Beverly Ortega Babers (Class of 1984) interviewed by Pendo Kamau (Class of 2024)

0:00:02.3 Pendo Kamau: Today is December 7th, 2021. My name is Pendo Kamau, Class of 2024. And I'm conducting this interview through the Documenting Student Life Alumni Oral interview. And I'd like you to introduce yourself with your name, graduating class, and your major.

0:00:23.5 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Great, thank you. My name is Beverly Ortega-Babers. When I graduated in 1984, I was known by Beverly Ortega, and my major was Psychology.

0:00:36.6 Pendo Kamau: Thank you. My first question was, where did you grow up?

0:00:41.2 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I grew up in many different places. My dad was in the Air Force. I graduated from high school in what they called Kaiserslautern, was an American high school overseas. And we lived in Germany, they called it West Germany at the time, because Germany was divided at that time. I lived in Germany for all of my high school, which was a real bonus, but prior to that, I lived in Ohio, Maryland, Utah, California, and I actually went to nursery school in Germany, so began and ended there.

0:01:23.1 Pendo Kamau: Okay, thank you. How did you hear about Haverford?

0:01:28.2 Beverly Ortega-Babers: When I was a junior, senior, whatever it was, at that time, schools would mail catalogs because they didn't have the internet, and they would mail you information based on your PSAT, SAT scores, that kind of thing, and I got a lot of catalogues. One of which was this red catalog that had a bright yellow flyer, a quarter-page flyer that when I was going through the catalog, it fell out. And on that yellow sheet was an announcement that Haverford was going to be admitting women as freshmen for the first time for the year that I would apply, and I thought that was such a cool challenge. So Haverford got on my radar screen because of that. It was also relatively close to relatives that I had in the United States, because my family would still be in Germany when I came to go to college and I wanted to be relatively close to some family members, and so it was the school that I applied to.

0:02:39.1 Pendo Kamau: Okay, thank you. And how did you choose to enroll in Haverford compared to the other schools you applied to?

0:02:45.6 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I was applying kind of blind because I was overseas and I didn't... I wasn't familiar with a lot of colleges. My mother had gone to a historically Black college due to segregation. I had family members who lived in Baltimore, so they knew about Johns Hopkins 'cause it was there. So I wasn't really familiar. So I just did it based on what I could research overseas. I did get into... The schools I got into, I accepted both Johns Hopkins and Haverford. When I came back to the States and was able to visit the two campuses, to me they were very different. Hopkins asked me... They wanted to assign me a student ID. When I went, I went in just to say, hey, how do I look around? And they were like, what's your student ID? Let me get your student ID, and that was a little off-putting. Haverford, I went on campus on a Sunday with my aunt, and there were people playing softball and I just approached them, they happened to be alumni and they stopped their game, chatted with me, walked me around. It was a very welcoming experience and that set the tone, they had me at that and it set the tone for the years I would spend there.

0:04:14.1 Pendo Kamau: Thank you. My next question is, what were your initial feelings about Haverford and how did they change over your undergraduate experience?

0:04:31.0 Beverly Ortega-Babers: My initial feeling when I arrived on campus, there were... I didn't know, I want to say about a hundred and twenty maybe females in the class of 300. Would it have been 300? Something like that. And then the other classes were male, and so I always felt very welcome, I think to the extent that there were arguments about whether women should be admitted, those arguments had taken place over the course of years before my arrival, and the students who were there were really welcoming and embraced the co-education idea. And wonderful women who were friends, but it did take a while for the whole, for there to be enough of a presence of women for it to make a difference, and for there to be a big pool to choose from for friendships and athletics and activities. And so it did take a while for that to happen, but it was not... For me, it was not a negative experience. It was a very positive experience.

0:06:05.3 Pendo Kamau: Thank you. My next question is, what were the main pressures and concerns that you were feeling upon entering Haverford and how did they change over your four years?

0:06:22.6 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Pressures and concerns. I don't know, I think I was... I think maybe I was naive a bit, because I wasn't concerned about things like, what am I gonna do when I get out of here? How am I going to make a living? What's my vocation gonna be? I wasn't concerned about that. I just figured things would evolve if I embrace the process, things would evolve.

