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Interview with Ellyn Uram Kaschak
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Title
Interview with Ellyn Uram Kaschak
Contributor
Kaschak, Ellyn Uram ; Gashurov, Irene
Subject
Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni at San Jose State University. Harpur College – Alumni at University for Peace in Costa Rica; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in San Francisco.
Description
Dr. Ellyn Kaschak is an award-winning psychologist, author, teacher and human rights activist. She is a professor emerita of psychology at San Jose State University. She teaches in the gender studies program at University for Peace in Costa Rica.
Date
2018-02-13
Rights
In Copyright
Identifier
Ellyn Kaschak.mp3
Date Modified
2018-02-13
Is Part Of
Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni
Extent
56:23 minutes
Transcription
Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Ellyn Uram Kaschak
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 13 February 2018
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(Start of Interview)
IG: 00:00
Up to you. We can either try to get you on Skype, or we can just do this over the phone.
EK: 00:09
Okay, either way, or we can go on FaceTime. You guys [inaudible] FaceTime
IG: 00:16
Uh, FaceTime? No, I am here with my colleague, Aynur de Rouen, and so say hello.
Third speaker 00:28
Hello. How are you?
IG: 00:29
Who is the- yeah, she is the project manager for the oral history project. So should I give you a little bit of overview of what the oral history project is, or should we just plunge into the interview?
EK: 00:46
Why do not you give me a short review?
IG: 00:48
Okay, so the short review is that we-we are creating a virtual center for the study of the (19)60s. It will exist to promote scholarship on this important decade. And-
EK: 01:10
Okay.
IG: 01:10
-so we have collections of audio recordings, um, different collections. So one collection is a you is a set of 200 of interviews with 275 prominent leaders from the 1960s representing a range of political affiliations. So we have everyone from yippies to, you know, civil rights leaders like John Lewis and Shirley Chisholm, and there are people who were anti-war activists, as well as Vietnam vets who, you know, willingly went to this war. So that is one collection. The other collection is the collect, you know, the project that you are participating in, and that is a set of oral history interviews with alumni of Harpur College from the 1960s and it is to give. So it is to give a look back on what your experience at Harpur was like and how you perceived the events around you so the larger perspective. So these are, you know, these are tapes right now for oral history that will be transcribed, digitized and placed, excerpted, placed online. We have to ask you for your permission to-
Third speaker 02:42
-consent form, and I can email to you. You can either sign it and email back to me, or, if you prefer, I can send it via mail with a paid envelope. So it would be maybe easier for you. Do you want me to do that way? To do that.
EK: 03:20
Email is easiest for me.
Third speaker 03:22
Email is easy. Okay, I will I will email to you, then
EK: 03:27
You will never find me if you should not stand there.
Third speaker 03:29
Okay, all right, I will send you an email after the interview this afternoon.
IG: 03:35
Okay.
EK: 03:36
Okay, good.
IG: 03:37
Okay, so are we ready to start?
EK: 03:41
Yes, okay, I do not know what is wrong with it.
IG: 03:46
It is okay. That is okay.
EK: 03:48
So keep going this way. I guess.
IG: 03:49
Let us, let us go this way. Okay, so Ellyn, tell- first of all, you need to identify yourself and tell us who you are, where you are and what you are doing by participating in this interview.
EK: 04:10
Okay, so this is the actual interview.
IG: 04:13
Yes, yes.
EK: 04:16
Okay, I am Ellyn Kaschak, and I was a student at Harpur from 1961 to 1965 so I hope it does not mess up the tape too much. So I just sent John, and he said he'd welcome over to somebody a bunch of photographs from the 1960s of the dorms and articles, you know, invitations to dances and things like that that is going on.
IG: 04:50
Okay. Do you know who you sent this to?
EK: 04:54
I sent it to John.
IG: 04:55
I see, I see.
EK: 04:56
John um-
IG: 04:59
Cook-Cook.
EK: 05:00
John Cook.
IG: 05:01
Yes.
EK: 05:03
And he said he walked him over to the library so somebody has them.
IG: 05:07
Okay, I will get them from him.
EK: 05:09
And there is a whole bunch of, there is a whole bunch of little odd names from dancers. And I do not know if they still have it, but they used to have the vacation, stepping on the coat ceremony in the spring.
IG: 05:22
Oh, that is wonderful. Okay, so you please tell us you want, what is your age? Where are you speaking? Where are you physically located right now? And tell us that you are, you know, participating in this oral history interview.
EK: 05:42
I am seventy-four years old. I have been a professor at San Jose State for many years. [coughs]
IG: 05:55
We will, we will, but we did not catch what you said last you are 74 years old, and
EK: 06:05
I, when I graduated from Harpur, [inaudible] is George Washington University, I see where I got a master's degree in clinical psychology-
IG: 06:13
I see.
EK: 06:13
-from there, they were not hired at Union, and I could not get a job, and they were not taking union into the PhD programs, even though I was a top of my class. And so I was told that I could not get a PhD because it was a waste of money. And you know, when I would just stay home and have babies? So I worked in DC for a couple of years as a school psychologist, and then times started changing, and I went back to school at Ohio State, got a doctorate, and came out to California to do my internship at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto, and then I got a job at San Jose State as a clinical psychologist at a community psychologist. And I stayed there for my whole career, until I retired.
IG: 07:02
Okay, so where was that at what state at California state?
EK: 07:07
San Jose. San Jose. Oh, San Jose State University.
IG: 07:12
State University. I know where that is.
EK: 07:15
Yeah. That is right in the middle of Silicon Valley stuff.
IG: 07:20
Yes-yes-yes.
EK: 07:21
It was [inaudible] and I went there.
IG: 07:24
Yeah, I could imagine. So just let us backtrack now to your early life and tell us where you grew up. Where are you from?
EK: 07:39
I am from Brooklyn.
IG: 07:41
Oh, well, where-
EK: 07:44
I spent a few years in Valley Stream before I left, but mostly Brooklyn.
IG: 07:47
Where in Brooklyn, if you do not mind my asking.
EK: 07:53
Coney Island.
IG: 07:54
Oh, I know where that is. So, who were your parents? What did they do?
EK: 08:04
My parents were first generation Americans, and they were Celia and Bernard Uram, and they just kicked around and did a lot of things and fun. [coughs] Oh, I apologize. Finally, my father, after I was out of the house, when I was in my 20s, opened a successful business. So-
IG: 08:35
Excuse me, a what business?
EK: 08:37
A successful business. It was called [inaudible] stores, and it sold [inaudible], it was a discount store.
IG: 08:43
Okay. And you said that your parents were first generation from where?
EK: 08:50
Well, my grandparents came from Eastern Europe, and they came in 1900s to get away from the [inaudible], so way before Hitler and from Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire.
IG: 09:05
Okay, all right, did your parents go to college?
EK: 09:11
No, they just barely finished high school. They had no interest in my going to college, or anybody going to college. They did not even know what it was, and I was the one that consisted on an education. So that was the early days of the scholarships before the government shriveled them. So after the New York State using scholarship and I needed to go someplace inexpensive, of good quality inside New York. So that became Harpur.
IG: 09:46
Um, so, how did you persuade your parents to let you go to college?
EK: 09:52
Well, I did not. I just went. [inaudible] on me.
IG: 09:56
Okay, so, um, uh, you know, so-
EK: 10:02
I had the scholarship. I paid for everything myself, and I practiced increasingly, I went to college.
IG: 10:09
Well that is, that is very bold, very courageous of you.
EK: 10:13
I am bold.
IG: 10:14
Bold, courageous. So, um, so
EK: 10:20
Like- what I wanted. I did not want to like it. You know, sitting in Brooklyn, owning somebody's children.
IG: 10:27
I see. So did you have siblings? Do you have siblings?
EK: 10:32
Yes, I did. I have two younger siblings. My sister is three years younger. She eventually went to Stony Brook, and my brother is a high school graduate.
IG: 10:42
I see, so did he go into the family business?
EK: 10:49
He did not. He had, psychological problems. So he has not worked.
IG: 10:55
I see, I understand. So you decided to go to Harpur because of its affordability and because of its reputation? What was the reputation of the college back then?
EK: 11:09
The reputation of Harpur was that it was the [inaudible] public schools. It had a great reputation, and it was really just starting up. I do not know how it got a good reputation so fast. So they have just been Triple Cities College a few years before.
IG: 11:28
So did you learn about this from your friends, from your academic advisor? Do you remember?
EK: 11:37
I do not remember. I needed a lot of research myself, but also had a pretty good values counselor, so you probably helped me.
IG: 11:44
Okay and you financed your own education. What did you work during your college education or during the summers? When did you make money?
EK: 11:59
I always worked during the summers, and once in a while, I worked during the semesters in the cafeteria, you know, cleaning up the trays in the cafeteria.
IG: 12:10
Okay.
EK: 12:12
I mean, the campus. I was just here; the campus looks very different. There was one cafeteria, and everybody had to eat on campus.
IG: 12:21
What were your first impressions a city girl from Brooklyn, from Coney Island, coming to really the boondocks. So what did you think?
EK: 12:39
In the first place, my father was one of those guys that would not use a map, so he drove to Albany and went to the left turn to get to Binghamton. So it took us two days. We pulled up, and it was nothing but mud. There were two, three buildings and mud. "Are you horrified?" I said, "Take me home. I do not be here." And they had not finished the dorms. There were only two dorms, two girls dorms and two guys dorms, and they had not finished them. So they had us tripled up in the dorms for the first semester. So it was, I guess it was after the [inaudible] in a lot of ways.
