Oral history interview with Astrid Terry, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Astrid Terry
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: May 20, 1991
MF: And if you could start out with some general information like where you're from and when you went to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] and what your major was and that kind of general stuff.
AT: Okay, my name is Astrid and I was born in Holland and moved to Durham with my family in 1968, so I was raised in Durham. I went to UNCG in—started in 1984 and graduated in 1988. And I went there with the intent of getting into the nursing school and so I did my first two years of regular undergraduate work and then got accepted into the nursing school and completed that program.
MF: Okay, that's a BS [Bachelor of Science], right?
AT: Yes. [Editor’s note: She received a BSN [Bachelor of Science in Nursing].
MF: Yes, because actually UNCG, when it was WC [Woman's College of the University of North Carolina] only offered like BAs, no BSs. I thought that was weird, but—and you lived on campus.
AT: For three years and then the fourth year I moved out.
MF: Yes, yes. And what dorm?
AT: Mendenhall [Residence Hall].
MF: So how could you sort of generally describe dorm life at Mendenhall?
AT: I liked it a lot because I knew—there was a few girls on the hall that I knew, and we would go visiting each other, leave doors were open and talk and stuff, but there were a lot of girls on the floor who kept to themselves and you walked past them and they wouldn't speak, that kind of thing, and I didn't like that at all.
MF: Yes, yes.
AT: But I liked being in the dorm and having somebody you could run down the hall and borrow stuff from, and I felt like it made you real close to people and I liked that part of it. 2
MF: And what about like how visitation worked and so forth in the dorm?
AT: It was inconvenient to have a policy that men couldn't stay overnight and could not come up to the floor until twelve noon. That was kind of inconvenient, but on the other hand, I liked it for the safety features of it. And I didn't mind it. And when Steve would come to visit me he would stay in the guys' dorm with a guy friend and that worked out fine.
MF: Yes.
AT: And I actually probably preferred it to be that way so that I could feel comfortable walking down to the bathroom in the middle of the night in my t-shirt and underwear, you know.
MF: Yes.
AT: So it was inconvenient, but I liked it. I would prefer it to remain that type of system.
MF: But now in the guys' dorms, the way visitation worked was usually a little bit different. A lot of people called it sort of an "open door" policy.
AT: Oh, I know.
MF: Where people kind of looked the other way in the guys' dorms. Also during the time you were there, I guess it was—maybe it was when you were a freshman—Coit [Residence Hall] became coed. And how do you remember that sort of going over on campus, with the coed dorm?
AT: It wasn't—it must not have stood out. It doesn't stand out in my mind so I guess I didn't think a lot of it.
MF: Yes.
AT: And I probably didn't even realize that it wasn't always coed. I probably—because I think I had an option of living in a coed dorm before I got to campus, I found out, so I just thought it was always that way.
MF: Yes.
AT: And I think that was fine. I didn't mind having it that way. I thought it was pretty cool.
MF: What did you know about Residential College?
AT: I think—well, I knew more then than I remember now—[laughs] that the students were there and they lived there and all went to classes together and I guess I thought that maybe they were a little more intense in their studies.
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MF: Yes.
AT: That was about all I really remember about it. More focused with what they were doing, I guess, instead of the general stuff that you have to get through.
MF: Yes. How did—sort of like the heritage of UNCG having been a women's school—did that seem to affect anything about the atmosphere of campus or maybe the way people looked at UNCG or anything?
AT: No, I don't think so. I think it—people that grew up around here might know that little bit of history and maybe that gives it a nice piece of background history. I don't think that's what they think of it now. I don't think they think—I think people think of UNCG as being small; and therefore, they may not think it's up to the same academic levels with other schools, but I don't think it's because of the history of having initially been a women's college.
MF: Yes. What about academics at UNCG—your classes and some of the faculty you came in contact with?
AT: You mean, what was my impression of it or—?
MF: Yes.
