Fighting Oppression

Nate is a TRiO advisor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He also teaches the first year TRiO class for students at the University, and teaches another class in South Africa every year. He has been working at the University with the TRiO program for 16 years now.

Wake Up Call

As a younger teen I was fascinated by social justice work. My dad was gay, he passed away eight years ago. I had a judge from Hennepin county literally say to me that I was safer with my abusive stepfather than I was with my gay dad, so at this very young age I was kinda shocked by this. There was something that didn’t click for me, being this privileged white guy and not knowing any of this stuff. The interesting thing about growing up with a gay father is when I was a young person, I didn’t learn hatred yet. I didn’t learn homophobia, yet. But when I got to high school I learned homophobia really quickly. I lived in this shitty neighborhood in Minnetonka, which if you know Minnetonka it’s quite wealthy. In eighth grade I went to Minnetonka junior high school for one year, and I was in this new student organization for like kids who were new to the school or whatever. And the family that moved in next door, they were also new, and so their daughter was in this group with me. Her name was Sarah, and somebody said to her, I’ll never forget it, they said, “I heard you have a fag living next door.” And it actually became quite terrifying and violent to be in that school. I used to get harassed like crazy and bullied on the bus. The funny thing about homophobia and hatred is that it can rot you in ways that it shouldn’t, even when you know better.

This teacher that I met in high school got me involved with one of the first things that I ever got involved with. These two non-profit organizations started this underground railroad simulation. They would literally go to high schools and take kids out to the woods, and chase them through the woods at night like they were on the underground railroad. I was a participant on it because of this teacher, and then after that I became a volunteer and worked for the program. It was transformative to these youth. So like as a junior and senior in high school, I really learned about white supremacy and white privilege. I was around these dialogues about white supremacy all the time and I started making connections to the homophobia and classism, and I would say this underground railroad thing was just huge for me as this white kid. That was like, “Yo, wake up.” That was the first wake up call.

[In college] I started down the music major path, and it’s interesting because when this whole music thing started to collapse, this mentor of mine said, “Ah man you really gotta meet this guy named Terrance Quami Ross in Youth Studies”. We scheduled a half hour together, and we hang out for four hours. It’s literally a meeting that changed my life. This guy had me convinced that I should join Youth Studies because at that time it was the only real social justice type of major on campus. It was the most diverse major at the time; black, brown, gay, straight, they were all in this major. And I’ll be honest with you, I never thought I would work with youth. I loved young people, but it was like, “Do I wanna work in non-profit with young people?” So I took a summer job with TRiO upward bound. I didn’t even know what TRiO was. I really liked this TRiO program, but it was a short summer job, and I had to go back to grad school. The summer job ended and I was looking for grad assistantships, cause I was literally working in a parking booth my first year of grad school. It was awful, I was getting sick all the time. I got a phone call from an old mentor of mine that said “Hey, TRiO students support services is hiring a graduate assistant, I think you should apply”. And here I am, sixteen years later, still working in TRiO.

Nate and his students in South Africa

Ubuntu

I believe the more we engulf ourselves in communities that are different from us, the smarter we become and the more free we become. When I was an undergrad here at the U, I was really pissed off, and I had this faculty [member] who was a professor and a mentor of mine, who said, “You know your stepdad is still beating you. You’re angry and you let him control your life because you’ve never let him go or you’ve never forgiven him.” This was a profound thing to me. I knew a lot about South Africa because of anti apartheid work in high school. South Africa, after the end of the apartheid, they went through this process of healing and that was called Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC, where the victims under apartheid forgave the whites who committed horrendous human rights abuses and atrocities like you would not believe.

In 1991, Nelson Mandela was released as a political prisoner and he initiated this thing called the Truth and Reconciliation where victims of torture and abuse could come to a court like body and come face to face with their perpetrators and tell them what they had done. The perpetrators had to come to the truth with the crime they had committed, meaning in exact detail so it could be reported and could be verified. It was all about the truth, if they told the truth and they could prove that they were saying the truth, they gained amnesty. Rather than putting these people in prison, or turning the tides and killing all these white people from the apartheid government, they literally fucking forgave them. Which is literally insane when you think about it. It comes from an African philosophy of ubuntu: “If I oppress you, I oppress myself.”

