Oral history interview with Ashley Frazier, 2016

Lacey: All right, it's recording now. It is December the 2nd, 2016. This is Lacey. I am interviewing Sarah-

Ashley Frazier: Ashley.

Lacey: ... Ashley Frazier, I'm sorry. I don't know why that came up. We're just going to start right off with just some basic biographical stuff. Where were you born?

Ashley Frazier: I was born in Norwood, Massachusetts, on November 15th, 1973.

Lacey: 1973. You got any brothers or sisters?

Ashley Frazier: I have a younger brother, he's almost two years younger than me. His name is Jon Michael. He now lives in Wisconsin. He's a nurse anesthetist. He only graduated a couple years ago, so like me he's a very long ... he's taken the long road.

Lacey: That happens sometimes. A nurse what? [inaudible 00:00:51].

Ashley Frazier: Anesthetist.

Lacey: Anesthetist.

Ashley Frazier: It's not easy to say. It's a nurse who gets a graduate degree in anesthesiology.

Lacey: That was going to be my guess.

Ashley Frazier: He puts people to sleep when they're having surgery.

Lacey: Oh okay.

Ashley Frazier: Who knew.

Lacey: Yeah, I didn't know that was a ... I'm glad it's a specialization. What do your parents do?

Ashley Frazier: My father's dead, he died in 2010, just the same year I started back to school. He worked in a paper mill most of my life. Before that ... when I think about my life I think of, there's like the struggling phase where both my parents floundered around a little. They didn't exactly have steady jobs, and in fact they went to school ... there was a very weird story to how they met, but I won't tell that right now. But they met in Oklahoma at a small college, and when they left college they moved to Massachusetts, where my mom was from. 00:02:00They had a series of small shops and businesses that didn't really work out, and after a few years I think they decided the fast-paced New England east coast thing was not for them, and moved back to where my dad was from in Oklahoma.

Ashley Frazier: When we got there, for a few years I just remember ... I was really young, but I remember it being sort of tough. Like a couple of memories, really early memories, were like my mom got a traffic ticket once, and I remember some heated discussions about how to pay it and what to sell. I think that really made an impact on me, sort of like wow, it would be easy for us to not have enough money to do stuff. Then we lived in a house that had fleas, and we sprayed OFF! on our legs before we went in. So, although those aren't super clear memories to me, I think they sort of characterize my perception that it 00:03:00was a struggling time.

Ashley Frazier: Then my dad got a job at Weyerhaeuser Paper Company, which is pretty large, and in the small town where I grew up it's one of the main industries, and so it was a big deal. I remember, we were sitting at dinner when the phone call came that he got the job, and I remember it being sort of a huge sigh of relief, like everything's going to be okay, and it was. I think that, when I think back, that there was sort of a sense of increasing prosperity from then on, that we started to have medical insurance, and we built a house and moved out into the country. Although my memories aren't super clear there's sort of snatches of things here and there. That's sort of how I remember my childhood and my parents.

Ashley Frazier: So, all that to say my dad worked at a paper mill and my mom, after babysitting and doing cake decoration and different things, went back to school and got a degree and became an elementary school teacher. That's what she 00:04:00was for the rest of my life after that, until just a few years ago when she retired, and moved here.

Lacey: Well that's nice to have her closer I imagine.

Ashley Frazier: Yeah it is, it's very cool.

Lacey: What were you drawn to in high school do you think? Subject-wise.

Ashley Frazier: I've always been a jack-of-all-trades kind of person, and I think I gravitated towards teachers more than subjects. I had a teacher, Sarah Ziegler, who was my English teacher, and slipped me books on the sly.

Lacey: Nice. What books did she slip you?

Ashley Frazier: She slipped me The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

Lacey: That's a large book to slip.

Ashley Frazier: Which ... well we read like the first few chapters in class and I remember really loving that book. Now maybe not so much, but at the time it seemed really radical and I wanted to keep reading it after we read the little bit in class. I can remember asking ... we didn't really have a lot of resources 00:05:00in our hometown, which was Idabel, Oklahoma.

Lacey: Idabel?

Ashley Frazier: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: But about 100 miles away was Texarkana, Texas. That was the nearest sort of city. Although now, looking back, it's a really small city. I wanted to go to Texarkana so I could buy the book, because it was the only place I could think of that would have such a amazing book. I remember my mom saying that that book wasn't really the right thing for me to read. We were really religious and I don't know particularly what about it she knew but I knew that she didn't want me to have that book and read it, and Ms. Ziegler gave me a copy. I don't remember other books that she gave me but I remember that one in particular because I really wanted it and I didn't have a way to get it.

Lacey: And your mom did not want you to read.

Ashley Frazier: And my mom did not necessarily want me to read it.

Lacey: That's fascinating. What other teachers?

Ashley Frazier: Wow. There was a teacher named Craig Wall, who was a science 00:06:00teacher ... actually when I think about it Larry Dane was, I think, my freshmen biology teacher, and then Sherry Wall was my teacher in 10th grade. I think I had Craig Wall, no relation, for the last two years of high school. I loved all of them. I really did like sciences. But Mr. Wall had a really lax sort of attitude towards how we rolled in class. I remember everyone wanted to have him first period because you could roll in a little late, as long as you had brought some donuts. We did sort of fun stuff, I think it was chemistry that I had with him. I always loved science, and I loved my science teachers. I always liked the teachers that were creative in the classroom and let me do things my own way. 00:07:00That has really persevered as a like for me all this time. I'm still really drawn to people who let me do my own thing. I think it's affected how I see myself as a teacher as well.

Lacey: Probably. Okay, so we're graduating high school?

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: And then are we applying to colleges?

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: Where are we applying?

Ashley Frazier: I had all these dreams of going to like a small, charming New England liberal arts college. I do remember, probably my junior year, like sending off ... because this was back in the day ... sending off little postcards for information from all these magical, beautiful, ivy-colored-stone schools, and making lists of the ones I'd really like to go to. Then, when it came time for the actual application process, I think I realized that the application fees even were like 60 bucks, and I didn't even have the money to 00:08:00apply to all these schools, and that if I got in ... I was pretty confident I could get in actually, I'd been a really good student, but I knew that my family couldn't really afford to send me to those colleges. Although I don't really ever remember having a conversation about paying for college with them. Probably from our history, financially, I knew not to ask for money. I'd always had a job, and self-reliance I think is a big family important thing that you should ... my dad would say when you're 18 you're not my job anymore, and although he was joking I think I really took that to heart, and so I didn't apply to any of those schools.

Ashley Frazier: I took the ACT and made a really high score, and so it became apparent to me that if I went to an in-state school with my ACT scores I'd get a 00:09:00really big scholarship and essentially go to college for free. I don't know that I even applied to many ... I really don't remember, it's been 20 years ago. But I don't think I applied to many schools. I might've applied to Oklahoma State and OU. I went to Oklahoma State, and I think the financial aspect was probably the biggest decider of where I went to school.

Lacey: Sure. Do you remember what you were leaning toward, in terms of a major, at that point?

Ashley Frazier: I don't think when I went to school I had any idea in particular. One of the things in my high school you could do is we had a [inaudible 00:09:42], like a small community college, and once you had fulfilled your graduation requirements for the high school you could go take college courses. So I think that when I started school I had about 35 hours, which meant I had a really short period of time to declare a major, because all those gen-ed requirements-

Lacey: Were already done.

Ashley Frazier: ... were already done. And I didn't want to, because I really didn't know what I was going to do. I took a lot of weird classes just to sort of fill up the space, and it was free, and I really liked school. I remember taking a class, like the philosophy of death and dying. I took law courses. But one of the scholarships I had was called a Regents Scholarship, and for the Regents Scholarship you worked in a lab on campus, and I worked in a limnology lab, which is sort of like marine biology for lakes.

Lacey: Oh that's cool.

Ashley Frazier: Specifically they did aquatic toxicology. So we had all these fish tanks with fish and mollusks in them and we poisoned them at various degrees of severity. Then we would kill these little fish and mollusks and extract their DNA and see what that level of lead or cadmium or whatever in the water did to them. It was fascinating. The lab was like a little family, they 00:11:00were very close. The atmosphere was just really fun. I think that really quickly I decided that's what I wanted to do, was work in a lab, like bench science. Initially I took tons of science classes, I sort of saw that, and then I got unsure, like what exactly would I do with this? My family was interested in medical school for me. A lot of people in my dad's family are in the medical field. I really didn't want to go to medical school. It sounded awful. It sounded like a lot of work. I was also really loving still, books, language, literature, writing. So I guess I sort of looked for a way to have science and language all together.

Ashley Frazier: As I was taking all of the classes just to pad my hours I took a class in the Theater department that was called Dialects of the World, I think. We learned the international phonetic alphabet, as a way to understand how you would speak a dialect. Through that I met Lynn Williams, who was in the Speech-Language Pathology department at Oklahoma State in those years, and just really connected with her, and loved her. She's a pretty well-known expert on phonology in my discipline, and I of course didn't know that at the time but I really loved her and how she taught. After I took all of the classes that she taught I had quite a few hours in speech pathology, and only then did I actually research what it was, because most people don't know, and I didn't know at the time, what speech-language pathology even was. I don't know that we ever had one 00:13:00in any of the schools I went to.

Ashley Frazier: I was never super drawn to it in particular. I think when I learned what it was, and I really wanted to work with Dr. Williams, I thought well, that sounds good enough. She was on some kind of a grant, and I got a job with her transcribing disordered speech. I just remember that as being something I did. I would go in this little room and put on headphones and do that. I just sort of fell into that major I think, just by virtue of liking that professor.

Lacey: I can see that. If you were drawn to teachers more than subjects that would make sense.

Ashley Frazier: I always have been. I guess I'm a people person and I just really like people.

Lacey: If you know what you like you can go for it.

Ashley Frazier: That's right.

Lacey: So you started the job.

Ashley Frazier: So I started that job, and made a little bit of money. Money was 00:14:00always a thing ... I actually got married in college, and so I was married after my first year. The person I was married to was a veteran, and was going to school on the GI Bill, which was $400 a month at the time. So between ... we bought a trailer for $2500 and that's where I lived all through college. We had that $400 from him and then the 40 or 50 bucks a week I was making transcribing, and then we gave plasma twice a week.

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: And in 1992 through 6 you could survive on that in small-town Oklahoma.

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: I guess just academics and money are the two things I really remember through those years. I was really happy. I loved Stillwater, Oklahoma, I loved Oklahoma State. I never missed a football game. I liked the big-college atmosphere. Being from such a small town where everybody knew you, it felt 00:15:00really great for me to be able to be anonymous and do my thing, and feel like there were people who were different. I think I'd always felt a little outsider-y, being from the country. When I went to high school it was the town kids and they all knew each other and did stuff together. I wouldn't say I'm super social, I'm a little introverted, so I didn't have tons of friends, but I've always just had a few people I was really close to. I was close to my then-husband, and we had a few friends, and it was just a happy time. We rode bikes a lot, and made it on that little bit of money. I think it gave me real confidence. It felt good to be 19 years old and feel like I was self-sufficient. It always has since then. I've just always really appreciated that, that I have whatever skills and resources I can get together to take care of myself. I think those are lessons I learned early on that have stuck with me.