AT: I felt like it was the same as it would have been at any college. I felt like they had—I felt like the education I got there was just as good as I would have gotten anywhere else. I felt like the faculty were intelligent, and I always found that they were willing to help you and to answer questions. And I think that always depends on how you approach them and how they see you. You know, if you're a visible student, they know, you know, they are more open with you and stuff, but I felt like they were real helpful and I felt like I got a real good education from them. I always felt like those that I encountered, except for maybe one or two teachers, they really wanted to be there and were doing a good job at what they did.
MF: Were there any faculty that sort of stood out either as being really good or really bad
or—?
AT: More in my anatomy and physiology classes. And I don't know if that's because I was just being really getting into the specialty area of nursing, but I felt—I can't remember their names, but there was one female physiology instructor that I was real impressed with. She was real knowledgeable and would throw in personal stories so that it would all make sense. Or she may have been my anatomy teacher. I don't remember. But I remember talking about like the allergic response and histamines and stuff and so that we could understand the whole process. She was talking about antihistamines, which are just like Benadryl and stuff—
MF: Yes. 4
AT: And then it really made sense to me, the whole process about how thing—the chain reaction within your body and stuff and so that stood out in my mind—somebody that was willing to take that extra step and didn't just have rote memorization that she was spitting out to you.
MF: Yes.
AT: You know, she understood it and therefore she could help you understand. And I really liked the head of the physiology department. He taught my physiology—not physiology, physics class.
MF: Oh, okay.
AT: The head of the physics department and he taught my class. And I really liked him. He did a whole lot of demonstration kind of stuff, and I learned real well from hearing something and seeing it so that was real helpful to me and he had a—his theory was he put up all the formulas up on the board. And I thought that was unusual. That's part of the answers for the test, but he said if you don't understand how to use them, it's not going to be any good to see them, and so he was really into the concept of understanding things and really wanted to help people understand.
MF: Yes.
AT: So those are the two people that I guess, my anatomy teacher and my physics teacher I really liked.
MF: How was the program in the nursing school set up? Like, for instance, for myself, I'm not familiar with the nursing school at all.
AT: Well, once you—you have to have a certain grade average and then you get into the nursing program and that's two years and you have classes either Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday. Basically, it's all five days, but it's regular classwork and you also have a clinical rotation. I guess that required anywhere—you'd go once or twice a week as much as like six hours a day. And we went to different facilities. I went to Moses Cone, Wesley Long [Hospitals]. I went to Winston-Salem to the health department there. I went to High Point. I went to a retirement center. And so you would get graded on paperwork you did as well as kind of a subjective evaluation of how you did. And the grading scale there was different from the rest of the university. It was like a seven or eight point grading scale, which I didn't agree with. I felt like the university should be across the board.
MF: Yes.
AT: Ninety and above is an A and such.
MF: Yes. 5
AT: But it wasn't that way. I didn't like that at all. They didn't grade on a curve so, you know, what you got is what you got. [laughs]
MF: Yes. [laughs]
AT: Which was fine with me, but I really didn't agree with some departments having one grading scale and some not. The faculty was real accessible to go and ask questions to. You had an advisor, and they would help you do stuff; help you make decisions for what class to take next time. You know, like regular advisors. They were pretty nice. And it was real close knit kind of group. Everybody was real visible because they taught classes as well as clinical so you got to know people within the department and be on a first name basis with them and stuff.
MF: Oh, yes.
AT: I liked that.
MF: About how many people were in your class of nursing students?
AT: We started off with about a hundred or about eighty people in my class, and by the time we graduated, I think we were down to about sixty.
MF: And the nursing school at UNCG, they have a pretty good reputation for their graduates passing the nursing state exam, don't they?
AT: Initially they did. When I decided to go to UNCG, they did because I applied to UNC Chapel Hill and UNCG, and they were considered equal in the state for your education.
MF: Yes.
AT: And then when I got there, their passing rate was like in the sixties or seventies [percent].
MF: Oh, really?