The whole idea fascinated me, and like I could go somewhere in this world and learn what that meant and then literally do that for my own self. So, when I graduated from the U of M I literally packed up all my shit and sold everything I owned and moved to South Africa (laughs). The only person I knew in South Africa was a guy who was a guest professor here at the U of M in Youth Studies the year before I went there. He said, “Come and I’ll make sure you have whatever you might need. I’ll throw you in a community and you just go for it.” So I did it. It was nuts, it was crazy, but I did it. The people there became my dearest family. They are the ones who listened to me and helped me change. I came back a totally different person and that’s why I went to grad school, I promised them I would continue my education.

Nate and his TRiO students at the program retreat.

I’m Happy Here

Through this job I have so many opportunities. I’m now a faculty [member] for the school social work and social justice minor. My main point when I was building [the TRiO] class was like, “I am done lying to students. I am done helping the University lie to students. So, I’m going to put this curriculum together in a totally different narrative of what these institutions are actually like for underrepresented students, and I’m going to bring that into the classroom, and tell them the truth, as hard or whatever [as] it may be to hear, in hopes that that fires students up in a way” so to speak. “To self-author their journey here, and know how to navigate this stuff in this more personal kind of way” or whatever. And so we tried it. And after the first time we taught it, the evaluations came back and 100 percent of students said they would recommend the course. So yeah, our whole point in that class is to kind of bring up different types of identities that are similar across TRiO students, and then just really talk about what’s really happening in higher education around those identities, and then letting students decide for themselves what to do with it.

As far as I’m concerned we’re one of the only real radical social justice programs on this campus. We do our job really well, with students who are coming with low ACTs and less preparation for college. The University does not want these students here but they can’t get rid of them because we’re here. And they keep attacking the students of color, the low-income students, and students of disabilities.There’s so many people on this campus who think they are good, well they are good people, but they don’t get it. They refuse to give things up in order for our students to be successful. That is the hardest thing of this job, and the fact that we have to deal with that every day. There’s times where I think, “I’m going to leave, this is too much,” and times where I think “Is this really what I want to be doing?” But through all of it, I have been like completely humbled by this program. I would not work anywhere else. Mostly it’s just the students that keep me coming back.

Back in the day I used to work in the residence halls as a CA (Community Advisor), and there used to be this kind of general saying that like, “20 percent of students are going to love you, 'cause you’re a CA. 20 percent are going to hate you 'cause you’re the CA, and the rest are going to decide once they meet you.” I find that to be very true as an advisor too. I have so many students in my history that are just super cool, and I’m just really close to, and close to their families. I love getting up in the morning to come in here. I learn so much from these students and their communities and their families. The most meaningful thing to me for sure is the relationships I have with students. They may start off in my office thinking “this guy’s going to tell me what to take and and not to take and remove my hold and stuff.” And later on, they are friends of mine, and now interestingly enough they are coworkers of mine. My whole life is just really fascinating that way and really meaningful that way. I just feel really full of meaning in what I do, even though I don’t get paid shit. I don’t care though. I just dig it. I don’t know why I would leave. The cool thing about higher ed is that you have a ton of autonomy. That’s really important to me. There’s a ton of resources here too, that’s the cool thing about the U. I hate the U and I love the U, you know what I mean? I hate the U for what it does to underrepresented students and I love it for the resources and the underrepresented students, you know what I mean?

Everything changes so fast, and I never expected to be here, and certainly didn’t expect to be here as long as I have. Now I just don’t even think about it anymore. I’m happy here. This is cool. We’re just still here, until they kick my ass out, I’m here (laughs).

Story facilitators:

Alec Showen, Sergio Molina, Teagan McIntyre