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Identifier
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MartinGail
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Title
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Gail Martin Oral History Interview
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Date
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1 July 2016
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2 July 2016
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Creator
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Gail Martin
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Contributor
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Nancy Koppelman
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extracted text
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Gail Martin, VP of Student Affairs
Interviewed by Nancy Koppelman
The Evergreen State College oral history project
Interview 1
July 1, 2016
FINAL
Koppelman: This is Nancy Koppelman interviewing Gail Martin. Hi Gail.
Martin: Hi Nance.
Koppelman: I’m going to ask you a few questions about your early years, your childhood, your
parents—things like that. Whatever you’d like to say about where and when you were born, what your
parents were like, what their background was, their interests and aspirations, etc.
Martin: Ok. I was born in Elmira, Washington, in a birthing hospital. It was there rather than where my
parents lived, which was at Grand Coulee Dam because there wasn’t much of anything at Grand Coulee
Dam when I was born, there wasn’t a hospital and doctors were scarce. My parents had been married
for nine years and had not had any children. So, while I was born in Elmira, my parents went to the
birthing center after I was born by prior agreement and a legal agreement. My birth mother handed me
over to my parents Marie and Gus [Coosal]. Took me to Grand Coulee Dam where they were running a
motel with a root beer drive-in, a Studebaker car agency and a kind of teenage hangout. So that was my
auspicious start in life.
Koppelman: So, you moved into a motel?
Martin: Yeah, I did. I felt like I was in one for a long time, like 12 years at least. And then some of spilled
over into my life after high school. But, one of the things I hated about it, but now I’m really grateful for
is that I was actually going to work in my parents motel specifically—by the time I was seven or eight
and knew enough numbers, I was in charge of picking up all the dirty laundry each day and sorting it,
counting it, filling out the laundry slips, tying it up in a sheet and having it ready when the laundry man
came from Ephrata to Grand Coulee. Grand Coulee at that time did not have a laundry.
Koppelman: So, it’s fair to say that you had a working class background.
Martin: Definitely.
Koppelman: What kind of a student were you in high school?
Martin: I was the teacher’s pet. I worked hard at it too, I loved school. I thought of it and later when I
could articulate about my childhood I thought of it as a sanctuary. I thought teachers were gods, but I
know they weren’t.
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Koppelman: Were you college bound when you were in high school? Did you know you were going to
go to college?
Martin: I didn’t even know what college was. My dad, Gus, had a third-grade education. My mother,
Marie, had an eighth-grade education. I never saw either one of them read a book. My dad religiously
read the newspaper every day, but not my mother. So, school was great. And I had terrific teachers in
this little boomtown at the time in Eastern Washington. By the time I graduated high school it was no
longer a boomtown. For example, there was a girl who lived across the street, and when I could, I would
go to her house, then eventually began stealing books and I’d bring them back to my bedroom, I had
them tucked under my bed. Eventually her mother figured out who the criminal was and went to my
parents and, of course, raised all holy hell. In retrospect this surprises me, my parents didn’t know what
to do, so they thought they should go see my teacher. And they went to see her, Mrs. [Orbock], my first
grade teacher. We didn’t have kindergarten. And Mrs. [Orbock] said, “Do you know where the city
library is?” And it was within walking distance of the motel. And she said, “Take her there, get her a
library card, make the ground rules for how long she can be gone and I’m pretty sure that will take care
of it.” And it seems to.
Koppelman: And it did. You said you didn’t even know what college was when you were growing up. So
how did you come to go to college?
Martin: I had to make a lot of mistakes before I found my way to college. I should say, I was good at
school, I was happy at school so I had a natural proclivity toward learning. My high school English
teacher took a particular interest in me and was enraged when I married, in my opinion and hers of
course, prematurely. When I did that, well before that I had thought about college. I had looked at some
catalogs but I didn’t have anything to compare it to. And my parents, they never talked about it. “You
better get your homework done because you’re going to have those tests.”
Koppelman: It sounds like it wasn’t part of their world.
Martin: It wasn’t in any way that I could see.
Koppelman: So you ended up going to college for you undergrad at?
Martin: At Central Washington State University. I applied to all the state schools and I was accepted at
all the state schools and I chose to go to Central because it gave me the most financial aid. And I was
going to have to work. And by that time I was divorced and had two children, about two and four and a
half.
Koppelman: So you were in your early 20s then?
Martin: Yes. I believe that in winter quarter of my first year of college I turned 24.
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Koppelman: Ok. And when you started at Central what year was that?
Martin: 1962.
Koppelman: Is that where you met Barbara McCann or was that later?
Martin: That’s where I met Barbara McCann and Charlie.
Koppelman: Why don’t you talk about that a little bit because obviously when you met them you had
no idea what would come of it.
Martin: No. I certainly didn’t. I had taken a class from Charlie. And it was the first time I went to a
teacher for a conference. He was teaching a 19th Century novel class, there were 13 weeks and he
expected 13 19th Century novels and 13 papers, and then a summarizing paper at the end. So, before
class had started, and I still could change, I went and had a quick conversation with him. I said because
of personal circumstances I knew that I wouldn’t be able to deliver on more than 11 of the novels and 11
of the papers and the summarizing paper. And what I needed to know because I was on financial aid was
if it was possible to pass the class and maybe even be able to achieve B-level work so I could keep my
financial aid and still be able to read the 19th Century novels. And he said, “Well, it depends on what kind
of student you are.” So, I thought that was a reasonable answer, but not terribly reassuring. But, I
jumped in and I took the risk and it turned out fine. I was right, I just made it through 11 papers, 11 A’s
on those papers and a B in the course. I thought that was fair, too.
And in that context, I don’t remember when I met Barbara for sure. I do think it was on campus
at a scholarship thing that was going on and she was there because that was part of the faculty wife
role. And she invited me over and we got to know each other.
The other reason I wanted to actually take that course from Charlie is that he had been the
mover and shaker in getting the trustees and the faculty to agree to dismiss college for one whole week
in spring quarter and to have what he called, “The Symposium.” So, we are all turned loose from our
regular academic obligations, but they’re not reduced, we still have to find a way to do them. A good
percent of the kids went home. And the ones who stayed were a lively bunch. We got to spend time—
what’s the LSD guy’s name?
Koppelman: Timothy Leary.
Martin: Timothy Leary and a psychologist, I can’t remember what college he was from.
