Shannon McCarville

JASMINE: Okay, this is Jasmine Timmester interviewing Shannon McCarville--is that right?

SHANNON: Mmm hmm, yep.

JASMINE: Shannon McCarville, and it is December 7th, 2021. So to get us [started here], I'd like to ask you if you could tell me just a little bit about like your early life, you know, growing up, you know, maybe your family situation, and then maybe, you know, how you heard about Antioch and how you decided to go?

SHANNON: Yeah, great. So--and my pronouns are they/them, so you know. So, I was 00:00:30born in Brookings, South Dakota, and I spent the first 10 years of my life there. I have, I'm one of five kids, and the second youngest. There's actually a big gap in my family, my siblings are 9, 10 and 11 years older, and six years younger. And so, we lived in South Dakota. I moved to 00:01:00Minnesota with my parents and younger sister when I was 10, we moved up north-east of the Twin Cities, and I went to three different high schools. My junior and senior year, I went to Purpich Center for Arts Education, which is a public magnet school for the arts in Golden Valley Minnesota. And 00:01:30that was sort of a, the--obviously growing up in South Dakota and Lindstrom, Minnesota, I never really fit in, there was always something different about me, and going to Arts High was sort of like a pre-Antioch experience, where all of a sudden I went from a very traditional place that I did not like, to a queer 00:02:00 utopia, progressive, arts-based community. So, and there were actually, it was, we joke that it's a feeder school for Antioch because several people from my time also went to Arts High. And I, it was my, I found out about Antioch because my dad had asked both of my theater teachers at 00:02:30Perpich, at Arts High, where I should go to college, and without, you know--and the conversation was separate, and they both said without hesitation, Antioch. So, I knew I needed to check out this place, and it was one of the colleges I applied to, and I visited, and as soon as I walked on campus, even though I had had this idea of where I wanted to go to college, in that it would be on a coast, in a city, around, you know, 10,000 students, and then 00:03:00when I got to Antioch, it was none of those things, but I still knew that it was something that I wanted to experience. So, I entered Antioch in 1998, and... what else? Early life, coming to Antioch... Should actually have the [questions up].

JASMINE: Yeah, no worries. This one is just before the core missions. So no, yeah, that's, I think a great summary of how you became introduced and how you got interested in Antioch. With your family, you know, you said you have a lot of siblings and everything. Were you--are--do you remain close with 00:04:00them? You know, how has that kind of relationship, you know, been for you? If you don't mind speaking on that.

SHANNON: Yeah, I am, I would consider myself close to my family. My parents are still together and two of my sisters live in Minnesota, and then I have another sister and a brother who live down in Texas. And I have had a very close relationship with my sisters my whole life, and my mom, and they've been, sort of integral in my growth as a person, and very 00:04:30supportive of me throughout my life. And my brother and my dad are fine.

JASMINE: That's great to hear that, you know, some of those relationships are so positive. Let's see, then. Okay, let's go into the first question here, which is--kind of a compound question--"Antioch College has a reputation for having one of the most radically progressive campus-cultures in the country." The first part of the question is, "Would you 00:05:00agree with reputation?" And the second part is, "What was it like arriving as a new student?"

SHANNON: It's hard for me to imagine anyone disagreeing with the assertion that it is one of the most radical campuses in the country, especially now 00:05:30having, you know--I knew right away, I knew from day one that it wasn't like other colleges, and living through it, I knew that it was a very different college experience than my peers were having other places, whether it was a small, liberal arts college or a big state school. I knew that it was a very unique experience, and now, you know, all these years later, that just gets confirmed over and over again when I talk to people about their 00:06:00college experiences that, I don't know anybody who's had quite the same experience that I did, and the only people who I feel really, really, really understand it are people who went to Antioch at some point or another. I know that we have our schools that are considered contemporaries who have also either survived or not survived. When I was there, we talked a lot about Goddard being similar to us, and Marlborough, and Evergreen, which is a 00:06:30state school school in Arizona, and Hampshire as well. And even, you know, talking to students from those colleges, it still really sticks out to me that Antioch is a unique experience, and there wasn't... and I would joke, throughout my time there, when I would have something that seemed like a very 00:07:00traditional college experience, like, "Oh, haha! We're having a traditional college experience!" Because I even knew at that time, that what... basically everything from the academics to especially the community, to just the, I mean, explicit politics of the community, that it was unique. And I can 00:07:30remember, when I got to campus, it was a community meeting day, and I walked up to McGregor Hall, and there were three people outside having a cigarette, and they appeared to be very queer to me. And as soon as I walked up, they were, like, "Hey, are you a prospective student?" and they engaged me in conversation right away. And I felt, you know, as a high school kid coming to 00:08:00visit a college, how cool is that? That these like, older, queer folks just started talking to me. And then having the experience of going to community meeting too, and seeing like, wow, this is a space where students are, you know, are kind of running the show and setting the agenda, and administrators are listening to what we have to say. Seems very special.

