Shelby Chestnut

JASMINE: Okay, so, this is Jasmine Timmester interviewing Shelby Chestnut. And the date is October 7th, 2021. So, before we even get into the main questions, I want to ask if you could tell me a little bit about, like, how you learned about Antioch, how you decided to come to Antioch, just kind of in--just kind of your life in general, before Antioch.

SHELBY: Yeah, that's a great question. I went to high school in 00:00:30Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I went to a really terrible suburban high school for the first two years, and then applied and was accepted to a school called The Perpich Center for Arts education, which is a statewide art school that's public for Minnesotans and its 11th and 12th grade, I believe. And they had different art areas, I applied as music, I played cello since I was a 00:01:00very small child. And It was probably the first time I'd ever been in, like, a supportive education environment. So this was the late 90s. I'd encountered a ton of homophobia and transphobia at my first high school. And so when I got to Arts High, I was just like really, I don't know, like pleasantly surprised or a little bit shocked that there was other people like me, and also really smart and good at different areas. And I met 00:01:30a woman there, God I wish I could remember her name. I know her name was Liz. She was a guidance counselor at the high school and she was working with students to get them placed in different schools and I at the time 00:02:00was like really focused on music and was going to go there. And unfortunately, my senior year of high school, my--one of my best friends at Arts High was killed, related to gun violence. So he was killed by three guys who 00:02:30were also about our age, like high school, just out of high school. They had a gun and they wanted to know what it was like to kill someone. Like I don't think they genuinely were like, out to murder him. But unfortunately they did. That really like, I think changed my life in terms of like what I wanted to do and how I wanted to be in the world. So I took a gap year and was 00:03:00obviously a mess like, I think losing a close friend at that age is just not something people should go through and it kind of changes you if you do. I took a gap year and the guidance counselor at the Arts High School gave me some schools to look into, thinking like, okay, you have learning disabilities, you are queer and trans and you don't want to play music 00:03:30professionally like, at school. Like that's not the reason you want to go to school. And you're pretty like social justice-focused. I remember, I applied to do like Americorps and I didn't actually get in. So this was like, the internet was like a new thing at that point like a lot of schools didn't really have robust websites. So, I remember going to the internet, the dial-up internet that my family had, and looking at these 00:04:00different schools and I requested information from Antioch, per her suggestion. And I remember seeing queer people on the website and thinking this is like the best life. So I got information and then that fall I was heading to New York and stopped in Yellow Springs, and saw a guidance counselor and did an interview and I just loved it. This was like, I think days before 9/11, like 00:04:30September 11th, 2001. So I got in, I started in a spring semester and there was like nine of us that entered that spring, because it was an off cycle obviously. And it was actually my girlfriend who was driving with me to New York, I mean this was 20+ years ago, but we stopped in Yellow Springs and like, I 00:05:00did my interview, and she was going to school at Pratt--we weren't together at the time, but she always remarks like, how happy I seemed like, kind of being on campus. And I just had never heard of anything like it, other than like, where I went to high school and to think you could get a college degree and like, be around people like you, and learn radical things seemed awesome. I knew nothing about co-op at the time. I kind of, I wanted to be a peace 00:05:30studies major, which at the time there was two professors, Jim and Cheryl Keene, who'd come as like a pair-hire, from the Quaker schools that they taught in. And they did a lot of peace studies stuff. I quickly changed my major, not because I didn't think peace studies was important, but I actually was more interested in like, cultural studies than peace studies. Yeah, so that's how I found out about Antioch. And my--it was a paper application. So I had to like fill it out by hand. Like I didn't even have a typewriter, 00:06:00I don't think.

JASMINE: Wow, that is pretty cool. And let's see. So, I think we'll go ahead and get into the first main question, then, which is "Antioch College has a reputation for having one of the most radically progressive campus cultures in the country, would you agree with this reputation? And what was it like arriving as a new student? So you kind of already touched a little bit on it, 00:06:30but if you want to talk more.

