[LAUGHTER] SPEAKER 1: What? [LAUGHTER] Okay, so introduce yourself. And when did you arrive at Cornell? [Speaking to someone not in the interview] Hi, Cyrus. What's up? [INAUDIBLE] SPEAKER 1: Yeah, she's in her office though. [INAUDIBLE] SPEAKER 2: So I am Lori Leonard. I am a professor in the Department of Global Development. I'm also the Faculty-in-Residence here in Mews and for Loving House. And I arrived at Cornell in January of 2014; so, almost exactly eight years ago. [Mews Hall is a Residence Hall at Cornell University] SPEAKER 1: Cool. Why did you choose to come to Cornell? SPEAKER 2: I chose to come to Cornell because- Partly because of my department. I think that Cornell is a really big and diverse university. And I was interested in an interdisciplinary department and in development studies, but yet wanted access to people who do things- who are in more technical fields like SIPS. [SIPS stands for School of Integrative Plant Science] Right, the plant sciences or the animal sciences or even in the disciplines like anthropology and sociology. So it was a really- It just seemed like given what I was studying and where I was at in my career, it was a good- it was a good fit. SPEAKER 1: Cool. How did your path intersect with that of Loving House? SPEAKER 2: So I became the Faculty-in-Residence in Mews inÉ2017. This is my fifth year, so 17, 18, 19, 20- yep. In 2017. Loving House did not exist then. And in my- I believe it was my second year here, Loving House was created. And so I was here at the inception. In fact, the year before Loving House opened, we formed a steering committee to sort of plan for it, to think about how it should be structured and how we would admit students to it and those kinds of things. And so I was part of the small group of faculty and staff that put it together. SPEAKER 1: Oh okay. So that was like your role in the founding of Loving House? SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: Nice. What does it mean to you? Loving House. SPEAKER 2: I think Loving House has been the best thing that I've seen happen to Mews. And, you know, there was a lot of- I mean, I wouldn't say a lot, but there was some concern initially about how a program house would fit in a first-year dorm. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. SPEAKER 2: Right. And what the interface would be between the students in Loving House and the students in Mews. And I can say from the perspective of Mews, if I'm thinking about the whole building, Loving House has generated a lot of energy. The students in Loving House tend to be super involved in the life of the dorm. You know, we have had COVID; so, last year was an anomaly, and we're still not back to, quote unquote, normal. But I would say that Loving House students have been incredibly engaged and have really added a lot of vitality to the residence hall. SPEAKER 1: What stigmas have persisted surrounding the founding of Loving House? Or have there been any? SPEAKER 2: You know, the very first year- and you should check this with Taylor. But the very first year, there were some, you know, I think messages on the white boards. There were some- I think there was one that was outside on the lawn right by Loving House. So the first year, it was a little shaky, and I think people were a little bit- I don't know. It was happening all over campus, but it did feel a little- You know, it felt uncomfortable here. And it was disappointing that that happened. Since then, I have not seen or heard of any of that. And so, if it's happened, I haven't heard about it. I don't think it has. SPEAKER 1: What kind of messages and stuff? SPEAKER 2: I don't remember the exact wording of them, but there were homophobic slurs. There were racial slurs. Not just related to Loving House, but for the dorm more broadly, the residence hall more broadly. But it was- And I remember Taylor taking away the markers for the whiteboard at some point, and we were talking about locking the lounges so that people couldn't go in and leave messages. But that was the very first year that Loving House opened. SPEAKER 1: What was it like dealing with that, like having to go and make adjustments because of the homophobia? SPEAKER 2: I have to say that it was disappoint- In some ways it wasn't surprising. I was kind of surprised that there wasn't more of a reaction. I think it was really disappointing. And I know it was hurtful especially to the students who lived there, but it was disappointing and hurtful, I think, to a lot of people. And I think there has been- You know, we've had fantastic RAs. We've had fantastic students who live in Loving House. And I think they really sort of coalesced around each other. And we had a number of- we had a flood in Loving House. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] SPEAKER 2: That first year of Loving House. SPEAKER 1: Wait, the first year? SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: Oh, you're not talking about Diego's flood? SPEAKER 2: Diego's flood? SPEAKER 1: When he put the disco ball in the sprinkler- [INAUDIBLE]? SPEAKER 2: No, no, no, no, no, no. This was related to the construction back here. SPEAKER 1: They were doing construction five years ago? SPEAKER 2: They were doing construct- They were starting- what were they doing? Yes, it was the first year that Loving House was open. So, no, it wasn't five years ago. It was 2019. Two years ago, right? SPEAKER 1: Oh yeah. SPEAKER 2: Right? And so, they had covered the- when they were doing the construction, they had covered the storm sewer, and then it started raining really hard. It was Halloween actually. It was Halloween, and it rained super hard. And one of the residents from Loving House, bless her heart, went out there and tried to uncover the storm sewer that they had covered up. But the water was literally coming through the walls. It was up to the windows, right behind Loving House. And so, we had- I mean the whole hallway was- the water was probably that deep, and it was muddy water. And so all the residents had to get their stuff off the floor, their mattresses, their clothes. Their stuff up off the floor. We had to move some of them out so we could, you know, we could dry it out and clean it out. And so it was a tough start to Loving House. There were a bunch of things that happened that year and then poof- SPEAKER 1: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] SPEAKER 2: And so in March, everyone had to move out. And so it was a tough first year. But one of the Loving House residents actually wrote about the flood, wrote a piece for The Chronicle. She was a newspaper writer, and she wrote a piece for The Chronicle about it. So they just took things in stride. They made the best of it. They were a tight bunch. And I thought that they just- You know, they rose to every occasion and just moved on. So I was, you know, part of that whole group. From the beginning. SPEAKER 1: Yeah. [PAUSE] What is the most interesting thing a student has told you about Loving House or