JASMINE: That's awesome. And so, you know, kind of getting to the aspect of 00:08:30the question about being radically progressive, as far as the campus culture, you know, are those kind of the things that you think of, in terms of, you know, why it was--why it felt, you know, progressive to you, is it, you know--so it was kind of the welcoming nature, the way that, you know, students had a say, and just, you know, possibly just disproportionately queer, you know, campus that it had then?

SHANNON: I should connect you with one of my friends Nadine, who did her senior 00:09:00project on queerness, and she had done a survey of students and how many identified as queer, and I don't remember the exact number, but I do remember it being disproportionate, and how cool that was. I think that the, what seems radically progressive to me about Antioch isn't one 00:09:30thing, it's most things. When you hear, you know, going back to the history of the college and, you know, being one of the first colleges to have a woman professor, and mowing anti-war slogans into the golf course, being famously anti-war and protesting for civil rights, there was such a rich history of activism before I got there. And I feel like it also includes the 00:10:00level of discourse that happens, you know, one of the things that makes Antioch unique is how small it is. For better, or for worse, everybody's talking to everybody and everybody's engaging on every subject, and it is in some 00:10:30ways, you're going to get a community of people who are coming together around social issues, because that's what Antioch is known for, and people are generally in the same political ballpark as each other, you know, it can feel like there are common goals that we all want, even though we're 00:11:00very, very, very different individuals. But there was a sense of like, you know, we all want to work for, you know, an equitable society, and one where people feel valued and safe, and that we can be authentic and create change in the world. I do think that the rallying cry of Horace Mann's quote ["Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."], which we joke about all the time and is a very intense quote when you when you think 00:11:30about it. It is something that, you know, that is a reason why we went there is because we wanted to create change. It seems like Antioch is not a place that you attend college to just graduate and go on to your normal, professional life. Like, you come to Antioch, there's something specific about Antioch that has attracted you there, and definitely part of the 00:12:00co-operative education program, I think, stands out for a lot of people. But just having--just feeling like as an institution Antioch wants to develop leaders and activists in a way that's more authentic than just a college brochure of like, "Do you want to be--do you want to lead, or do you want to follow?!" Like, I would say, even, you know, shortly after I got there, 00:12:30it's like, we're a campus of leaders. We are not a campus of followers, and sometimes that is hard. Because, you know, we all have ideas about what--the change that we would like to see and we would like to be, but that means there's going to be a lot of hard conversations that are continually happening, a lot of conflict, and navigating that is hard, because 00:13:00that's another thing that makes Antioch so unique is that, there aren't a lot of college communities that have less than 500 people on campus, and we were in a lot of ways, sort of empowered and also left to ourselves to figure out how to navigate that. And I think that there's, that might have changed since the college reopened, too. I know that there's different ways that the college is being run, but it always shocks people when I tell them after the cafeteria closed, there was one adult on campus. You know, like we governed ourselves, you know, we carried--the 00:13:30Hall Advisor Coordinators carried pagers in case of emergencies, you know, like if the police showed up or the fire department showed up on campus, it was students that were communicating with them. And I don't know many other people who had such an autonomous environment in college. So, and we 00:14:00would, you know, there was always an energy around activism that you'll never really experience again in the same way. That everybody is young, and this is the time where it's like, we are out of the hou--we were, you 00:14:30know, out of our homes and were able to really explore who we are, and what we want, and we are given this very loose framework, and it's really, it's up to us to... I don't know, I'm losing my train of thought, but.

JASMINE: Yeah, I get what you mean, you know, I think that statement 00:15:00you made of, you know, you were empowered, but also, you know, left to your, left it up--they left it up to you, to essentially run the campus and everything, like, that really, I think, brings in both sides of it in that it was simultaneously empowering, like you said, and there's a 00:15:30certain level of maturity that that inevitably is going to bring about, but then at the same time, that's a lot of responsibility that other people your age weren't having to, you know, take up. And so, that's really quite a unique experience--you know, today, there's definitely not as much of that [at Antioch], there's definitely a lot more, you know, staff and 00:16:00administration running things as opposed to students running things themselves, but I think you can still see that a little bit, and yeah, that I can still see that same sort of dynamic today, of, you know, having maybe extra responsibilities that you wouldn't see elsewhere, and how that can be both beneficial and also quite taxing as well. Let's see, I think we 00:16:30can go on to the next question, then, which is another compound question, multiple questions in one. "How do you think this culture affected you during 00:17:00your time attending the college and your life beyond? Did it affect your understanding of your own gender and sexuality?" And please include your co-op experiences when thinking about this question.