SHELBY: Um, I mean, I think yes, and I've had the privilege of not only being a student but being an alumni who meets a lot of the students and, you know, you all are awesome and I think, are far more... I don't know, engaged than I was as a student in some ways. Because I think it's like two-fold: on one hand, like the campus community is a direct reflection of, sort of what we're learning in the classroom and these bigger social 00:07:00issues, but then people have the added bonus of going on co-op and like being out in the world, and being politicized, and just engaging, and then coming back and bringing those ideas. And for me when I was a student, a lot of the faculty were really the drivers of that knowledge. So I don't know if that's the same for students now. When I entered Antioch, it was the spring of 2002, so post 9/11, I think a lot changed in just like the world and the 00:07:30country in terms of political ideology and activism. And at that point, the--Antioch University had taken full financial control of the college. So they controlled our budget annually, and former president, Bob Divine had just stepped down and was on medical leave, and we were in the process of appointing a new president for the college, and this man, Jim Hall was the 00:08:00acting president for the college and he was like, I think the CFO or the Chancellor for the University. So I remember, I have this like image, it was like Thursday evening and this person, Brandy Ellis who's now a law librarian at Notre Dame, she's a good friend of mine, she had just come back from co-op and she was like real--she's like, she's like this, like little white girl who just was like, smarter than anyone 00:08:30I'd ever met, and mouthy, very mouthy. And she was like telling all these new students they needed to come to the Friday night forum. We used to have these Friday night forms where we would like debate really hot things in McGregor 113, so it was kind of like community meeting but like a specific topic that people would have dialogue about. And it was the budget crisis that we were in. So they had like, shrunk our budget substantially. They had 00:09:00really limited student resources particularly, and we didn't really have a president who understood Antioch. [We had that ?] president who was working for the University. So, that Friday I went to this meeting in McGregor 113 and it was the first meeting of Antioch, it was like my first week on campus. It was packed! I mean, there--standing room only in McGregor, students, staff, faculty, Yellow Springs residents, I mean, everyone was there. And this man 00:09:30who was the acting president--I think it was Jim Hall, but we might need to like research that--is brought in with like a team of people and he's like, Enemy Number One. So he's brought in and like comes down to the floor of McGregor and it just becomes this like, semi-facilitated debate, but quickly kind of devolves to just be like "you're evil and killing us" kind of thing, which is true. I mean, it was kind of the beginning of the end for Antioch at that point because what, six years later, they--the 00:10:00university closed the college. So it was a lot of that, and that same semester, there was dorms--I think it seems like you [Jasmine] are in Units right now, or I'm sorry, Case Commons [a dormitory unit on Antioch's campus]. There was dorms next to there that were very worn out, and not doing so well, and they had a mold problem. And we were basically evacuated from them because they were unsafe to live in, and we started what was called Tent City. So 00:10:30we--there was like 20 or 30 students living on Main Lawn in tents because we were protesting. I don't think I did, If I remember, I'm not a real camper. Anyways, it was like this moment where it was just like, what was happening on our campus, was like a direct reflection of the things that we were learning about or the things that we'd experienced on co-op. And so there was like, I'd say a ton of activism, and it was also the early 00:11:00thousands, so it was a ton of anti-war protesting that was happening. So often, most of us would go to New York City or Washington DC over the weekends for big protests with a group of students. Sometimes facing arrests, sometimes just demonstrating. But yeah, I think it's really radical, I suspect it still is, based on my involvement with the college. I saw that there's like, on the flagpole, like a message written, that's like, you know, 00:11:30very articulate. It's sort of like, we're challenging you about why we have an American flag up, and also we're doing it respectfully, so. I will say the things I learned at Antioch, like among students and staff and faculty are things I still use today in terms of like my work, which I think would be deemed pretty radical. Sorry, that was a long-winded answer.