AT: It was poor, and they were getting into trouble about it. And so the year I entered into the nursing program, they revamped a whole lot of things, and I guess—like the grading scale and not grading on a curve and their expectations of the work you did. And when my class graduated, it was like eighty or ninety percent passing rate.
MF: Oh, okay. So what they did really helped?
AT: Yes. It picked back up.
MF: Did it sort of weed some people out too? Well, yes, I guess it did. You said it started out with about a hundred. 6
AT: Yes, it did. And also in nursing school when you fail a course and have to repeat it, it's not offered again until—if you fail in the fall that course isn't offered again until the fall next year—
MF: Oh yes.
AT: —because the whole program is based on that you complete this course and to go to the next course. You have to have completed this course to have the knowledge base, so that also, if somebody failed a course they weren't going to graduate. They may not have dropped out of the nursing program, but they were going to be a whole year behind.
MF: Oh okay, yes.
AT: See, they could advance in certain courses, but to graduate they'd have to wait a whole year to make up that course they missed.
MF: Okay. Going back, sort of, to more of the social aspect of campus life—I know a lot of people will remark that Tate Street was a real big focal point for their college experience. And along with that also sometimes you'll hear people talk about the real infamous reputation that Tate Street had and some people will say that it was an unwarranted reputation, and so how does all that sort of fit in with your college experience?
AT: Well, I was dating my boyfriend, and I would come home on weekends a lot so what I saw of life off campus or even on campus was just what I saw during the week.
MF: Yes.
AT: And occasionally I'd stay there on the weekends. I liked going to Tate Street. There was a—there was a pizza place there that I liked to go to, but it did—it had not just college people. It had blue collar workers that would come in and sometimes I would feel like I had to be careful, like, you know, that they might try to pick you up or be offensive or you might offend them unknowingly and something would happen. And then there was another—a bar that would have people come play music that I liked to go to, and Steve would like to come up and we'd go there. So I liked that. There [are] a lot of houses on Tate Street. For the most part, there wasn't a whole lot to do—a couple of food places.
MF: Yes.
AT: They started building it up the year I was leaving, and the following year they built a couple more restaurants, but the restaurants they had were not chain restaurants and stuff. Sometimes I felt like we were kind of in the middle of nowhere because to get anywhere you really needed to have a car. You know, if you wanted to go to the mall, you had to have a car. If you wanted to go to McDonald's, you had to have a car. So sometimes I felt like that was a problem, but I guess there was enough to do around campus that if you wanted to, and if you stayed on weekends, if you didn't have a car somebody you knew probably would and you get places you wanted to go. 7
MF: Yes. Campus got pretty deserted on weekends.
AT: Yes.
MF: Yes, people called it a suitcase college or something like that.
AT: Yup. I definitely helped build that up.
MF: [laughs] Yes. Oh, you were one of the suitcase students.
AT: Yup.
MF: What do you remember about fraternities and sororities, because they're still kind of a new thing on campus at UNCG?
AT: The ones that were more visible and that stuck out in my memory were the black male fraternities because of their initiation. They had to do a lot of silly things and they were real visible, and you would see them in the cafeteria doing their silly things.
MF: Yes.
AT: There's also—was it Phi Mus? The Phi Mus—it was a sorority. And they were like the—not necessarily well-to-do girls, but they were all the prissy ones. That's how I saw them. You know, worried about their makeup and worried about their mixers and worried about this, that and the other. And so I don't know, I wasn't big on that either. And then there was the black sorority [laughs] that they were real visible when they had their initiation too. They did a death march over campus all dressed in black, and they would take one step per minute and move through campus. Take all day to get across the campus, and it was—my understanding was it was a way to put to rest and mourn—they were letting their old self die. And then when they got done with their march across campus, they were going to be new members having new lives in their sorority. And I thought it was pretty crazy. [laughs]
MF: [laughs] Yes.