SHANNON: I think that I had already had the benefit of going to a high school that was really inclusive, you know, and coming to Antioch obviously 00:17:30furthered that journey, I mean you're going to learn more about yourself in college, it's probably the time in your life where you learn the most about yourself. And I think about any other place that I could have gone, and that it would have been different. I feel like very few places were as queer 00:18:00affirming as Antioch at that time, and, you know, radically affirming. And I'm sure a lot of colleges are catching up to that, but something that I am... something that I talk about when I talk about Antioch is that it is truly about 20 years ahead of its time, in that, you know, there's plenty of 00:18:30conversations happening around affirmative consent now--there weren't any happening in 1993, and it... I think that the... the diverse identities and experiences of students would also not have been found other 00:19:00places, in that people showed up, day one there were people that showed up radically, authentically themselves, and others, you know, they developed their sense of self and their identity, you know, throughout the four years, or maybe it sort of came to them afterwards, but there was... there 00:19:30definitely was a feeling where I can be my exact self on campus, when very few of us were that before, and you wouldn't have necessarily expected that going to a college in rural Ohio, that it would be such a radical place, but it introduced me, you know, like, I would say that the community that you find there--wait, let me start over with this thought. I think in every 00:20:00queer person's journey, there is a list of identities that we try on until we find what's right, and just being immediately accepted when I came in as you know, I'm not even sure exactly how I identified at that point, I know I think I started coming out at 16 as bisexual and then was 00:20:30identifying as like, gay, lesbian, and then I think shortly after I got to Antioch, I'm like, "My identity is dyke," and, you know, by the end of college I had realized that, you know, lesbian and dyke just weren't really for me, and it was--and queerness and the word "queerness" 00:21:00was something that existed at Antioch in ways that it didn't exist in other communities, even. The word hadn't been really accepted as a reclamation yet, I even had a co-op advisor who was gay, he was like, "Can you help me understand why people call themselves queer?" And you know, "That was something 00:21:30that people used against me my whole life," you know, and having conversations like that was really important. It was you know, my first, my first year of college where a friend of mine started to transition and that was the first person I'd ever met who had transitioned, it wasn't part of the conversation at all, that was happening. And this person had grown up in 00:22:00Springfield, Ohio, and had their buddies that they'd had since childhood, and it was just sort of like, you know, This is who I am, and everyone said, Cool. That makes sense. And then I can remember a couple of years into Antioch then we had an incoming class that had several trans 00:22:30guys, you know, and it was just sort of like, okay, like, great! This is, you know, this feels totally normal and it wasn't a thing like we had to be like, "There're going to be some transgenders on campus." It was just like, not even a conversation. It was just like, oh, okay, here's some new students and there wasn't--I didn't really see any growing pains around that, like, it was already so... I mean "accepting" doesn't 00:23:00really... that's not really the word, but "inclusive" doesn't really fit either. It's just sort of like, this is who we are, and it's not even a case of like, you know, students are going to accept other students, you know, it's just sort of like, we are the students and this is who we are, and if you were uncomfortable with queerness, like, you sort of just 00:23:30got over it, you know? Like it wasn't like there was, you know, the... There wasn't--even, you know, the few like, frat boys we had on 00:24:00campus, it was like, homophobia wasn't something that showed up in a traditional way. And there... and I can't think of a lot of places that was true in 1998. So that felt--it's weird to look back and be like, "Oh, what a blessing that was," you know, and how strange it is to say now, but it was a really, really big deal to be able to come into a school and like, your 00:24:30gender and sexuality is just fine. You know, it's not going to be an issue and it's not something that in and of itself is going to create conflict. You know, we had every semester we would have our Queer Center meeting and you know, like 30 or 40 people would show up, which is a good portion of the campus when it's so small, but you start making connections, and then those connections can last, you know, throughout the rest of your time at 00:25:00Antioch or beyond. So I found it to be, you know, in terms of like having a queer and trans identity, it's almost like it was a non-issue.

JASMINE: And yeah, I mean that's that's great. With that, would you say that it was very easy to experiment or conducive for experimenting 00:25:30then? And you know, were there any potential drawbacks I guess to you know, that openness and how it was just so different from, you know, the rest of the country, really, not even just other colleges? Just really trying to get at, you know, kind of that claim of, you know, "echo chambers" and "living 00:26:00in a bubble," you know, was there any kind of, you know, feeling of like, maybe because we're so different from the rest of society here, maybe I'm not being prepared for the quote-unquote "real world"?