Koppelman: So, it sounds like during The Symposium the faculty and administration planned a series of
talks, guests would come, is that what happened?
Martin: The guests were invited; they came up with their own topics. The requirement as I recall, this
was a long time ago, was that whatever they decide to explore with these students in this fairly isolated
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place in the world, that it would speak to modern times. It was so exciting I just got goosebumps. It was
so exciting. I went to it slavishly, I spent as much or more time sitting on a chair listening.
Koppelman: Here’s a question for you. Is one of the things that made it more exciting because some
students didn’t go, people went home, they decided, “Wow, here’s a week off. I can do what I want.”
That the people who did go were, they had an unusual perspective about such an opportunity? They
would rather sit and think then have time to themselves. It just occurs to me that that makes it even
more special in a certain kind of way.
Martin: It’s hard to answer that because of all the time that has gone by. Needless to say, I wasn’t
hanging out with a bunch of friends. My plate was full. However, I met some of those same people again
that I had attended The Symposium with. Which was quite controversial, people were complaining
about it, “Taxpayer dollars,” etc, etc. But, I met a bunch of those people, I don’t know how many, when I
became moderately politically active around the Vietnam War and around Civil Rights. And those
people, the ones I could remember from The Symposium, most of them were there doing the same
thing. I don’t know what that says but somehow it sorted us out.
Koppelman: It says birds of a feather.
Martin: Maybe.
Koppelman: So, you started college in 1962 you said, so you finished in 1966?
Martin: ’65, I went to summer school, I was on the three-year plan.
Koppelman: I see. Did you know you were grad school bound when you were in college, was there a
little space between college and graduate school for you?
Martin: There was a little space for me. When I graduated from Central I interviewed for a job teaching
English. I probably had 10 interviews, and I remember when somebody finally offered me a job I looked
at my resume and I said, “Oh my god.” Over here in the right-hand corner I had volunteered that marital
status was divorced. And I had so fully disclosed on the applications that people didn’t ask me about
them. Most of them didn’t even ask me, they just kept going. But, the principal of Port Angeles Senior
High School, whose name I can’t remember, he had a different response. He asked me over to the
campus. He particularly wanted me to interview with the chair of the English Department at Port
Angeles Senior High School. She was a very literate and wise woman of a certain age, and she was all for
it. I would be the youngest, even having lagged my way into college, and she felt they needed that. So,
they offered me a job and I took it. And I packed the boys up and we went to Port Angeles where we
stayed for 10 months.
Koppelman: What came after that?
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Martin: In March of my first year of teaching the phone rang, and it was the chairman of the English
Departmental at Central. The person who taught the Methods Class, how to teach teachers how to
teach English, was due for a sabbatical and she nominated me to the chair as someone fresh from their
first year of teaching to come in and teach the course from that point of view, and freshen it up. And so I
backed up the boys and went back to Ellensburg, worked really hard.
Koppelman: Were Charlie and Barbara still there then?
Martin: Yes, they were. And Charlie was a provost by then. And that’s kind of where I thought, sort of
“Prufrock.” Do I dare? Do I dare to part my hair? Do I dare to think I could go to graduate school and
maybe end up teaching at a community college, full-time? Which would be so much more manageable
than what I’m trying to do right now even though I loved teaching. I like teenagers, I don’t know what it
is. The head of the English Department at the time, after receiving the nomination, hired me for a oneyear, temporary position in addition to teaching teachers how to teach English, or representing that
experience for a first year teacher. I was also teaching Introduction to Literature and Composition to get
my full teaching load. So, it had some variety in it and I really liked it and I just thought, “This might be as
close to this as I’m ever going to come. I have to decide.” Anyway, I talked to the department chair who
had taken this big chance on me. And he said, “Well, you go ahead and apply where you want to apply. I
happen to have some former colleagues at Washington State University in the English Department. I’d
like to call and chat with them and see if it makes any sense from their point of view.” Which he did and
he said, “I’d like to nominate you.” And he said, “They would like to hire you as a teaching assistant.”
And it just kind of fell in place, it was like it was meant to be. While I panicked initially a little bit, I
pushed through.
Koppelman: And so you packed up the boys.
Martin: And so I packed up the boys and went to Pullman, Washington.
Koppelman: And you went into the English Department into the PhD program?
Martin: No.
Koppelman: The master’s program?
Martin: The master’s program. I could only see…
Koppelman: The next step.
Martin: Yeah.
Koppelman: And so, now we’re coming to the edge of Evergreen finally, I think. Now, Charlie wasn’t
there yet when you got there?
Martin: Oh yeah, he was.
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Koppelman: In Pullman.
Martin: Oh no, he was still at Central.
Koppelman: But Rudy was at Pullman?
Martin: Mmmhhh. And the way that all connects up is on a Sunday morning I was reading The
Spokesman Review, and here’s this big article with Charlie’s face right beside it, and this big article about
his leadership around the founding of a new college in the state of Washington, a true undergraduate
school, liberal arts school.
Koppelman: And you read about it when you were in Pullman?
Martin: Mmmhhh. And Rudy was finishing up his course work, preparing for the orals for his PhD in
American Studies. At the same time, we had decided to get married.
Koppelman: Ok, back up. How did you and Rudy meet?
Martin: We were both teaching assistants in the English Department and that’s where I met him. We
collaborated, along with David [Marr], it was a way of sneaking black literature in the back door because
they didn’t have any at this point in time. But we did some sessions in our comp classes where we read a
play—I’m blanking on the name. I’ll have to come back and fill it in.
Koppelman: I think David talked about it at the memorial.
Martin: He may have. It was a dialogue on a subway in New York City between a white woman and a
black man. And we were trying to do a sort of cultural history slant, and in the context of having them
have to go to the library to see what they could find that would help them understand this play.
So, that’s how I met Rudy. We had [carols] in rough proximity to each other. He was married
when I met him and we just both kept our distance. Other than going out with other grad students and
having a cup of coffee and discussing something that was literary or historical. That year when he came
back to Pullman, he had been at Pullman before I was there. And I heard people talk about him and how
much they missed him, and wished he was still there, it was too bad he thought he had to leave, all of
that. I didn’t have any idea what that was about. I did get a little weary of hearing how he walked on
water, however. And developed a bit of curiosity about how I would add that up for myself. I mean, I
thought at the time before I met him that one possibility was that he would be one of those people so
full of himself that I would just keep walking. (laughs) And not stop for a chat. Didn’t turn out to be the
case for me, anyway.