like the fact that you got in? SPEAKER 2: You know, one of the most impactful things for me was- I don't know if you're going to interview him or not, but Ian Wallace. SPEAKER 1: Yes, someone else is. SPEAKER 2: Okay. Ian Wallace only got to live there for one year. He was one of the students who worked really hard to make Loving House happen. And I was so happy for him that he got to live there as a senior. And I think it was just- It was something that so many people had wanted for so long and had worked so hard to bring about. We had actually the grand opening for it in this room. It was packed. This room was packed. And there were people who came back for that who had tried to create a Loving House on Cornell's campus many, many years ago and hadn't succeeded. And they were just- Everyone stood up and gave speeches, and they were just so proud and so happy. And I guess I was just happy for Ian that he- I can't remember his exact words, but he just was so- I think everyone that lived in Loving House that first year was proud to be part of the first group of students that got to live in Loving House. SPEAKER 1: Hmm. That sounds really special. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: What did you learn about yourself through the founding? SPEAKER 2: What did I learn about myself through the founding? You know, I learned a lot from the people on the steering committee. I learned a lot from the students. I learned a lot about- I'm going to sound repetitive, but I learned a lot about what it means to people to be accepted and to have a place where they feel that they belong. And I learned a lot about- I mean, you can sort of- In an abstract way, you can understand why that's important. But when you see it, it becomes, you know, something much more tangible and very different. And I have all kinds of different encounters with people in Loving House. One of them- I go to Baltimore a lot. One of them was going to Washington, D.C. and so rode down with us in the car and talked a lot about Loving House and what it meant to her to be there. So, you know, I think I learned about myself. What did I learn about myself? I learned that I didn't fully understand the importance of that kind of- A place, you know? Where people could be themselves and didn't feel like they had to hide their identities. She had had a really tough- She came as a sophomore. She had had a really tough first year here and didn't feel like she could be out to her roommates. Right. And just to hear the toll that took on her, and the amount of energy it took for her to manage that, what she revealed and what she concealed was- You know, it was amazing. And, you know, she just never felt comfortable. I think her whole first year here, she just was- there was a level of discomfort that she lived with. And I think I didn't fully appreciate the day-to-day stress that that causes and the just the complete sense- I mean, you can see it, but the deep acceptance that people have of each other here. SPEAKER 1: Was there a lot of, I guess, interest in it from like students who wanted to live- Were there a lot of students who want to live here the first year? SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: Or was there a kind of like, "Oh, I don't know. I'll see how this goes" kind of thing? SPEAKER 2: Well, what we did was we - the steering committee - created the application form. So we had an application form. We asked people to answer lots of questions, and I remember that we had many more applicants than we had spaces. SPEAKER 1: Oh, wow. SPEAKER 2: That first year, we had many more applicants than we had spaces. And everyone on the steering committee was sort of going through the applications trying to figure out- And some people wrote a lot. Some people wrote a little. So, it was kind of hard to gauge. like, what do we do now? We have more people- And so we had a whole set of criteria that we came up with. Ultimately, I think it was Taylor that really picked people. SPEAKER 1: Right. SPEAKER 2: And you know, with what happens with housing. People say I want to live here and then a friend gets a place there or, you know, people change around a lot. But there was a huge amount of interest in it the first year. And I don't know- It seems to sort of work out that we get the right number of people every year, but we have more first year students in it than we thought we would. We thought it would fill up with, you know, seniors, juniors, sophomores. We were going to save a few spaces for first years. I'm actually glad that a lot of first year students get to live in Loving House, who want to live in Loving House and who don't have to go through, you know, stuff related to their identity in addition to having to make the transition to college. SPEAKER 1: So when you were planning Loving House, was your- Were you thinking of it as more of a space for upper class students or more for first years? SPEAKER 2: We were thinking of it as mixed. As mixed, but we thought it would be predominantly older students. And I forgot how many beds we were going to save for first years. It might have been ten, maybe even less. SPEAKER 1: That's actually a lot. How many beds are there in total? SPEAKER 2: 30. SPEAKER 1: Oh, wow. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. So I think we thought it was going to be- was it 5 to 10 that I think we were reserving for first year students. This year half of them are first year students. So we have more first year students than we thought. But I kind of like that. You know, I like that. And also, I think it makes me think that for a lot of students it's not such a big deal anymore, you know, that people are comfortable living in other places. So, you know, it's- I don't know how to think about it, but I think we initially thought that there would be fewer first year students than there actually are. SPEAKER 1: Mm hmm. Is there still the same amount of interest in Loving House as there was like-? SPEAKER 2: Initially? SPEAKER 1: Yeah. SPEAKER 2: I think generally speaking, there is. I mean, we've only- These last two years have been weird, you know. So it's hard to tell what's really- what's really going on. Because of COVID, a lot of people didn't even come back last year. We do have some people, not many, but some who've stayed here their entire Cornell career. That's cool. I think that's really nice. And I still run into people on campus who moved out of Loving House but have very fond memories of living there and felt like it was a great place for them when they were there. SPEAKER 1: Mm hmm. All right. Do you have anything to add or, like, want to make sure we got to? SPEAKER 2: No, I think you did an excellent job, Emma. [LAUGHTER] SPEAKER 1: Thank you. SPEAKER 2: Thank you! SPEAKER 1: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. SPEAKER 2: Of course. Of course. SPEAKER 1: I know it's, like, kind of late, but- SPEAKER 2: No worries. I got a cookie out of it, so. [LAUGHTER] And here you go. SPEAKER 1: Thank you.