SHANNON: I think the concept of a bubble is interesting. It's 00:26:30the same thing we talked about at my high school as well, and it seems to me like, when you are going to school in a town of 5,000 people in rural Ohio, with less than 500 students, like that is the definition of a bubble and that's, I mean, that's reality. And that's--and I know that living 00:27:00in a bubble is seen as a bad thing, but that's one of, you know, that's the environment that's created specifically when you have that small of a community in you know, in a rural area. Or not, I mean, we, you know, you can have bubbles anywhere, but it's hard for me to to 00:27:30envision, like how to have... I mean, people say "living in a bubble" as a concept, but it's like, what is that--like, what is the opposite, then, of that? Is it like, true integration, you know, into the larger world? Because then you sort of lose out on the experience that you're having in that bubble, too. So, people say it like it's a bad thing, but I don't necessarily think living in a bubble for four years of your life--but 00:28:00not even that because you're out in the world, I mean I think that the thing that pops the bubble is co-op. And I think that that is the balance to this really extreme community experience that we're having is that--and you are, you know, sent off into the world for better or for worse, and people feel varying degrees of preparedness for that, but I think that without co-op it would have seemed like we were less prepared than, you know, when we all left, but as a 19 year old, I moved to New York City for the summer and 00:28:30lived in Manhattan and stage-managed a performance art venue. So, I wouldn't necessarily say that I felt like I lived in a bubble. I feel like it was... it definitely... it forces you out of whatever bubble you feel like you're in when you go on co-op, regardless of the co-op, unless 00:29:00you do four co-ops that are at home with your parents, which is also fine if that's the experience that you want to have. But without Antioch, I wouldn't have worked at a homeless newspaper in Seattle, you know, these are experiences that were facilitated by Antioch that balanced the insular nature of the community. And I actually feel like that prepared us in some ways more than others, I can remember my parents talking to me about my 00:29:30little sister... I don't know, she was, like, when she was starting her vet school, and moving in with roommates and, and all of this stuff and how worried they were, and I was just like, do you not remember when I moved to New York when I was 19? Do--like, what--what--you know, how different those 00:30:00standards can look for somebody who is like an independent person, you know, an independent young person who made the choice to go to Antioch knowing that they would go off into the world and do these cooperative education experiences and make it work, and figure out how to live in New York on a hundred dollars a week, you know? Like, so I think in that way, we were really prepared, and I think in the traditional schooling way, you know, we 00:30:30weren't always as prepared. So, just in that we did not get a very traditional education always and, you know, I pursued a second undergraduate 00:31:00degree in filmmaking, you know, and being told like, "Well, you have to take English 1 and 2, because you didn't take that at Antioch," and it's like, I don't even think we offered English 1 and 2, you know, but I was also writing 20-page papers my first year! So, that can be frustrating in that experience, and I know people have a hard time, like, navigating not having grades for grad school, and we have a lot of, you know, less of like, 00:31:30technical degrees, which can be hard if, you know, I know the education program changed when I was there and it can be, you know, I didn't know a lot of stem folks at Antioch. So I think in those ways, it can feel like the non-traditionalness was a hindrance, but I think in the real 00:32:00life, the real--I don't know, the practical applications of the skills that we learned at Antioch, I feel, prepared me and I feel like I have really, like most Antiochians, like kept in touch with so many folks, and I see them thriving all over the world and leading really interesting lives. I 00:32:30don't know many boring Antioch graduates, I'll be honest, like I feel like if I were to walk into a room of sixty-year-olds, I'd be like, "Oh God, what is this going to be like?" But if those sixty-year-olds are all Antioch graduates, I know we will have something to talk about.

JASMINE: That's a great point, yeah, it's definitely a sign of the very unique and sometimes radical culture. You talked a little bit 00:33:00about your co-ops and everything. Would you like to add more to, you know, how those co-ops added to your overall experience of Antioch and you know, your development? Or, you know, we can move on as well if you feel like you said enough.

SHANNON: I think co-ops were amazing and hard. I think that the 00:33:30nature of the the mixed schedule was really difficult and being off-schedule with people that you know, and it was also pretty tiring to have that pace. And I know that the structure has changed a little bit. It was exciting, and also 00:34:00scary, and I have so many experiences from it that inform who I am, and so many great memories and so many hard memories, and it's one of those things that I would I would put in the category of, I'm so glad I did it and I would not want to do it again. I... yeah I mean, just hearing 00:34:30everybody's, you know, I have my own experiences with co-op, and just the incredible diversity of what people were doing out in the world is really great. I'm really excited now that my friends and classmates are the ones that 00:35:00are, that are getting Antioch students to come and co-op with them, and that feels like a really great continuation of that. When I lived in Seattle, I lived with some Antioch graduates, and I think that the way that co-op and Antioch community exists really brings students of different 00:35:30generations together in that way too, where people are working and living together from different generations that would have never met each other, and learning from each other, and I think it's another really interesting thing that happens in the community.

JASMINE: Oh for sure, that really, you know, kind of makes me think, for the first time, just how that inter-generational--those inter-generational connections of Antiochians are really fostered by the co-op program in ways that 00:36:00they may not otherwise be fostered at other schools. That's really interesting. You also mentioned the Queer Center briefly, I don't know if you'd like talk a bit more about that and, you know, what that, what kind of presence that had, you know, what kind of--how it added to the the Antioch experience while you were there?