0:06:57.3 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I felt like I fit in, I think generally. The one challenge for me was things like just my culture. There weren't a lot of Black women who were students. I think there were five in my class and one of them or two of them left during freshman year, and so I didn't find my person amongst my class. I waited a year and then I found my person, and so things like just doing my hair, 'cause I would relax my hair and do my hair. [chuckle] Just things like that. There were that and other experiences were a little isolating, 'cause normally I would... And over time, I got to be able to do those things with other people, 'cause there were enough people there who understood and weren't asking questions. So there were little cultural things that became easier over time when there was a greater pool. But otherwise, there's nothing that stands out.

0:08:23.6 Pendo Kamau: Okay, thank you. And towards the end of your time at Haverford, did you feel that sense of like all things fell into place? Or were there other things more, I guess, pressing?

0:08:36.3 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Things did fall into place when it came to that. In my belief, if you have one or two people who you get and get you and you can rely on, I think that's a gift, and that's all I need. And so that fell into place certainly over time. I think looking outward from myself, there were things going on at the college with respect to divestiture from investment in South Africa and the interest of the student body and others in attracting more, kind of, minority faculty. And so there were issues that were there, that as I became more mature and kinda looked outward from my own situation, were issues that were important. So there's a bit of a... So while there was that, and I was a part of the Minority Coalition and Black Student League, and we certainly discussed and challenged and talked about that. There was also the ability... I also had the ability to be a student, to play basketball, to engage in other activities, and to just be a kid walking around campus doing what you gotta do, and not feeling that those other matters defined my experience.

0:10:23.4 Pendo Kamau: Thank you. My next question is relating to your major. How did you choose your major, and major being psychology?

0:10:40.2 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I took different classes as you do you know freshman year and sophomore year. There was not an academic subject that I found to be really exciting at all. Psychology was the lesser of evils for me, because I took a couple classes, thought they were fun. [laughter] I liked the professors okay, and so my major was like a default to not what I thought might be an exciting career or academic investment, 'cause I had to pick a major in order to graduate. It wasn't designed for my future, it wasn't well-researched and studied. I didn't have input from people telling me, "Oh, you gotta do this, you gotta do that." So it was like, you know, this is enjoyable enough.

0:11:37.3 Pendo Kamau: That is so interesting. How did that impact you over your time taking more classes as an upperclassman, looking at like, "Okay, what am I gonna do after Haverford?"

0:11:50.2 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I didn't think about that a whole lot, to be honest with you, it's... My exposure to professional people at that time was, I had an uncle who was a lawyer, he had graduated from Howard Law School and had opened his own shingle, 'cause at the time, if you were Black, that's what you did because you couldn't get a job at a firm or within government or anything like that. I had an uncle who was a veterinarian, which was fascinating, but not my thing. I had an aunt who was a teacher and a principal, so I had fairly limited exposure to options. And so in my mind, I was like, I'll probably be a lawyer or I would do something, but I wasn't exactly sure what, but it wasn't gonna be a psychologist. And when I did get out of school and started looking at jobs, people with psychology degrees, you really needed to get a doctorate if you're gonna support yourself in that field. So... But meanwhile, the classes were cool, I feel like I learned a lot studying or taking the classes that were offered.

0:13:28.5 Pendo Kamau: Okay, thank you. And you started talking about the people in your life that were giving you a glimpse into what it means to be a professional. Can you talk more to the other, I guess, major influencers and your... Whether it's perspective on career or even personal identity? I know some of the other speakers that I've gotten to talk to spoke a lot about what they were reading and listening to at the time in regards to crafting their outlook onto life. Can you recall any other people or speakers or thinkers or musicians that were very relevant to your, I guess, personal identity or outlook at the time?

0:14:24.8 Beverly Ortega-Babers: When I think identity, I go first to my family, to my parents, my extended family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, all of whom were very influential because they are that generation that bridged from sharecropper and servants to being able to have some hope of moving up, moving up into self-sufficiency, financial stability. And I watched that, the generation above mine do that, and it meant hard work, it meant education, it meant work, and it meant leadership, I think, because the people who were in my life rose like my father. He joined the Air Force at 17. When he left 33 years later, he had risen to the highest rank that he could as a non-commissioned officer, and he worked. My parents had full-time jobs and they had part-time jobs. As long as I can remember, my mom ultimately got her PhD and worked my whole life and worked from entry level, and with every move, trying to craft a career when she was supporting my father and moving with him, but she still crafted her career and would bring work home.