AT: I thought it was—I didn't like that at all. I thought it was kind of stupid. The black fraternity I thought was kind of cute. That's the stuff I liked to see, little silly stuff like carrying bricks around and, you know, trying to—have them to stand up and sing in the middle of the cafeteria. That's the kind of stuff that I think is cute—not get drunk in the middle of the night and do something with a dog or something, you know, like you hear about.
MF: Yes. [laughs]
AT: You know, I didn't see any of that stuff. And I know that they sponsored things like once or twice a year they'd all get together and—well, no, I guess individually they would raise 8
money for certain organizations. And I wouldn't realize that this thing going on this weekend was this fraternity's way of raising money, but once I did realize it, I liked that. I saw they weren't just out for fun because they all did something to raise money.
MF: Yes.
AT: So I liked that. I missed not having like a fraternity place like where, you know, they all had to live off campus if they lived together. It would have been neat if they'd had a place on campus that people could identify with, I think.
MF: Oh, yes, like over at Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina].
AT: Yes, how they have nice old looking buildings that you know just represent a lot of history. That you know people have been there and all.
MF: Yes.
AT: But the places where these people stay, they'll be torn down soon because, you know, they’re made out of wood, and they trash them. They'll be gone soon or swallowed up into development.
MF: Yes, into expansion of the school. What about like during the time that you were in college there was the change in age for drinking and stuff like that? How did that seem to affect the campus?
AT: I know it was a big deal because they—if you were found with alcoholic beverages, you would get in trouble by the school, and I know that at parties they were no longer allowed. Like fraternity parties were not supposed to be having it and stuff. And I felt like—I thought it was real strict, you know. I felt like if people were of age and they wanted it, they should be able to have it, but because they were a school organization they were not allowed to have it, and I thought that was too restrictive. I didn't like that.
MF: Yes. Also, I guess they stopped allowing kegs at Spring Fling.
AT: That's the same kind of thing. You know, there again, if people were of age I felt like, if they wanted it they should have been allowed to have it. Just because you're in college doesn't mean you are underage. There were people there who were old enough to drink and seems to me that if they wanted it they should been allowed to have it, but the campus, I guess, wanted to promote being alcohol free and so they weren't doing it.
MF: Yes, yes, I guess also weren't there a lot of—I guess there was at least one organization that strung up something about responsible drinking or something. Do you remember?
AT: I don't remember.
MF: I can't remember what the name of it was. Going back when you were talking about the 9
black fraternities, it made me think—what do you remember about race relations on campus during the time you were there?
AT: They were all right. Just like I said in the dorm, there'd be people you'd walk by—they wouldn't make eye contact, they wouldn't speak. That was white and black alike. And walking down sidewalks, you'd encounter the same thing. And I remember talking with a black girl one time, and she said that it didn't—you know, I said a lot of the black people won't look at you, won't smile and stuff and how that offended me. And she said, "Well, it's not just you. It's just that some of these people have attitudes." She said, "They do the same thing to me." And she was a nice looking black person, so I guess any type of unfriendliness—I couldn't attribute it to being a racial thing. I think it was just, you know, that's just the way some people are. I guess that was just my first encounter with people who weren't friendly across the board.
MF: What do you remember about the Neo-Black Society?
AT: Nothing. They might have had stuff printed up on flyers, but I didn't—I don't remember anything they did or anything they tried to promote.
MF: And then also, there was a UNCG—oh, I guess just about any college is known as sort of having a really large visible gay population. And so, what do you remember about some of that?
AT: When I first got there the cafeteria was divided into three sections: the gay people and the people in the theatre department all ate in one cafeteria, and when I first got there some of the people that took me in—and the people who partied a lot also ate in that cafeteria.
MF: Oh really?
AT: And when I first got there, one or two of the people who took me under their wings were older than I was and they hung out in that particular cafeteria. And I would see a lot of the gay people [coughs] excuse me, and that was really my first encounter with seeing a whole lot of gay people at one time. They were obviously gay. The way they talked and carried on. And then the other cafeterias were divided up. One was for black people. That's what they chose. You know, it wasn't delegated that way. And another one was for like Phi Mus and—the people that were—you know, you dressed up to go eat dinner, that kind of thing.