SHANNON: Yeah. Are there still--what like, what is the state of the 00:36:30Union of Independent Groups on campus? And that always, my friend could never hear that without saying, "It's not a union if they're independent and vice versa!" but it was like the Women's Center, BAMN, which is By Any Means Necessary, which was previously Third World Alliance, there was the Queer Center... I don't remember all of them, but what--it's, you 00:37:00know, it was, it's hard to even... I look back on it and it's like, these groups existed, they didn't really... I don't even know how, looking back, it's like, what was the leadership? Because it was all student-run, but it was very collective-y, like, here's a room you have, here's the general theme of the room, do what you will. So, you know, I 00:37:30know like, you could do--you could have a co-op running the Women's Center, but I don't know that anybody was in charge of the Queer Center, like we would have meetings and we'd hang out there, we'd have parties there, and we'd throw parties, you know, like the... Here's another example of Antioch being 20 years in the future: I can't think of many schools that were having a drag ball every semester. It was just what was 00:38:00ha--you know, there was these parties that happen and Drag Ball was one of them. And while I was there, before binary gender was even a conversation, it was like, you know what? This party is now called Gender Fuck. And, you know, there were some folks that were like, "No, we like Drag Ball, blah, blah, blah," but it's just like, Nope. It's Gender Fuck. And that was just like, 00:38:30Oh, sure. Yeah, fuck binary gender. And that there would be this celebration every year--or every semester where people who, you know, I went to parties in drag as different characters often, you know, like that was just, I could just do that. But, you know, having this time, too, where people can, you 00:39:00know, even if it wasn't part of their identity, could try it out and have fun, and nobody was going to be mad at you for trying something else on for the night, and seeing other students perform it was a really great thing. I don't actually think that would happen now, where just anybody was allowed to to dress in drag, I think that would, I don't know, people 00:39:30wouldn't be as accepting of that, in terms of feeling like it was inauthentic or whatever, but it just, it was a really, it was one of my favorite nights every semester, is seeing people as a gender they don't usually present as.

JASMINE: [Yeah,] it's awesome! We've had a Gender Fuck, I 00:40:00think, my--I think we did it like once each year, for my first three years, and then we haven't had it--well, you know, my third year is when covid had already come to America and everything, so, I don't think there's been a Gender Fuck since covid hit, but I know it's a tradition that students 00:40:30still appreciate. And, you know, to answer your question a little bit about, you know, what is it like today, we don't--I've never heard of the s--the Union of Independent Organizations or, I'm not sure if that's exactly what you said, but we do have a few clubs, you know, there is a Queer Center, it's more of a club rather than a "center" center. And at the moment it just got a room in Weston Hall and that's 00:41:00dedicated to the Queer Center. And we have Women's Club, and a few other organizations, but the others are, I think, in large part mainly just hobby groups, like Gaming Club, or Knitting and Crochet Club. Yeah, so yeah, that's great to hear how Gender Fuck like, came into being, and 00:41:30it really is just another great example of, you know, Antioch's culture in general.

SHANNON: Mmhmm. I remember for Gender Fuck specifically was when we would see one or two very timid Cedarville students show up at our parties, you know, and being so afraid that somebody would see them there. I have no idea how they even found out about it, but it's like, yeah, great come to our party.

JASMINE: That's awesome! I think we can go on to the next question here. 00:42:00 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?

SHANNON: I would say more than, family and career, I think of myself as building community. And you know, I have a career that allows me to do the 00:42:30things that I want to do, and--but my real passion is connecting people and causes, and I think that's something that developed at Antioch. I'm the person--I am the convener. I am the event planner. I am the person that, when you move to Minneapolis, you know, people are like, you should 00:43:00get to know Shannon, because--and not, you know--just for anybody coming into, you know, this... I don't know how to--anybody coming to a new place, or wanting to expand parts of their life, I am always thrilled to help out with that in the sense of like, "Oh, like, you like so-and-so, have you met 00:43:30this person? I'm going to send you a couple--" or, you know, like, "You're looking for a mentor for nonprofit management, I know these executive directors." Or, "You're new to this city, have you heard of these 00:44:00places? You could check out this event, this nonprofit..." It's not necessarily like one specific community that I'm talking about either, it's just a larger sense of being in community in the Twin Cities and in the sense of being, you know, part of intersecting communities. But that, I feel 00:44:30like, has been more of a theme in my life than what I do for a job or who I'm married to, my community has always been very important to me and I think that directly comes out of my time at Antioch too, and the community that was there, and seeing how a community that existed for just a moment in time, can be maintained for a lifetime. And obviously that's been made 00:45:00so much easier through social media, which was just getting started when I graduated, but the networks that Antiochians keep are really strong, and I don't know many Antiochians who don't keep in touch with any other Antiochians, like it's been a real joy [background noise] to stay connected with people over the years and to see what they are doing in terms of their 00:45:30families and careers and community. So, I feel like I, Antioch played a very big role in that for me, and also just being a person who likes to be a visible part of a community and bringing people together.