Lacey: That makes sense. It all sounds very stable ... so I imagine you just had like a routine. It was just like school, marriage, and making sure finances were fine.

Ashley Frazier: Yes. And I had grown up very, very religious, and at that point being married and being a good wife were sort of the ultimate goals for women. My partner now jokes with me that my description of small-town Oklahoma life in the 70s and 80s sound like her parent's descriptions of West Virginia in the 50s. I don't know if that's true but it wasn't a particularly sophisticated or progressive life. We went to church, we did our thing. Once I got married I was really devoted to that whole model of what being a woman looked like to me. I cooked dinner every night, I kept the house clean, I went to school. Like I was, I was very oriented to doing the stuff I was supposed to do. It was comforting 00:17:00to me. I think that it was stable. It was stable, predictable, and I was really happy for a while.

Lacey: I also feel like there's something to be said for just the little victories of that kind of stability.

Ashley Frazier: Absolutely.

Lacey: The money is fine, I cleaned the house today, dinner got made.

Ashley Frazier: Yup. Even giving plasma. I have a big scar on my arm from that.

Lacey: Really?

Ashley Frazier: I think that now people, when they think of that, they kind of cringe like, "Oh, who does that?" But for me you know ... it was also predictable. You go once, you get $5, you go the next time you get $10, like if you do it on the schedule it's 50 or 60 bucks every week or two. That was our grocery money. We did it together, we never missed a time. It's funny how at that time that seemed like such a really great opportunity for me. Now looking back I think, "God I was selling bodily fluids in order to make it, that seems grim." But it didn't feel grim at the time, it felt like we figured out 00:18:00something we could do that didn't take that long.

Lacey: It's genuinely both, because in hindsight you're just like, "It's amazing I could do that and that worked out."

Ashley Frazier: Yeah, yes. Yes, absolutely.

Lacey: And you have a scar from it as well?

Ashley Frazier: I do yeah.

Lacey: See that makes it scarier in my opinion.

Ashley Frazier: [crosstalk 00:18:21] scar, and I think that times in the past I have seen people's eyes light up and ah they probably think I've been injecting drugs, but no I just, for four years, I gave plasma twice a week.

Lacey: Okay. That seems perfectly fine given the situation, honestly it does. It's just the hindsight that makes it just seem kind of like oh.

Ashley Frazier: Absolutely.

Lacey: It's amazing what you can survive and do when you need to.

Ashley Frazier: That's right, that's right. And honestly that's ... that whole life seems so foreign to me. I rarely think about it. Talking about it now even, all these memories come back. It was very happy. It was a very happy time for me.

Lacey: Good. So did you graduate with a degree in speech pathology?

Ashley Frazier: I did, I graduated with a degree in speech pathology.

Lacey: What year?

Ashley Frazier: In 1996. I was part of the honor's program at Oklahoma State. That was a cool thing that kind of gave you special access. It was a big college, but honor's students were in classes of like 20 or less. They're often sort of a seminar with all full professors, no TAs. In fact, I never had a TA, all the way through college. I don't know if that was a sign of the times or if it was the honor's thing. So I always got a lot of attention, and ... I don't know, I just loved school. I loved everything about it. I've never been like, "Oh I can't wait to get out of here." I've always loved being a student, and liked being in school.

Lacey: Well that's good. Then what drew you into the speech pathology, I'm going to say it wrong. [inaudible 00:19:53] ... speech pathology. What drew you to that? Initially it was the professor, but what about speech pathology did you 00:20:00find so interesting exactly?

Ashley Frazier: I think it was science-y enough to satisfy that. I was always really interested in the brain, like how does it work? Now I know that's called cognitive science, but at the time I didn't. I would read books about what makes people change? Or what makes people ... sort of psychology I guess. And again, I always loved language. I took lots of linguistics classes. I always was a reader. In big trouble so many times for reading under the desk when I should've been doing other things.

Ashley Frazier: But I guess that what drew me into that was it seemed like really a combination of that. It's a science, you're studying the brain and behavior, but also really in-depth about language. How does it work? Where does it come from? What is it in the brain that lets you access words? Every time you produce a new thought you're using sort of this corpus of words that are ... you can put them in a dictionary, and yet every time you're putting them in a new 00:21:00combination to express thought in a novel way. That still seems like magic to me after all these years. I think that it just always made sense to me, like this is really the perfect thing for me. Communication is just a passion, I guess it always has been. I probably wouldn't have been able to say that at the time that I graduated, but that's certainly what I love about it now.

Lacey: Very cool. It does sound like magic when you describe it that way. It really does. So you graduate in '96.

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: You getting a job right after?

Ashley Frazier: No. Speech pathology, the sort of entry degree is a Master's degree, so with a Bachelor's degree in speech pathology you can't really do anything. Or you couldn't then, I think some states now have a speech-language pathology assistant option that you can help do therapy, but at the time there wasn't anything else. I knew that I was going to have to go to graduate school. 00:22:00I decided to be brave, because again I really didn't have any money. Not only did I ... also my grades weren't perfect. As much as I had always been a great student and loved school ... and actually my recollection would've probably been that I had a 4.0, but recently, probably when I applied for this program, I looked at it and I had like C's. B's, C's, A's. Today I don't know if I'd get into a speech-language pathology program. They're very competitive, it's hard to get in. But at the time I applied to like all the really biggest programs. I applied to the University of Arizona, the UNC Chapel Hill, University of Kansas, University of Washington, which really are the top programs in the field. I don't know what I was thinking or where that courage came from, but I got into most of them and I still don't understand that, maybe it was just less competitive at the time. I'd never get in with my grades now.

Lacey: You don't have to at this point though.

Ashley Frazier: That's right. Thank goodness. So I came to Chapel Hill ... well, went to Chapel Hill ... from Oklahoma State. I decided to go there really based on almost nothing. The University of Kansas seemed too close to home, and I really wanted to get far away. I had a friend who had gone the previous year to the University of Arizona and he said to me, "Anything that isn't nailed down gets stolen," and I don't know what it was about that but I was ... it was fear. I was afraid, it didn't seem like a good place to be. University of Washington seemed, weather-wise, to be an awful choice. So North Carolina just seemed like a nice place to be. I had had a family member who lived in Durham at some point in my childhood. Now I'd never visited, I'd just heard stories about it being nice. So I started school here, and when I moved here with a U-Haul I think it 00:24:00was the first time in my life I'd ever set foot in North Carolina.

Lacey: What's your first impressions of North Carolina?

Ashley Frazier: My at-the-time husband and I, he really wanted to go back into the military, and we'd had a super happy four years together. We sort of, with almost no discussion, decided that when we graduated he'd move to Louisiana to work on an offshore oil rig or something, and then I would go to North Carolina, and we'd just go our separate ways. I think it seemed weird to me and everybody else because we were very happy together. I just think we both understood that we were really young and-

Lacey: Was it an actual divorce or did you-

Ashley Frazier: ... we did, we got a ... we eventually got a divorce, but initially no, I just moved to North Carolina and he moved to Louisiana.

Lacey: ... Okay, so it was just like a separate living situation?

Ashley Frazier: Yup. So I had a U-Haul, my dad was following me. I drove to North Carolina. One of the first memories I have is that I had ... the internet 00:25:00was very young in those days, and on a Usenet group I had arranged to sublet some dude's apartment in Chapel Hill, in a place called Kingswood I think. I got there and as I was walking up the stairs to the apartment there was vomit all over the steps, and the apartment was dirty, and nobody in the management company seemed to know that I was going to be moving there. I don't even remember how it happened but I didn't move there. They started a new lease for me in another of their properties that was slightly nicer.

Ashley Frazier: The very first day I showed up with my U-Haul and I couldn't move into the ... or didn't move into the apartment where I thought I was going to live. We moved across town to a different place. I remember that and I remember that my dad and I went out for barbecue. We ordered and we sat at a table and when we got it, it was pork. Where I grew up barbecue is beef, and we 00:26:00were like, "what is this?" I went back up to the counter and said, "We got pork, we just wanted regular barbecue." Then he said-

Lacey: Did they laugh at you?

Ashley Frazier: ... they did, they said, "Honey this is regular barbecue." I think for that, like in that moment, I realized I was in a whole different place. Things would be different. I don't know, I guess I moved into my apartment. My dad I don't think was here long, I don't really have any memories of anything else in particular we did. I just remember those two things. There was some tough conversations about the whole living situation. It must've been pretty soon after that because it was before school had started, so I wasn't yet working. The brakes went out on my car and I needed like $400 to fix it so that 00:27:00I could even go work anywhere. I remember ... so remember I was a person who never borrowed money or wanted money from my parents, and I feel like I was in a position ... I don't remember if I specifically asked. I think I described the situation and said, "I need this money," and I remember a conversation where the upshot of it was, "You've made your bed, now sleep in it." I don't think anyone said that to me but it was sort of like you've made this decision to live apart from your husband, and this is sort of what happens. You can't do that.

Ashley Frazier: It was a hard conversation because I think in my mind I knew that we were going to get a divorce, but I don't think I'd really ... that was a very taboo thing in the religion of the family I grew up in. I don't know that I ever said it out loud. But I got this very clear message that they disapproved of that. My brother, who was a college student at the time, actually lent me the money ... I don't even know where he had it ... to fix my car. My husband called 00:28:00me one time and said, "Do you want me to come to North Carolina?" And I said no. In October of that year I just got in the mail a divorce certificate. So again we barely discussed the whole going our separate ways thing, and then we really didn't discuss the divorce. I think it was just understood that it had run its course.

Lacey: You just signed it and sent it back?

Ashley Frazier: I don't even think I had to.

Lacey: Really?

Ashley Frazier: I don't know if that's from the place where we lived or the time, but no, it was a done deal. When I got it, it was done. I remember feeling really strange about that, like wow.

Lacey: Sure, because that was still like a month into school it had to be, right?

Ashley Frazier: Yeah, it wasn't-

Lacey: That's so weird.

Ashley Frazier: ... that long. Literally, I think it was May 25th, it was May 25th, my dad's birthday, when I graduated. From May 25th to October we sort of had no contact, and then I was divorced. I remember thinking that, wow, I was 21 00:29:00and had been married for several years and divorced, and I do remember feeling really strange about that. Like what's my life going to be? Am I going to be okay?

Lacey: Yeah, it's a weird situation regardless of the time in general, just like a month into school, new place, you only know like the people in your classes at this point. And divorce.

Ashley Frazier: Yeah. So during this time ... so I had two years at Chapel Hill. I loved it, I still loved school. It was definitely harder, and I was with a more competitive group of people, but ... I don't know, I don't ever remember it feeling particularly competitive. I don't think I've ever needed to feel like I was number one, exactly, I just wanted to learn stuff. It's all about relationships. I think I wanted to have close relationships with my professors. 00:30:00I had a few friends that I was close to. I ended up moving in with a guy who worked for a startup magazine, at the time, called ACC Athlete Magazine. So I sort of got into sports just by virtue of that, and again that's kind of what I remember about school.