JASMINE: No, that's totally fine. Yeah, share absolutely as much as you want. That is such an interesting experience, like you, are you 00:12:00saying like this budget crisis and everything, this was happening, like, your first year that you arrived on campus?

SHELBY: Yeah, like my first week is when I like, you know--I kind of knew probably about it, but I'd never been at a place where like the things that were controlling us, or impacting us, we had a direct say in. So students did a ton of negotiating of the budget with comcil [Community 00:12:30Council]. And then we had Administrative Council, which is I think is similar to Community Council, or College Council, I'm sorry. So yeah, we were--and then I--Brandy, who I mentioned became the community manager that following summer, with Shalini Deo, who's a trustee now, and then Tristan Owner [?], who is an alum who lives in Arizona, and then Shannon McCarville, 00:13:00they're an alum, who you should interview for sure, who lives here in Minneapolis where I am. And I worked for them as a work-study student, and then, as a co-op student. Yeah, but that like really changed--I was like, oh, this place is awesome.

JASMINE: [Laughs] Gotcha. Okay. We can go on to the next question which is, "How do you think this culture affected you--" "This culture" as 00:13:30in this like, radically progressive culture. "--affected you during your time attending the college and your life beyond?" And, "Did it affect your understanding of your own gender and sexuality, while you were at Antioch?" And, "Please include co-op experiences when thinking about this question." So, long question.

SHELBY: [Good ?] question, I mean one hundred percent, so I would say like, what I do is very--I'm the director of policy and programs at an 00:14:00organization called the Transgender Law Center. And before that. I was at a place called the New York City Anti-Violence Project, which worked with LGBT survivors of violence. So I've kind of always done community organizing, since Antioch. I went [to] the New School for my master's degree in New York City, and studied very similar sort of... I studied public 00:14:30policy. But like with a focus on like working with directly impacted communities, so they were the kind of the people steering the projects that we were working on. So, a hundred percent, and then--what was--can you repeat the question, or the last part of the question?

JASMINE: So the first part is like, how do you think this culture affected you during your time attending the college, and life beyond? And then the second part is like, specifically asking about, like, did it affect your 00:15:00understanding of your gender and sexuality?

SHELBY: Did it affect my gender and sexuality? Yes, a lot. I think in some good ways and I think in some hard ways. I came out really young. I came out when I was 12 years old, so that would have been 1993? I don't know. I'm I'm 40 this year, so I don't know how long ago that was. 00:15:30You know and I think I knew really early on I wasn't like a lesbian [chuckles]. I was like, oh, like this is... I feel more like a guy than I do a girl, but there really wasn't a lot of words. At the time it was like, where I grew up there was a magazine called Lavender Magazine and it 00:16:00was like, more like you could find LGBT things. So I like picked it up at the at the music store in the town I lived in, and like took the bus to Minneapolis, which was like an hour bus ride, to like find the queer coffee shops. And I think that's like when I first--so probably right before I entered Antioch was like when I started to hear the term "queer" and like understand what it was, and was like, oh that makes a lot more sense. I have to say when I got to Antioch, I had a bit of like a gender crisis, not because I was like, 00:16:30not sure who I was, but I think--so it was like the early thousands, I think access to like, medical care for trans people was becoming a more understandable thing and people were accessing it. But it was still really kind of raced and classed. And I remember getting to Antioch and you know, my--I came 00:17:00from a pretty working-class family, I was--I'm half native, and I'm half-white. So I was raised by my white family for the most part. But really middle-class and my mom as a single mother was pretty poor most of my life. So, I didn't have like a ton of access to a lot of things, I was paying for school on my own. And I remember meeting trans people at Antioch and being like, well, I'm clearly that. That's obvious. But they would kind 00:17:30of constantly remind me like the ways I wasn't trans, if I wasn't on hormones or wasn't like, hadn't had surgery, sort of thing, which I think was pretty common at the time. I think it was a way of trying to articulate those things to people. So anyways, I--it took me probably a year to find like my community at Antioch, which was mostly like, queer and trans people of color. But again the terms like were so different at the time. I 00:18:00mean 20 years ago like, you know, I just look at young people today and I'm like, oh like you're going to save us all because like you understand like gender is a construct and all these things are super binary, and at the time I was pretty binary in terms of like like I wanted to be super masculine and like have like a pretty cis[gender]-looking girlfriend that sort of thing. And I definitely knew I was trans but like, the gender-pronoun stuff was like really 00:18:30confusing for me and almost just like, almost kind of triggering? I was like, well, I want to look like a man but like I don't know what I'm supposed to call myself. But you know, I've been really fortunate to have so many jobs and a career that has allowed me to just sort of explore my own identity, but also like learn from others, and I think it started at Antioch. But it was certainly like, pretty classed in terms of like, who was seen as trans versus who wasn't. There was a ton of white 00:19:00transmasculine, people who'd, like, already medically transitioned, and were kind of pushing that on other people as like, that's how you have to be trans. Which, you know, as we know is not the case. People can be trans any way they want. And also, it just was not accessible in that era. There was one doctor in like the 40-mile radius who you could get a hormone prescription from. So there's--you know where the fire station is in Yellow 00:19:30Springs? There used to be a medical clinic there, and that's where we would go for medical services and there was one doctor there who would work with trans patients. Sorry, that was a long-winded answer.