JASMINE: That's great to hear. That is definitely been a very 00:46:00common theme throughout the interviews is, maybe less strictly speaking of "community" and more specifically "chosen family", and how Antioch--you know, people saying that Antioch taught them how to form and find chosen family. And 00:46:30so with that, you know, do you have any other thoughts maybe on, you know that idea, you know, is--I'm assuming that's relatively close to what you're talking about in terms of just being in community. And, yeah, and just how that, maybe how Antioch specifically might have either developed 00:47:00those skills or changed those values, etc.

SHANNON: Mmhmm. One of, you know, a lot of it goes back to it being a unique experience that we experienced together. So--and truly it does, I mean a lot of this goes back to the size of Antioch and the the passion of its students, but you have to develop skills in community with--when you're 00:47:30living in a bubble in Yellow Springs, Ohio. You just have to, I mean you could be going to a giant school and have conflict with somebody and never see them again. You know, but we have to live together in this space of like, you know, a couple of city blocks. So I feel like, you know, when you have conflict, when you have things you need to work through, you and, you know, with the support of your people, like, figure out how to work through it, which is 00:48:00really helpful because you're going to have that conflict coming up in the rest of your life, especially when you are doing political work or change work. And at that same time, I think that really intense experience bonded students together in a way where it does feel like family, and it can be family, and I know that "chosen family" gets used a lot of places, 00:48:30but the, you know, the connections that I formed with people at Antioch, feel much deeper than the ones I developed with the people that I went to school for the, you know, all of the rest of the time. Like it's just not the same, 00:49:00the level of involvement we have in each other's lives in that environment is so profound, and I think that that definitely shows up in after-graduation-life in the connections that we keep with each other and how interestingly enough, I have--there are people that I've gotten to know 00:49:30post-Antioch, who I went to Antioch with, that I know better now, just in keeping in touch with them and how neat that is, too. Because it will never quite make sense when you're living it, but looking back at the time there, I think that most people would say like, that was a special time in my life. And in a way you take for granted--because it's the life 00:50:00you're living, it's the here and now, and when you look back, 20 years and say like, wow, like, what an amazing opportunity to be trapped in a small town, with all these brilliant, difficult fucking people for four years. And to know that there'll never be another time in your life like that. And there are times where I just wish I was--you know, I would think, Man, what 00:50:30I wouldn't give to like, have everybody back just for, you know, a certain period of time. We could all see each other again. It would be, you know, it would be really great, but obviously that just can't happen. But, I knew it was special at the time and I can, I still see all the time, how special it was for the connections that we made and maintain to this day.

JASMINE: That's very powerful. You know, it is so hard to really put it into perspective. Just how much of a unique experience it can be at Antioch until after you've already moved on and, you know, essentially started a whole 'nother life afterwards. Yeah. Let's see, I 00:51:30think we can go on to question number 4, that is--and this can be difficult to answer, you know, if you don't have much to say about it that's totally okay. It is, "Are there any ways in which you think your life would be different, had you gone to a more typical liberal arts college?"

SHANNON: I've thought about that over the years, you know, while I was at Antioch and beyond, it's just sort of an exercise in what-ifs, 00:52:00and it's hard to, in some ways it's hard to imagine and it goes back to when I would joke about like, "Oh, I'm having a Collegiate Experience," and mainly that was, that happened within the realm of women's rugby, which existed for a small part of my time there. It started as a gym class, the 00:52:30anthropology teacher had played women's rugby and decided she wanted to offer it as a gym class, and we all loved it so much that we had a team for a couple of years. It was our only organized sport. And probably the most organized sport since football went away in 1924, honestly, and it was this huge, huge thing that I could spend an hour just talking about that, but going to--part of the culture of rugby is to hang out with the other team 00:53:00afterwards and drink together, and having that experience would always be very like, Oh wow! This is like, regular college people and what they do. And then especially when it's like, when like their men's team would come in and it's like, Whoa! This is like a regular college party, and it's very different than what I experience, you know, all the time. You know, it's like we're, you know, when I was at Antioch, there was essentially something happening every weekend that like, the whole 00:53:30college would go to and have a dance party together and that doesn't happen at other schools, like, you go to bars, you go to this party, you go to that frat house, but we all hung out together all the time. And, so in that way it's like I can't even imagine what my community would have looked like at a more typical college or, you know, just having to have like 00:54:00a gradual coming out process, and, you know, and all of what that would entail in the late '90s, which wouldn't have been easy most places, honestly, I feel like, what a blessing it was to go to Antioch, or a place like one of the colleges that I listed earlier where it was just like, no big deal. And how much longer it would have taken me to feel more comfortable with who, you 00:54:30know, who I am as a person in all regards, I think was really sort of much easier than it would have been at a larger school or a more traditional school, which is most schools, in just that, very early on, I had a strong sense of both who I was and who I was there in that community. So, there have been 00:55:00many times where I've thought about that question and it's just really hard to picture. You know, I remember going to the, there's a--at the U of M there is like this students' co-op that is on frat row at the U of M. And it's like, if--it's like that one little community, like 00:55:30that would have been the Antioch community in one building, you know, and there's so much else going on, but it's like this is kind of what you have here. All of these people are drawn to this one spot and I feel like I could have found that at any other college, you know, like, my partner went to Lawrence [University] and lived at the co-op there and has a very tight group of friends that have all stayed in touch, you know, but that is sort of the, you 00:56:00know, that's who they were going to find, was each other, you know, the like, 15 loosely connected people that came together, when your chances for having that but also having other groups and sort of like, intersecting communities at Antioch was just a lot easier because of its size and because of, you know, our sort of collective passion.