Ashley Frazier: I went to class. At that time the Communication Sciences and Disorders ... which is now what they call our field usually ... Department was in the basement of a building right behind Kenan Stadium. Between Kenan and the medical school, sort of in the middle of nowhere, just in a basement. So it was kind of grim, again. Not particularly nice facilities. I think at the time I was just so young and lived so far away that I didn't really understand the legacy and history of UNC Chapel Hill. It didn't seem that glamorous to me really. It 00:31:00was sort of here we are, stuck in a dark basement. But I had great professors, and I bonded right away with one of my professors, Celia Hooper, who's actually here now.

Lacey: Celia Hooper.

Ashley Frazier: Yup. She's the Dean of HHS now. But at the time she was a young speech-language pathology professor. One of the ... I don't remember exactly when it was, but I think it was during my first year, I went to a pride march and someone spoke to me there and took a picture of me, and the next day in the newspaper there was a big picture of people with rainbows and assless chaps, you know the whole thing, and then there's me and a sort of big, fat pull quote with my name on it. I remember having a moment of real panic.

Lacey: Sure. What year was this?

Ashley Frazier: 1996 ... of thinking ... one of the things speech-language 00:32:00pathologists do is work with children, and I remember having a moment where I worried that if they saw that that there might be some fear of me being around children. The next day, when I got to school, Dr. Hooper had that newspaper article cut out and taped on her door. It said, in sharpie, "Yay! We are so proud of you." I don't even think I can possibly describe how much that impacted me. To just have that sigh of relief, and not only relief but to like publicly say you're okay with me, and so I think that for the first time I started to think that, oh, this might be okay. I think that in that time I was ...

Ashley Frazier: I think that in that time, I was, you know, early 20s and I guess realizing that I was attracted to women after I had been married. I lived with a man at the time as well. I think it was just sort of a beginning exploration. So, I didn't really, in college, ever look outside of my box of myself as a wife. But in grad school, I more and more started to think about that, like claim my identity and figure out who I was. To have a professor reach out to me in that way and say it was okay ... So, I became her graduate assistant. I don't know what magic made that happen. This is also the time that the internet started to be a big deal. She was one of the first professors to put one of her classes online.

Ashley Frazier: As a grad student, and also, actually, thankfully my roommate at 00:34:00the time, worked with the internet. Between me and him, we helped her get one of her classes online. I just remember that, sort of, very brave new world.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: Like, "Wow, things are really changing. We can teleport people from other cities in to lecture in the classroom." I guess I remember it as a momentous time for lots of reasons. One is that the internet really started to become a thing. As an undergrad, I still went to the library and looked up journal articles and photocopied them, putting dimes into the copier, all of a sudden, you started to be able to look up stuff online. Like real stuff, not just UCINET groups.

Lacey: Right.

Ashley Frazier: I think I felt, even in that moment, that this was going to change everything. I was super excited that I happened to be alive and young enough to be excited about it in that time. And also just starting to figure out 00:35:00what it might mean to be gay or bisexual, and think about what that might mean for my life, and how my life might be different than I thought. So it was an exciting time for me.

Ashley Frazier: North Carolina, at the time, seemed like a super progressive and exciting place. The Triangle certainly had a concept of itself as something really new and hot. People were moving from all over the country and the world to work in RTP. That was sort of changing the flavor of North Carolina. It was becoming a really progressive place. When I graduated and left North Carolina, the image of North Carolina, I kept in my heart.

Lacey: I would love to keep that image of North Carolina in my heart as well.

Ashley Frazier: Right? Yes, yes.

Lacey: So was that your first Pride at the time? '96?

Ashley Frazier: No, it wasn't. I had actually gone to a Pride event in Oklahoma 00:36:00City, super secretly.

Lacey: Ah. While you were still married?

Ashley Frazier: While I was still married, yeah. At that time, I think I was just envisioning myself as a progressive open-minded person who might be an ally or whatever.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: I don't know what this says about me. So, the internet, the brand new internet ... At Oklahoma State, I was one of the first people that wasn't a computer science major who had an internet account. I had to go to this weird office in the Office of Information Technology, and apply, and give these reasons why I might need to have access to the internet. They had to approve it.

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: It was really weird. They were very suspicious. It was an old white guy who was like, "Well, why do you need this? Who will you communicate with?" I, really, was just curious.

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: When I got it, there was Pine Email and Internet Relay Chat. It was all very type in stuff, it was not graphical or visual yet. I was on all these UCINET groups. One of them was like GLBT, whatever that was called in 1992 ...

Lacey: Right.

Ashley Frazier: I don't think it had all the letters yet ... but, the Big Smoke, Oklahoma City gay group. Through UCINET, I sort of made these connections and found out there were gay bars and a parade. Super secretly, I went to Oklahoma City one week, and just sort of, I guess, was dipping my toe in the water like, "What's going on here?" Not only with gay stuff, I also would get interested in 00:38:00all kinds of groups of people. People who played video games ... Like, I would sort of get on these groups and find out all this stuff. I think I started to realize, "Wow, there's a whole world of people out there that I had no idea existed." So, I think just that idea of starting to be able to connect to people that you didn't know in your hyper-local community, blew my mind a little bit.

Ashley Frazier: I think it was the first time I had ever connected with a community of people who were, I think, calling themselves survivors of childhood abuse. I had many secrets related to that that I had never really talked to anyone about. The internet UCINET groups were the first time I think I ever reached out and connected with other people and said, "Oh my god, this happened? We're real?" I don't know, I guess that all contributed to why I was so excited about the changing times. It just felt like you could connect with people in a 00:39:00way. Well, I still feel that way. That hasn't changed.

Lacey: No, because it is one of the consistent, amazing things about the internet, is that you can reach out and meet all sorts of different people that you did not have any previous contact with and discover similarities.

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: That is one of the few good things that we still have of the internet.

Ashley Frazier: It is. Although now, I think it's so all around you that you become immersed in these relationships online and sort of neglect your real life relationships some of the time, which I think everybody has to decide how to balance that in their life.

Lacey: Yeah. Everyone has their own balance for that.

Ashley Frazier: So anyway, 1996 through 1998 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I felt like I began to blossom, as in my own human. That I wasn't just somebody's wife or somebody's daughter. I was my own person and I could make decisions and set goals for myself. I think I felt extremely, vibrantly alive, and excited about my future.

Lacey: Yeah. It certainly sounds that way. There was a lot of doors open to you 00:40:00suddenly in Chapel Hill at the time ... the person that you were at the time, as well, specifically.

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: Like, you were suddenly more able to reach for said doors.

Ashley Frazier: Yes. The person that I lived with at the time, his name is Mike, became probably one of my best friends for many years. We were romantically involved for a little while. Even after that ended, we lived together for years in several states. That was interesting. He worked at this magazine ... I got a job, upon graduation, in Maine working at a brain injury rehab. I remember it now ... No, I didn't write this down so I could be wrong. But in my mind, it felt like I was all ready to move to Maine and practically days before his job sort of seemed to be going away, the magazine folded eventually.

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: The way I remember it, he practically ran after me in the 00:41:00driveway and through his stuff on top of mine and moved to Maine with me. I don't know if it happened exactly like that but it was sort of a last minute thing. He had been from Massachusetts, so for him, it was a move closer to home. So, we moved to Maine. I worked. It was my first real-life job. I wish I could remember how much money I made. I want to say it was around $28,000/$30,000, but it seemed like this massive amount of money.

Lacey: Well, you weren't in school at the time, so that's part of it.

Ashley Frazier: Yes. Yeah, so lots of stuff happening, but it was very exciting to move. I was closer to my family from Massachusetts.

Lacey: I was going to say, are they still there?

Ashley Frazier: Yeah, I hadn't had much contact with ... We would visit once or twice a year, or once every year or two.

Lacey: So they left Oklahoma and went back to Massachusetts?

Ashley Frazier: No, my parents-

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: -moved away from Massachusetts, but all my mother's family was 00:42:00still there.

Lacey: Okay, got you.

Ashley Frazier: So, cousins, grandparents-

Lacey: Sure. Extended family.

Ashley Frazier: Yeah. I remember, I only lived there for two years but I was really happy. I lived near the ocean and that seemed really magical to me.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: Maine has it's own culture. It was exciting to me to be around a new thing. Learning and working exclusively with people with brain injuries seemed like a dream come true.

Lacey: What, specifically, were you doing with them?

Ashley Frazier: I was a speech language pathologist in a rehab facility. There just aren't that many that are devoted just to brain injury, and so I was excited that that was the population that I worked with all the time. They would come in shortly after an acute care stay in a hospital. Sometimes they would be in a coma. We would just help them. At the time, speech and language pathologists still did a lot of language work. So, helping people sort of regain 00:43:00their language skills and start to connect with family ... working on cognition stuff, retraining attention, and being able to follow a calendar.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: One of my strongest memories at that time is that every morning there was a current events group. We'd all sit around the table, trying to make sure we were all oriented to what day it was, where we were ... We would go through some of the stuff in the news. I think it was one of my first feelings of being a teacher. It was a little different than one-on-one speech therapy where you're really training and doing a task over and over. In this current events group, it was really different. You were trying to engage everybody and get everybody to participate, and I really loved it. So, that was fun. I enjoyed working there very much. I made a really close friend who was an exchange 00:44:00occupational therapist from Ireland, Delores.

Lacey: Oh, that's cool.

Ashley Frazier: So, we were good friends. When I first moved there, we lived in Kennebunk, which is sort of a resort town and sort of closed down in the Winter. The rehab where I worked was in Kennebunk. Eventually, it was a little boring and we moved to Portland, which is small city around the ocean. It was beautiful. It was the first time I'd ever lived downtown.

Lacey: What was that like?

Ashley Frazier: It was so exciting. It was a three story house and we lived on the middle floor, and right off the interstate, I guess I-95, I can't remember now. Portland is a bigger city, it encompasses more. There's a little piece that sticks out called the Old Port that's sort of a really downtown area. I would compare it to Greensboro, size-wise.

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: That might be completely wrong, but a small downtown area that feels like a downtown.

Lacey: From your interpretation, yeah.

Ashley Frazier: Yeah. I had a little dog, a little Jack Russel terrier.

Lacey: Aw, what was his name?

Ashley Frazier: Moose.

Lacey: Great.

Ashley Frazier: I would walk over to, it was called Deering Oaks Park, a really large sort of downtown park ... and walk with him in the mornings. We could walk into downtown to where there was bars. There was a beautiful place called the Portland Public Market, which I think has since closed down, probably long ago. It was a really early version of what an urban farmers market, like farm-to-table, place look like. It's this soaring beautiful wood and glass where people would bring their stuff and sell it. I think I remember it as a time when ... I really had never spent much time in a city at all, even a small city. I've never lived in any kind of a downtown where you could walk places. I really had 00:46:00not spent much time thinking about myself as part of a context. I think that the public market made me start to think about, "Where does our food come from?"