0:16:19.9 Beverly Ortega-Babers: So I think my influences beyond my parents, also my more extended aunts and uncles of that generation, they worked hard and they believed that they had a responsibility for the entire next generation, and so everyone worked and pitched in and lifted. So that's my identity. And having an understanding of the history of this country, the diverse history, I have relatives, I have an aunt and uncle who are Black Muslims, and I would go to their mosque on occasion, and reading about Malcom X and those thoughts around there and talking to them about that. And the pride in their history and the determination that you have to kinda do it, you have to do it yourself, you have to lift yourself up and lift up the people around you. So, Psychology was actually an opportunity to understand better, group dynamics, racial dynamics, gender equity, the socialization that we get in this country from infancy, to believe in one's worth versus other people's worth. So it was an opportunity to understand that and better understand that.

0:18:05.4 Beverly Ortega-Babers: And I think that helped to inform me as well, for sure. I also think there's an exposure at Haverford to people. The first time I went to Haverford and went down Ardmore Avenue, which had... At the time there were very luxury car lots within half a mile of campus, and you'd go down. The first time I saw all that, I was like, who in the world could drive these types of cars, it was just like crazy. People live like this? And then I got to campus, and yeah, there were kids my age driving those kinds of cars, and it was like a different world for me. But exposure to that and people who lived their life as if they were more entitled, it was good exposure because that is helpful in the real world and in the world that I would ultimately venture into. So that education was... All of that helped to shape my identity, and my awareness of the world, and my ability to navigate the world.

0:19:30.0 Pendo Kamau: Thank you. That was a wonderful response. My next question... Oh, am I muted?

0:19:36.7 Beverly Ortega-Babers: No, I can hear you.

0:19:38.0 Pendo Kamau: Okay, wonderful. My next question, I wanted to inquire if you participated in Horizons, and if so, what impact it had on you and/or the campus.

0:19:52.1 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I don't believe it existed when I was there. Describe it to me and I'll see if there was a predecessor. [laughter]

0:20:00.5 Pendo Kamau: Okay. It was like a week-long... At least it's called Horizons now, a week-long program for students of color, first generation low-income students, to be able to stay on campus, meet each other, and I participated in it, it was a lot of upperclassmen talking to underclassmen on that, and I think it started in the... I wanna say like '74, '76 but maybe with a different name.

0:20:27.3 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Yeah, there was a program that existed that... When I got to campus, I realized that there were a number of students of color who had... Who knew each other, and they had gone to this program together. I wasn't invited to go, I'm assuming I wasn't invited to go, I don't know, maybe because I was coming from Germany, maybe it wasn't obvious where to put me, what my category might have been, 'cause I was coming from Germany. I don't know if they placed me as an international student or not. But I wasn't invited and I really felt... It felt like I had to catch up actually to the relationships that were formed, they had their own inside jokes and they were... And so I did feel like I missed out, even though... So I didn't participate, but I felt as if I missed something that was really important and meaningful to the students who were around me.

0:21:32.4 Pendo Kamau: Okay. Thank you for sharing and I wanted to talk more about forming those relationships and connecting to other people. I was very happy reading about the different... The different organizations and whatnot that you were involved in, and also being captain on the basketball team all four years, but I wanted to ask, yeah, if you could go over the different events that... The different organizations you were part of, and how they contributed to finding community and relationships while you were at Haverford.

0:22:09.0 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Yeah, basketball was great. I played basketball since fifth grade, so there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to play basketball in college. Fortunately, I walked into a situation where [chuckle] the only pool of folks trying out were these girls drawn from this one class, and so... [laughter] And so I was able to play all four years, and I was able to be co-captain all four years because of that. There were three of us who had ever played basketball before that period, who tried out. And so the three of us, Jenny Kehne, Jenny Lipman, and myself became the co-captains. And it was an easy choice because we knew that when you dribble down the court you had to stay within the lines. Not everyone did. We knew that when you shot a ball, you had to shoot it at your basket and not the other team's basket, not everyone knew that as we discovered over the course of the year.

0:23:13.4 Beverly Ortega-Babers: So it was fun once we understood that, "Hey, we were just... We were trying to figure it out, we are learning." We weren't gonna set anything on fire. [laughter] And you have to be a kind of brave person to have never played basketball before to come to try out. Right. And so the women who are on the team were dynamic and fun and... By my junior year, I think we were 500, well, I know we were 500 because it's the kind of thing you know. But my freshman year we lost a game 100-21. It happened to be the Lincoln University, which was not fun for me 'cause I was the only black person on the team, and I was getting heckled by the... By their crowd. But it was... I wouldn't trade any of it, I wouldn't trade any of it at all.