JASMINE: Yeah, I think those are excellent points and I can definitely relate, to most of those points of, you know, of just... hmm, hard to put into 00:57:00words--but yeah, it's very relatable for sure. I will go ahead, you know, we're getting on to the last question here, and so, I like to--I think it's a nice one to close out with, so I like to ask before the final question if there's anything that we didn't get to talk about, you know that you wanted to include, you wanted to make sure that you covered or anything like that, just before we hit the final question.

SHANNON: Um, I did think to to make another comment about rugby, which was very controversial at the time because it was like, too mainstream to have this team of like--there were two straight girls on the entire team--one of 00:58:00them came out later--like it was an entirely queer team of people who identified as womanish at the time, like, wearing jerseys and running around the campus yelling "Diesel!" for some reason, that was like what we yelled, and even in this very like, alternative universe of this rugby team that is like this ragtag 00:58:30 queer like, school with no sports, like, people were just like, "Oh, that's so mainstream," you know, and but when we were going and playing these other teams, so we were playing Wittenberg [University] and Ohio State and places like this, like places with actual rugby programs with people who had played before in their lives, and just seeing--and just the culture clash that would happen every time we would hang out with them afterwards, and there's 00:59:00this whole tradition of like rugby songs, and we would take all--and with these individual verses and we would re-write all the verses to be about like queerness or S&M [sadism & masochism] and, you know, and how that was just such a wild experience to sort of, you know, be hanging out with these students from other colleges and us singing songs about things that they would have never imagined. [Shannon's cat steps in front of the camera] And now 00:59:30you got a cameo from my cat.

JASMINE: Yeah, that sounds awesome, I'm very jealous that we don't have something similar at the moment.

SHANNON: That and keg-softball were the only sports, but keg softball was something--[to cat] excuse me--that was truly the sport that, I mean, 01:00:00I guess there was like Ultimate Frisbee a little bit, but keg softball was the... trying to think of the word--it's the sport that anybody could play because you would take the leftover keg from the night before, and you'd play softball, and you couldn't strike out. You just couldn't, like, you could just swing until you hit the ball, and there was a lot of shit talking and joking. And if you knocked--if--you brought your beer out in the 01:00:30field, and if somebody knocked over your beer when they hit the ball, it was an automatic out. But those were the only organized sports that we that we had.

JASMINE: Hmm. That's--I've not heard about that one. That sounds great. We currently have a hacky sack group and I was going to say that I think that's the closest thing to an organized sport that we have right now, but there is also Camelot that they--

SHANNON: [Laughs] Yeah.

JASMINE: --brought back, and they're doing that. Was there Camelot while you were at Antioch?

SHANNON: There sure was. It was within the contested years of, should there be really disgusting things and dead animals, or not.

JASMINE: [Laughs] Gotcha, gotcha, that's good, yeah, I haven't--

SHANNON: I haven't-- I haven't-- I haven't-- I haven't-- Like, how does that make any sense?! Like how did that even come to be, like when you think about how--

JASMINE: Right, right.

SHANNON: --bizarre that is, you know, what confluence of things caused people to throw like, lard from the cafeteria and dead animals at each 01:01:30other at this time? "We-Want-to-Change-the-World College!" It was very interesting.

JASMINE: [Laughs] Yeah, I agree about that.

SHANNON: More of an organized sport that like, I think about on 4/20 how there was always like a giant smoke circle on Main Lawn.

JASMINE: Hmm.

SHANNON: That was like, I don't know, like, 50 or 60 people every year, and 01:02:00the year that I was in CG we went and bought snacks and distributed them for 4/20 [laughs], you know, like again, these experiences--you know, Naked Frisbee on Main Lawn, and people taking off their clothes in the cafeteria and getting up on the table. These are just things that didn't happen other places.

JASMINE: [Laughs] Wow, wow. Yeah, that is something. I think we can 01:02:30go ahead then, if there's nothing else, we can go onto question number five, the last main one. "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?"