So, Rudy is back and I guess by Christmas it was, I wasn’t really in on this, but I think it was
around Christmas he told his wife that this was not going to work. And that he had to move on in order
for him to do what he felt he needed to do with his life, leaving her with a boy and a girl. I think [Laurie]
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was even a preschooler and Skip had started in school. Anyway, she fell apart, went home to her
parents. Rudy took the kids and moved to Moscow, Idaho to establish residency because you can get a
divorce there much more quickly than you can in Washington State. And so we didn’t see much of him
because he had the kids in school over there and it was all about getting through the prelims and ready
to leave so he could go earn money someplace and write his dissertation, which he had pretty well in
hand conceptually before he left.
Koppelman: And so somewhere along in there, that must have been about 1968, ’69, around then?
Martin: Mmmhhh
Koppelman: At what point in your education and Rudy’s education did you get married? That was just
before Evergreen?
Martin: Right. It was on July 27, 1969. That was a decision that Rudy and I really studied and labored
over. We tried to be honest about the reasons we shouldn’t as well as the reasons we should. I will just
say that as a personalities and structure of how we lived, we had a great deal in common even though
we were from very divergent life experiences. In the end, my son Grant, we were out on the Washington
coast, we drove over there and stayed in a little cabin with the kids. And Grant asked Rudy, I’ll never
forget this, “Rudy, are you going to marry us?” And he sputtered, it was an awkward moment. (laughing)
So, Rudy decided he was going to marry us, and we decided we want to be married even though we had
said I will never get married again. If I ever do, shoot me.
Koppelman: So then a year or two after that, I guess, so Charlie was already kind of underway with
Evergreen at that point.
Martin: Yes.
Koppelman: So, Charlie then got in touch with Rudy? Got in touch with you? How did the connection
get made?
Martin: Oh, no, in that article in The Spokesman Review I mentioned where it was the first place I
connected Charlie with The Evergreen State Colle And I read everything I could about what it had to say
about Evergreen and stuff. Rudy had a job offer from Portland State, and he liked the idea of living in
Portland. I said, “You know I haven’t known you for a long time, but for the time I’ve known you, you
have this ongoing rant about how higher education is delivered. You think it’s hypocritical. You think it’s
more about the teachers than the students. You could go on for days regaling all that was wrong with it.
And then you discover something new and go on that rant for a while. You need to apply to this place
and put yourself where you mouth is.”
Koppelman: And so at that point Rudy hadn’t met Charlie.
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Martin: Oh, no.
Koppelman: But, you knew that Charlie was at the helm.
Martin: Yes, and I told Rudy about the class I took from him. That story got folded into my narrative.
But, no, Rudy hadn’t met him.
Koppelman: So, then he applied to Evergreen?
Martin: After a little bit of nagging, yeah. He said, “I’m going to go to my office on campus.” He said
early on a Sunday morning. And he said, “If I can walk out of there with an application I’m proud of by
the end of this afternoon then I’ll send it off and see what happens. If I can’t, if it’s too hard, if I’m
pushing it or yanking it around to fit something I’m not absolutely sure about then I’ll let go.” I said, Fair
enough.” Off he went, and he came back—I can’t remember how long the essays had to be. They
wanted a lot in the application. So he sent off the application and almost immediately got a phone call
to come for an interview. And so he did that. I guess it went well. (both laughing) But, it was on some
level, painfully, same old same old. Rudy was the only person of color, there were no women on the
planning faculty. He said, “I don’t know, but I’ll go try it.” Then he called the guy at Portland State who
raised the salary on the offer he’d given him. They left their negotiation with go do it for a year, call me
if it isn’t all that you think it’s going to be. If it is all that you think it’s going to be I will be really jealous.
Koppelman: So, what do you remember about that first year? You guys were married by then. So you
packed up the boys again, and you came to Olympia and there was no college yet.
Martin: No college, no community that you identified with. We had a few racial encounters right from
the beginning. I was worried about the boys and how they would handle all that. And then it was time
for everybody to go on the clock. Not me because I was there as a wife.
Koppelman: So, can I ask you a question? I think it’s really great in your memory you can call up the
kind of lecture of what it was like where nobody except maybe a couple of people noticed that there
were no women or even thought that was something to think about. Maybe people thought it would be
nice if we could have more people of color, but my guess it that it wasn’t the same kind of thinking that
goes on today, right?
Martin: That part is true. But, in the course of the planning faculty discovering each other because they
didn’t know each other, and they were right away aware that they had only one black colleague and no
women on the faculty at that point. Part of what they had to do besides put tougher the nucleus of an
institution and look at the whole place as a creation, they also had to plan a curriculum for the first year.
When it all was done and said, and the curriculum plans were submitted, no one had offered anything in
cross-cultural studies of any sort, or women’s studies of any sort. Rudy was really disappointed. And he
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had designed two curriculums. One was a multicultural one called “Contemporary American Minorities.”
The other was a literature history slice of the Harlem Renaissance. And nobody was eager to teach with
Rudy, initially. And then Beryl Crowe, who was on the planning faculty, became close friends with us. He
wrote a letter of resignation and said he was not going to join a new college that was going to repeat
these patterns from the past. Here was a chance to change it. We have to be real, and sincere, and dig
and figure out how to do this even if it means we can’t teach our own favorite thing. And my
recollection is that nobody wanted Beryl to leave because he colored the most outside the lines, it
appeared.
Koppelman: Can you give an example of how he colored outside the lines?
Martin: I think it was more about how he had lived, how he continued to live. That his parents rolled
him and his pretty large family out of Oklahoma during the Depression, so he’s an Okie. He’d been a
farm worker, he’d been in the Merchant Marines, he was very blue collar and sort of looked at the world
through a different lens than even Rudy did sometimes. Rudy was middle class.
Koppelman: So, like you, Beryl wasn’t born to aspire to higher education.
Martin: Right. No, in fact he thought being middle class was a corruption. He gave me a really bad time
about it.
Koppelman: So, now here he finds himself founding a college.
Martin: Yes. And he was into that. He liked being somewhere where something was being created that
might lead to other people rethinking how they were doing things in the world of education.