IG: 13:22
So how-how long did it take you to acclimate to these new surroundings, and what helped you?
EK: 13:34
Well, it took me a few weeks. I was really depressed in the beginning, and then I started to meet people. I had a boyfriend. I met friends who were also from New York. There was an extreme divide. I do not know if this still is, between the upstate and the downstate students.
IG: 13:52
There was a big difference?
EK: 13:55
A huge difference. So the downstate students were my friends. They were familiar to me. They were also from Brooklyn or Long Island or the smartest kids in their class and so on. The upstate students were also very [inaudible] were the smartest students I have ever met at any school that I have gone to, and they were smarter than a lot of the faculty where I taught. So I like that. The upstate students were just industrious. They just studied all the time. So the first two roommates that I had, were set the alarm o'clock for six o'clock in the morning, go to the cafeteria, have breakfast and begin studying before their classes. The first time I have ever seen people study like that.
IG: 14:43
What were some cultural differences, if any, between the upstate and downstate students? Could you remember any anecdotes?
EK: 14:54
Um, the upstate students went to church on Sunday morning, early [inaudible], and they would, they got in couples or in friendship groups, and only used to study in the state union of the library and then study from morning to night.
IG: 15:19
And but you, you must have studied as well. I mean, what was your experience of academics at Harpur? How did you- did not you find it rigorous, or did-
EK: 15:35
Much more rigorous than anything I had done before. And so I did study, and I wanted to be a psychologist, but the Psychology Department only did rat psychology. The 1960s was the height of Skinnerian psychology, so that meant you studied rats and boxes and not people. So I will tell you an anecdote. We do not have to live for three hours every week, and they eat a little like closet with your rat. Your rat had a fresh bar to get food. I do not know if you are familiar with those kinds of studies. That is Skinnerian psychology, and I became so bored because my rat was asleep. It turns out that rats are not trainer animals, so they sleep all day. So nobody saw the rat in setting up the labs. So I took a pencil and I poked my rat to get it to wake up and do the study psychopaths, of course, and rats [inaudible] with me. And so I went to the whatever it was in the nurse's station at the Student Union. I got a tetanus shot, and I dropped psychology, and I majored in foreign languages.
IG: 16:53
What, um. That is very interesting. It echoes some of the experiences of other alumni who studied psychology. They also complained about rat psychology.
EK: 17:08
There was no people psychology at all. You could forget about it if you went to that and I wound up majoring in Russian language and literature, which I think was a good start for being a psychologist. Anyway, Dostoevsky, Chekov all of them.
IG: 17:24
Yes-yes. That is what I studied as well.
EK: 17:28
Did you?
IG: 17:29
Yes.
EK: 17:29
So as a result, I mean, Russia is coming back before the Russian maybe it will be useful.
IG: 17:36
Perhaps.
EK: 17:37
An interesting topic to study.
IG: 17:40
It is an interesting without question. It is an interesting topic to study. It is an interest. It is a rich literature to study. So you nonetheless, so um, so you were disappointed with sort of the direction of psychology courses. How did you find the Russian literature courses who were some of your professors?
EK: 18:08
You know, they had the early professors there that we still had moved over from the community college, so I had, we used to call them by their last names [inaudible] they did not have doctorates, but they were both from Russia, and from [inaudible]
IG: 18:37
I see, I see. So you know, how was that?
IG: 18:43
It was the Russian department.
IG: 18:45
That was the Russian department. How did you find your experience?
EK: 18:50
I love languages, so I found it very interesting.
IG: 18:53
Did they teach-
EK: 18:55
And Russian was much more difficult in psychology, because we had to read War and Peace and all that in the original.
IG: 19:02
Really, you read-
EK: 19:04
I am probably the only person you know that read War and Peace in the original, but I still have the book. It was a tremendous effort.
IG: 19:16
That is, I could imagine, that is extremely impressive. That is an education in itself.
EK: 19:21
It was. And then when I finally went back to psychology at Northern Washington University in the people psychology, you still had to take your, you still had to take nine years exams to get an advanced degree. And I took my English, and was a beast.
IG: 19:40
I could imagine after reading War and Peace in its entirety, you probably did better. You probably knew more than a lot of the faculty, the Russian faculty there.
EK: 19:54
Probably I do not recommend it. I mean, it is really origins, but I need to learn a lot. I was very happy with the major, because I got to know languages, and then I did psychology later on, and it really showed me instead, because of the rigorousness of Harpur, is what really changed me. I was from one of those school [inaudible] in high school. It really changed me into taking education really seriously and studying and being prepared and so on.
IG: 20:25
So um, you um, studied Russian very intensively. You worked in the cafeteria and in the summers to pay your way through college. But you- did you participate in residential life? What was that like for you?
EK: 20:49
Residential life was not much. We had, you know, that was we had a paid-telephone in the hall, and that was the only telephone so everybody's boyfriends would go in in the evening, we had a curfew. I believe it was 10:30. There was a curfew for the girls, not for the guys. So everybody would say good night at 10:30 and then the phone would start ringing. But there was only one phone, and so residential life, as I remember it now, revolve around a lot, around the [inaudible], and what fraternity did he belong to, and what dances you went to, and things like that.
IG: 21:31
And you mentioned you had a boyfriend.
EK: 21:35
Yes, I did.
IG: 21:35
And so what-what life did he expose you?
EK: 21:42
He, um [inaudible] is actually his name. I kept his name. [inaudible] Uram was actually my family's name.
IG: 21:53
Oh, that is very interesting.
EK: 21:56
So and I just actually saw his sister for the first time. And, I do not know how many years, I just did a TED talk last year. I hope maybe you were there.
IG: 22:10
I know I was not there. I so I miss your talk. So-
EK: 22:19
I just saw her for the first time in years, and his parents had gone, but she still felt like family to me. So he was a townie, what we used to call a townie, yes. Oh, and he commuted, and he lived at home with his parents. So being that he commuted, they got him a car. So that was like the epitome he had a car. We could go places. We could go out on dates. He we used to drive all over upstate New York. I do not know if [inaudible] still there. It was a monastery.
IG: 22:56
Yes, I visited it.
EK: 22:58
It was a beautiful experience. It is like we used to do things like that quite a bit together, especially on the weekends. And he studied and also worked this whole time [inaudible]. And his mother worked in- as a waitress in the Arlington Hotel. I do not know if it is still there.
Third speaker 23:21
What hotel?
EK: 23:21
It was one of those ugly buildings, and she gave him all his money so he could go out and date and do things like that. So we had a pretty good time. And I was close to his family, because they were right there. So I go spend Christmas with the family and so on. And most of the activities centered around what they called Men's social clubs. They did not have fraternities. There was no football they were going to be principal and not have a football team, not have fraternities and so on. So but they had men's social clubs. And so most of the activities were for [inaudible] and then on social clubs, and then the big dances.
EK: 23:21
The Arlington hotel, it was downtown.
Third speaker 23:21
No, I do not know.
Third speaker 24:08
I have a question. So how did you feel about having a curfew because boys did not have it, girls had it. So how did it make you feel about it?
EK: 24:21
You know, we did not question it that much of the time. It was 1961. Boys could and also the boys could live off campus. And we did not like it that we were not, you know, like we'd [inaudible] know about it. And a lot of the girls used to sneak out after they did it, they did a great check at 10:30 and then they climb out the window and go over to their boyfriend's place.
EK: 24:42
So, it was accepted that the way girls had to be treated, and it was a little bit of a joke, because the idea was, you know, you told me you cannot get pregnant before 10:30. You know, so it was a little bit of a joke, but we took it kind of as a joke. Nobody took it that seriously. Nobody was strongly into feminism or anything.
EK: 24:42
Yeah, it is interesting.
IG: 25:11
Was that was feminism or the women's right movement in the air at all?
EK: 25:20
Not in Binghamton.
IG: 25:22
But at Harpur?
EK: 25:25
No-no, not really, not really. We had some very interesting guests that came and talked to us. And so there was a lot of politics in the air, mostly Vietnam politics. [inaudible] good news. He was a very well-known writer, and he came to campus. And when the Roosevelt came to campus and he did not have any money, she charged a lot of money, and one of the student leaders told me, we do not have money left to [inaudible] And she [inaudible] limousine one day and hung out with everybody.
IG: 26:04
That is great. That is great.
EK: 26:06
But there was not much about feminism. The females were all there to get to get a husband and a degree.
IG: 26:19
Well, you found it you know your boyfriend, and then who became your husband. Were there? Was there anxiety about the Vietnam War, and how did it express itself? And as his-
EK: 26:36
Tremendous anxiety about the Vietnam War, because that was the age of the guys that were getting drafted. And so there were two ways not to get drafted. And one used to go to graduate school. [inaudible] to get in and keep studying, and the other was to get married. So a lot of people were getting married to keep the guy out of the war. A lot of my friends got married last year, and also the pill have just come out control, a-
EK: 27:11
Birth control.
EK: 27:12
So a lot of them, you know, even technical version in those days, the technical discussion how old you are now?
IG: 27:22
Well, [crosstalk] I see, I see.