SHANNON: I would say... for current Antioch students... and this is 01:03:00not, this is probably not something that... Okay, so I'll start off with saying, be patient and be kind to each other, because there is such a 01:03:30sense of urgency at Antioch, because we are coming in, and we are fucking ready. We are going to change the goddamn world and we are going to change it by the time we graduate. And social change is hard, and it takes a long time, and it's not very glamorous, you know, and it's super fun to 01:04:00like go to protests and travel around and I saw lots of people just say, Well, I'm just going to drop out of school and like, you know, do XYZ, now I'm going to protest full-time and it's like, you have this, you have this opportunity right now that you will not have at another point in your life, like, use this opportunity. You will get out of it what you put into 01:04:30it like everything else, but the change that you want to make is going to take your lifetime. And I know that people don't want to hear that, but that is the nature of moving forward is that it's not going to happen by the time you graduate, and you are building the skills to keep working on change for the rest of your life. So, part of that is being patient with your 01:05:00own journey, and part of that is being patient with other people's Journeys, because, you know, you are surrounded with people who have had different experiences than you and it's going to take a while for everyone to learn about each other and understand each other on a deeper level. So that's where the "be kind" comes in, it's very easy to just 01:05:30get caught up in like, what you think is the way and the righteous path and, you know, and everybody's coming from a different place and working together is hard. But ultimately, I think that's how you create change is working with other people, and if you're not patient like--and who, you know, 01:06:00what 19 or 20-year-old is patient? But that's just something that is like a muscle you have to build, is feeling like you can do revolutionary work, but also be kind and patient and it sounds really simplistic, but that would have prevented a lot of hard feelings, I think, if people knew that ahead of time. Because like I said, it's a group of fiery passionate people and 01:06:30you're all learning at the same time like specifically, like you are literally there to learn, and that's a special time in your life too, because like, we're not--people aren't expected to learn for the rest of their lives, but that is the most open environment that you're going to have [background noise]. So, yeah, it's pretty simplistic but 01:07:00that's my advice to current and prospective students. Know that you're going to have people that you meet at Antioch who will be in your life forever, and people will be in your life forever who you didn't meet at Antioch but you met through Antioch. And I would say for the second part of the 01:07:30question is about just in general queer folks?

JASMINE: [Yeah.]

SHANNON: You know, I'm going to actually say, I'm going to say the same thing, and, Be kind, be patient. Especially this has to do with the 01:08:00inter-generational nature of queer community, and that, and you know, community is this association of this one part of our identities, and we're so different, and we're all coming from different places and it's really easy for us to not hear each other, because our own important--our own experience is so important, and that's how we frame everything. And I 01:08:30feel like there's a lot of missed opportunities to connect with other people because they have a different experience or a different way of seeing things. And I don't mean that in like a Pollyanna way, I mean, that in a very specific like, you know, this seventy-year-old queer person, this seventy-year-old gay man might have--might not understand XYZ, you 01:09:00know, but you don't understand XYZ about what he went through either, you know, and just because this is like, how we say things now, or like how we view things now, like there can be a bigger opportunity for understanding if it's not just sort of like, Well, you're a, you know, you don't know shit, like, you're just some old gay guy, you know, and that really breaks my heart when I see that, and I have gotten more involved in in the elder LGBTQ population in the Twin Cities. There's a nonprofit that 01:09:30I volunteer for that specifically brings together aging, LGBTQ seniors and younger folks to create community and it's really made me realize how few inter-generational spaces there are, because honestly, we don't get along, as, you know, as shitty and as hard as that is, it's like, there's--you know, if you don't come into those spaces with an open 01:10:00mind, there is going to be disagreements and people are writing each other off, and its really sad because when you think about queerness and you think about, you know--this isn't necessarily something that's used anymore, but everybody who was in, you know--had some sort of like, queer identity was referred to as family, back when I came out like, "Oh, they're family," 01:10:30that was shorthand, and--but truly, I mean when you talk about chosen family, we're all really, you know, so many of us are very blessed and lucky now that we get to keep our families after we come out, but for a lot of older LGBTQ folks like that wasn't the case and and other queer folks like are their family and but to see people who are aging and dying without support 01:11:00is really hard and I feel like I would like to see more young people stepping up to do work with our elders, because to me they really do feel like family in a way that, you know, that there is a responsibility to like, listen to their stories and like, write down their histories and, you know, figure out 01:11:30like, how can we help somebody find resources now that they have to go into a home, and they don't have you know, they didn't marry and they didn't have kids. So, I think that is part of what I would want young queer folks to think about. And I don't--you know, it's like I--it's hard to say now as like a middle-aged queer person, like, I 01:12:00don't really have my, I don't really know what it's like to be a person who's coming out as a young queer person anymore and it--because it seems so different, it's like, truly a different world and I don't... you know, anything that I've learned about the struggles has been from like, social media and the handful of like, my friends' queer kids. So, it's hard for me to, you know, give any meaningful inspiration 01:12:30other than, like, you know who you are, or you're figuring out who you are, and you can be patient with yourself during that process, and you will find people. If you haven't yet, keep looking, because they're 01:13:00out there, and as difficult as it can be sometimes to have this loosely 01:13:30connected, you know, community, whatever that means, it's also like a really beautiful thing to be a part of.