0:24:15.5 Beverly Ortega-Babers: We had some really... By the time I was a senior and we had recruited more and all of that, we had some really dynamic players and won some really great games, and I know the team has gone on in the last 40 years to win conference championships and all that, so come a long way. Very good friendships came out of that. Some of my closest friendships actually were people who were on the team.

0:24:45.3 Beverly Ortega-Babers: And Haverford, at the time was the kind of place where you had just multiple of circles of friendships arising from different activities that you're engaged in and it was very fluid to go in and out of these different circles, because there are only 1000 students when I was there, and if you didn't know someone's name, you know at least her face, and it was very familiar and kind of friendly environment. People looked up and said hello.

0:25:13.5 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Now, when I'm on campus, people are so often in their phones that they don't look up and speak to each other, which is off-putting for me, it's a little bit... It's different in my experience there. I was the first female president of the Students Council, and that arose... I don't know how just... Why did I run even? I don't know, it was something about... I was active in the Minority Coalition. It was like, "Hey, let's see if we can get some stuff done through Students Council." And I was like, "Okay, I'll run." And I won, Jenny Kehne, who was another co-captain on the basketball team, was the first female Honors Council Chair at the same time. And there was another woman who was also part of the student government, so there are three of the five positions for women, when we are seniors, and we thought that was appropriate.

0:26:26.8 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I'm trying to think of other... And then BSL, Black Student League, Minority Coalition, part social, part activist, you know? But no, it was all... I remember it all as being interesting, exciting, challenging, fun, heavy, but not so overwhelming that it felt like a burden.

0:27:02.7 Pendo Kamau: I get that, and thank you. And could you speak a little bit more about your time as student council president?

0:27:12.4 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Sure. The one thing I did that I... Well, there's probably two things. One thing that I did that I was really pleased about and take credit for is the... Started the rose ball no, no, the Snowball, the Snowball. We had the first one after I came into office because I just thought it'd be fun to like... Let's have some tradition. It's like let's start some traditions. And so the Snowball was one. Live band, at the time we had gambling casino games that were one half of the dining center and the band and dancing on the other half of the dining center and it was formal, it was a chance to dress up and just have fun. And I think that tradition, at least before COVID, I think that tradition was still alive, I don't know what the deal is now with it.

0:28:15.8 Beverly Ortega-Babers: The other thing I did, which I know wasn't so popular is, I was trying to establish more controls over alcohol drinking, just because my... I just saw... I felt like I saw a lot of people who just lost control with the drinking and it led to situations that weren't safe. There was in my freshman year, I don't know if there's... What documentation exists about this, and I don't remember if it was in the student paper or not but there was a sexual incident that was really... That got several people kicked out of school, related to alcohol, to the extent that it was, I don't know. But I don't know, I just saw behavior that I thought was not healthy, and so I tried to limit the ability to get and drink, kind of, on campus. That wasn't popular but it's something else I tried and I'm sure that it's still just like everywhere, I'm sure that those issues still exist.

0:29:40.8 Pendo Kamau: Yeah, thank you. And actually, the Snowball was last weekend, so...

0:29:44.7 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Yeah!

0:29:45.5 Pendo Kamau: Yes, it's very much alive and well, yeah.

0:29:47.7 Beverly Ortega-Babers: What's it like? What do they do?

0:29:50.7 Pendo Kamau: Okay, I wasn't able to attend but one of my very good friends went and she sent me pictures and they had it in Founders and they were like... The decorations were beautiful. They were absolutely beautiful. It was this deep blue color, it was just well lit and the food... They had food and then they had dancing as well but... Yeah, and it's like formal, so everyone was all dressed up and…

0:30:15.8 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Yeah. Oh, that's so nice, I'm really glad to hear that. Aww, that's good. I like that.

0:30:22.7 Pendo Kamau: Oh good, yeah. My next question was, what was your motive for joining so many groups, but I guess... Yeah, 'cause you're co-captain of the basketball team, which I can imagine took up a lot of time, and I know you started talking about how being on Students Council was a means for potential change, like let's see what we can do via this vehicle of student government, but yeah, I wanted to ask what was your motive and how did you juggle all of that?