JASMINE: No, it's great. Yeah, I mean, most of the interviews have been about 40 minutes, but I mean we could go an hour and a half, two hours, if you wanted to. It's totally fine with me. Yeah, that's really interesting. And so talking about like your understanding of your gender and 00:20:00sexuality and and the culture that you were in at that time like what was--was there much of an effect, like going away on co-op and, you know, like kind of leaving the Antioch bubble and then coming back, was there much of an effect on you in that way?

SHELBY: You know, to be honest, I had to do a lot of co-ops on campus, because I was paying for school myself. So, I did one co-op in Atlanta, working 00:20:30for a school that was like, almost like a baby school of Antioch, it was like a k through 12 like work-study school. Other than that, I did co-ops on campus or I had pre-Antioch coops or then was the community manager after, so that I--that counted as a co-op credit. I wish I had taken or been able to take more advantage of co-ops as like a, get-off-campus, because I think it 00:21:00would have helped expand a lot of my understanding of things, but it was really just out of financial need that I didn't co-op off campus a lot. But I did a co-op in Community Government as a first year and then I worked on this Yellow Springs Health survey. So that was like around Yellow Springs. And then I did one in Atlanta at a school. And then I did a community manager after I graduated as my final co-op, and then I had a pre-Antioch co-op credit for 00:21:30working at a restaurant before came to college.

JASMINE: Okay. All right, then to go onto the third question: "Since graduation, have you built a family and/or career, and if so, do you relate these aspects of your life to your time at Antioch in any ways?"