Koppelman: So, can you say a few things about what the feeling was like among all you folks in that
year before the college opened when you first met and spent time together. What do you remember
about that time in particular? Any story in particular or any particular person that comes to mind?
Martin: I remember that I experienced, partly because I felt more dependent on Rudy than I really was,
financially and stuff. I’d been doing it on my own for 10 years by the time we got there. So, I looked
around and here are these other faculty wives. And interpersonally I don’t remember being put off or
anything by any of the faculty or their wives, they were a friendly lot. There was some kind of tension
between excitement and fear because it’s a big thing to create a social institution, and it should be
sobering. And I think by far the greater majority took it that way, and treated it that way. And then there
was this gaggle of faculty wives, me among them, who some of us also wanted to have careers. And we
got asked to serve on all kinds of advisory bodies and stuff like that, and that was fine, to help out. It was
better to help out than to be all the way out and not ever be at the table or in the back of the room. And
I had quite quickly gotten a position at Olympia Vocational Technical Institute, now SPSCC. And that was
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when OVTI was primarily in Centralia. That’s where its brick and mortar was, and they were just trying to
tap into the Olympia market. So, I was teaching a full-time load.
Koppelman: Commuting to Centralia?
Martin: Mmmhhh, in composition. By the second quarter they moved me here, relocated me here to
some kind of office building which is kind of where SPSCC is right now, and I started only having to go
there, and that was good. The teaching was just fine, maybe a little too easy. But, also my attention was
split because whenever I could I was sitting in the back of the room at Evergreen. And occasionally
another faculty wife would come. I don’t know what the difference was but I didn’t feel like an
interloper, and I kept my mouth shut and I watched. It was like watching a huge chaotic construction
project kind of come alive before your eyes. When we broke for Christmas break that first year of the
planning faculty the planning group was on edge, shook up, they were having a hard time. A lot of it,
from my point of view, was semantics and needing to find a new way of talking about things, a new way
of thinking about themselves, a greater articulation of what focusing more on the student and what the
student wanted to do.
Koppelman: So, just in contract, obviously, to a discipline bigger than the teacher who has a
prefabricated bunch of stuff to input, and then the student produces the output that tells the teacher
that the input has worked.
Martin: Yep.
Koppelman: And you had gone to school on that model, and you loved it, you were a great student.
Martin: And so had all of them.
Koppelman: You had a really great vantage point because you were on that periphery to observe what
was going on, and to understand what it was they were trying to undo, without the burden of undoing it
being on you. So, that’s really interesting.
Martin: Right. I didn’t have any complaints about my education and I still don’t. But, that doesn’t mean
what worked so well for me works for everybody.
Koppelman: Right.
Martin: Totally unanswered question about the time I spent soaking up Evergreen, making sure I
understood what was going on.
Koppelman: I really like how you talked about, just now you articulated what it was you were
witnessing taking place.
Martin: Well, and going into Christmas break that first fall, there really wasn’t anything that the group
had—
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Koppelman: They hadn’t constructed it yet.
Martin: They hadn’t constructed it. I think it was Merv Cadwallader, but I can’t swear to it, who was an
academic dean during the planning year, and very influential in the founding of the college. He, I believe
it was him, he gave all of the planning faculty a book by Alexander Meiklejohn, and asked everyone to
read it over the break. And they came back and basically none of us knew exactly what they were doing,
but they were engaging deeply with that book in a conversation about what would that look like here,
something like that.
Koppelman: So, reading that book turned the tide in some important way.
Martin: It’s like seminar. This is the one thing that we all have in common and we’re going to try and
understand it together. And you could see a kind of slowly forming excitement, something that would
become excitement. So, the faculty simultaneously came up with some core interdisciplinary study
seminars as a primary vehicle. So they would come to more or less some kind of agreement, it wasn’t
always absolute, but it at least had to be directional, it had to be moving forward. And then there were
things like the faculty agreeing to move their offices every year and co-locate with their students for an
entire year-long coordinated studies program. I’m sure there were regrets about some of those things.
Jumping ahead, when the college took in its first class, it had as many unresolved questions as it had
certain things in place to try and do a test run and see how it goes.
Koppelman: And what do you remember about how the first class of students found out about
Evergreen, and how they came? And what it was like when people started showing up? What do you
remember about that?
Martin: Well, there used to be this horrible joke about, “And now we’re going to admit students and let
them ruin it all?”
Koppelman: (laughing) Well, there’s some truth to that even now because you plan a program and you
have this whole scheme and ideas and then the reality is always different from what you fantasize. And
of course, when you first start teaching at a place like Evergreen, you’re very wedded to the fantasies at
the beginning, but now I’m not anymore because I don’t think in terms of the fantasies anymore. And
that’s fine, it’s great, it’s better because then it really is in a lot of ways about what are the students
going to learn from this, not what are my fantasies all about.
Martin: Last week I spent some time with Leslie Layton, who is an Evergreen grad. She came to the
college direct from high school, she was from Paradise, California. How did she hear about it? This is still
the ‘60s and the early ‘70s, and there is this bloody grapevine out there. But, there were also lots of
articles in the newspaper, and there was pretty good press coverage. I mean a lot of the students were
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from the northeast, you know. So, the word got out there. Leslie, I remember, was just absolutely
insulted when she had to sit and listen to her first lecture because she had thought there would be no
more of that. And this last week when I saw her it was still on her mind. I said, “Come on Les, get over
it.” (laughing) “You would have missed Beryl’s lecture? Come on, I don’t believe that.” “Well, but they
said…”
Koppelman: They said it would be different.
Martin: Yep.
Koppelman: In the first couple, three, four years, what were the big things that were going on in the
culture of the college as it’s going through its birthing pains? And some of that unfinished business in
the first year starts to have to take shape? So, for example, there probably wasn’t a whole lot of career
development thought in the very beginning, and then that had to take shape, academic advising had to
take shape, all the infrastructure that makes a college a college. I wonder, and this had a lot to do with
you and you ending up to become a central person at the college, because so far you’ve talked about
yourself as an observer in the back of the room, one of the “gaggle of faculty wives.”
Martin: Well, full disclosure here, after the planning year, or near the end of the first year of the
planning year, I knew I wanted to work at Evergreen. And the other part of the truth is, and this sounds
arrogant or stupid, make your choice. I didn’t really care what I did, I could see myself in a variety of
roles.