EK: 27:27
And so a lot of the girls once they decided marrying a guy,[coughs] [inaudible] enjoy birth control, so they got pregnant, and the girls dropped out of the guy finished school. So a lot of my female friends went home last year to have their babies.
IG: 27:50
Unmarried or married?
EK: 27:51
Married, they slept with the guy only because he became engaged and they knew he was the one they were going to marry. Otherwise, she did not have sex with anybody. [inaudible] marry him, then the sexual thing has changed drastically.
IG: 28:07
Yes, I agree. So was- were you involved at all in student activism, was there were any of your friends involved in student activism, and what was the nature of that?
EK: 28:29
Listen very much. There was a small group of students from the city that were involved in activism, and most people mostly people, I think, kept themselves into their own group.
IG: 28:49
So-
EK: 28:49
And some-some activism in that Vietnam and that was all these, nothing, I remember, nothing about feminism.
IG: 29:01
What about the Civil Rights Movement?
EK: 29:04
Well, the civil rights movement, yes, definitely, and we will let anybody who went in March, I met, I actually worked on Shirley Chisholm presidential campaign that was already in California.
IG: 29:19
That is very interesting. [crosstalk] yeah, she is one of the people we have interviewed in our 60s collection.
EK: 29:34
She was not really the first woman to do anything, and she really was a tough woman, history [inaudible] president. Then I was already in California, doing my internship. And once I got to California, I got I was not very aware of politics. I was just doing my own life. And when I was at Hartford, once I got to California, there was civil rights. It was Vietnam, there was black people running for offices, all kinds of stuff, and there was the abortion coalition. That was the first big issue of feminism.
IG: 30:10
Was that in the (19)70s, when did you get to California?
EK: 30:15
Got to California in the late (19)60s, maybe 1968 and they had started. I was in Ohio. Oh, I know- Ohio until 1968 studying psychology, and that is when the consciousness raising groups began. And so we all got ourselves in the consciousness raising group, and all became feminists, and there were no courses in psychology of women at all. They let us organize someone and teach without a faculty member, but all the faculty were men, and they did not have any idea what we were doing. So when I became a feminist, it was in the mid (19)60s. I had already, I was maybe four years out of Harpur. I was not going on while I was in Harpur.
IG: 31:17
So there were no- you did not really have that much of a political awareness at that time at Harpur?
EK: 31:31
[crosstalk] interested in learning and in having fun-
EK: 31:38
-and that is the way I use race, that you pay attention to your own life and you do not get involved in this other stuff. My entire family is still that way. I am the only one who's political, and I became very political. I wrote in several books on [inaudible] psychology.
IG: 31:38
In having fun.
IG: 31:54
That is remarkable. What did you think owes to this? You know, radical departure from the way you were brought up. Is it the academic experience that you were exposed to, or what-what do you think contributed to your enlightenment?
EK: 32:18
I think I academically studied and just like they call it quickly, study this stuff, and all of a sudden you realize that this is not a normal world. This is a world that you will be impressed. And so that moment, it just feels normal. Well, of course, blacks cannot go into places that whites go into. And you know, I looked at in the south, so I never really saw that. But, you know, females cannot be used, men keeping it and so on. And all of a sudden, you read the material, and there is a huge quick in your head, and you see that it is not normal, and it is not just the way the world is, the way the world will be constructed. And once you see that, you see it can all be reconstructed and reconstructed, and you know, the same again.
IG: 33:09
Did you that is very interesting. Did you learn any of these intellectual skills? Do you believe at Harpur College? Did you get any of the sort of, you know, foundational, you know, intellectual, intellectual foundation for this, to make that leap?
EK: 33:34
I would say, not in the sense of content, but in the sense of thought process. Because what I began to do the work that I do, I was not a therapist for too long, even though I studied therapy, but what I write is epistemology and philosophy of science. So what I wanted to do was to ask the questions. And that is what those fields are. You know, why? How do we know what we know? Is it makes a question of epistemology, and I have written several books on that topic. And I just, I actually just wrote one of the blind people who are, how do they understand gender and race? And that was my question. How do they know what they know they cannot see skin color. They cannot see any other stuff. Yet, they really need to know about all those things.
IG: 34:27
So I am just curious. So how do they know? How do they perceive race?
EK: 34:33
They asked their friends, you see, when I started writing the book, I was hoping that they were going to have a different system, not that they were not going to discriminate, because they were human beings, but they were going to have a different system, maybe touch, maybe something else. No, they go around and they ask their friends and then have this whole elaborate way of asking, like, if they go to a bar and they need a woman there. Her, they have a similar [inaudible], and when he shakes hands to tell them if she is pretty or ugly, so they know whether to go out with her.
IG: 35:10
But they must have experienced discrimination themselves.
EK: 35:15
You know, many of them did not, because they went to schools and they were all mixed together. I mean, they got to the A's when they started dating, they would bring home a boy, and the mother would say, you cannot date that boy. He is not of your race. And that is when they started learning.
IG: 35:32
I see. Was there, yeah-
EK: 35:36
Very startling to read about how they learn about race and gender and sexual orientation. We have a lot of stuff about transgender going on now, and they cannot tell the difference because the voice is the same. So the transgender things that are going on are just visual. And so I came to realize how much of our society is an issue.
IG: 36:03
That is, that is very That is fascinating.
EK: 36:09
That is actually what my Tiktok was on. It is unusual.
IG: 36:14
I-I will look at it after we speak. But returning to Harpur College, did you feel that there were groups, you know, or individuals that were discriminated? Did you have, well, you probably did not have this idea of discrimination per se, but did you feel that it was there was, you know, maybe less of it because it was a homogeneous community, or was there any, any kind of discrimination on campus?
EK: 36:53
There was not much. The students from downstate were almost 100 percent Jewish. Ones from upstate were almost 100 percent capital Protestant.
EK: 36:58
They did not mix with each other. They did not think about marrying each other. I had friends that I do not know if you have spoken to Dolores Chapel yet.
IG: 36:58
Yeah.
IG: 37:09
No.
EK: 37:11
She knows she is [inaudible].
IG: 37:13
Yeah, I am writing down her name. Okay.
EK: 37:16
She was somebody that used to speak to; she was married to Giles Hoyt and he became a German professor. She was growing another guy ever since high school from her hometown, which was Tonawanda. When it got time to marry, she converted Catholicism, and they broke up after 10 years of dating, and she married somebody else, sure he did too. So the big discrimination was between religions, and it was not just Jewish and Catholic and Protestant, also. the, uh, I do not believe there were any other groups on campus. Everybody was white. Two men who came from Barbados and must have been on scholarship. So they were not Americans, and they did not stay very long. What happened is that one of my friends began dating, one of them, and her father happened to be a photographer, and so she sent, she only sent her pictures home to be developed. Remember, they used to develop pictures. He saw that she was sitting on the lap of a black man, and he pulled her out of school and made her come to Hofstra so and there were two black men. There were maybe 400 students in each class, if I remember correctly, and everybody else was white, if you consider [inaudible] used to be white.
IG: 38:55
I am laughing. And yet, Ellyn, you married, you know, someone who was a townie. I married a Catholic boy. So isn't that kind of a very rebellious, you know, decision to have made, and-
EK: 39:18
Yes. You seem to getting to know me, I was not rebellious, I just do what I want to do. And especially then, it was like that. And also, I had dated him for four years, but my family should have been ready for it.
IG: 39:33
Right. Have they?
EK: 39:34
You know, I met him in freshman year.
IG: 39:37
Yeah, had they met him?
EK: 39:39
But neither of us had any particular variation.
IG: 39:49
So did you encounter any resistance from either of the families?
EK: 39:56
My family.
IG: 39:57
Yeah, yeah. But you prevailed.
EK: 40:04
It was not a horrible resistance to say, he knew they could not control me by that point.
IG: 40:10
I-I guess not.
EK: 40:13
Yeah, I was going to do what I was going to do. So we got married, and part of the reason we got married, this is a funny anecdote that you are making me think of it is they had $250 round trip. You could go to Europe for the summer. It was a shorter flight. And I said, I cannot go to Europe. I do not marry him. We cannot travel around Europe. It is not like today. And so the week before graduation, we got married, week after we went and spent some [inaudible].
IG: 40:45
I have known people to get married for lesser reasons.
EK: 40:53
That is the main reason that I married him.
IG: 40:56
Well, you know, if you read contemporary Soviet literature, you know, there is stories by Trifonov [Yury Trifonov] about, you know, couples marrying because somebody had a- an apartment in a prime neighborhood-
EK: 41:18
Oh yeah, [inaudible]
IG: 41:21
-apartment with an extra room. So-so I am curious, how do you think that your classmates remember you from Harpur College days?
EK: 41:32
A lot of the people I was friendly with had graduated, most of the New York City kids who went back the second year we could not take it in Binghamton, so a lot of us did not graduate together. There are fewer in touch with Peter Carroll Oliver [inaudible] or Erin Oliver,
IG: 41:53
No.
EK: 41:56
Well, you missed.
IG: 41:58
No. I mean, I- no, I do not.
EK: 42:01
I do not know if you want to list the people in general.
IG: 42:04
That would be wonderful. That would be wonderful, but I need to speak to graduates, I think. But it would be really wonderful to get a list from you.
EK: 42:18
Carol graduating from there. Bruce Benderson graduated from there. He became a writer, and he lives in Paris and writes in French.
