To, yeah, to make this, this sort of conflict resolution happen in a way that it turned out to... I'm just curious, you said you ended up with a 20 some odd page MOU here. Were you mostly responsible for drafting it, or did you turn it over to them as a drafting committee? Or as like, how, how did that, how did you get to that final document?

Kit Chalberg (45:08): Yeah, actually both. So it started with me kind of just holding the pen during the meetings and just getting it in rough but good enough shape, to where people could start, right. Seeing how things were organized. And, and we did it. Like I said, we did it by quarter over two years, so it was very sequential. It was like quarter one of, I don't know what year it was, 2017 or whatever it was, you know, Q2. And so... and tt was broken down by their university calendar, and so you, you could really see like kind of how things would build upon one another. But eventually what I did, because it came, it became really long and it was still pretty technical and sort of in internal jargon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the group agreed that the provost at the time, and it wasn't Priscilla, it was the, the chair of the MAS program at the time, that they would become sort of the masters of the pen from there.

Kit Chalberg (46:05): And then they took it and then really started refining it and aligning language and, and the things that, because I don't work there and I haven't known them for 20 years, things that I would just miss as a, as a third party writer. And so, that was, I actually forgot we even did that until you just said ... that became really valuable because well, number one, it removed me from having to control a 20 page document, which is just un unwieldy, but two, they could, they were working kind of on their own ... to put this thing together and then would come back to the broader mediation team and, and essentially say, here's our proposal. Here's how we think we should say this. Here's how, you know, here's what we think we should do in, in these sorts of order. Um, and get agreement on those things. Or, you know, um, tee up additional conversation that was needed in order for people to buy into the, the overall plan.

Grande Lum (46:57): Got it. Great. And this happened over a two year period, would you say? The...mediation, how?

Kit Chalberg (47:05): No, the implementation aspect of the agreement was about two years, but it was, I think it was, it was about eight, six to eight months, something like that. Of... Actual sessions.

Grande Lum (47:15): Did you meet on a weekly basis for two to three hours? How did that, how

Kit Chalberg (47:19): Did that work? We met, we met twice a month, so we met every other week. At that time, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't Zoom and the way that it is now, I think we had like Skype or something terrible like that, which, you know, no one would wanna use Skype. But I, I really feel like in this particular situation, especially early on, the people being in a room together could have never been replaced. And, and, and meeting that regular, I think really, really signaled to people that, one, people are super committed to make this happen. And two, we wanna work quickly because, you know, this, just 'cause of all the factors that were going on.

Grande Lum (48:02): You raised an interesting point, right? Today, given the pandemic, more and more mediations are going on Zoom, I mean, it is very clear, this is happening. How would you imagined seeing about today? 'Cause you know, we're, we're, this is useful as folks who are either mediators now or going into mediation, think about the difference between in-person and video conferencing. What do you think, as you think about that, very successful mediation that you had, and if you had to do it by Zoom today, how would you think about that?

Kit Chalberg (48:42): Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think in... Some ways it would definitely be easier, you know, for... logistical reasons, right? Like people finding parking and stuff like that, you know, you can peel out of a meeting for an hour and jump on and then go back to your, you know, go back to your meeting late that afternoon, right? I mean, there's a lot of logistical pieces that are there, but I think in terms of the way that I, that I would've facilitated it, I don't think it would've been that much different. I still would've been really focused on, you know, using the, the, the study circles approach, like I said, from the beginning, and having people really try to align some values and, you know, using storytelling and narratives as a way to build some relationships and... stress the importance that each individual had for the particular issue that was going on.

Kit Chalberg (49:34): I and I know that the, the writing, I don't know this actually, I was gonna say the writing may have been easier, but the writing is still challenging with one person. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I don't, you know, you know, if I'm sharing screen on Zoom right now, you're a little strip over on the side, and if I got 10 people, I can't even see 10 people because the strip isn't long enough. And like, there's some anxiety inducing things that go along with that so that maybe you don't share your screen, but then now you lose the value of having everyone seeing transparently what it is you're writing and, and how you're phrasing things and the words that you're using. And so that would be a big drawback if you, if you, for me anyway, like, my, my opinion would be if, if you weren't able to, especially early on, share, the notes and the key points and the synthesis that you're doing as the facilitator and the notetaker, if you weren't able to share that in Zoom there, there would be some limitations. I think you're losing something. I think you're losing a really valuable piece of the overall process.

Grande Lum (50:37): Yeah. That we could of course talk about this more. It's such an important consideration going forward when people are making the decision between in-person and Zoom and what do you gain and what do you lose and how do you make up for things that might be lost here? Yeah, benefit of relationships, the benefit of trust. I mean, those are all questions that I think anyone in these situations, whether you're the mediator or the parties, you really have to think because it was a commitment that everyone was gonna be there. That's a higher commitment, really. Right. Than being, being on, on video conferencing here. One last question, on this, is you, you know, you earlier talked about how you have to learn about identity management, you know, what is it that be a white male in a situation, here, where you're dealing with Mexican Americans and, and an issue here. Did that, were there any identity management issues here? And, what worked well and what was the challenge here?

Kit Chalberg (51:37): Oh, I don't think, I can't think of any, any specifically in this one. And I go back and the reason, I think I go back to just because of how long I'd, I'd known these folks, I'd known them a really long time, and had been fortunate to do substantive work with them. Not just like, you know, they knew me and I knew them, but like ... we had, you know, had been in really difficult conversations before. And, you know, they had, I'd earned their trust. And so I never had to worry about it, with that particular group. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, as much as I had, in different, in different examples, in CRS work.

Grande Lum (52:17): Yeah. Yeah. When I've had that conversation, I, you're, I think it's, my sense is because ... you've managed those issues well in your past with them, they trusted you, they understood that you had ... cultural competence in dealing with the issues here. And that, that, my guess is my sense is, is what served you well. They trusted you because they had worked through whatever they had gone through, other difficult issues with you right. As well. Yeah. Good. Uh, any last thoughts on this before we, we, we move on and any, anything else that you'd wanna share about this? I, I thought this was terrific giving you a sense of here's what the problem was, uh, here's how, how you manage it, here's the outcome and here's, you know, where, where you are today. But anything else you would add?

Kit Chalberg (53:02): No, I just appreciate the opportunity to, you know, go down memory lane and so I, there was a lot of things in there that I had forgotten about and, yeah, it was just, it's fun to, to rehash those, those things.

Grande Lum (53:16): Great. Thank you.