And just going back in time to fill in a piece quickly, when Rudy was preparing for his prelims and
doing the final stuff to be able to leave with a skeleton of his dissertation, I was working in the high
school equivalency program in the Department of Education at Wazzu. And the professor who got the
federal grant for this particular program, which was a program to deal with the children of migrant
workers, and the interruptions in their education because of travel and relocation and all, to keep their
families together. I really have a charmed life, I fall into opportunities sometimes, you know. And, so, I
went to work as the program assistant for this program, about 60 students, somewhere around high
school age, all of them. And the professor who had gotten the grant, he was sort of like the man who
had the vision. And he looked at me one day, I think I’d been at work a week and a half or something,
and he said, “Ok, you’re in charge.” I said, “What?” And so I was in charge, I had my first administrative
experience, and it was in the fire. There were behavioral issues, and loneliness issues, and food issues
because they didn’t want to eat the cafeteria food, and why would they? And on, and on, and on. I loved
it, I loved it, I just really thought it was a great experience.
12
So, fast forward. I think because of that, because I had loved being in the classroom too and
working with students, but I just looked more broadly when I was at Evergreen because I guess when it
got to the point where I was trying to teach Evergreen students how to articulate their transferrable
skills, I thought that was a good thing to do because I had just done it to get hired at Evergreen. So, I had
a bridge job, there was some Emergency Employment Act money, temporary money, which the college
used to start a Learning Resource Center. I was writing specialist in the resource center. I had a
colleague in math, in reading.
Koppelman: So, it was called the Learning Resource Center in the second year after the doors opened,
or the first year?
Martin: First year. Hit the ground running.
Koppelman: And so you were the first writing person in there, that’s interesting.
Martin: And that was because the faculty were told that they had to teach writing, that they couldn’t
separate that out or put it in another class because it would erode over time what they were trying to
do.
Koppelman: Let this be the last big subject for today because I’d love to hear just a little bit more about
that philosophy. About why it was important for everybody to teach writing, even if your field wasn’t
English or literature or history or something like that, but if your field was biology, or political science or
mythology, or entomology—you know who I’m talking about. Why all those people would be teaching
writing, why? How did they make sense of that? How did the entomologist make sense of that, why did
that make sense to all those people?
Martin: I’m not sure it did. There was an ongoing rebellion of sorts where some people opted out, some
faculty, of actually engaging with their students around writing. Some of them took to it like a duck to
water and were fabulous about teaching them how to write in science, how to write in literature, how to
write in social science.
Koppelman: Was it the lion’s share of the faculty that did take to it enough to—
Martin: I think it was a lot like a tie between those who got comfortable enough to really deeply engage
in it and do it seriously, and then a whole long continuum of people who refuse to do it. My job in the
Writing Center was peculiar in the sense that some of the faculty would ask me to come and basically
teach writing in their class, just substitute me for another faculty member. Some would work with the
students who were writing at the college level, separate the ones who won’t and create another group
and I will go in and team teach with them. That was a lesser used model. And then some was just oneon-one with the student who initiated the contact as much as the faculty member did, but they knew
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they weren’t up to snuff. And they had aspirations. And if they did, if they wanted to learn how to write,
they could.
Koppelman: So, I think we’re going to stop for now.
End of Interview
14
Gail Martin, VP of Student Affairs
Interviewed by Nancy Koppelman
The Evergreen State College oral history project
July 2, 2016
FINAL
Koppelman: Gail, you were going to say something about graduation.
Martin: I was going to say something about Evergreen’s first graduation.
Koppelman: Please. What do you remember about it?
Martin: I remember that there was a negotiation late into the night the day before that graduation with
a group of students. I can’t remember how many, I wasn’t part of the negotiation, but it was between
them and President Charles McCann because they wanted to protest at graduation, or sit-in, or
whatever. And somehow, I don’t know how this happened, but the outcome was they dressed in
military garb and were on the stage during graduation. So, I still think it’s interesting that whoever made
that decision, might have been Charlie, I don’t know, gave them the opportunity to be the focal point.
This was the day after the Tet Offensive started and the students were animated, and afraid, and
mournful and showed all of that while they were doing their—I don’t even know what the word for it
would be—their demonstration. It ended up right at the middle of the first graduation at Evergreen.
Koppelman: And where was the first graduation held?
Martin: It was held in the library lobby.
Koppelman: And do you remember how many people graduated?
Martin: Not very many.
Koppelman: So, did they all fit on the stage, then?
Martin: The graduates were front and center on the floor.
Koppelman: Okay. So, who was on the stage in military garb?
Martin: Students.
Koppelman: Graduating students or just students at the college?
Martin: I couldn’t tell.
Koppelman: That gives a good flavor, for me, of the idea that something was very much at stake for
people and every step that they took. So, that the first graduation there’s a negotiation going on into
the night the night before about something.
Martin: And I think the effect was to, it sent the message that what these students are upset about, and
caring about enough to disrupt graduation is important that they’re speaking their values about this.
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Koppelman: So, it sounds like it doesn’t surprise you, knowing Charlie for example, that that would
have been the outcome of negotiation. Can you say more about Charlie in particular? Or did it surprise
you?
Martin: It did. Because the Charlie who was my teacher was a very thoughtful, and traditional academic
who had ideas about how we could improve education for students. In having said that, I think one thing
Charlie manifested, although he was very strict in many ways in his classroom, it manifested for me his
way of doing things that the students’ view and work are extremely important to the endeavor. And
there’s no reason to be there if that’s not true. And I think by giving the student responsibility, assigning
them the job of educating themselves in a social context, I think that some students felt liberated and
others were terrified.
Koppelman: Yeah, I think that’s still the case.
Martin: And I’m curious what kind of an Evergreen student I would have been. I wondered about that
because I didn’t know there was anything wrong with lectures. (laughing) I enjoyed every one of them.
Koppelman: Can you say more about Charlie? Who became a very close friend of yours. Thinking back
on those early years of Evergreen where you were when you described yourself in the back of the room
listening to what was going on. When you think back on what he was like, and what type of president he
was, what do you remember about him? What comes to mind?
Martin: One characteristic he had was listening well and often only responding with silence. By that I
don’t mean he was secretive, but he felt that his opinions could derail things. And he was hoping that if
you take away some of the hierarchical organization of higher education that that would allow room for
other people to grow their own opinions and have them feel accepted when they articulate them.