SHELBY: Yeah, I'm actually really really close with most of my Antioch friends still. Oddly enough, I'd say my best friend from Antioch 00:22:00is this person Casey Hinckley who you should probably also interview. Her and her partner, who's also an alum of the College, also, a dear friend of mine, live in Northern New Mexico with two kids. They're a queer family. I've stayed really close with my Antioch folks, and, you know, to some extent when I graduated it was like real, kind of let-down because it was like this moment where I was like, oh, we've gone from this, like family unit to everyone trying to like go fit into society and, turns out, I think 00:22:30we just are better off being part of the sort of micro-society of like queer and trans people. Yeah, I mean, I also just, I think Antioch allowed me to understand for me, the importance of like friends as family. And that sort of world. Career-wise, I've had a really great career after Antioch. I graduated in '05 and so it was kind of right as like, the 00:23:00economy started to decline, and then '08 like, probably the worst recession aside from Covid, where I was unemployed for a long time, but I got a job in Santa Fe, New Mexico working at this place called the Santa Fe Art Institute in like '08, through an Antioch friend. His name is Peter Willig, he lives in Cincinnati, and he had had the job and was leaving, and he was like, "Oh, you should apply for it." And so, I got a job there, and, like, worked with--there was Antioch co-op students coming through. It was great. I was there 00:23:30for a couple years and then I went to grad school in New York City. Then again lived like, two, three blocks from like a lot of my Antioch friends, who'd moved to New York. I was there for about 12 years and then recently have been in Minnesota just handling some family stuff. But yeah, Antioch changed my life in terms of like, understanding of community and family, and then I was very fortunate out of grad school in like 2010 to get a really great job 00:24:00and that kind of propelled my career. And then I've been at my current job for about five years. And it's, you know, every day I get to go to work with queer and trans people of color, trans people. There's a lot of bad things I think happening in the world targeting trans folks, but I think, I think we are really resilient and kind of winning, if you ask me. But yeah, I get paid to do that every day, so it's great.

JASMINE: Awesome, it seems like the, building a family of friends is a common theme so far through the interviews. Was there a--I don't know, would you mind speaking more like how that kind of, how you kind of came to that, at Antioch? Because you know, I know a lot of people like, they come to 00:25:00Antioch and they don't quite understand that, they're not looking for that family of friends, but it just seems to kind of happen.

SHELBY: Yeah, I mean, I think pretty naturally I just was like flocking to the people who I knew, and who felt like home to me. And we really kind of moved as a unit. There was like, you know, there was like times were it ebbed and flowed and, you know, we were in different sequences, and on different co-ops and, you know, people certainly had falling out, and reconnecting, but I 00:25:30think overall like, I just started to find my people and it was really clear who... we just kept taking more people in, you know, and to be honest, like we were kind of like the radical queer and trans folks that did a ton of activism on campus. Kind of lifting up the intersections of like race, class, and gender, and had a number of different protests over the years connected to 00:26:00that, like sort of holding the administration accountable but also our fellow students. And people--there were some years where I think the activism became such a focus that people kind of distanced themselves from us, and so we were kind of just our own little group. But yeah, that, I don't know, to me, felt very natural, to just be like for the first time in my life 00:26:30truly around people who like, I identified with, were having similar experiences. Yeah, and just how, I don't know. We kind of couldn't be without each other, and to some extent, many of those friendships are still the same way. Like my mother recently passed away, and, like, they're the same people who just immediately were like, Okay what do you need? Like we'll come be with you, like we'll help you, you know, just look out for each other. And I think you know, there's like, I don't know if 00:27:00you've ever read the book Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, but it, you know, like the book is, like, set in a very specific time and in a lot of ways I didn't relate to it, but the ways that I think queer and trans folks were like building community in like a time where that was really not a safe option, is something I really felt happening for me at Antioch. It was like, oh, we live in like, Southwest Ohio, which like, I'm from like the Upper 00:27:30Midwest, so I don't see Southwest Ohio as all that Midwestern, I'm like this is pretty close to Kentucky and kind of country. It just felt very different. And like, you know, I had to culturally adjust to a lot of things like, oh, you can't just like--at least where I grew up it was like, people might hate you, but they'll pretend to be nice to you. Whereas like, Ohio, like they're going to be pretty direct about not liking you. So yeah, we just banded together and like, really kind of formed a community, it was like, we'll look after each other.

JASMINE: [Awesome]. To go on to the fourth question: "Are there any ways in which you think your life would be different, had you gone to a more typical liberal arts college?"