IG: 42:27
Oh, wow.
EK: 42:27
So he'd be an interesting guy. Yes. Carol Oliver became a one of those Maharishi people, and she lives in Iowa at Maharishi University.
IG: 42:41
That is great.
EK: 42:43
And, you know, there was a lot of hippie stuff going on.
IG: 42:48
Was there experimentation drugs?
EK: 42:56
There was not much drugs. I remember Cal gave me for a wedding present, a nickel bag of grass. To translate into current lingo, a nickel bag was like $5 worth of marijuana. That was a wedding present for me, and I had never seen it before. I did not know what to do with it. There was not much in the way of drugs. It was a lot of alcohol.
IG: 43:23
A lot of alcohol. So but my question was more, what do you think that? How do you think your classmates would remember you? How do you remember yourself from that period?
EK: 43:46
I remember myself as mostly being [inaudible] and his friends and studying and socializing and not being anything. So I am not sure how many of them would remember me, except the ones that I was close to. Names that I am hearing you will definitely remember me.
IG: 44:10
So you are in touch with these other people?
EK: 44:13
Not in touch with some of them, but some of them even come up on Facebook and see what they are doing. The reason I know about Giles and Dolores is when John first came out here with some [inaudible] he was trying to give some money to the German department or something. He was a German major,
IG: 44:36
And his name is Giles?
IG: 44:38
All right.
EK: 44:38
And I do not think I got along with him very well, because they do not set the alarm to six o'clock in the morning to get up and study it. I was like, "Are you people crazy?" So, you know, because they had, they had fair people often with what we get along well as roommates. And when I did finally get the roommate, they had fairly rich. They were right. We did not get along. Oh, here is another funny story. Her name was, I mean, I do not know how much detail you want. Her name was Sophia Kashack, K, A, S C H, A, K, and she sat next to Bob in orientation. His name was Kaschak, and she fixed me up on a blind date with him. That is how I met him. So [inaudible]
EK: 44:38
Giles G, I, L, E, S, and his last name is H, O, Y, T, and the wife [inaudible] I guess, I guess she took his name. Her name was Doris. She was my roommate. She was my first roommate.
IG: 45:39
I am- And so Kaschak, how do you spell that again? K, A-
EK: 45:45
My version?
IG: 45:46
Your version
EK: 45:47
K, A, S, C HA, K
IG: 45:51
So similar to yours? With [crosstalk] yeah, I understand. So, what do you think you know kind of looking back on this experience at Harpur College, what lessons did you learn from life at this time, from this time?
EK: 46:15
Well, the thing that was most important to me is how intelligent the students were, that I finally there had people I could have conversations with, you know, on the equal level, and that there were other people in the world who thought about the things that I thought about and wanted to do the things that I wanted to do. And I think that really served me a lot because that brought me out of my shell. In some way, it made me realize all the things that was possible to do. So in some ways, I would say there were a few good faculty members, but mostly it was the other students for me.
IG: 47:00
And you were kind of, you found yourself, you were coming into your own, or you were finding yourself.
EK: 47:06
I was, I did find myself. I very much came into my own. My retirement on psychology. I had quite a bit of confidence and so forth.
IG: 47:17
That is wonderful.
EK: 47:20
I did not have that when I went to Harpur, I was just kind of beaten down and told not to go to college and get married and all that. Love to see some of those people again, but it would be a shock. I am sure you think that you look exactly the same and everybody else has changed.
IG: 47:45
I am sure that there would be there you would find common ground if you were friends during your formative years at college, I think that there would be a connection still.
EK: 47:57
I think so too. And a lot of them went on to be writers, and a couple of them from, you know, in Hollywood, Richie Cunningham and what is the other guy's name, there were a few graduates eventually- the usual audience are very-very big Hollywood producers, Rob Reiner and people that you would know.
IG: 48:27
Wow. It would be so helpful. So to get a list, a short list,
EK: 48:35
You do not have those names.
IG: 48:36
I have those names, but I cannot identify them from lists of hundreds of people. So if you [crosstalk] I just have a whole directory. And the year they graduate I do not have, I-I- you know, you are pinpointing the people that would be very interesting for me to talk to, and I think for posterity, to have-
EK: 48:59
Yeah, people that went on to be very well known in Hollywood, to be very good writers. I cannot think of that. It is not coming to me right now, but it will.
IG: 49:09
Okay that it would be really great. So you know, for-for someone listening to this tape. And you know, considering-considering, you know, the considering going to Binghamton University in just in a future generation. What could you tell this prospective student about your experience and about-about what are the most important lessons that you have learned in life that relate to education?
EK: 49:52
You know, it is hard for me to say, because Binghamton is so different. It was like a small I wanted a small college room. I would get to know everybody, and it would be like a community, and that is what it was. And now I do not even know any people that were there, but it is overwhelming to come to the campus. I was extremely impressed. John took me around, but it seems like they have a lot of really fascinating opportunities and summer programs and things like that that I was very impressed with, and I still think the students are very bright.
EK: 50:27
Yeah.
EK: 50:27
I think it is very important. I do not know. I cannot, I cannot really say, because I was there for two days. I think it is very important. From what I understand, the faculty is very good right now. Also, I met Russian Studies faculty, that is kind of what I am interested in. And I met Don and Harvey and [inaudible] studies faculty, Liam Mueller and whatever it is, and they are very enthusiastic and very motivating. But I think at least for me, the most important thing were the other students, the first time in my life, the other students were as smart as I was, and able to have the conversations I wanted to have, and that is really what changed me.
EK: 51:18
But I could not hear it now.
EK: 51:28
It does not even does not even look the same.
IG: 51:30
Yeah.
EK: 51:30
You will see some of the pictures because they sent a picture of the student union and the old dorms, which I can go offices now. And it is a completely different place. It would be hard for me to comment on it now. I think it is a top education.
IG: 51:44
Yes, that is a wonderful plug, but your criticism or your advice to future administrations is to have a greater diversity of students and faculty. Is that it?
EK: 52:01
I think they have it now, I looked at it when I was there.
IG: 52:04
Yes, okay.
EK: 52:06
I was just there last March when I did the TED talk and I said, "Oh my god, they have every city, every color, every other people." I think they have done it.
IG: 52:15
They have done it.
EK: 52:16
Without my advice,
IG: 52:17
Without your advice.
EK: 52:21
Because the world has changed so much.
IG: 52:23
Yes, it has.
EK: 52:25
You know, you cannot do that.
IG: 52:28
I have.
EK: 52:29
I was very impressed by the administrators and the faculty that I met. I met a few students because I gave a scholarship for summer work with women. So I met that student and some of the students had questions. They came to talk to me.
IG: 52:44
That is wonderful. Any concluding remarks? Ellyn, I know that you are braving your cold so we can end now after an hour, but I would like to ask you if you had if you have any concluding thoughts or remarks,
EK: 53:08
[inaudible] and also feel free to call me again when I am not sick, if you need other comments or other names or something. I am just getting over that horrible [inaudible]. So that is what this caution is about. I live in, oh, I live in Costa Rica now.
IG: 53:28
Oh, that is incredible.
EK: 53:31
Just here for a few weeks to take care of taxes and business. And so I went down to Costa Rica when I was in George Washington, and got to know the place, and I have been teaching there and training students and training therapists throughout probably four decades. In addition to being here, I split my time.
IG: 53:50
So what are, what are the university that you are teaching at in Costa Rica?
EK: 53:57
It is called the University for Peace, and it is the United Nations campus. There are four of them in the world. They bring students in from- this is how much I changed from back then. They bring students in from all over the world, and they teach them skills that hopefully are, you know, conflict resolution, and skills that are hopefully helpful in bringing about peace. And they send them back to their countries. They become diplomats, they become presidents of their countries, and it is one way to try to bring about peace. And they are wonderful students.
IG: 54:32
That is wonderful. And what do you teach them? You teach them what?
EK: 54:38
I teach gender and peace. My- I have got my [inaudible] to be, you know, gender and ethnicity and sexual orientation, pretty much, but as a clinical psychologist, so I teach them those topics and how they handle their peace issues.
IG: 54:55
What a wonderful life.
EK: 54:58
It is fabulous. I love it there. It turned out to be [inaudible]. And I keep writing I just have a look at so- I could say that about Harpur also got me started on exactly the life I wanted to have and I was meant to have.
IG: 55:14
That is very gratifying to hear.
EK: 55:18
And I am thinking now about getting some kind of donation to a program, because I am really grateful that they starting out.
IG: 55:25
Well, I if-if I can, I will pass that information to John Koch, and he will be delighted. I am sure.
EK: 55:35
I have noticed him very well. I have met with him several times, working on what project I can do. He is a lovely man.
IG: 55:41
I will, I will let him know.
EK: 55:45
Okay, and if you need to find me, yeah, like an ocean sound, okay?
IG: 55:50
I will. I will, in a few days, I will email you for those names. I taken some down, but I, I am, I will, I will do a follow up,
EK: 56:02
Okay, and take the coughing out of my tape.
IG: 56:04
I will, we will, we will. Okay, thank you so much.
EK: 56:12
Happy to talk to you again anytime you want to.
IG: 56:15
Thank you so much. Get better soon.
EK: 56:18
Thank you.
IG: 56:19
Bye, bye. Take care. Bye, bye.