Koppelman: And do you think that happened? What do you remember about relationships between
Charlie and the other people in administrative positions, the faculties stumbling along figuring out what
their work was?
Martin: Well, Charlie was sitting at the back of the room too, a lot of the time. Dropping in and out and
listening to where everybody was really trying hard to pull something together that would be
meaningful. And you know the short list of what he was against?
Koppelman: Mmmhhh, no grades, no tenure—
Martin: No departments. That’s maybe the most revolutionary thing, and it’s also one of the things that
some faculty experienced the loss of.
2
Koppelman: I think that’s still the case because eventually everyone comes to teach leaves that
structure and comes into this very different structure and then tries to figure out what’s my professional
life going to be now that I don’t have that structure anymore? How does this different structure work?
Martin: I think the question you’re asking is hard to answer because more than anyone I think I ever
knew in higher ed, Charlie was skilled at keeping his own counsel. He didn’t have to be heard about
everything.
Koppelman: It sounds like that was something you really respected about him.
Martin: I think it worked, to try harder. You could see after Christmas the planning faculty had taken a
deep breath collectively and got moving again.
Koppelman: And this is partly because he had given them that book to read.
Martin: Charlie didn’t give it to them. I think it was Mervyn Cadwallader, one of the deans. That was a
good thing.
Koppelman: So, can you remember in those first couple years, once the doors opened and the first
graduating class happened, any specific issues that came up that you had to solve collectively? Or that
you had to solve or saw other people working on that became the college, essentially? Because clearly
the college opened, you had faculty and you had students, you had a skeleton crew of services. But then
a lot still had to be constructed kind of on the fly. So I’m just wondering if you have any specific
memories of a student or faculty member, or some issue that came up that illustrates some of that.
Martin: Well, the one I know the best is the one I was part of and that was creating a career services at
Evergreen. And the faculty was nervous, the administration was nervous, the board of trustees was
confused.
Koppelman: What were they nervous and confused about?
Martin: They were nervous and confused about how these liberal arts grads were going to be able to
convince somebody to hire them. And I was kind of naïve that I didn’t expect there to be so much weight
placed on what happened to Greeners after graduation. During that time I was running seminars called,
“Is there life after Evergreen?” It turns out there was.
Koppelman: Do you remember if that happened right away? That there was this fear that what would
happen to graduates and could they get hired anywhere?
Martin: Yeah, I think it was there almost from the beginning. I think the faculty did talk about it. And the
students, one of the really enjoyable things in working with the students on the things like career
planning and finding a job and all of that was working with the ones who sort of applied their Evergreen
pedagogy to finding work. And to go out and visit work places, and try it on for size, and have a
3
conversation with who’s there, and see what you can find out. And put that together with what it felt
like to be there, and what the other workers looked like. I don’t know about you, but for me it has never
been as important to have a right job title that represented success, it’s always been the environment,
it’s always been more important for your own growth and development.
Now, when I started to work in career planning and placement, the first day I came to work, and
I got there at eight o’clock, and the administrative vice president was standing by my door. And he said,
his name was Dean Clabaugh, and he said to me, “I opposed you being hired for this position. And I want
you to know that I told Les Eldridge that I was opposed to him hiring you, and I told Larry Stenberg the
same thing.” I said, “Well, thanks.” What a welcome.
Fast forward by about six and a half months, and we’re up in Library 4300, and the place is full of
students and employers. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but I think we had 10 state agencies
represented who all had hiring authority of their own. And so what I did was have a meeting with the
students and I said, “I think this is an ideal time to practice your skills about talking to people, where
you’re exploring work and we’ll try and get you divided up by something you’re interested in. We won’t
be able to do that with everybody, but you’ll still learn about real life workplaces that are hiring people.”
I asked Dean Clabaugh to give the opening to this thing and he talked about the college, and thanked
them all for coming, and hoped that they would have a productive and useful day. I think the employers
had a great time, most of them. And they enjoyed that the students set the agenda and the students
asked the questions. So it was like they get a chance to tell the story of their workplace, and they
recorded all of these sessions. The reality of it was a really good thing. I had resisted just bringing HR
recruiters from various organizations onto campus to interview for specific jobs because I think on the
way to getting a career-related job you need to get your feet wet in the workplace.
Koppelman: Absolutely. That was good thinking.
Martin: Well, before I went home that day there was a knock on my door. It was him, it was Dean
Clabaugh. And he said, “I was wrong.” I said, “Thanks.” It was a good day.
Koppelman: I’ll bet.
Martin: Because I didn’t know if they’d come. That was the year I visited every state agency, and it was
exhausting.
Koppelman: I bet. But, your instincts were right, I think, about how to help students. Because there’s
that intermediate step before you apply for a job you need to know the landscape and how to find that
out.
Martin: Yeah, and while you’re learning about that questions will come up or dilemmas.
4
Koppelman: And it’s good to be able to ask them when the job itself isn’t at stake.
Martin: Very good. They were thrilled not to be asked, “Are you hiring today?”
Koppelman: Can you talk a little bit, if you feel like you’d like to it would be great, what you remember
Rudy’s contributions being that come to mind right at the top in those first years. I mean I’m sure lots of
people can talk about those things, but my guess is that your eyes were wide open in a special way to
what was going on there for him between him and everybody else. Just how he became such a leader so
quickly, at least it seems like it happened pretty fast. It’s obvious he had that in him.
Martin: I think he had probably been a leader every place he was. Definitely there was more at stake.
There weren’t any bricks—that isn’t true, there’s red square. I was going to say bricks and mortar, lots of
mortar.
Koppelman: Still wet, still in the bags.
Martin: I see Rudy most deeply engaged in, he was part of an informal conversation that people were
having about standards. And it was really important to Rudy without being a Luddite slob about it, that
students be held to a level of college performance before they’re awarded credit. This was a difficult
transition for some faculty to maintain a traditional standard like that. They do it with A, B, Cs
elsewhere, but you should still be doing it. Sid White wrote a wonderful article that I think it sort of
brought that conversation to a close because he had gotten it right. And it was a paper he did on the
difference between being authoritarian and authoritative. And that that difference, if you can move
from being authoritarian person, the person who knows the most about this, if you can move and open
up that space for students. And it’s fine to help them fill it up, but not to tell them exactly how it has to
be. That giving over was really hard on some faculty. Rudy had, as you know, he had a lot of natural
authority. And he changed in his early days at Evergreen around that. He taught himself not to always
give the student the answer, but to give them a direction to go and find it. And he enjoyed that. And he
told the students what he was doing so it wasn’t—
Koppelman: Wasn’t mysterious..