MF: Yes.
AT: And then some of my friends had gay people so I'd get to hear a little bit of the stuff through them about their particular personalities, but I didn't really learn anything across the board about gay people, but I just got to know a couple of them while I was there.
MF: Yes. What do you remember about other students' reactions to gay students on campus?
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AT: I guess we all thought, me and the people who took me under my wings, they didn't care. They just acted like they were regular people. Then the people of my class that I hung out with of my own age, we all kind of were taken aback by them, and we preferred not to be around them, especially in large numbers. [laughs] You know, and like there was a gay bar at the edge of campus, and I would never have chosen to go there. I didn't actually ever go, but there were some people who would go to it just as soon as any other place. And I wouldn't. I'd rather go to a heterosexual place.
MF: Yes, which one?
AT: I can't think of the name of it. It was a dinner—not a theater place. It was—Tate Street was set up with grocery store down here and then the Hop In right here and then that bar was right here.
MF: Mr. Rosewater's?
AT: No.
MF: It's gone through several names.
AT: It was some bar.
MF: I think it's the Edge now or something.
AT: And then Aycock [Auditorium] was across the street from it.
MF: Yes, I know which—it was Mr. Rosewater's for a while and then something else and now the Edge or something. I don't know. What are some of the biggest changes that you've seen at UNCG over the years?
AT: They were trying—when I was—my last year there, they had approved plans and were starting plans for making it even more of a walking campus. We have a lot of commuters, so on the edge of campus would be a lot of cars and then on campus would be cars of faculty. And they were going to close down some of those streets and have people walk through campus. That was going to be a big change because we were all worried about how you would move into your dorm.
MF: Yes. [laughs]
AT: And then I know that they were revamping like the cafeteria and changing the way like you pay for your meals. That was going to be different, and I felt like that was a waste of money. I was satisfied with food services there, and I would have preferred all that money to have gone into more parking space or providing funner—a wider variety of activities that would keep people on campus.
MF: Yes. 11
AT: You know, like movies or dances or whatever. Other changes that I saw—those are two changes that stand out in my mind.
MF: And what do you see for the future of UNCG? What do you think? What kind of developments do you think—?
AT: I think they are trying to—oh, I know what else they did too. They were trying to increase their athletic department, redo some of the buildings that most of the students use and stuff. And I see them as trying to promote themselves as an academic institution. I think they already are. They have a good reputation, but it's not one that stands out in the minds of everyone. It stands out in the minds of people who are looking to go to college because they hear about it through their counselors at school and stuff, so I think they are going to try to promote themselves as a good academic institution. And as they draw in more people, I think they are going to try to build up their athletic programs. They already are good in certain areas, and then in other areas they are in a lower grade competition and stuff. I don't know that they want to get bigger, but I think they do want to get a little bigger and a little bit more well known.
MF: Is there anything—I know we've skipped around a lot. Is there anything you can think of that I didn't get to that you'd really like to mention?
AT: Nothing in particular, just that I enjoyed my time at UNCG. I picked it because it was a small college, and I felt like the attention I got from my teachers and stuff was because it was a small college. And I liked it because things were close together. I think that although I didn't know a whole lot of people on campus—had it been a larger area of land I would have known even less people.
MF: Yes.
AT: You know, I feel like everybody was real close together and, you know, if there was a dorm that was cutting up and being loud and stuff, everybody would hear it and stuff and that made me feel like part of the bigger college because on bigger college campuses, you you'd have your loud, rowdy people and your quiet people and so I felt like it was—being close, everybody in close proximity, you would hear a little bit more stuff going on that made it just feel like a college kind of atmosphere. And I liked it a lot. It’s a real pretty campus, and I think they do well keeping up with it and stuff. I liked it.
MF: All right, then. Thank you.
[End of Interview]