(End of Interview)
Interview with: Ellyn Uram Kaschak
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 13 February 2018
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
IG: 00:00
Up to you. We can either try to get you on Skype, or we can just do this over the phone.
EK: 00:09
Okay, either way, or we can go on FaceTime. You guys [inaudible] FaceTime
IG: 00:16
Uh, FaceTime? No, I am here with my colleague, Aynur de Rouen, and so say hello.
Third speaker 00:28
Hello. How are you?
IG: 00:29
Who is the- yeah, she is the project manager for the oral history project. So should I give you a little bit of overview of what the oral history project is, or should we just plunge into the interview?
EK: 00:46
Why do not you give me a short review?
IG: 00:48
Okay, so the short review is that we-we are creating a virtual center for the study of the (19)60s. It will exist to promote scholarship on this important decade. And-
EK: 01:10
Okay.
IG: 01:10
-so we have collections of audio recordings, um, different collections. So one collection is a you is a set of 200 of interviews with 275 prominent leaders from the 1960s representing a range of political affiliations. So we have everyone from yippies to, you know, civil rights leaders like John Lewis and Shirley Chisholm, and there are people who were anti-war activists, as well as Vietnam vets who, you know, willingly went to this war. So that is one collection. The other collection is the collect, you know, the project that you are participating in, and that is a set of oral history interviews with alumni of Harpur College from the 1960s and it is to give. So it is to give a look back on what your experience at Harpur was like and how you perceived the events around you so the larger perspective. So these are, you know, these are tapes right now for oral history that will be transcribed, digitized and placed, excerpted, placed online. We have to ask you for your permission to-
Third speaker 02:42
-consent form, and I can email to you. You can either sign it and email back to me, or, if you prefer, I can send it via mail with a paid envelope. So it would be maybe easier for you. Do you want me to do that way? To do that.
EK: 03:20
Email is easiest for me.
Third speaker 03:22
Email is easy. Okay, I will I will email to you, then
EK: 03:27
You will never find me if you should not stand there.
Third speaker 03:29
Okay, all right, I will send you an email after the interview this afternoon.
IG: 03:35
Okay.
EK: 03:36
Okay, good.
IG: 03:37
Okay, so are we ready to start?
EK: 03:41
Yes, okay, I do not know what is wrong with it.
IG: 03:46
It is okay. That is okay.
EK: 03:48
So keep going this way. I guess.
IG: 03:49
Let us, let us go this way. Okay, so Ellyn, tell- first of all, you need to identify yourself and tell us who you are, where you are and what you are doing by participating in this interview.
EK: 04:10
Okay, so this is the actual interview.
IG: 04:13
Yes, yes.
EK: 04:16
Okay, I am Ellyn Kaschak, and I was a student at Harpur from 1961 to 1965 so I hope it does not mess up the tape too much. So I just sent John, and he said he'd welcome over to somebody a bunch of photographs from the 1960s of the dorms and articles, you know, invitations to dances and things like that that is going on.
IG: 04:50
Okay. Do you know who you sent this to?
EK: 04:54
I sent it to John.
IG: 04:55
I see, I see.
EK: 04:56
John um-
IG: 04:59
Cook-Cook.
EK: 05:00
John Cook.
IG: 05:01
Yes.
EK: 05:03
And he said he walked him over to the library so somebody has them.
IG: 05:07
Okay, I will get them from him.
EK: 05:09
And there is a whole bunch of, there is a whole bunch of little odd names from dancers. And I do not know if they still have it, but they used to have the vacation, stepping on the coat ceremony in the spring.
IG: 05:22
Oh, that is wonderful. Okay, so you please tell us you want, what is your age? Where are you speaking? Where are you physically located right now? And tell us that you are, you know, participating in this oral history interview.
EK: 05:42
I am seventy-four years old. I have been a professor at San Jose State for many years. [coughs]
IG: 05:55
We will, we will, but we did not catch what you said last you are 74 years old, and
EK: 06:05
I, when I graduated from Harpur, [inaudible] is George Washington University, I see where I got a master's degree in clinical psychology-
IG: 06:13
I see.
EK: 06:13
-from there, they were not hired at Union, and I could not get a job, and they were not taking union into the PhD programs, even though I was a top of my class. And so I was told that I could not get a PhD because it was a waste of money. And you know, when I would just stay home and have babies? So I worked in DC for a couple of years as a school psychologist, and then times started changing, and I went back to school at Ohio State, got a doctorate, and came out to California to do my internship at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto, and then I got a job at San Jose State as a clinical psychologist at a community psychologist. And I stayed there for my whole career, until I retired.
IG: 07:02
Okay, so where was that at what state at California state?
EK: 07:07
San Jose. San Jose. Oh, San Jose State University.
IG: 07:12
State University. I know where that is.
EK: 07:15
Yeah. That is right in the middle of Silicon Valley stuff.
IG: 07:20
Yes-yes-yes.
EK: 07:21
It was [inaudible] and I went there.
IG: 07:24
Yeah, I could imagine. So just let us backtrack now to your early life and tell us where you grew up. Where are you from?
EK: 07:39
I am from Brooklyn.
IG: 07:41
Oh, well, where-
EK: 07:44
I spent a few years in Valley Stream before I left, but mostly Brooklyn.
IG: 07:47
Where in Brooklyn, if you do not mind my asking.
EK: 07:53
Coney Island.
IG: 07:54
Oh, I know where that is. So, who were your parents? What did they do?
EK: 08:04
My parents were first generation Americans, and they were Celia and Bernard Uram, and they just kicked around and did a lot of things and fun. [coughs] Oh, I apologize. Finally, my father, after I was out of the house, when I was in my 20s, opened a successful business. So-
IG: 08:35
Excuse me, a what business?
EK: 08:37
A successful business. It was called [inaudible] stores, and it sold [inaudible], it was a discount store.
IG: 08:43
Okay. And you said that your parents were first generation from where?
EK: 08:50
Well, my grandparents came from Eastern Europe, and they came in 1900s to get away from the [inaudible], so way before Hitler and from Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire.
IG: 09:05
Okay, all right, did your parents go to college?
EK: 09:11
No, they just barely finished high school. They had no interest in my going to college, or anybody going to college. They did not even know what it was, and I was the one that consisted on an education. So that was the early days of the scholarships before the government shriveled them. So after the New York State using scholarship and I needed to go someplace inexpensive, of good quality inside New York. So that became Harpur.
IG: 09:46
Um, so, how did you persuade your parents to let you go to college?
EK: 09:52
Well, I did not. I just went. [inaudible] on me.
IG: 09:56
Okay, so, um, uh, you know, so-
EK: 10:02
I had the scholarship. I paid for everything myself, and I practiced increasingly, I went to college.
IG: 10:09
Well that is, that is very bold, very courageous of you.
EK: 10:13
I am bold.
IG: 10:14
Bold, courageous. So, um, so
EK: 10:20
Like- what I wanted. I did not want to like it. You know, sitting in Brooklyn, owning somebody's children.
IG: 10:27
I see. So did you have siblings? Do you have siblings?
EK: 10:32
Yes, I did. I have two younger siblings. My sister is three years younger. She eventually went to Stony Brook, and my brother is a high school graduate.
IG: 10:42
I see, so did he go into the family business?
EK: 10:49
He did not. He had, psychological problems. So he has not worked.
IG: 10:55
I see, I understand. So you decided to go to Harpur because of its affordability and because of its reputation? What was the reputation of the college back then?
EK: 11:09
The reputation of Harpur was that it was the [inaudible] public schools. It had a great reputation, and it was really just starting up. I do not know how it got a good reputation so fast. So they have just been Triple Cities College a few years before.
IG: 11:28
So did you learn about this from your friends, from your academic advisor? Do you remember?
EK: 11:37
I do not remember. I needed a lot of research myself, but also had a pretty good values counselor, so you probably helped me.
IG: 11:44
Okay and you financed your own education. What did you work during your college education or during the summers? When did you make money?
EK: 11:59
I always worked during the summers, and once in a while, I worked during the semesters in the cafeteria, you know, cleaning up the trays in the cafeteria.
IG: 12:10
Okay.
EK: 12:12
I mean, the campus. I was just here; the campus looks very different. There was one cafeteria, and everybody had to eat on campus.
IG: 12:21
What were your first impressions a city girl from Brooklyn, from Coney Island, coming to really the boondocks. So what did you think?
EK: 12:39
In the first place, my father was one of those guys that would not use a map, so he drove to Albany and went to the left turn to get to Binghamton. So it took us two days. We pulled up, and it was nothing but mud. There were two, three buildings and mud. "Are you horrified?" I said, "Take me home. I do not be here." And they had not finished the dorms. There were only two dorms, two girls dorms and two guys dorms, and they had not finished them. So they had us tripled up in the dorms for the first semester. So it was, I guess it was after the [inaudible] in a lot of ways.
IG: 13:22
So how-how long did it take you to acclimate to these new surroundings, and what helped you?
EK: 13:34
Well, it took me a few weeks. I was really depressed in the beginning, and then I started to meet people. I had a boyfriend. I met friends who were also from New York. There was an extreme divide. I do not know if this still is, between the upstate and the downstate students.
IG: 13:52
There was a big difference?
