Rochelle Smith Item Info
Rochelle Smith
Topics:
Rochelle Smith:
Interviewer:What is your name and position at the university?
RS:My name is Rochelle Smith; I am a reference and instruction librarian and an associate professor. I am the librarian to the humanities part of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences. I am also a Vandal because I graduated from the masters program for creative writing at U of I. That’s not why I am here now, but it’s part of my UI history.
IN:In terms of race and ethnicity how do you identify?
RS:I identify as Black. I prefer that term, especially because I am from the Caribbean. It’s more inclusive. I have used African American because I am an American citizen, but it’s complicated like these things often are. Black, non-Hispanic I guess if you're going to do the census style question.
IN:What made you choose the University of Idaho when choosing where to work?
RS:I actually lived in Moscow for a couple of years back in the 90s and I just loved Moscow. I came here just to visit friends and kind of fell in love with the area. I moved away for library school and was away for several years, then came back for grad school and I was hoping to be able to stay, so when the job at the UI Library opened up, which happened while I was in grad school, I applied and got it. So, it was really the area as much as anything else.
IN:What challenges have you experienced as a member of the University of Idaho faculty and staff?
RS:A lot of challenges have to do with resources. Money is scarce, and it has been the entire time I have been here, especially after the financial crisis in 2008. I think that has been a challenge for everybody, feeling like there’s things that we would like to do, but can't do. So I guess that is one kind of answer. Another one is community building. For example, with Dr. Freeman I am on the Black Faculty and Staff Association which just founded itself a year or so ago. It surprised me that in 2020-2021 there really weren't affinity groups on campus for staff and faculty the way there are for students.
There is not even a policy in the faculty/staff handbook on how to create a university-recognized affinity group, so if the Native American staff or faculty, or the LGBTQ or the Latinx faculty or staff wanted to say here we are, how do we get a group started, how do we get money, how do we sustain ourselves, how do we shape ourselves, there aren't clear pathways to doing that. I am the co-chair of BFSA, and I have had other faculty trying to form affinity groups say they are so glad that BFSA has begun the process, and to let them know when there is some kind of university policy in place. So, we're in the middle of trying to do that now.
IN:What has the climate been while you have been here?
RS:I am trying to be diplomatic and also truthful. I certainly think that when I lived here in the 90s, and again I was pretty young, and just living life, that was in the wake of a lot of white supremacist activity that had happened in northern Idaho. So, my friends at the time were like, are you sure you want to move to Idaho? Moscow was always that little blue dot, always had that little college-town, old-hippies feeling to it, that I think a lot of college towns around the country have. I think one of the things that feels like it has changed in the past decade is the political climate in general.
It has made every place feel different, especially smaller places, but I think the presence of Christ Church has really changed things, in terms of Moscow feeling different, feeling more like encamped sides, and you pick sides, and each side has a coffee shop, and you only go to the coffee shop on your side. Which was not the case in the 90s. I think Moscow in the 90s felt a lot more peace and love and tie-dye. That doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty of issues in the 90s, it just means my engagement with it was more relaxed. Coming back to Moscow, my friends were very clear about the changes, like no no no, that is Christ Church. Some of the conversation that was going on around Christ Church surrounded Doug Wilson’s comments on slavery, where there were university forums discussing that and so on. In some ways Christ Church has increasingly pushed an agenda that has felt very divisive.
And to me, even if you're from a very conservative religious body, there’s plenty of places you could go without defending slavery. Even when going up against women’s reproductive rights, I would be like not cool, but I would get it, that would be very much in line with your larger project. But slavery is a weird thing to stick up for. And I mean who knows why, I am not enough of a political scientist to understand that. I do definitely feel like I miss some microagressions, but one of my survival strategies for living here, which seems dramatic to say, is to the extent I can, socially or morally, to assume the best. I assume the best a lot, and I think that is just who I am, how my own philosophy of life goes. It definitely feels like, we’re in this moment of great social change so everything is much more stirred up, and I think it feels a lot more like there are people we do like and people we don’t like.
IN:Have you been able to develop positive relationships with other black people during your time here at the University of Idaho?
RS:Yeah, I mean keeping in mind there aren't a whole lot of us. If you are a Black person in a majority white space, or a majority non-Black space, the majority of non-Black spaces are going to be white spaces. I think there is always a tendency to be like, hey I see you and you see me, and we nod. I think the Black Faculty and Staff Association is really important because there are people in that group that I don’t know if I ever would have spoken to without it.
And that is not because I wouldn’t have wanted to, it's because you might see someone across campus that you have no direct contact with, I am not going to run across campus and say, “hello fellow Black person! Let’s be friends!” Because that is weird, and I would find that weird if someone did that to me, and so I think that there are not a lot of avenues for connection. So again, I think that the BFSA is an important place for connection, both for people on the Moscow campus and around the state, like Professor Shaakirrah Sanders who is a law professor who is now in Boise but used to be here in Moscow.
IN:What do you feel has been your greatest contribution to your department during your time at the university?
RS:That is a good question. Well I work at the library, and I am a reference librarian, but a teacher first of all. Undergraduate education is really important to me. So I think one contribution that I make is modeling curiosity and passionate engagement for students. And, specifically as an amateur, a generalist. Librarians are jacks and jills of all trades. If you're at the reference desk you could be asked a history question, and the next person could have a chemistry question or the next person a literature question. We are continually toggling between topics, which means I am good at moving between topics.
Let’s say you’re in the English department, you probably spend most of your time thinking about literature. You aren’t necessarily connecting those ideas to science, or to other subjects, but you may need to. It is hard to connect between different topics, and I think that it is something that I am good at, I have the mental space and the energy to think about how things connect. So, I can be a good source for help and ideas that can be connected with one another. Especially with undergrads where you’re not an expert at everything. You may love things, but you’re not yet an expert.
IN:Do you feel like the University has done enough to support you during your time here?
RS:Um, that is a hard question. That is a really hard question. In one sense the university could do more in terms of supporting everybody. For one example, closing budget lines and not hiring new people when someone retires. That can end up taking a lot of funding out of supporting teaching. I think a lot of people would say that, and not just about this university; it’s a general trend. A lot of administration and a lot of fundraising for new sporting facilities like our basketball arena, but not a lot of maintenance on existing buildings and not a lot of making sure we have enough people to teach English or history. The history department is tiny, it is such an important subject and it is what? Seven people? I think over time, making sure that those areas are supported has shifted in ways that I don't agree with.
- Title:
- Rochelle Smith
- Type:
- text
- Format:
- application/pdf
- Preferred Citation:
- "Rochelle Smith", Black History at the University of Idaho, Black History Research Lab, University of Idaho
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/blackhistory/items/rochelle_smith.html
- Rights:
- In Copyright. Educational Use only. Educational use includes non-commercial use of text and images in materials for teaching and research purposes. Digital reproduction permissions assigned by University of Idaho Library. For more information, please contact University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives Department at libspec@uidaho.edu.
- Standardized Rights:
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/