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: We also lived near ... I can't remember the name of it. After people left the rehab that I worked, they would go into a reintegration of community. So, I guess now, you'd think of them as halfway house kind of thing.

Lacey: That was the word that was coming to my head, yeah.

Ashley Frazier: That you're living in a group with other people like you. There's a little supervision but less than in rehab. So there was one not far from us. It was also the first time I really had experienced homelessness, people who were struggling with drug use, and seeing people on the street who were just so different. In the blocks around where I lived, there were these 00:47:00people recovering from brain injuries who's behavior could be strange. There were homeless people who lived in the park. I think that for me, although those things sound terrible, I felt like I was part of the world in a different way. I realized there were people that lived in so many really different ways. So, I think it just, to continue on that path of feeling like a person who's whole life was in front of them, I started to realize there were different kinds of people than me, in a really real way that I could engage with as part of my environment.

Ashley Frazier: That's what I remember from those years. At the time, things were good. I liked my job. Mike and I lived together and were close friends. I got into a car accident in 1999. I had a head injury. It was a mild head injury. 00:48:00It was really shocking to me because I was working with people with brain injuries. When you work in a ... I think there's a black humor that goes with every job. So many times, people would come in, and it would become really immediately clear their life was never going to be the same. Their wives would leave them, their jobs didn't really want them back, and so you're advocating for them. At some point, inside, you knew, there life is never going to be back to normal. So, to each other, we'd be like, "Oh my god, please kill me if this happens to me."

Lacey: Right.

Ashley Frazier: And there I was in a hospital. My coworkers would come and visit me and do all the orientation questions, "What day is it? Where are you?" I remember having this real crisis of, "Will I ever work again? Am I going to be okay?"

Lacey: Right.

Ashley Frazier: I was.

Lacey: I'm glad.

Ashley Frazier: It took me a while. I had some sleep problems and impulsiveness. At that time, I had been sort of preparing to go back to school to get a PHD. So even then, I was thinking about it and it wasn't possible for me then, or I didn't feel like it was possible for me. I had been talking on the internet with someone who lived in New Zealand. I don't know, honestly, if it was just a brain injury thinking, but I decided after I started back to work and I was struggling, the best course of action would be for me to quit my job and take all the money I got from the settlement from the car accident ... someone had hit me head-on-

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: And just go to New Zealand and backpack around for a while. So that's what I did for-

Lacey: That is very cool.

Ashley Frazier: For better or worse.

Lacey: It already happened, right.

Ashley Frazier: That sort of started what I would think would characterize the next few years of my life, which was traveling. I traveled there for a while. While I was gone, Mike, my roommate in Maine, got a new job in Philadelphia. When I came back, he basically said, "I've moved. I packed all your stuff and it's here with me whenever you want it." I eventually made my way back and moved in with him in Philly. At first, it was just going to be for a little while until I got a job but it ended up being several more years. The only thing I really knew about Philadelphia was Rocky movies. I literally had no idea what to expect. When I moved there, I was still not sure I could be a speech pathologist anymore.

Ashley Frazier: I have no idea how I did this but I applied for a job doing 00:51:00training for a market research company outside of Philadelphia. I actually still work for them now, so for 16 years, I've worked for them full-time or part-time. So, I do weekend work with them now. Just training people ... They have a staff of several hundred market research interviewers all over the 48 continental states who go door to door, basically, cold-calling people and asking them to participate in media research.

Lacey: Oh.

Ashley Frazier: So, I was training them to, like, "What do you say at the door? Communication-wise, how do you get people's trust," because nobody wants to see someone come to their door.

Lacey: No, they don't want to see, especially if you have a clipboard.

Ashley Frazier: Yes. So, they pay people to do the interview. There's no sales involved. For a while, four years, I did that full-time, sort of emersed in, "What makes people make a quick decision at the door? What are things you can do communication-wise to put them at ease so they'll listen to what you have to say?" It was basically salesmanship training-

Lacey: Right. Without the sales.

Ashley Frazier: Without the sales. Then I would also help them do the interview correctly. It was a really divergent path from speech pathology, the way I had been doing it. It got me thinking about what all could I do with this degree. Communication is so far reaching and beyond just people with disorders. I was excited I could do something different. I loved Philadelphia. I started off living in the suburbs outside of Philly, then eventually moved into the city, and then eventually moved back out but closer in.

Ashley Frazier: I lived there from 2000 to 2010 when I moved here. During that time, Mike got married, and so we didn't live together anymore. That had lasted for, oh, I don't know, four or five years that we had been off and on, different 00:53:00cities living in the same house. So, I hadn't been a grown up by myself, so I had to find a place to live alone, and I was dating. I guess I dated lots of people, which was new for me.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: I had pretty much been a serial monogamous. The job that I had had me traveling a lot. I went to many countries during that, sort of middle 20s years, and really loved traveling. I focused, almost completely, on travel, dating, and I would say, probably drinking. I was never a person who went out much. And so, to live in an even bigger city now, after Portland that had a night life. For the first time, I had friends that would go out at 10:00 o'clock. It felt wild and crazy. So briefly, I think I had that sort of crazy youth.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: But it was short-lived. I met someone and eventually moved in together and was back to my old ways of keeping house, cooking, and cleaning. So I met my partner now in 2008, and told her about this dream I had to get my PhD. I went back to speech pathology after a few years, so I was back doing that.

Lacey: Okay. Doing it at a different research facility probably?

Ashley Frazier: I actually was doing it as a private practice.

Lacey: Oh.

Ashley Frazier: So I contracted out to the schools. I was working with some adults. There's a place in Philadelphia. It's a gay and lesbian community center that has night classes. I was doing this evening class for male to female trans people who wanted to sort of try on, "What could my voice sound like," or, "How 00:55:00could I present differently?"

Lacey: Well, that's fascinating.

Ashley Frazier: And so, I was using my sort of clinical background to say, "Well, if you want to use your voice differently, you could do it this way." It wasn't very prescriptive. It was really more of fun and games. It's become more clinical now where there's sort of a whole group of people who do it more as a, "Come into the clinic and let's do speech therapy."

Lacey: Right.

Ashley Frazier: At the time, it was a little more free-willing than that. I think, probably, I liked it better that way. Anyway. I was doing lots of stuff. I felt really like a had a powerful agency for my own life. I was making the decisions about where I worked. I was sort of negotiating how much money I would make. I think that felt really powerful. I was like, "Wow, I'm really a real life professional." I was in love and I was thinking about my life in the 00:56:00long-term. I said that I wanted to go back to school, but I was making what felt like a lot of money at that point and wasn't sure that was possible. Janine is the person that I was living with at the time. She was like, "You can definitely do that. You can do anything you want to do." I don't know if I trusted it. Then we broke up and I sort of let it go for a while.

Ashley Frazier: We eventually got back together. I think my budget was so wild. I was spending ridiculous amounts of money on pedicures, massages, and shoes. At some point, she took my budget and basically said, "Look, if you would get a grip and spend money more wisely, you could easily readjust to a student 00:57:00salary." It sort of was this negotiation where I didn't really believe it was possible and she was completely sure it was possible, and within a few months, convinced me to really think about. So, in November of 2009, I went to ASLHA the American Speech Language Hearing Association's meeting. I presented, as a part of a panel, and talked about the work I was doing in Philadelphia.

Ashley Frazier: Celia Hooper, who had been my mentor at Chapel Hill, talked to me and said, "Hey, at UNCG, we have a brand new doctoral program, and they're interested in doing this kind of work. It's actually happening there. If you came down, you'd love it. You'd love Greensboro." I think she might have slipped in that a lot of people think UNCG means UNC gay.

Lacey: As an incentive.

Ashley Frazier: She just really convinced me to give it a try here. She said that even though she was a Dean, she had been recently on the faculty in the CSD department and would serve as my faculty advisor. So, I felt confident in that. I knew that we worked well together. I don't know. I don't know what happened. Just really in a six month period, I went from, "No way. It really isn't even in my mind," to, "I'm doing this." My partner and I bought a house in Glenwood. We moved here and I started school.

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: So, it all happened really fast.

Lacey: That last part did, didn't it?

Ashley Frazier: Yes. Yeah. We had broken up and then we got back together, shortly before ASLHA, honestly. Really, between us getting back together, buying a house together, and moving here, was six or seven months.

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: I still can't believe I did anything like that, but it's working out fine.

Lacey: It seems so. Did you apply to any other schools at this point, or was it-

Ashley Frazier: No.

Lacey: It was just here?

Ashley Frazier: No, just here.

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: I came here in February, met with the department, had an interview, did all the formal applying, and funding-wise ... One awesome thing about speech language pathology is it's still a hot market. There's a huge shortage of people to do it clinically. There's an even bigger shortage of people to teach it, with a PhD. So, unlike lots of other students who are getting out of school and going, "What am I going to do," there's plenty of jobs. So, I felt good about that. It just convinced me that it was a good investment. So, I came and we were really all in. We decided to buy a house in Glenwood at the time. We found a teeny 830 square foot house with one bedroom. I think we paid around $15,000/$16,000 for it.

Lacey: Wow.

Ashley Frazier: Which is amazing.

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: I can't even believe, even in 2010, that that's possible.

Lacey: Right.

Ashley Frazier: But we did, and fixed it up ourselves. I don't know if it was just the luckiest thing in the world or what, but Glenwood is the best place to live. I have amazing neighbors. It's just an incredible place. I think UNCG, I feel the same way about. Doctor Hooper is still my hero. We work so well together. She's connecting me with so many people. I love people here. So, I couldn't be happier, honestly. It might be why I've been here for seven years. I'm really excited. It was very exciting to come back to school after ... wow, from the 12 years, I guess, of working. I don't think many times, in your late 30s, you get an opportunity to sort of go back and be a student again, so it felt great.

Ashley Frazier: My partner only went to school later in life, so when we moved here, she was actually a Bachelor's student. So for a couple of years, we were both students. It was just fun. We were working on this house we bought. We had lots of free time. We had a really flexible schedule. We could meet on campus and hang out. It almost felt like you're playing at going back in time and being a kid again.

Lacey: Does she go here?

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: What did she get her degree in?

Ashley Frazier: Sociology.

Lacey: Oh, okay.

Ashley Frazier: After she graduated, she got a job and is actually an Administrative Support Specialist in Peace and Conflict studies.

Lacey: Oh, cool.

Ashley Frazier: So, we are UNCG all the way.

Lacey: Couldn't give any more support to this school if you tried.