SHELBY: Oh, yeah, my whole life would be different. My mom always said like the two things, she was so happy for in my life was that I found the Arts High School here, and that I went to Antioch. I became a really good 00:28:30student at Antioch. There was a woman who used to run the academic support center. Her name was England Kennedy--I think she now teaches at UNM, University of New Mexico--and I had a really hard time with reading and writing, being dyslexic and having some learning disabilities, and she just like helped me so much that I like, became somebody who could understand school and do well. I remember getting to grad school and just being bored to tears because 00:29:00I was like--I picked it thinking, oh, this will be like Antioch 2.0 and I was like, this is trash. These are just like, yuppies who are going to like, a liberal school. Yeah, Antioch, totally changed my life. I don't even think--I think once I saw Antioch and knew about Antioch, I just didn't even apply anywhere else. I was like, no, this is it. So, it was kind of like I had no backup plan if they didn't take me. Yeah, I don't think--I mean there's certainly other schools that I think are similar and I 00:29:30think liberal arts as a whole--I was actually listening to a podcast the other day about sort of liberal arts, and this whole like political correctness, social justice warrior history, because I think there are schools that are similar, you know, like Hampshire [College] is similar and Evergreen [State College] is similar, those sorts of places. But Antioch was just--I loved Southwest Ohio, like I think Yellow Springs and that region is just 00:30:00really magical. I think the campus--and Antioch's history, it's just got like a super rich legacy of activism, like all generations. Yeah, I don't think I could have--I don't think I ever wanted to go anywhere else. Like it felt like home, like the second I found it.

JASMINE: [That's] really cool. Yeah, we kind of--I think it is--that question can be kind of like, eh, well, obviously life would be 00:30:30totally different, but I appreciate the response. The last question is, "Is there any message that you would give to the current and future students of Antioch, if you could, and any message for the current and future LGBTQ+ youth in general?"

SHELBY: I would say, Antioch students, like really make it your, make it the education you want. There's just a ton of resources, both in the 00:31:00faculty and the staff, and in the alumni, and in co-op. And I think Antioch--like we need Antioch right now. Like I think this country is having sort of a bit of a moral crisis. Like, where do we go? What do we want to do? You know, we all survived like four years of Trump. And I think it's, you know, he's gone, but I think there's great threats that are still out there, and I think Antioch and like social engagement and sort of, progressive thinking is like what we need right now to not only like, move this 00:31:30country forward but to like make a mark in higher education. Like there's no school like Antioch, there never has been, and there never will be. And now you have all these schools kind of, trying to take parts of Antioch and replicate it, but they don't do it as well as we do. So my advice would be like, come to Antioch. Bring your friends. You know, anyone you can 00:32:00talk to, talk to them. Like people--I think a lot of different people can do well at Antioch. And what was the last--LGBT folks? Or young people?

JASMINE: [LG]BTQ+ youth in general.

SHELBY: Yeah. I mean, I think like, I am not one to say like, "It gets better," because I've been the kid who, like, you know, was suicidal, or facing like physical threats, that could like really hurt me permanently. And 00:32:30also, when I finally got to Antioch and met people who were like me, a lot of that like, shame and sadness and fear, just dissipated because I was like, oh I'm not alone. I think there's so much youth activism right now for queer and trans people, that people should find it and even if they have to kind of do it in secret because their family or their friends aren't supportive, they should definitely do that. And I think, you know, for me, I work 00:33:00with a lot of trans, young people and I'm just like, constantly astounded at their like resiliency and vision, like, they're coming up with ways of like, saying to hell with the binary, and these constructs that like, don't serve us, even that we created five, ten years ago. So, I learn something new every day from queer and trans young people. You know, and it's fascinating, we're facing a ton of anti-trans legislation across 00:33:30the country, targeting young people specifically. And, I just watched a video of people that I work with and they're all trans young people and they're saying like listen, like, not only are we going to be alright, we need adults to stop messaging that they're going to take care of us. Like we can take care of ourselves, but you need to trust us. And I think that, to me, is like a message that I really wish I'd gotten. Like, you don't need some adult to validate your experience, you need other people like you to 00:34:00validate your experience, and for me, I was super fortunate to find that at Antioch. It changed my life.