EK: 13:55
A huge difference. So the downstate students were my friends. They were familiar to me. They were also from Brooklyn or Long Island or the smartest kids in their class and so on. The upstate students were also very [inaudible] were the smartest students I have ever met at any school that I have gone to, and they were smarter than a lot of the faculty where I taught. So I like that. The upstate students were just industrious. They just studied all the time. So the first two roommates that I had, were set the alarm o'clock for six o'clock in the morning, go to the cafeteria, have breakfast and begin studying before their classes. The first time I have ever seen people study like that.
IG: 14:43
What were some cultural differences, if any, between the upstate and downstate students? Could you remember any anecdotes?
EK: 14:54
Um, the upstate students went to church on Sunday morning, early [inaudible], and they would, they got in couples or in friendship groups, and only used to study in the state union of the library and then study from morning to night.
IG: 15:19
And but you, you must have studied as well. I mean, what was your experience of academics at Harpur? How did you- did not you find it rigorous, or did-
EK: 15:35
Much more rigorous than anything I had done before. And so I did study, and I wanted to be a psychologist, but the Psychology Department only did rat psychology. The 1960s was the height of Skinnerian psychology, so that meant you studied rats and boxes and not people. So I will tell you an anecdote. We do not have to live for three hours every week, and they eat a little like closet with your rat. Your rat had a fresh bar to get food. I do not know if you are familiar with those kinds of studies. That is Skinnerian psychology, and I became so bored because my rat was asleep. It turns out that rats are not trainer animals, so they sleep all day. So nobody saw the rat in setting up the labs. So I took a pencil and I poked my rat to get it to wake up and do the study psychopaths, of course, and rats [inaudible] with me. And so I went to the whatever it was in the nurse's station at the Student Union. I got a tetanus shot, and I dropped psychology, and I majored in foreign languages.
IG: 16:53
What, um. That is very interesting. It echoes some of the experiences of other alumni who studied psychology. They also complained about rat psychology.
EK: 17:08
There was no people psychology at all. You could forget about it if you went to that and I wound up majoring in Russian language and literature, which I think was a good start for being a psychologist. Anyway, Dostoevsky, Chekov all of them.
IG: 17:24
Yes-yes. That is what I studied as well.
EK: 17:28
Did you?
IG: 17:29
Yes.
EK: 17:29
So as a result, I mean, Russia is coming back before the Russian maybe it will be useful.
IG: 17:36
Perhaps.
EK: 17:37
An interesting topic to study.
IG: 17:40
It is an interesting without question. It is an interesting topic to study. It is an interest. It is a rich literature to study. So you nonetheless, so um, so you were disappointed with sort of the direction of psychology courses. How did you find the Russian literature courses who were some of your professors?
EK: 18:08
You know, they had the early professors there that we still had moved over from the community college, so I had, we used to call them by their last names [inaudible] they did not have doctorates, but they were both from Russia, and from [inaudible]
IG: 18:37
I see, I see. So you know, how was that?
IG: 18:43
It was the Russian department.
IG: 18:45
That was the Russian department. How did you find your experience?
EK: 18:50
I love languages, so I found it very interesting.
IG: 18:53
Did they teach-
EK: 18:55
And Russian was much more difficult in psychology, because we had to read War and Peace and all that in the original.
IG: 19:02
Really, you read-
EK: 19:04
I am probably the only person you know that read War and Peace in the original, but I still have the book. It was a tremendous effort.
IG: 19:16
That is, I could imagine, that is extremely impressive. That is an education in itself.
EK: 19:21
It was. And then when I finally went back to psychology at Northern Washington University in the people psychology, you still had to take your, you still had to take nine years exams to get an advanced degree. And I took my English, and was a beast.
IG: 19:40
I could imagine after reading War and Peace in its entirety, you probably did better. You probably knew more than a lot of the faculty, the Russian faculty there.
EK: 19:54
Probably I do not recommend it. I mean, it is really origins, but I need to learn a lot. I was very happy with the major, because I got to know languages, and then I did psychology later on, and it really showed me instead, because of the rigorousness of Harpur, is what really changed me. I was from one of those school [inaudible] in high school. It really changed me into taking education really seriously and studying and being prepared and so on.
IG: 20:25
So um, you um, studied Russian very intensively. You worked in the cafeteria and in the summers to pay your way through college. But you- did you participate in residential life? What was that like for you?
EK: 20:49
Residential life was not much. We had, you know, that was we had a paid-telephone in the hall, and that was the only telephone so everybody's boyfriends would go in in the evening, we had a curfew. I believe it was 10:30. There was a curfew for the girls, not for the guys. So everybody would say good night at 10:30 and then the phone would start ringing. But there was only one phone, and so residential life, as I remember it now, revolve around a lot, around the [inaudible], and what fraternity did he belong to, and what dances you went to, and things like that.
IG: 21:31
And you mentioned you had a boyfriend.
EK: 21:35
Yes, I did.
IG: 21:35
And so what-what life did he expose you?
EK: 21:42
He, um [inaudible] is actually his name. I kept his name. [inaudible] Uram was actually my family's name.
IG: 21:53
Oh, that is very interesting.
EK: 21:56
So and I just actually saw his sister for the first time. And, I do not know how many years, I just did a TED talk last year. I hope maybe you were there.
IG: 22:10
I know I was not there. I so I miss your talk. So-
EK: 22:19
I just saw her for the first time in years, and his parents had gone, but she still felt like family to me. So he was a townie, what we used to call a townie, yes. Oh, and he commuted, and he lived at home with his parents. So being that he commuted, they got him a car. So that was like the epitome he had a car. We could go places. We could go out on dates. He we used to drive all over upstate New York. I do not know if [inaudible] still there. It was a monastery.
IG: 22:56
Yes, I visited it.
EK: 22:58
It was a beautiful experience. It is like we used to do things like that quite a bit together, especially on the weekends. And he studied and also worked this whole time [inaudible]. And his mother worked in- as a waitress in the Arlington Hotel. I do not know if it is still there.
Third speaker 23:21
What hotel?
EK: 23:21
It was one of those ugly buildings, and she gave him all his money so he could go out and date and do things like that. So we had a pretty good time. And I was close to his family, because they were right there. So I go spend Christmas with the family and so on. And most of the activities centered around what they called Men's social clubs. They did not have fraternities. There was no football they were going to be principal and not have a football team, not have fraternities and so on. So but they had men's social clubs. And so most of the activities were for [inaudible] and then on social clubs, and then the big dances.
EK: 23:21
The Arlington hotel, it was downtown.
Third speaker 23:21
No, I do not know.
Third speaker 24:08
I have a question. So how did you feel about having a curfew because boys did not have it, girls had it. So how did it make you feel about it?
EK: 24:21
You know, we did not question it that much of the time. It was 1961. Boys could and also the boys could live off campus. And we did not like it that we were not, you know, like we'd [inaudible] know about it. And a lot of the girls used to sneak out after they did it, they did a great check at 10:30 and then they climb out the window and go over to their boyfriend's place.
EK: 24:42
So, it was accepted that the way girls had to be treated, and it was a little bit of a joke, because the idea was, you know, you told me you cannot get pregnant before 10:30. You know, so it was a little bit of a joke, but we took it kind of as a joke. Nobody took it that seriously. Nobody was strongly into feminism or anything.
EK: 24:42
Yeah, it is interesting.
IG: 25:11
Was that was feminism or the women's right movement in the air at all?
EK: 25:20
Not in Binghamton.
IG: 25:22
But at Harpur?
EK: 25:25
No-no, not really, not really. We had some very interesting guests that came and talked to us. And so there was a lot of politics in the air, mostly Vietnam politics. [inaudible] good news. He was a very well-known writer, and he came to campus. And when the Roosevelt came to campus and he did not have any money, she charged a lot of money, and one of the student leaders told me, we do not have money left to [inaudible] And she [inaudible] limousine one day and hung out with everybody.
IG: 26:04
That is great. That is great.
EK: 26:06
But there was not much about feminism. The females were all there to get to get a husband and a degree.
IG: 26:19
Well, you found it you know your boyfriend, and then who became your husband. Were there? Was there anxiety about the Vietnam War, and how did it express itself? And as his-
EK: 26:36
Tremendous anxiety about the Vietnam War, because that was the age of the guys that were getting drafted. And so there were two ways not to get drafted. And one used to go to graduate school. [inaudible] to get in and keep studying, and the other was to get married. So a lot of people were getting married to keep the guy out of the war. A lot of my friends got married last year, and also the pill have just come out control, a-
EK: 27:11
Birth control.
EK: 27:12
So a lot of them, you know, even technical version in those days, the technical discussion how old you are now?
IG: 27:22
Well, [crosstalk] I see, I see.
EK: 27:27
And so a lot of the girls once they decided marrying a guy,[coughs] [inaudible] enjoy birth control, so they got pregnant, and the girls dropped out of the guy finished school. So a lot of my female friends went home last year to have their babies.
IG: 27:50
Unmarried or married?
EK: 27:51
Married, they slept with the guy only because he became engaged and they knew he was the one they were going to marry. Otherwise, she did not have sex with anybody. [inaudible] marry him, then the sexual thing has changed drastically.
IG: 28:07
Yes, I agree. So was- were you involved at all in student activism, was there were any of your friends involved in student activism, and what was the nature of that?
EK: 28:29
Listen very much. There was a small group of students from the city that were involved in activism, and most people mostly people, I think, kept themselves into their own group.