Ashley Frazier: No. So, it was interesting because during the few years after we first moved was the same time that UNCG was crossing over Lee Street into 01:02:00Glenwood. I'll let the record reflect, there was a lot of discussion about that. Some Glenwood neighbors were not excited about that idea, and others were. There were some times that it was a really tense topic. I think I've always felt a little torn because it's hard for me to see UNCG as the big, bad wolf when I work here and really work with so many people that are so pro-student, who've devoted their whole lives to service. Fortunately, one of the things I got involved with early on was a project that was focused on HHS student community engagement. We tried to quantify that. Because I was emersed in this data, with Bob Weinberg actually, who's over in social work ... I had real numbers that 01:03:00told me what an impact students at UNCG had on the community.

Ashley Frazier: So, I've always viewed it as a really community engaged university. I know that we're more diverse than most predominantly white institutions. I know that we have really sort of amazing graduation rates and supportive students. I think though, for me, it's been a source of pride to be part of a university that is a little different, that seems to support students more than is usual, that seems to be more community engaged than is usual. So, for me, it was hard to hear this conversation that positioned UNCG as a horrible, big faceless entity that was looking to destroy my neighborhood. But at the same time, I really love my neighborhood.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: So, to feel protective of both, I think, was hard for a year or so. It's mostly sort of settled down now. Now that it's mostly over there, I 01:04:00don't think everyone's 100% happy but it's no longer in process, so I think that for better or for worse, we're going to have to learn to live together.

Lacey: It's not really a hot button issue at all right now.

Ashley Frazier: Not so much. The rec just opened the ... Kaplan Wellness ... What's it called?

Lacey: Kaplan Center?

Ashley Frazier: The new Kaplan Center has opened.

Lacey: The Kaplan Center, yeah.

Ashley Frazier: Initially, the parking situation over there was a little confusing. I don't think it's a done deal because there's still construction going on. Initially, I think people are very sensitive to whether there's infringements on our rights as neighbors. Initially, when it opened, students were parking, there was a little bit of a rise in anger about, "Now, the streets are all blocked and there's people parking in front of my house." I think they worked themselves out. I know that UNCG was responsive to those complaints and 01:05:00has moved the traffic cones around a couple of times to try to come to an agreement. I guess I'm hopeful that we continue to work together. I trust and hope that UNCG will be a good neighbor. But I also trust and hope that the Glenwood-ians will start to feel some positive impact of the University being there, and will be at peace with what's happened.

Ashley Frazier: That's all I really want. It got a little heated for a while within the neighborhood. A few years ago, my partner and I started a project called Glenwood is Awesome. So, we started to paint flower pots and put them on the porches of vacant houses just to help people remember that they were loved and not forgotten about. We really were just trying to put our eyes on the 01:06:00positive things about our neighborhood.

Ashley Frazier: ... put our eyes on the positive things about our neighborhood, and try to get past the narrative that it's a dirty, dangerous place that needs saving. Or, that no one really cares about it, so UNCG did us a favor by tearing down some of the old houses. But also, I think to remind us as neighbors, about what's great about living there.

Ashley Frazier: So I think the story of me as a Glenwood resident probably goes hand in hand with me as a UNCG student and employee. I love both of these things. The struggle to try to have them coexist in my life has been interesting.

Lacey: No, you're good, I was checking the time. And I'll cut that part out, so I don't hear that. I just wanted to see where we were. Okay, we're going to back track a little bit.

Ashley Frazier: Okay.

Lacey: And just talk about your first days at UNCG.

Ashley Frazier: Okay.

Lacey: So, you did the interview process?

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: And you moved down here in the summer? When did you buy the house?

Ashley Frazier: Jay moved down here in April, and I moved down here in August when school started.

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: So over the summer I actually stayed in Philadelphia with a friend, trying to make as much money as I could make, for those last few months before I started back to school.

Lacey: Makes sense.

Ashley Frazier: And while that was happening, she was here working on the house to try and get it ready to be habitable. No one had been living there when we moved there. It was little bit of an excitement, like, "Are we going to be able to live here?" And we were, it was a great house, we loved it. We lived there until this time last year. We bought another house just a few blocks over. So now we live in a large house. We moved from an 800 square foot house to a 2,400 square foot house. Just three blocks away from each other, even in the same block.

Ashley Frazier: So that's our commitment to the neighborhood. We bought our 01:08:00forever house, we want to live with our forever and evers. I love it, that I live so close to UNCG. So yeah, we moved down here in 2010. I moved here in August, I started school, Janine started school.

Ashley Frazier: I remember us being very happy. My very first semester I took, I think, 5 classes. Which later, I looked back on and was like, "What was I thinking?" So it was really busy. I was reading, writing, in class constantly, which was really exciting for me, to be back at school. I always had loved school and it was fun.

Lacey: Cool. And how big was ... You have a co-hort, when you came in? I don't know how that works.

Ashley Frazier: CC's a really small doctoral program. So we did ... my co-hort was 3. There was myself, a person named Holud, who was from Jordan, and another 01:09:00guy named Deshaun, who was from India. We all started at the same time. I think we were only in the third year of the doctoral program. So at the point that we started there were, as of yet, no graduates of the program. So the very first co-hort graduated, I think, in my second or third year.

Lacey: Okay, very cool. What classes were you taking that first semester? Any that you can think of.

Ashley Frazier: I took ... Oh, one of my big fears about school was math, particularly statistics. So I took a baby statistics class. I think it was Statistics for Public Health, with Bill Dudley. I adore him, I still do. He, I think, calmed me to say, "Look, you're smart. This is manageable, millions of people do this. You're going to be fine." So I think he really calmed me about 01:10:00the math part.

Ashley Frazier: I took a class with Sylvia Bettez, that was, I think, Race, Class, Gender, and Pedagogy. I'm summarizing, maybe that was the topic. I don't know if that was the main-

Lacey: Was it Bettez or Pettez?

Ashley Frazier: Bettez, B-E-T-T-E-Z, I think. And that class totally blew my mind. She's an amazing, amazing teacher. What else did I take? I took a class ... oh wow! I took a class about cognition and communication, that was taught in 186 Stone, I think. The super technology classroom.

Ashley Frazier: As an early attempt at a partnership with Western Carolina, who doesn't have a doctoral program anywhere in that side of the state. So the UNCG-CSD Department has a partnership which is called IDEALL. I don't know what 01:11:00that stands for. But basically-

Lacey: It's from your department and Western Carolina?

Ashley Frazier: Yes, and Western CSD. So basically, students from Western Carolina can enroll as doctoral students at UNCG and take the classes through technology. I think this might have been the first class that was offered in that way.

Ashley Frazier: So during that time ... this was practically a miracle. Nancy Helm-Estabrooks, who is probably the biggest rock star in all of my field, as far as brain and communication-

Lacey: Nancy Home-

Ashley Frazier: Helm, H-E-L-M, Estabrooks. Just masterful research in Aphasia, she's done. Every SLP who works with adult language has probably 10 books by her 01:12:00on their bookshelf. So at the time, she was still lecturing at Western Carolina, which was kind of her retirement job, I think. We have Kristine Lundgren on our campus here, who's also amazing. Worked with her in Boston and came here.

Ashley Frazier: So they co-taught this class with Dr. Lundgren at UNCG and Dr. Helm-Estabrooks at Western on the TV. I have a really strong memory, not only was the class amazing, but this very surreal feeling, "I can't believe I'm back in school and I have a professor, right now, is like a hero to me. And she's on the TV. Wow!" It was so strange and exciting. I think I walked around that whole semester pretty much feeling like this, "I can't believe this is happening." It was just so fun.

Ashley Frazier: When you go from working all day to being a student again, even despite how hard it is to work and write papers, the schedule being flexible and you sleep later in the mornings. It was sort of like a big vacation. It stopped being one after a couple of semester, as I picked up steam and had more and more responsibility. But the first semester, I was really discovering Greensboro and the campus. It was amazing.

Lacey: So, what differences did you notice between UNCG versus Chapel Hill?

Ashley Frazier: I think at UNCG, there's a lot more focus on caring for each individual student. Now you have to remember that these are 12 years apart. So I don't know how much just college campuses generally have changed, as far as that goes.

Ashley Frazier: But, there's a lot more effort to engage students in college life. I think teachers care more. I think the quality of teaching, frankly, 01:14:00seems better here. The classes are smaller. I had real doubts about how I'd feel about UNCG. Both of the colleges I went to previously were much larger, and I really like that about them. I liked the legend of schools like around sports, around traditions.

Ashley Frazier: Because I didn't feel like I knew UNCG as well, I wasn't aware of those so much. I knew it was smaller. I don't know, I just thought, "Wow. I hope I don't go here and it's a bummer." But, I've had the opposite experience, this has been the best university experience, so far, for me.

Ashley Frazier: Some of the differences, I think, are not having such an emphasis on sports. It sort of changes the flavor of campus. On the one hand, I 01:15:00think it's really exciting when the whole campus goes to a homecoming parade and football games, and there's a huge stadium in the middle of campus. But I think the excitement of that is pretty limited. I think it's a way to engage alumni, and a way for some students to bond to the university. But as far as the day-to-day life, I think it's more of a distraction sometimes.

Ashley Frazier: Similarly, medical schools can do that. When you have a hospital in the middle of campus I think it can really distract from the experience of undergrads. So I think coming to UNCG and not having a football stadium in the middle of campus and not having a hospital in the middle of campus, keeps us more focused on what the experience of being a college student here is. I think there's just a lot more attention to undergraduate teaching.

Ashley Frazier: I think there's sometimes more resources at bigger schools, but I don't think that I feel like I've suffered in any way from that. I feel like I've had more attention and more opportunities on this campus than I did.

Lacey: More opportunities to do other things-

Ashley Frazier: To work with professors. My professors are more free to talk to you. All of my classes are taught by real professors, still, which has always been my experience. But they're not teaching to 200 people. I think for undergrads that's important, because I think it's easy to feel lost on campus. I think that most of my students seem to feel like their professors are accessible.

Ashley Frazier: It's a weird thing, I think, to be a student and teach at the same time. Because I, maybe, have too much connection to students sometimes. I 01:17:00still have that identity. But I like that, because I feel like they talk to me in a different way than maybe they would if I was a real professor.

Lacey: One with more authority. So what is the job that you have now?

Ashley Frazier: So now I am a Research Associate in The Institute to Promote Athlete Health and Wellness.

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: Which, is a center that's housed in the Public Health Education Department on campus. I connected with David Warrick, who is the founder and leader of that institute, through Dr. Hooper. All good things really come from Celia Hooper.

Lacey: A good mentor can do that.

Ashley Frazier: Yes. In my Master's program I had worked together with her on a program called Sports Speech, which was focused on helping student athletes to communicate better. But in those days better, I think, was really focused on 01:18:00media. If you have an interview with ESPN, how do you seem polished?

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: I think that with the times it's become clearer that, that really isn't the right thing to prepare them for. If you have that opportunity, most of the people who are in college athletics are going to do something else, they're not going to play sports professionally. So being on ESPN is really a pretty niche need. But, they're able to communicate effectively with their professors to be successful in class. Things like that are important.