0:31:02.3 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I think basketball at the time, I don't know, it might be different now, we basically had practice every day from 4:00 to 6:00. We had games, we would do weight training irregularly and generally during practice time, so I found that to be, to offer, to provide structure in my day and it was good. Do classes, have practice, eat dinner and then you could study at night. I just think there are a lot of hours in the day, and so I didn't... And I've always been a night owl, so I would stay up all night and do a paper and that was okay, I mean... And then I would sleep a little bit, four-hours sleep and keep on moving. So it was... I did have a lot of sleepless nights when I think about it, so I can't say that it was easy, but I wouldn't wanna trade off the fun stuff for the academics, it just wasn't me. And the leadership, the student government and leadership stuff, it was...

0:32:27.9 Beverly Ortega-Babers: It just seemed to fit my personality and my... I didn't have a goal like I'm gonna be president or anything like that. It was just along the lines of the kinds of things that I did in high school and so it just fit me.

0:32:51.0 Pendo Kamau: Okay, thank you. My next question is, what was the political climate throughout your time at Haverford? I know you mentioned already in terms of the politics of having women on campus and how that over time was able to be a more felt presence and how that impacts how people interact with another, but what was... Yeah... What stood out to you in regards to the environment at Haverford, political but even socially, as we started to talk about?

0:33:30.6 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I mean, when you mentioned political, I voted in my first presidential election when I was a student, and it was Jimmy Carter and... Was it Ronald Reagan? And Ronald Reagan won, I was so disappointed. It was Jimmy Carter's re-election bid. So the country climate was... I just wasn't a fan of Reagan, I just wasn't a fan. He had a lot of fans, I just wasn't one of them.

0:34:02.6 Beverly Ortega-Babers: The politics on campus were... There was the first, like, Dean of Minority Affairs brought on campus. Her name was Dr. Freddye Hill, she was an African American woman who was... She was a good confidant and mother figure, I think, to some folks on campus, some students on campus who would go to her, and... So she was trying to build out the support network for women and for students of color and who knows what happens behind the scenes, but it was just her. She didn't have a staff or anything, it was just her.

0:34:56.7 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Marilou Allen was there. She subsequently ran the Women's Center and the 8th Dimension Program, they called it. And she was a good outlet for a lot of women. So the climate on campus was, I think building... They were trying to understand how to support and staff up for the future of the campus, the future student body of the campus. I think there was a feeling that the administrators were willfully ignorant of some of the issues that students of color on campus thought were important. And when it comes to politics, and I mentioned some of them like just more students, more representative student body, more representative staff and professors and...

0:36:12.2 Beverly Ortega-Babers: So the tensions were there that continued to exist, although your generation of students really did a great job of building upon past challenges to the administration by making demands that were quantitative. The demands, which is qualitatively better than our demands, and I think that's wonderful, and they were discussed and met, which is totally a different experience from us. So I've looked at that with a lot of appreciation and admiration, what this generation has been able to do. So it's a...

0:36:58.7 Beverly Ortega-Babers: But like I said, it didn't define the experience, at least for me, fortunately, and it didn't, probably because of my mix of experiences, most of which were really positive. It didn't leave me with a negative taste at all, it was a taste of the world and good experience. And as I've grown older, I've come to understand better different perspectives when it comes to running an organization and determining resources and the allocation and all of that, so hopefully that's comprehensive enough.

0:37:42.8 Pendo Kamau: Oh, it was really good. Thank you. And then I wanted to talk about, as we start to wind down the interview, what interested you in partaking and speaking with me today?

0:37:58.1 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I do think that history gets lost, and I think it's important that it not get lost. There were, when I graduated in 1984, the president of the college, Robert Stevens, in his remarks at the graduation, he listed the names of 110 women who had made it through the four years, and were graduating, he listed all of our names. And we were there and we were... We helped to transition the school into something different. I think it's important that history be documented. I think the contributions, I think if Haverford were to look back at the contributions of Black women to Black female students to its evolution, they would find that we disproportionately contributed to the school, to its culture, to its life, to its breath, to its positive evolution. And I think it's important to document that, because the people who write history often don't document or they...

0:39:24.3 Beverly Ortega-Babers: They put, they intentionally don't include different folks. There are, there are students who I, who I went to school with in my era, students of color who have disengaged from the campus. But they were there and they were dynamite and active. And a lot of people stand on their shoulders, even though they, their names may not be a part of this video history, but, I just think that that should be acknowledged.

0:40:06.9 Pendo Kamau: Thank you. And I agree. I want to, okay. I wanted to ask, were there any experiments, experiences or information you wanted to bring up in this interview? Any memorable stories or like instances that you tell people when recollecting about college and whatnot?