IG: 28:49
So-
EK: 28:49
And some-some activism in that Vietnam and that was all these, nothing, I remember, nothing about feminism.
IG: 29:01
What about the Civil Rights Movement?
EK: 29:04
Well, the civil rights movement, yes, definitely, and we will let anybody who went in March, I met, I actually worked on Shirley Chisholm presidential campaign that was already in California.
IG: 29:19
That is very interesting. [crosstalk] yeah, she is one of the people we have interviewed in our 60s collection.
EK: 29:34
She was not really the first woman to do anything, and she really was a tough woman, history [inaudible] president. Then I was already in California, doing my internship. And once I got to California, I got I was not very aware of politics. I was just doing my own life. And when I was at Hartford, once I got to California, there was civil rights. It was Vietnam, there was black people running for offices, all kinds of stuff, and there was the abortion coalition. That was the first big issue of feminism.
IG: 30:10
Was that in the (19)70s, when did you get to California?
EK: 30:15
Got to California in the late (19)60s, maybe 1968 and they had started. I was in Ohio. Oh, I know- Ohio until 1968 studying psychology, and that is when the consciousness raising groups began. And so we all got ourselves in the consciousness raising group, and all became feminists, and there were no courses in psychology of women at all. They let us organize someone and teach without a faculty member, but all the faculty were men, and they did not have any idea what we were doing. So when I became a feminist, it was in the mid (19)60s. I had already, I was maybe four years out of Harpur. I was not going on while I was in Harpur.
IG: 31:17
So there were no- you did not really have that much of a political awareness at that time at Harpur?
EK: 31:31
[crosstalk] interested in learning and in having fun-
EK: 31:38
-and that is the way I use race, that you pay attention to your own life and you do not get involved in this other stuff. My entire family is still that way. I am the only one who's political, and I became very political. I wrote in several books on [inaudible] psychology.
IG: 31:38
In having fun.
IG: 31:54
That is remarkable. What did you think owes to this? You know, radical departure from the way you were brought up. Is it the academic experience that you were exposed to, or what-what do you think contributed to your enlightenment?
EK: 32:18
I think I academically studied and just like they call it quickly, study this stuff, and all of a sudden you realize that this is not a normal world. This is a world that you will be impressed. And so that moment, it just feels normal. Well, of course, blacks cannot go into places that whites go into. And you know, I looked at in the south, so I never really saw that. But, you know, females cannot be used, men keeping it and so on. And all of a sudden, you read the material, and there is a huge quick in your head, and you see that it is not normal, and it is not just the way the world is, the way the world will be constructed. And once you see that, you see it can all be reconstructed and reconstructed, and you know, the same again.
IG: 33:09
Did you that is very interesting. Did you learn any of these intellectual skills? Do you believe at Harpur College? Did you get any of the sort of, you know, foundational, you know, intellectual, intellectual foundation for this, to make that leap?
EK: 33:34
I would say, not in the sense of content, but in the sense of thought process. Because what I began to do the work that I do, I was not a therapist for too long, even though I studied therapy, but what I write is epistemology and philosophy of science. So what I wanted to do was to ask the questions. And that is what those fields are. You know, why? How do we know what we know? Is it makes a question of epistemology, and I have written several books on that topic. And I just, I actually just wrote one of the blind people who are, how do they understand gender and race? And that was my question. How do they know what they know they cannot see skin color. They cannot see any other stuff. Yet, they really need to know about all those things.
IG: 34:27
So I am just curious. So how do they know? How do they perceive race?
EK: 34:33
They asked their friends, you see, when I started writing the book, I was hoping that they were going to have a different system, not that they were not going to discriminate, because they were human beings, but they were going to have a different system, maybe touch, maybe something else. No, they go around and they ask their friends and then have this whole elaborate way of asking, like, if they go to a bar and they need a woman there. Her, they have a similar [inaudible], and when he shakes hands to tell them if she is pretty or ugly, so they know whether to go out with her.
IG: 35:10
But they must have experienced discrimination themselves.
EK: 35:15
You know, many of them did not, because they went to schools and they were all mixed together. I mean, they got to the A's when they started dating, they would bring home a boy, and the mother would say, you cannot date that boy. He is not of your race. And that is when they started learning.
IG: 35:32
I see. Was there, yeah-
EK: 35:36
Very startling to read about how they learn about race and gender and sexual orientation. We have a lot of stuff about transgender going on now, and they cannot tell the difference because the voice is the same. So the transgender things that are going on are just visual. And so I came to realize how much of our society is an issue.
IG: 36:03
That is, that is very That is fascinating.
EK: 36:09
That is actually what my Tiktok was on. It is unusual.
IG: 36:14
I-I will look at it after we speak. But returning to Harpur College, did you feel that there were groups, you know, or individuals that were discriminated? Did you have, well, you probably did not have this idea of discrimination per se, but did you feel that it was there was, you know, maybe less of it because it was a homogeneous community, or was there any, any kind of discrimination on campus?
EK: 36:53
There was not much. The students from downstate were almost 100 percent Jewish. Ones from upstate were almost 100 percent capital Protestant.
EK: 36:58
They did not mix with each other. They did not think about marrying each other. I had friends that I do not know if you have spoken to Dolores Chapel yet.
IG: 36:58
Yeah.
IG: 37:09
No.
EK: 37:11
She knows she is [inaudible].
IG: 37:13
Yeah, I am writing down her name. Okay.
EK: 37:16
She was somebody that used to speak to; she was married to Giles Hoyt and he became a German professor. She was growing another guy ever since high school from her hometown, which was Tonawanda. When it got time to marry, she converted Catholicism, and they broke up after 10 years of dating, and she married somebody else, sure he did too. So the big discrimination was between religions, and it was not just Jewish and Catholic and Protestant, also. the, uh, I do not believe there were any other groups on campus. Everybody was white. Two men who came from Barbados and must have been on scholarship. So they were not Americans, and they did not stay very long. What happened is that one of my friends began dating, one of them, and her father happened to be a photographer, and so she sent, she only sent her pictures home to be developed. Remember, they used to develop pictures. He saw that she was sitting on the lap of a black man, and he pulled her out of school and made her come to Hofstra so and there were two black men. There were maybe 400 students in each class, if I remember correctly, and everybody else was white, if you consider [inaudible] used to be white.
IG: 38:55
I am laughing. And yet, Ellyn, you married, you know, someone who was a townie. I married a Catholic boy. So isn't that kind of a very rebellious, you know, decision to have made, and-
EK: 39:18
Yes. You seem to getting to know me, I was not rebellious, I just do what I want to do. And especially then, it was like that. And also, I had dated him for four years, but my family should have been ready for it.
IG: 39:33
Right. Have they?
EK: 39:34
You know, I met him in freshman year.
IG: 39:37
Yeah, had they met him?
EK: 39:39
But neither of us had any particular variation.
IG: 39:49
So did you encounter any resistance from either of the families?
EK: 39:56
My family.
IG: 39:57
Yeah, yeah. But you prevailed.
EK: 40:04
It was not a horrible resistance to say, he knew they could not control me by that point.
IG: 40:10
I-I guess not.
EK: 40:13
Yeah, I was going to do what I was going to do. So we got married, and part of the reason we got married, this is a funny anecdote that you are making me think of it is they had $250 round trip. You could go to Europe for the summer. It was a shorter flight. And I said, I cannot go to Europe. I do not marry him. We cannot travel around Europe. It is not like today. And so the week before graduation, we got married, week after we went and spent some [inaudible].
IG: 40:45
I have known people to get married for lesser reasons.
EK: 40:53
That is the main reason that I married him.
IG: 40:56
Well, you know, if you read contemporary Soviet literature, you know, there is stories by Trifonov [Yury Trifonov] about, you know, couples marrying because somebody had a- an apartment in a prime neighborhood-
EK: 41:18
Oh yeah, [inaudible]
IG: 41:21
-apartment with an extra room. So-so I am curious, how do you think that your classmates remember you from Harpur College days?
EK: 41:32
A lot of the people I was friendly with had graduated, most of the New York City kids who went back the second year we could not take it in Binghamton, so a lot of us did not graduate together. There are fewer in touch with Peter Carroll Oliver [inaudible] or Erin Oliver,
IG: 41:53
No.
EK: 41:56
Well, you missed.
IG: 41:58
No. I mean, I- no, I do not.
EK: 42:01
I do not know if you want to list the people in general.
IG: 42:04
That would be wonderful. That would be wonderful, but I need to speak to graduates, I think. But it would be really wonderful to get a list from you.
EK: 42:18
Carol graduating from there. Bruce Benderson graduated from there. He became a writer, and he lives in Paris and writes in French.
IG: 42:27
Oh, wow.
EK: 42:27
So he'd be an interesting guy. Yes. Carol Oliver became a one of those Maharishi people, and she lives in Iowa at Maharishi University.
IG: 42:41
That is great.
EK: 42:43
And, you know, there was a lot of hippie stuff going on.
IG: 42:48
Was there experimentation drugs?
EK: 42:56
There was not much drugs. I remember Cal gave me for a wedding present, a nickel bag of grass. To translate into current lingo, a nickel bag was like $5 worth of marijuana. That was a wedding present for me, and I had never seen it before. I did not know what to do with it. There was not much in the way of drugs. It was a lot of alcohol.
IG: 43:23
A lot of alcohol. So but my question was more, what do you think that? How do you think your classmates would remember you? How do you remember yourself from that period?