Ashley Frazier: So in retrospect, we decided that maybe we'd get back on sports speech and think it through. She introduced me to David Warrick, thinking that he could be involved with that. Because his research is really around developing interventions and educational programs for student athletes, primarily around 01:19:00alcohol and drug education. But while I was here 3 or 4 years ago, a lot of his research became more formalized into this institute, to promote athlete health and wellness.

Ashley Frazier: Instead of helping me work on my one little project, he saw a place for me there, just applying communications the same way he was applying his preventions science background. I probably actually ask people from lots of disciplines. It's a really inter-disciplinary opportunity for me. We've had people from Kinesiology, from Public Health, from Counseling and Education, and me. So it's been exciting for me to see.

Ashley Frazier: I feel to characterize my professional life has always been, "How can I use this in a weird way? How can I push the boundaries of what people think of as this discipline?" I think I get bored easily and I like to do new 01:20:00things, so whether it was working with trans people or athletes, or just people in business who want to communicate better. I've thought about ... If you think outside of the disorder. People we think of as typical communicators, who don't have a particular disorder, lots of people still struggle to communicate effectively.

Ashley Frazier: So David has really given me the opportunity to apply that in the sports world. My dissertation is focused on sport coaches, athletic coaches, and how they can communicate most effectively with their athletes around issues around well being.

Lacey: Oh, that's cool.

Ashley Frazier: It's not something that I know anyone else does, so I think that's exciting for me to feel like we're trying something new to see if it works. Perhaps it's the closest thing to those days when I was in a limnology 01:21:00lab cutting open a fish. It feels like a real experiment because people aren't really doing this. You can truly go into this and say, "Hey, let's try this and just see if it makes a difference." So I think that's been exciting for me.

Lacey: That sounds exciting. When did you get the job for that? I don't want to lose track of the years here.

Ashley Frazier: I've lost track of the years. For the first 3 years I was fully funded by CSD, Communications Sciences and Disorders. I think that was sort of the limit of their funding. So when that funding ran out, I was funded through the Dean's office for a year, so that gets me to 5 years. And then after that, I was already, as part of that, doing some work with David Warrick.

Ashley Frazier: The institute started and he was able to fund me as a graduate student for a year through that. Then after that, I sort of finished my course work. I got some more prospectus and I didn't need to be enrolled full time. We 01:22:00sort of had this conversation, "Do you want to keep taking a bunch of classes and we'll call you a graduate assistant? Or, do you want to just work here while you finish as a research associate?"

Ashley Frazier: So really, I just kind of pretty seamlessly moved from graduate assistant to part time worker there. And hopefully ... it's always a funding thing, but hopefully there will continue to be a place for me there, at least part time. I think the work we're doing is amazing. I love David, I love Jeff and Sam, and all the graduate students we work with. For me it's a great situation and fun place to work. I'd like to hang in there for a few more years because something they really have a strong grip on is, how to get grant funding for new and novel projects. In CSD that's a little less common.

Ashley Frazier: So I think what I'm hoping to learn, working for IPAW is real skills in being able to write a good grant, so I can take those skills back with me to CSD. I really don't want to abandon my discipline, I want to go back to it with bigger and better skills to push it in a new direction.

Lacey: Okay. We're going to go back just a little bit, just to talk about classes before you-

Ashley Frazier: Okay.

Lacey: I don't know if I'd sent these, the ones about classes, to you or not.

Ashley Frazier: It's all right, I'll wing it.

Lacey: Yeah, I think you can do it. Tell me some of your favorite classes that you've taken here at UNCG.

Ashley Frazier: Wow.

Lacey: Some, I'm not saying one.

Ashley Frazier: So I told you that Bill Dudley taught this Statistics for Public Health. I'm terrible with what the actual name of it might have been. But, I really fell in love with him and I'm still madly in love with him. He taught a class on Multiple Regression, which was a class I didn't have to take. I can't 01:24:00even believe I did this, but I voluntarily took an extra stats class with him. He could have actually taught it with Mark Fine. I loved that class.

Ashley Frazier: Because I took lots of HHS designated classes, I had a few really close friends. My co-hort was super small for CSD, but there was one student in particular in Public Health Ed, Deidre Dingman, who I loved. We sort of started on the same path. These people have all graduated and I'm still here.

Ashley Frazier: But there was another student in Kinesiology, Aaron Piepmeier. We just kept having classes together. So by the time I took this Multiple Regression class, I had already had experience with Dr. Dudley, I really enjoyed him. I'd had several classes with this group of people, so we were all in there 01:25:00together. I really ... That stands out in my mind as feeling like a time when we were all far enough along that we kind of had our heads around what we were going to be doing research-wise. We had enough stats classes that we could actually start to have intelligent discussions about what was happening.

Ashley Frazier: I think it was a class where I was doing something hard and it surprised me that I was good enough at. And, to start to feel like we were actually taking all the new knowledge we had and being grownups with it. "We're really going to be able to apply this, to make up our own research questions, to figure out the answers to things we wonder about." So that was exciting. I really remember that class.

Ashley Frazier: The Race, Class, Power, and Pedagogy class that I had with Dr. Pettez was fantastic. It was my first semester and all kinds of people in that class also. I met a guy named Chris Kennedy, who was in Heretical Culture 01:26:00Foundations. We became really good friends. He also lived in my neighborhood and worked at Elsewhere. So he sort of introduced me to that whole South Elm area.

Lacey: What is Elsewhere?

Ashley Frazier: Elsewhere is a museum downtown.

Lacey: Oh yes.

Ashley Frazier: It used to be a store and they sort of repurposed all the stuff that was left in there. They have artists come and make stuff. I think the seed of that place is, the grandson of the person who had the store, which was a thrift shop for many years, started a project to catalog this slice of life in the 30s, when his grandmother started the store. I think the art is all created from all the things that are there. Nothing new comes in and nothing goes out.

Ashley Frazier: So anyway, Chris worked there and started a queer young people group. They had a zine that they produced. It was just interesting and he was so creative and did such exciting work. We ended up taking several classes together 01:27:00too. We were just really close for those couple early years.

Ashley Frazier: A lot of the students that I met in that class I ended up having several classes with. And Dr. Bettez is just a very, I would say, an ideal role model for who I would like to be as a teacher. The reading was challenging and copious, hundreds of pages of reading every week. There were lots of writings, it was a really difficult class.

Ashley Frazier: The discussions we had in class, I think, just really challenged the way I thought about so many things. I guess I feel like it was this sharing of cultural capital, about what it's like to be in the University, that I had never thought about and didn't understand. I'm really thankful I had it in my first semester, because I think it put me in a state of mind to really examine 01:28:00that all the way through school.

Ashley Frazier: This last school experience, to say, "What's really happening here? What's the hidden curriculum? What are these professors struggling with?" Because I don't think that our professors are ever ... well, I won't say ever, a malevolent force. I think that they're here to do good work, but they also work here and it's part of a system, it's part of an institution. And whether they like it or not, are often in the position of having to follow rules and meet benchmarks, and do things in a certain way.

Ashley Frazier: I just think that I had the opportunity to examine my education in a way that I wouldn't have if I hadn't had the good fortune to luck into that class right away. So that's been ... I think that was a huge blessing. I never took another class with her. I wanted to. It never quite fit in. I would say 01:29:00she's been a super influential part of my education, whether she knows it or not. Because really after that class was over I said good bye and haven't really talked to her again.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: But, if you ever listen to this oral interview Dr. Bettez, it was an amazing experience.

Lacey: You have a stellar recommendation on this oral interview.

Ashley Frazier: Totally. Everyone should take that.

Lacey: All right. Are there any other professors that you would want to talk about, that you haven't mentioned already?

Ashley Frazier: Oh yes, 100%.

Lacey: All right, let's get to that. And then we'll skip down to administrators after that.

Ashley Frazier: NCSD, there is a professor named Alan Kamhi who-

Lacey: Alan what?

Ashley Frazier: Kamhi, K-A-M-H-I. Who, also a rock star in our field, but is very focused on child language. Which, is not my thing. So it wouldn't have made 01:30:00any sense for me to work with him directly. However, if ever there was a perfect intellectual match, I think it might have been him. I think a lot of things we think about in the same way. He led my doctoral colloquium every year, really, that I've been here. He had us read really interesting books. Led us in really interesting conversations about them.

Ashley Frazier: I think that what I learned from him, not everyone has to like you for you to be awesome. One of the most important things to do in preparing for this career is, to learn how to think well and to be able to talk about your thoughts well. And to be able to have an argument in an academic way. He can certainly be prickly and challenging, and actually that's what I like about him 01:31:00most. He pushes and pushes and pushes.

Ashley Frazier: And so, within my first few years here I think I learned to be verbally flexible, in being able to talk about things effectively. I also learned to not just run my mouth, if I didn't have good thinking behind it and if I wasn't ready to come with some sources. I think he also modeled for me that you can direct class in such a way that the people in class can practice those arguments in a safe space, in that you're not humiliating yourself in front of a lot of people, but you're also getting practice. I really never fear any kind of 01:32:00presentation and what questions might come up, because I really know that no one will ever be as hard on me as he was, in picking apart arguments and challenging me to say it better and think better.

Ashley Frazier: So, I would say that he's sort of an old school kind of throw back, to a time when professors saw themselves as leaders in that way. I feel like so many professors now are all about co-constructing knowledge, which is fantastic but they sometimes don't challenge you in that way. I think they're so nice now. And I wouldn't want to be challenged like that in every class.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: But I think a professional seminar is the right place for that. There were only a few of us and it was personal. I always felt loved and I felt like he had my best ... He had my success in mind, it was never malicious. I 01:33:00bonded to him very closely. Second to Dr. Cooper, he's probably the person I am most connected to, and who has supported me the most in my development here.

Lacey: All right. You got here in 2010?

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: Was Linda Brady here at the time?

Ashley Frazier: She was.

Lacey: What are you impressions of Linda Brady?

Ashley Frazier: I think that I was just ... I think at that time I was really influenced by the whole UNCG thing that was going on with Glenwood. So, she was really made out to be a bad guy a little bit in that. But honestly, administrators, the over-arching ... Who's in charge of the university, is never something I thought about. So really, I would say I have very little opinion about her. Accept that, I knew she came after someone who was beloved and maybe 01:34:00had a hard time with that. I honestly couldn't talk with much authority on what kind of an administrator she was, because it was really all hearsay.

Ashley Frazier: you know when people are talking about you, they either love you or hate you. So I don't know that I am really qualified to say if she did a good job.

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: My impression was just that she had a lot of stuff going on that she had to be the spokesperson for. As the face of an institution, she got a lot of flack for stuff that was going on. I have really no idea whether that was legitimate or not. In all honesty.

Lacey: Completely fine. And our current Chancellor, Gilliam. Do you have any-

Ashley Frazier: Well I adore him.

Lacey: Have you met him?

Ashley Frazier: I have met him a couple of times, just very informally.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: I wouldn't say that we're friends. I think that ... This is 01:35:00going to sound now, like I'm being critical of the previous Chancellor, but I'm not. He feels personable. I feel like the communication from him seems really authentic. I appreciate the level of transparency. I do feel like he makes an effort to speak to us when things are happening.