Martin: No. “And this is why I’m doing it. I have office hours.” Then there was what they were calling at
the time multi-cultural education. And when the first draft of all the programs came in for the first year
of the college there wasn’t any in the curriculum. Rudy was devastated.
Koppelman: Right. I think you told me about this last time.
Martin: So he did what he didn’t want to do at Evergreen, and had had to do every place else. He had to
create, as the only black faculty member, a multi-cultural coordinated studies program. I worried at the
time that Rudy might nurse a kind of bitterness about that. But he didn’t.
5
They created this Contemporary American Minorities program where white people were the
minority and blacks, Indians, Asians and Hispanics—he hired for the purpose of staffing this program a
Hispanic male and a Native American male who is still a close friend. The end of the program was on
Hope Island and they created an intentional living community. It was pathetic, and it was hilarious.
Koppelman: Tell me why it was pathetic and hilarious?
Martin: Well, it rained all the time.
Koppelman: So were they living in tents?
Martin: Yeah. I mean some of them wore their good shoes. One person was quite entrepreneurial, she
brought cigarettes and sold them one at a time to people. But they made it, they knew each other in
different ways than they did before.
Koppelman: Why did they do it? What do you remember about why that’s what they wanted to do at
the end?
Martin: I think that’s what Rudy wanted them to do.
Koppelman: How come?
Martin: To experience exclusion, to experience being a majority.
Koppelman: I mean in the intentional community, who was in the intentional community, the whole
program?
Martin: Mmmhh, the whole program with a couple of exceptions for people who couldn’t do it
physically.
Koppelman: So, who was experiencing exclusion, who was experiencing those things you just
described? If everybody was there I’m not quite getting that.
Martin: The white students had been reading and studying things that would tell them what it was like
to be a minority, and in interaction. They did seminars but I can’t remember how those were organized.
Koppelman: It sounds like what you mean is by leaving campus they got to experience what it was like
to be a minority because even though white students might have been a minority in the program, the
program existed in this context where whites were a majority on campus.
Martin: Right.
Koppelman: So, by leaving and going to do this intentional, maybe a little utopian community.
Martin: Yeah.
Koppelman: That made it real, what they had been reading about.
Martin: Mmmhhh. And Rudy remained close to many of those students over the years and the students
of color and the white students, I mean I don’t know numerically, but they stayed in touch with Rudy
6
after the program was over. I think there have been three reunions of the program. And I think I was at
two of them and the other one I was at Antioch and couldn’t go.
But I just had a visit with one of the first Evergreen students I ever met. Her mother brought her
up here from Chico, California to enroll in Contemporary American Minorities. That’s why she came, she
wanted to understand. And right before she came she twisted her ankle so she was on crutches. And she
came to our house with her mom because her mom was understandably nervous and wanted to check it
out, and her mom was a college professor. So, Leslie had bothered to bring a huge bag of sand.
Koppelman: This is the student?
Martin: Uh-huh. She brought a huge bag of sand and she had to somehow lift it with her leg, this was
supposed to—
Koppelman: Therapeutic.
Martin: Yeah. I said, “Leslie, didn’t you think we had sand in Olympia?” “Oh, I don’t know anything,” she
said.” (laughing) She and her Mexican husband were here about a month ago. And she researched and
found this wonderful cabin on Budd Bay where they stayed for three nights and hung out with us. It was
great to see her.
Koppelman: That’s great. So, when you think back to those early years, are there specific incidents that
come to mind? Or turning points you remember, whether it was a crisis or you remember something
wonderful happening? Or a big surprise, or a moment when people had to come to the table and make
it work? Anything come to mind for you about that kind of thing?
Martin: We had a number of the interdisciplinary programs, it was sort of from the beginning, we had
one, at the most two, fail. It was kind of like, how was it failing? Well, the students were very unhappy
with it. The faculty appeared to have thrown in the towel. And then the effect of that on the deanship,
where Rudy was very quickly after he came to Evergreen, and having to reconstitute, it’s sort of like—
there was a metaphor for it we had, maybe I’ll think of it. And then dealing with the students and they
had the option of joining other programs, of doing independent study. One of the effects of that was if
your program failed, I remember talking with students who felt that they should have done something
rather than just be critical.
Koppelman: You mean that it was some way their fault?
Martin: Yeah.
Koppelman: So they felt responsible in some way?
Martin: Yeah.
Koppelman: That’s interesting.
7
Martin: Now, I didn’t interview all of them, but I think four or five of them came for appointments
trying to figure out how do I put my airplane back together here? This is not good. And a huge
ambivalence about leaving Evergreen. Some did, and it’s perfectly understandable why you would. So
that puts the anti-up on putting together the right team of people. And I guess in a way that’s consistent
with Evergreen, make the space and give the faculty permission to seek out who they want to teach
with, and not have it come from the dean’s area. They’re to help fill out a team if a faculty member
wants to talk about it, but don’t do it, don’t force it. And that helped.
Koppelman: It’s interesting to hear you talk about the early years and digesting problems and
understanding what happened. I wonder if you could say a little bit about the circumstances of your
promotion to Vice President of Student Affairs, which happened in 1986. Can you talk a little bit about
that? You went to graduate school to get your doctorate. You lived in New York for a couple of years to
do your coursework and all that, bringing the boys with you, etc.
Martin: Three years.
Koppelman: You lived in Park Slope in Brooklyn.
Martin: The second time. The first time we lived at 99th and West End Avenue.
Koppelman: Sweet.
Martin: In a pre-war. Used to see all of the musicians headed for 32nd Street, running down the street
on their way to work. I decided at some point that I wanted to be a Chief Student Affairs Officer, and I
thought I had one or two jobs left in me. Becoming the Vice President for Student Affairs was a mixed
experience. It required that I displace one of the people who supported me coming to work at the
college in the first place, Larry Stenberg. That the consulting team that President Olander had put
together involved a major reorganization of Student Affairs, and it organized Larry out into starting a job
that would have been interesting, but since he had been the Dean of Students certainly felt like a
demotion. But he was offered a job that would startup Alumni Affairs. And President Olander thought
that was a good idea because Larry knew so many students.