EK: 43:46
I remember myself as mostly being [inaudible] and his friends and studying and socializing and not being anything. So I am not sure how many of them would remember me, except the ones that I was close to. Names that I am hearing you will definitely remember me.
IG: 44:10
So you are in touch with these other people?
EK: 44:13
Not in touch with some of them, but some of them even come up on Facebook and see what they are doing. The reason I know about Giles and Dolores is when John first came out here with some [inaudible] he was trying to give some money to the German department or something. He was a German major,
IG: 44:36
And his name is Giles?
IG: 44:38
All right.
EK: 44:38
And I do not think I got along with him very well, because they do not set the alarm to six o'clock in the morning to get up and study it. I was like, "Are you people crazy?" So, you know, because they had, they had fair people often with what we get along well as roommates. And when I did finally get the roommate, they had fairly rich. They were right. We did not get along. Oh, here is another funny story. Her name was, I mean, I do not know how much detail you want. Her name was Sophia Kashack, K, A, S C H, A, K, and she sat next to Bob in orientation. His name was Kaschak, and she fixed me up on a blind date with him. That is how I met him. So [inaudible]
EK: 44:38
Giles G, I, L, E, S, and his last name is H, O, Y, T, and the wife [inaudible] I guess, I guess she took his name. Her name was Doris. She was my roommate. She was my first roommate.
IG: 45:39
I am- And so Kaschak, how do you spell that again? K, A-
EK: 45:45
My version?
IG: 45:46
Your version
EK: 45:47
K, A, S, C HA, K
IG: 45:51
So similar to yours? With [crosstalk] yeah, I understand. So, what do you think you know kind of looking back on this experience at Harpur College, what lessons did you learn from life at this time, from this time?
EK: 46:15
Well, the thing that was most important to me is how intelligent the students were, that I finally there had people I could have conversations with, you know, on the equal level, and that there were other people in the world who thought about the things that I thought about and wanted to do the things that I wanted to do. And I think that really served me a lot because that brought me out of my shell. In some way, it made me realize all the things that was possible to do. So in some ways, I would say there were a few good faculty members, but mostly it was the other students for me.
IG: 47:00
And you were kind of, you found yourself, you were coming into your own, or you were finding yourself.
EK: 47:06
I was, I did find myself. I very much came into my own. My retirement on psychology. I had quite a bit of confidence and so forth.
IG: 47:17
That is wonderful.
EK: 47:20
I did not have that when I went to Harpur, I was just kind of beaten down and told not to go to college and get married and all that. Love to see some of those people again, but it would be a shock. I am sure you think that you look exactly the same and everybody else has changed.
IG: 47:45
I am sure that there would be there you would find common ground if you were friends during your formative years at college, I think that there would be a connection still.
EK: 47:57
I think so too. And a lot of them went on to be writers, and a couple of them from, you know, in Hollywood, Richie Cunningham and what is the other guy's name, there were a few graduates eventually- the usual audience are very-very big Hollywood producers, Rob Reiner and people that you would know.
IG: 48:27
Wow. It would be so helpful. So to get a list, a short list,
EK: 48:35
You do not have those names.
IG: 48:36
I have those names, but I cannot identify them from lists of hundreds of people. So if you [crosstalk] I just have a whole directory. And the year they graduate I do not have, I-I- you know, you are pinpointing the people that would be very interesting for me to talk to, and I think for posterity, to have-
EK: 48:59
Yeah, people that went on to be very well known in Hollywood, to be very good writers. I cannot think of that. It is not coming to me right now, but it will.
IG: 49:09
Okay that it would be really great. So you know, for-for someone listening to this tape. And you know, considering-considering, you know, the considering going to Binghamton University in just in a future generation. What could you tell this prospective student about your experience and about-about what are the most important lessons that you have learned in life that relate to education?
EK: 49:52
You know, it is hard for me to say, because Binghamton is so different. It was like a small I wanted a small college room. I would get to know everybody, and it would be like a community, and that is what it was. And now I do not even know any people that were there, but it is overwhelming to come to the campus. I was extremely impressed. John took me around, but it seems like they have a lot of really fascinating opportunities and summer programs and things like that that I was very impressed with, and I still think the students are very bright.
EK: 50:27
Yeah.
EK: 50:27
I think it is very important. I do not know. I cannot, I cannot really say, because I was there for two days. I think it is very important. From what I understand, the faculty is very good right now. Also, I met Russian Studies faculty, that is kind of what I am interested in. And I met Don and Harvey and [inaudible] studies faculty, Liam Mueller and whatever it is, and they are very enthusiastic and very motivating. But I think at least for me, the most important thing were the other students, the first time in my life, the other students were as smart as I was, and able to have the conversations I wanted to have, and that is really what changed me.
EK: 51:18
But I could not hear it now.
EK: 51:28
It does not even does not even look the same.
IG: 51:30
Yeah.
EK: 51:30
You will see some of the pictures because they sent a picture of the student union and the old dorms, which I can go offices now. And it is a completely different place. It would be hard for me to comment on it now. I think it is a top education.
IG: 51:44
Yes, that is a wonderful plug, but your criticism or your advice to future administrations is to have a greater diversity of students and faculty. Is that it?
EK: 52:01
I think they have it now, I looked at it when I was there.
IG: 52:04
Yes, okay.
EK: 52:06
I was just there last March when I did the TED talk and I said, "Oh my god, they have every city, every color, every other people." I think they have done it.
IG: 52:15
They have done it.
EK: 52:16
Without my advice,
IG: 52:17
Without your advice.
EK: 52:21
Because the world has changed so much.
IG: 52:23
Yes, it has.
EK: 52:25
You know, you cannot do that.
IG: 52:28
I have.
EK: 52:29
I was very impressed by the administrators and the faculty that I met. I met a few students because I gave a scholarship for summer work with women. So I met that student and some of the students had questions. They came to talk to me.
IG: 52:44
That is wonderful. Any concluding remarks? Ellyn, I know that you are braving your cold so we can end now after an hour, but I would like to ask you if you had if you have any concluding thoughts or remarks,
EK: 53:08
[inaudible] and also feel free to call me again when I am not sick, if you need other comments or other names or something. I am just getting over that horrible [inaudible]. So that is what this caution is about. I live in, oh, I live in Costa Rica now.
IG: 53:28
Oh, that is incredible.
EK: 53:31
Just here for a few weeks to take care of taxes and business. And so I went down to Costa Rica when I was in George Washington, and got to know the place, and I have been teaching there and training students and training therapists throughout probably four decades. In addition to being here, I split my time.
IG: 53:50
So what are, what are the university that you are teaching at in Costa Rica?
EK: 53:57
It is called the University for Peace, and it is the United Nations campus. There are four of them in the world. They bring students in from- this is how much I changed from back then. They bring students in from all over the world, and they teach them skills that hopefully are, you know, conflict resolution, and skills that are hopefully helpful in bringing about peace. And they send them back to their countries. They become diplomats, they become presidents of their countries, and it is one way to try to bring about peace. And they are wonderful students.
IG: 54:32
That is wonderful. And what do you teach them? You teach them what?
EK: 54:38
I teach gender and peace. My- I have got my [inaudible] to be, you know, gender and ethnicity and sexual orientation, pretty much, but as a clinical psychologist, so I teach them those topics and how they handle their peace issues.
IG: 54:55
What a wonderful life.
EK: 54:58
It is fabulous. I love it there. It turned out to be [inaudible]. And I keep writing I just have a look at so- I could say that about Harpur also got me started on exactly the life I wanted to have and I was meant to have.
IG: 55:14
That is very gratifying to hear.
EK: 55:18
And I am thinking now about getting some kind of donation to a program, because I am really grateful that they starting out.
IG: 55:25
Well, I if-if I can, I will pass that information to John Koch, and he will be delighted. I am sure.
EK: 55:35
I have noticed him very well. I have met with him several times, working on what project I can do. He is a lovely man.
IG: 55:41
I will, I will let him know.
EK: 55:45
Okay, and if you need to find me, yeah, like an ocean sound, okay?
IG: 55:50
I will. I will, in a few days, I will email you for those names. I taken some down, but I, I am, I will, I will do a follow up,
EK: 56:02
Okay, and take the coughing out of my tape.
IG: 56:04
I will, we will, we will. Okay, thank you so much.
EK: 56:12
Happy to talk to you again anytime you want to.
IG: 56:15
Thank you so much. Get better soon.
EK: 56:18
Thank you.
IG: 56:19
Bye, bye. Take care. Bye, bye.
(End of Interview)
Date of Interview
2018-02-13
Interviewer
Irene Gashurov
Year of Graduation
1965
Interviewee
Ellyn Uram Kaschak
Biographical Text
Dr. Ellyn Kaschak is an award-winning psychologist, author, teacher and human rights activist. She is a professor emerita of psychology at San Jose State University. She teaches in the gender studies program at University for Peace in Costa Rica.
Interview Format
Audio
Subject LCSH
Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni at San Jose State University. Harpur College – Alumni at University for Peace in Costa Rica; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in San Francisco.
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Keywords
Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni at San Jose State University. Harpur College – Alumni at University for Peace in Costa Rica; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in San Francisco.
Files
Citation
“Interview with Ellyn Uram Kaschak,” Digital Collections, accessed July 12, 2025, https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/970.