Ashley Frazier: This has been a hard year, and a hard couple of years. I appreciate that on occasion we get messages from him. Now I'm also realistic, I don't know if he write those or how that works. But even that he makes the effort to do that. I love the Warrior Whip. I love that he's out buzzing around, hanging out. Part of that's probably all the excitement of it being his first year or two. But, I just feel that my impression of him is that he's someone I can trust. He's a leader that I'm glad that we have.

Ashley Frazier: I think UNCG made a shrewd move in getting him here. I think he seems sort of the opposite of what was here before. He just seems like a fun, nice guy. If you look at what he was doing before this, he's also a scholar. He seems more like a scholar than a business person to me and I think I'm happy about that. But those are just impressions, I'm certainly no expert on the running of the University.

Lacey: No one asked you for your expertise, it's just an impression as we're going. You were here during two administrators, two chancellors. Do you have any things about any other administrators that are here?

Ashley Frazier: Well, if I haven't said enough amazing things about the Dean of HHS. Celia Hooper is fantastic. Not only because I have now almost a 20 year relationship with her personally. Or, because she's my faculty adviser, but also because I have a partner who works in HHS. I work for and with people who work 01:37:00in HHS. I feel, just generally speaking, in this school she's loved. People feel like she cares about them personally. They have great love for her. I'm not aware of that happening in all the schools.

Ashley Frazier: I think she's a great leader. She actually teaches a course on Higher Education Administration, which I've taken. I think she has a great world view of what people are like and how you can lead them. I know that she devotes herself to study of how to lead with love. I think she really does a good job of it. She's led us through combining the two schools, HES and HHP, into one school, HHS with as little drama as possible.

Ashley Frazier: I think that's she's done a great job of being inclusive to the 01:38:00two schools coming together, because she was the previous Dean of HHP. I think you run into some real leadership problems there, because people feel like you favor your old school. I know she's gone out of her way to make sure it didn't happen that way.

Ashley Frazier: So really, besides our history of her being an amazing mentor to me personally, I think I can take a step back and say she's also a real role model for how leadership can look. And, how to be a strong woman. She always, back in the day, would say, that women have to stick together. That there's a lot of old boys clubs in the world, and that you have to make sure that you meet the right women. I think she uses the term brass ovaries.

Ashley Frazier: So I think some of that sticks with me, that you lead people kindly but also firmly and in that you make sure that people deal with you on 01:39:00your merits and don't discard you or disregard you, because of your gender or whatever else. All important lessons I've learned from her. Besides her I think that other administrators, Kathy Williams. She acted as a mentor to me when I was in the higher administration class, just from knowing people who work for and with her. I know she's beloved, another strong female leader, is a role model to me. I love lots of people around campus. I've had the good fortune to work with a couple of departments, I think that just like department heads, I've seen lots of great leadership from. Yeah.

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: I think we have good people here.

Lacey: Have you gotten any sense of campus culture since you've been here as a 01:40:00doctoral student?

Ashley Frazier: So not too much.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: I don't know if that's more because I'm a doctoral student and because I'm 40, or if it's because of the whole lack of sports thing.

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: Something that I've done for the last couple of years is administrator coordinated in this program called Spartan Choices, which is an effort to integrate campus athletics with the greater campus effort around alcohol education. So I have had the opportunity to throw work across campus with people who organize stuff for students. I'm both odd at the amount of resource that goes into sort of curating the experience for students, because that's developed over. In the 90s-

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: You showed up and you had to figure it out. But also with how much they know about students and they've studied it and there's data. I think 01:41:00that campus life is different, because of the time that we're in. But also because specifically on this campus, we have lots of commuters. We have lots of adult students. So perhaps we don't have exactly the same type of population that lots of colleges have. But, I think it's a very supportive place for new students. I think that the attention to things like living in learning communities, lots of campus activities or always having stuff to do. I think that the culture, while some people love to talk about young people today as coddled and having helicopter parents and everything spoon fed. What I see instead, is a model that's really worked well as far as retention, and particularly for supporting diverse students, first generation college students that UNCG's committed a lot of time, effort and resource to helping them. To 01:42:00figuring out what supports them best and getting them to graduation.

Ashley Frazier: I think, what I know about the culture is that, it seems like there's less parting and drinking going on here, than some of the schools I know of. It also seems a little less lively, I walk my dog over here at night sometimes and there's really not a lot of students out and about. I don't know what that means, if you're an undergrad here, if it's just super quiet and is that can do some studying, is it boring? Do they all go home? I don't know. It doesn't seem like the most fun... it wouldn't make to the top 10 List of party schools, I don't think.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: But, I think there's lots of opportunities for students who want to come here and be good students, and graduate.

Lacey: Okay. Are you graduating in May?

Ashley Frazier: Yes.

Lacey: Hoping so. Knock on wood.

Ashley Frazier: Yeah, I should be, yes.

Lacey: Yeah. What's the plan after that?

Ashley Frazier: Oh, well, just like you might have gathered from this talk that 01:43:00I like to keep my fingers and lots of pies and do stuff.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: And hoping to cobble together a life for myself that looks similar to what I already do.

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: I love working with IPAW and I'd like to say they're at least part-time. I've done adjunct teaching for three departments now, and I've enjoyed that. I love teaching. I'd like to keep doing that, although, culturally I think adjuncts are having more and more trouble staying afloat. I can always do speech pathology, part-time, I still work with that old company from Philadelphia on some weekends, I travel around the country and do that. I like that and I don't know if that's a self protective mechanism that you never put all your eggs in one basket.

Lacey: Maybe.

Ashley Frazier: Or from preserving sort of the ability, always to say, take the shovel and shove it, if something goes bad. I don't know what it is, but I've never liked the whole like, you have one job and you go there from nine to five. My hope is that my life will sort of continue in that way. But I want to stay in Greensboro for sure.

Lacey: Okay, cool. How do you think you've served beyond UNCG in professional organizations or community ways?

Ashley Frazier: When I was more connected to speech pathology, the profession, I always went to ASLHA conventions, which American Speech Language Hearing Association, and for several years, I was the chairperson of their LGBTQ caucus, which is called Le Gasp.

Lacey: Le Gasp?

Ashley Frazier: Yes, I didn't name it.

Lacey: It's such an amusing name.

Ashley Frazier: It is an amusing name. I think it's Lesbian and Gay Audiologists 01:45:00and Speech Pathologists. It sounds like a dance club.

Lacey: It does.

Ashley Frazier: Or a shoe.

Lacey: Or like a cartoon exclamation. Le Gasp.

Ashley Frazier: Something. Yeah. It has an amazing history, started by group of gay male speech pathologist, primarily, about 25 years ago, who met... So number one, speech pathology is a very female dominated profession, 99% of us I think are female. I feel like most of the males are gay. I don't know if numbers bear that out. But they started the group long ago as a way to advocate for equity within the profession and also in the workplace for people being discriminated against. Now they do lots of different things that's a little less of a concern now. Hopefully it stays that way.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: But they've advocated for best practices around how to treat 01:46:00children or clients who come from different backgrounds. So they've really become involved in the trans therapy and making sure that, that's not overly prescriptive. Making sure that, that's culturally competent, that you don't just say, "Oh, okay, I can do that." That you really know what you're doing first. They've moved into more of an advocacy role in that way. So I was proud to represent in that way for the profession. In the community here, I've done a couple of different things. For a while I worked on the YWCA, Racial Justice System Advocacy Committee, they started being part of this city committee, that's Holly Gate City Cordor partnership, which is sort of focused on this 01:47:00whole area that used to be Lee Street and on up, out of town.

Ashley Frazier: The transformation of it, into a destination as Gate City Boulevard. And I do that as a representative for Glenwood, because it's one of the neighborhoods that borders that area. I try to think of it as an opportunity to sort of advocate for the people who've been there for a long time, who don't necessarily have the resources to spiff up their place to be fancy. One of the things that characterizes this corridor through the city is that, it's a lot of immigrant owned restaurants and businesses. And that they probably don't have a lot of resources and that they might have some difficulty understanding what's going on, just because of language barriers and various things. I think I've appreciated being part of that community because I hear the inner workings of 01:48:00how decisions like that get made in cities. And that isn't an experience I've had before. But I think as a neighborhood advocate, it's been important for me to bring up this little guy concerns. I just started being part of an organization called the Pilot Club, is sort of like a-

Lacey: The what?

Ashley Frazier: Pilot Club.

Lacey: Pilot, okay.

Ashley Frazier: Yeah, my accent. Which is a service organization, just like you think of the Rotary or the Lion's Club or anything else with a name. Mostly focus on people with disabilities or who are fragile for some reason. One of the things they do is provide tracking bracelets for people who are likely to wander, or either kids with disabilities, or maybe seniors with dementia. They advocate for brain injury education and prevention. That's how I got involved 01:49:00with them. I just had an interest in brain injury. Those are kinds of community things I do. But honestly, most of my energy in that direction is based on Glenwood's awesome and neighborhood cheer.

Lacey: Sure. That's fair. So you've been out since you got here because you arrived here with your partner.

Ashley Frazier: That's right.

Lacey: What was the environments for LGBT students and staff when you got here, do you know?

Ashley Frazier: As far as my experience it was great, it's never really been an issue. I will say that professionally, previous to being here. I'd had ... you know my big fear at Chapel Hill.

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: If they found out they wouldn't want me around kids, that actually played itself out. I had a couple of jobs, two jobs, where I was told for keep it low, because families might be uncomfortable with me coming in their home or working with their kid. I guess I was always ready for them. I'm always nervous moving to any new place. But it's never really been an issue here. One 01:50:00thing that's been a little bit of a thing is that, when I started working the trans program here, I think I bring concerns to the table about things like, if someone comes to you and they want to change their style of communicating, how do you negotiate what that might look like?

Ashley Frazier: Because I think a tendency can be of some people to say, "Well, I know what women are like, I'm going to teach you how to be one." I think I've always sort of had a problem with that, because there's lots of ways to be feminine or masculine. I think that a client who's voluntarily coming to you for help, is the person who determines what they want that to look like. I think I struggled with that a little bit, just in having conversations with both the clients and the students who worked in that program within CSD. It was one of my 01:51:00first opportunities to really talk to people about that and think about how that might look in the profession. But I found people to be open to that conversation and ready to have it.

Ashley Frazier: My partner is a non-gender conforming person and I think that they've always felt welcome on this campus. With a few exceptions of people who hoot and holler out the window or say, are you a dude? I don't think that's necessarily tied to UNCG certainly, or tied to any place because those things happen occasionally, wherever you are.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: Part of the way I convince her to move down south with me, was to talk about what a progressive and non-Southern like, don't fall for the South stereotype. North Carolina's really not like that. We moved here based on that 01:52:00opinion. Shortly after we moved here, amendment one was passed. I think that, that was a time that I wondered if we'd done the right thing. We really loved it here, we're thinking about, is this a forever home for us? I think that and really everything that's come after it with McCory, has made us from time to time wonder, is this state going in a direction that conforms what we thought we were getting ourselves into. But at the same time, I think that both on campus I felt very supported.