I had originally applied for a job I thought was a perfect fit for me, half academic and half
administrative in the Advising Center, to be the Director of the Advising Center. And when I was offered
the VP job, which I didn’t even apply for, first thing I asked them was, “What about Larry?” And it was
clear that the president had decided for whatever reason, the reports of the consultants that he brought
in that they needed to have some new faces and create some new structures in Student Affairs. So, I
agonized my way. We were entering a big budget cutting period, too, and I wanted to make sure that
8
you didn’t just create something but that you actually funded it so it could do the work. So I accepted
the job. I don’t think anyone was more surprised than I was.
Koppelman: So, from that vantage point that you had in that job, how did you see Evergreen differently
than you had before? Did you see it differently in some ways than before from that perspective?
Another way to ask that question is what did you learn that you didn’t know before because you were in
that job?
Martin: I think during my work experience at Evergreen, before the Vice President job, I continued to
learn about faculty through students. And hardly a day went by that that wasn’t extremely useful
learning. In terms of advising students to know the faculty well enough to help people connect with the
students they want to connect with. One time a faculty member, can’t remember who it was, asked me,
“Do the students come and tell you all the horrible things about, say, me?” This was in career planning. I
said, “Most of the students I talk to, almost all of them have liked, and in a worst case scenario could at
least tolerate, their faculty because they wanted to learn the subject that that person knew well. And I
didn’t lose that connect when I became Vice President, and I worked at it.
Koppelman: So here’s a question, this is an unfair question, but I’m going to ask it anyway.
Martin: Another one?
Koppelman: Are these unfair questions I’m asking? When you left Evergreen we threw a party for you,
as you’re recall, and it was really quite an event. It was a mournful event that you were leaving
Evergreen, but it was an amazing event because if you’ll remember about 300 came to your party, there
were hundreds of people there. You were the kind of leader at the college that was a very rare thing as
an administrator, very rare. So the reason why it’s an unfair question is I just wonder if you can say why
you think you were able to touch so many people? I mean I can certainly say that, but I’m not the one
being interviewed, but I have ideas about that. And whether any of the things that you brought to that
position were things that you learned from just observing some of the people you’ve admired. For
example, you said about Charlie that he kept his own counsel and he didn’t say a lot. Now, you’re a
much chattier person than Charlie, but I have a feeling that you learned some things from observing him
that you brought to your own work. Do you think that’s fair to say even though you were different from
Charlie? Just in terms of making space for other people to be themselves.
Martin: Mmmhhh. I was never afraid of students. I was comfortable reaching out to them. In terms of,
I’m stumbling here because I don’t know that I externalized the way that I wanted to be with students.
Koppelman: Most of the people who came to this party were your colleagues, they were staff, faculty
and administrators. So those are the people I’m talking about, the people who are doing the daily grind
9
of keeping the college going and who I think really relied on your leadership and a kind of support they
got from you in order to keep themselves going, especially through some of the tough times. So that’s
what I’m getting at.
Martin: I think one of my goals was to be loyal and forthright with the people who reported to me, and
there were a lot of them, but to be there for them. At the same time to help everyone in Student Affairs
to understand that that’s not why somebody goes to college. We’re here to help hold the whole thing
together, but the core action is over here in academics. Doesn’t’ mean that students won’t learn a lot
from each other in the dorms, in their living arrangements off campus, all that will be good. I remember
inviting myself on to the salary setting taskforce that the college had, may still have as far as I know.
Koppelman: There are unions now.
Martin: No more administrative exempt employees?
Koppelman: There are, but they are all unionized now, believe it or not, even though they’re exempt.
Martin: Well, back before there were unions in student services—let’s just take the people in
admissions, the counselors on down. The counselors didn’t make a living wage. I mean it was
unintentional on some level that they were paid so little. I don’t know who would think staying at a
Motel 6 in Moses Lake overnight while you’re meeting with students in their meeting rooms downstairs,
it was a neat thing to do and you would enjoy being away from home. And we were so dependent on
them to tell the story well, and to tell it with good solid information and with presence, no jokes.
Everybody would say, “No grades?” And they’d laugh. So for me I appreciated, I’m focusing on
admissions, but that was a critical thing and remains a critical thing everywhere.
Koppelman: It sounds like what you’re saying is one of the things you gave to the staff, the
manifestation of your devotion to them, to me, was all the people who came to that party for you when
you left, but that devotion was you understood their work from the inside because you’d been in
Student Affairs and all these other capacities for so long. So you really knew what was going on.
Martin: I did, but I wrote a proposal and took it to the taskforce to increase their salaries and they
wouldn’t do it. I spent a lot of time helping them be clear about their expectations. And told them that
we wouldn’t have a chance to try again until the next budget year, and that’s like asking people to live
on hope.
Koppelman: So, the staff knew you were doing this on their behalf?
Martin: They knew eventually.
Koppelman: That’s the kind of thing that really makes a difference to people. They knew you were
looking out for them.
10
Martin: I was trying.
Koppelman: You were. And even if you couldn’t convince the taskforce the fact that people knew that
you were making the effort makes a huge difference to people’s moral and sense of commitment when
they know you have a commitment to them.
Martin: And having said that, I agree with that but I also understand why someone would say no more.
Telling the Evergreen story it takes a while to get your message down and to work your personality into
it. This is not to imply that the salary taskforce were bad people or anything like that, they were dealing
with budget cuts and keeping jobs funded rather than giving a few people a raise. It’s not an easy
balance to strike.
Koppelman: Well, we’ve been talking for a little over an hour. And I’m wondering if there’s anything
coming to mind that you’d like to talk about? We’ll digest and do this maybe one more time.
Martin: It’s indicative of the kind of attachment I had to the college, that in all the places that I worked
Evergreen is the only one where I have been motivated to donate money, and to still miss it. For me it is
all those people.
Koppelman: Well, the situations you describe add up to more than can be captured in an interview.
Martin: It was great good fortune. A lot of people got alienated at Evergreen, disappointed, and it’s
painful to see that. I want to go say, “Do something to help yourself. Just don’t get alienated” because
it’s a horrible place to go. I just never got alienated. I think some people tried to get me alienated.
Koppelman: Well you got out, also.
Martin: Yeah, I chose my time.
End of Interview
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