0:40:28.8 Beverly Ortega-Babers: I will talk about... Well, two things, one, I wanna talk about Joyce Couch, Joyce Couch arrived my sophomore year as a freshman. She was a Black woman who was my I don't know, saving grace or she was my savior because I really felt like, oh, you know, finally I had someone who understood me and who I could, it was just like, I could just sit down with and not say anything and drink tea with. And it was... It was so I just want to acknowledge and give a shout out to, to Joyce Couch. And my, my first job out of Haverford, remember I told you that I wasn't terribly concerned about what I would be doing and I wasn't but it was in... I graduated in, at the end of May. So it was probably like April.

0:41:39.5 Beverly Ortega-Babers: It wasn't much before graduation when Freddye Hill reached out to me because the... One of the two senators from Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, had reached out to the campus and said, Hey, I'm having... I'm gonna have an opening on my staff. And I'm just wondering if any, if you have anyone who might want to apply his son Shanin had gone to the school, hadn't graduated, but he had attended the school a few years prior. And so Freddye Hill reached out to me and said, Hey, I heard about this thing. Maybe you'll be interested, And I did interview and I got the job that was my first job out of college. And everything built on that, you know, kind of led to that or sprung from that. So I do think it's, it's special when you have a nurturing... An environment that's small and nurturing enough that administrators and professors can look out for individual students, try to get to know them, understand their interests and talents and help to guide them. And, and so just, you know, shoutout to that as well. I don't know that that would've happened in many places.

0:43:01.5 Pendo Kamau: That's wonderful. And so my last... Originally my last question was how has Haverford shaped your values and time post undergrad? So I'll still ask that question, but I wanted to inquire about Bryn Mawr 'cause we didn't really talk much about the school. What was your relationship to Bryn Mawr as an undergrad, has that changed after attending... After leaving Haverford?

0:43:30.2 Beverly Ortega-Babers: You know, I, I attended classes at Bryn Mawr, I did that kind of thing that many people did. There, there were Black women at Bryn Mawr who I got to know and became friends with. And that was important to me, you know as, as I've, I guess, a running theme in all of this is, you know, in search of this Black female community. And so they did, they did provide that. And so I did have friendships that were meaningful and they had like lobster night, every Thursday night at a particular dining hall. And so I would go, I would make sure I went to that. So it was... I don't know if it's the institution so much that has a... You know, that I have warm and fuzzy about. But the individuals who I interacted with, I have warm and fuzzy about.

0:44:39.1 Pendo Kamau: That's wonderful. And a lot of Haverford students can relate to heading to Bryn Mawr for dinner 'cause they still have very, very good reputation in terms of food.

0:44:51.7 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Yes.

0:44:52.4 Pendo Kamau: And so my final question is how has Haverford shaped your values and and whatnot past, post graduation.

0:45:05.0 Beverly Ortega-Babers: Haverford is a Quaker school which over time I've, I've come to understand that better than when I was a student. When I was a student, I was curious about it, and, it kind of... I kind of got it, but I think Haverford places, a spotlight on the individual and understanding the... Respecting the individual and encouraging each person to respect other people right, as, as individuals. And I think that was not... It was significant. I thought it was significant and it shaped the values of how we were... How we interacted and were supposed to interact on campus quite a bit. And so that, that was actually, it's, it's something that has stayed with me. One of the preschools I sent my kids to had that same kind of philosophy. I think Haverford was able to, was able to, it was like I said, it was small enough to be nurturing.

0:46:29.4 Beverly Ortega-Babers: You know, I could walk across campus and pass a professor who would stop and say, you know, “Hey, I noticed, you know, you turned in your paper late. What is, something going on?” I mean, that was not an unusual conversation for... You know, just to run into people who you know, wanted, who cared. I think the team dynamics around basketball around student government, just the whole team working together has been very... Has been a part of my ID in everything I've done since like in work environments and other environments it's, like, those lessons stay with me. So I do attribute a lot of my kind of the way I live and relate to other people. I think it was, I had a foundation certainly going into Haverford. I think Haverford built upon that foundation in a very positive way and it enabled me to continue to build with a focus on values, explicitly thinking about values and, and how I wanna walk around this earth and be perceived and treat other people. So it's... It's not insignificant. It's incredibly significant for me, I've continued to be active in Haverford since graduation because of that and I go to campus a few times a year because through my activities, my alumni activities on campus and try to give back.

0:48:21.7 Pendo Kamau: That's a wonderful place to end the interview. So I will stop recording now.