Ashley Frazier: One day actually, when I was leaving Dr. Patel's class and we talked about being affirming instead of just tolerant, which is not a concept that I really felt great about, that I understood very well. I was driving home 01:53:00and going up Glenwood Avenue, I saw, "Say no to Amendment One" posters, in every yard. I felt like I went up the hill and as I looked down, there's just a steady river of them. I remember thinking, I know a lot of the people who live in those houses and I know they're not gay. That really characterized through what it felt like to be affirmed. I think it was the first time that I was like, "They're explicitly supporting me and welcoming me in this way," not me personally. But, even though they don't have skin in the game that it doesn't affect them directly. At the same time as the same made me question whether it was really a welcoming place. My neighborhood never has, and certainly, UNCG never has either. I've always felt welcomed here.

Lacey: That's amazing. Can you notice the environment change at all here, since 01:54:00you've been here?

Ashley Frazier: A little bit.

Lacey: How?

Ashley Frazier: I really think, in the last seven years since 2010 that I've been here, the question of what ... How do I say this? I think that there's growing awareness that the fight for GLBT rights has really been focused on white GLBTQ people, and their sensibilities has become much more of a conversation. There's been a tendency to be over focused on things like marriage being legal when there are trans-women of color being killed on the streets, on a regular basis. I think that that sort of refocusing has made its way into 01:55:00university conversations. When you listen to student organizations, or a bottom up conversation, rather than sort of what the university conversation looks like, or the things sponsored officially by the University. And while I think they do a great job at trying to be welcoming, just by virtue of the size of this place, and the number of students. You can't always have your ear right on the railroad tracks. But if you do, I think you hear students a lot more concerned with things like that, particularly the last couple of years, since-

Ashley Frazier: I don't know what since what, I want to say since McCrory started doing the more outrageous things. Things like HB2, Trayvon Martin and all of the young men who've been killed since him, and Black Lives Matter. All 01:56:00of that surge of activism and awareness around identity, I think has changed the conversation, and the feeling on campus a little bit. Because I think that there are students who are concerned legitimately for their safety and lives. I think it's challenging to professors to decide whether they're going to stay with businesses as usual, or whether they're going to try to figure out how to incorporate these concerns into their classroom. I think that's happening every single day all over campus. Although I couldn't give you specific examples of it happening, I feel like it has changed the feeling on campus. But what I keep trying to think and believe and hope is that, feelings of difficulty and pain come before big change.

Ashley Frazier: And that increased feelings of tension and concern, don't necessarily mean we're all about to descend into madness. But that it's a feeling of discomfort that more and more people are having to deal with and reconcile with their feelings and emotions. And that what will happen, I have to hope, is that they'll really learn to recognize ways that they're privileged and that they've used that to be oppressors. I think that, as people come to terms of that sort of deal with their baggage and what they bring to the table, I hope that means the world will change. And that by virtue of that, the University will change, both in terms of policies and in terms of the people who work here.

Lacey: Have you had any involvement with any campus LGBT groups at all?

Ashley Frazier: I went to a couple of private meetings early on.

Lacey: Like the first year?

Ashley Frazier: The first year, there was a series of conversations. I want to say, that came through Mark Villacorda, who was at the Multicultural Center. Had a group of ... Gosh, see it's been seven years. I think called Kaleidoscope, who were sort of trained and having challenging conversations, went to a few things like that. I think that we're mostly focused on gender and bathrooms at the time. Like what would an inclusive policy look like for trans-students on campus? But what I think I realized pretty quickly, both with the pride group and also spent a little time with the recovery group on campus, is that, although technically I'm a graduate student, I'm a 40 year old person who also teaches, 43 now, who also teaches in classrooms. It isn't exactly appropriate for me to go hang out with students like I'm just one of them. Because I'm 01:59:00really not, at this point.

Ashley Frazier: I think that student organizations, like Pride, are really focused on activism in a certain way that I also was totally into my 20s. As you age, I think you start to see yourself differently as an activist, in terms of what's possible for you and what you prefer. I just felt like, energy wise, it was better for me to stay out of that stuff. I honestly made a decision not to be part of it.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: Until, I guess, such a time that maybe I'm a faculty member here, or can serve in more of like a advisory or support fashion.

Lacey: Sure. Have you gone to Pride here, or would that count as one you wouldn't go to at this point?

Ashley Frazier: Like the parade, like the city celebrates, the community celebration?

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: Yeah, I have.

Lacey: Okay, how was that?

Ashley Frazier: It was okay. I think, again, just like the thing I was talking about earlier. There is a little bit of criticism in the last year or two, about 02:00:00what Pride was focused on, and whether they're focused really on the most critical issues. Again, being a little bit wide focused and focused on marriage and celebration. Celebration can be hard to stomach when you're still being so marginalized and in danger.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: So I have gone but, I'm not exactly in the same place as I might have attended in the past.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: Where it was all fun and games.

Lacey: How has HB2, the past of HB2 affected campus from your perspective?

Ashley Frazier: Well, I mean in a very practical way, the two bathrooms in my hall are now unisex bathrooms. I think that's fantastic, except now, all the dudes come into the old girls room because it's cleaner, and now it isn't anymore.

Lacey: That is very practical.

Ashley Frazier: But, more seriously, I think there was a little bit of disappointment I think that the UNC system or even that you UNCG didn't go rogue right away and condemn that and say, "Hell no, not on our campus." I understand the larger political reasons that didn't happen. But I think you always have the stream, right? That somebody's going to stand up and say, we're just going to say no to this, is not okay. I'm glad eventually, they did come out with something like that. Maybe not as forcefully as I would have liked.

Lacey: Sure.

Ashley Frazier: But ultimately, I think they did stand up for what was right and say, we're not going to allow this. I don't know what to say about that whole HB2. The day that they called the emergency session, I started listening to it, before I came into work, and I honestly never ended up coming to work. I was 02:02:00mesmerized. I couldn't stop for one second, and I listened all the way through until they had the vote and I really couldn't believe it was happening. I have not been able to believe the ferocity with which people have supported it since then. It feels a little like, as surreal as this past election has been, that literally, you listen to things and can't believe they're happening.

Ashley Frazier: I know that some people think everything that's happening is fantastic. But really, after living in a time that felt so hopeful and positive. I really feel like it's becomes a little scary and just surreal. I mean, on some level, it's hard to believe that our world will change that much, right? I've lived through several presidents and despite all of the rhetoric, nothing really 02:03:00changes that much. But I think it's the first time in my life, I've believed that it might and that it's scary. So I don't know, I don't even know what to think. I feel that we are living in a surreal six month period right now.

Lacey: It certainly has been. Okay, so we're pretty much nearing the end of the time. I don't want to keep you too long. So we're going to hit the last few questions and I'm gonna ask if there's anything else you want to say.

Ashley Frazier: Okay.

Lacey: You can feel fair. So, concluding questions, tell me how you think UNCG has affected your life and what it means to you?

Ashley Frazier: Wow.

Lacey: Yeah.

Ashley Frazier: I think that, in lots of symbolic ways ... You may have gathered from this conversation, that I am an examiner of things, that I find tremendous amounts of meaning in things. Symbolically, this time in my life, to come back 02:04:00to school has been huge for me. I feel like this is the time where I'm closing the door on lots of youthful escapades and this is when I really decide what the rest of my life is going to look like. I think symbolically, in that way, for me, this is the place where that's happened. I have felt hugely supported by all of the people in this network of people that I've met here. From Dr. Hooper on down to graduate students I've worked with, I have real close personal relationships with lots of people at UNCG.

Ashley Frazier: I think what it's meant to me also in part, is being part of a community, I think that various things I've done on campus, like being part of Graduates Student Association. It's given me a taste of what it might be like to be a younger student here. But being in this limbo weird space, of being an 02:05:00older student and a doctoral student versus an undergrad, has been interesting. Because, I'm sort of in between all of those things, and can be a detached observer to some level. I feel like this is a school with a lot of integrity. I feel like this is a school that is not business as usual. I really do feel like they go the extra mile in a lot of ways.

Ashley Frazier: That's both from personally how administrators make decisions, but also serve in our mission as a whole. But lots of people have mission statements and that's not really how they roll. So I think that also the proofs in the pudding, like when you look at data and you see who we graduate and you see that we are able to provide extra support and even extra money to first gen students and stuff. I was part of Rawking Welcome Week, this last year and got to meet Austin and Kevin, the people from First Year Experience. When I see how 02:06:00much they care and how hard they work, even though those things don't directly impact me, it makes me feel really proud to be here. I think one thing it's meant to me, is to find a home in this University that feels like a place that has integrity, that I can feel proud to work for. And that I can see myself staying for a long time. It's always been important to me that what I'm doing as a job has meaning and that I feel like my work has meaning and the overall goal of my organization has meaning and that is how it feels to be in UNCG for me.

Lacey: These interviews are part of the 125th anniversary of this University, which is an excellent opportunity for reflection, but also helps us think about where we're heading in the future. What is the future for UNCG? Where do you see UNCG going as an institution in the next 25 to 50 years?

Ashley Frazier: I will artificially divide that question into, where I see it 02:07:00going and where I hope it goes.

Lacey: Okay.

Ashley Frazier: Because, one of the narratives that has come with UNCG expanding across the street was sort of the corporatization of the University and providing these resort like accommodations for students. I've thought a lot about that, and I'm interested in that question of, how do you stay competitive? Because I know that universities are getting less and less state funding and have to compete for students and have to create ways for students to stay on campus. I'm interested in that as a trend, and whether or not that's successful. But my hope is that they can balance that with, why the purposes of higher education.

Ashley Frazier: I think that developing whole people is important. In that way, 02:08:00I'm glad that they're focused on wellness and having a place to work out and having on-campus accomodation. But, I hope also that they always keep in mind that education, although it's about the whole person, always starts with the actual academics right? And that, in some ways, I think it's scary that it could become more about the experience and layer upon layer of people who are curating the experience and less and less money for faculty, classrooms and facilities, so that you have classes that are challenging. That it isn't all online education, because although I love online education, I think there's also something to be said for being in the classroom together in face to face community.

Ashley Frazier: I guess my hope is that the leadership of this organization, and I guess I have to say the UNC system as a whole, is able to balance out in a 02:09:00successful way. That at the same time as we're figuring out how to be an institution with less and less money, it doesn't just become about how pretty it is, or how much stuff we have. And that we always prioritize academics and research, and the opportunity for students to really do the hard work of learning as well as becoming fit, healthy, spiritually, and mentally well people.

Lacey: I think that's an excellent stopping point. Do you have anything else you would like to-?

Ashley Frazier: We've covered a lot of ground here.

Lacey: We have. I just want to make sure you don't you don't feel that you've forgotten anything?

Ashley Frazier: I think I've told you every single thing I know, actually.