INTERVIEW


 

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Holt Discusses What Brought her to Rollins College

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Holt: And I was reading the paper one day and I saw this ad for Rollins. I hadn’t really heard much about Rollins, but the thing that fascinated me was my husband had a PhD and I had three years of college that I had never completed and when I read the sentence in the ad about free tuition if you worked there, I decided I would apply because by then we had these kids that were rapidly becoming teenagers and no college plan for them as well. So I came to work here in ’85. I needed – I already had three years of college; I was a music major before then, and you can’t really do that with kids and practice and stuff, so I switched to anthropology-sociology; they had a combined degree back then and I got my BA in ’88 from Rollins – Hamilton Holt School.

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Holt Discusses Some of the Changes that she’s Seen on Campus

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Holt:  But back then, there was an invisible – this is my recollection – like an invisible fence between Hamilton Holt and Rollins; it was like we were two separate entities. There were services and events and if you weren’t a day student, you weren’t invited, even if it was something of interest, even if you needed this service, if you were a Holt student you had to go figure it out for yourself. I found that and I know I’m not alone, very demeaning, not just because I was a black female, but it didn’t matter if you were black, if you were a Holt Student, you were a Holt Student and this was off limits because this was for that. It just didn’t matter. To me, it made us feel like second class citizens at Rollins College, and that went on for a long time. There was just this separation and when Dr. Duncan came to Rollins College it was like he came in and I guess what in my mind equated it to, when the Great Wall of China came down you could walk from this side of the fence to that side of the fence and everything was okay. He took away the stigma – it was almost like a stigma of being a Holt student.

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Zhang:  Tell us about your academic work here, which professors you took courses from, which classes you liked better. (Play Audio)


Holt: I think one of my favorite professors in the anthropology-sociology area – well there were two – Linda Glennon, and Pedro Pequeno. And he was really interesting. Everything – there were words that he said that you would never forget, like when you’re getting ready to prepare for an exam, and you know at the end of the day, you’re tired and you can barely stay awake, and he was known for very interesting, long essay type exams. And he would run through stuff you should know and everybody’s sitting there blurry-eyed and he’s saying, “piece a cake, piece a cake.” That was his favorite thing, piece of cake. And you would get there to take the test, and oh god, it was anything but a piece of cake (laughs). You’re sitting there just writing away, thinking liar, liar! (laughs) Piece a cake?

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Holt Discusses her Work in the Community

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Holt:  But I worked with the girls at this home for years and absolutely rewarding once again, watching them because they come in with all kinds of issues from abuse to runaways, to you think it, name it, they’ve done it, all of that, and watching them and it’s usually a slow crawl, you know, just to be able to walk in the door and instead of them walking out and slamming it without saying hello or anything, you know, just to have them say hello in a civil tone is progress. So that’s the kind of baby steps that you take when you’re working with delinquents. And didn’t mention that, but when we were in California, my husband has always loved delinquents. He was working for a boy’s home in California that went out business, and he had these six absolute hardcore delinquents who had no place to go and one night he came home and brought them with him (laughs). So, I guess that’s got introduced. Oh, they were horrible, but it was a real learning experience, you know. It was like having your own lab right in your home (laughs). Well, I absolutely learned a lot from working with them, and some of it, just like working with these girls, there are some successes and there are some downright failures. You know, they turn on you, they go out and they commit more crime. We had one that got caught stealing from the blind operator at the post office. I mean, come on, you know, and then he goes away, and of course my husband brought him back when he got out. And it’s like he was like this from day one; he was in, out, in, out, in, out, but even the baby steps of progress – well that was one where there was no progress, there was absolutely no progress there. It just makes you feel good when you can help somebody become something.

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Zhang: So after your twenty-five years at Rollins, what are some of your most significant events or memories that you will always have and cherish?  (Play Audio)

 

Holt: I think one of my most significant events in the Holt school, I had a young lady – and I brought the little article, who was in a children’s home, and it’s well known now, and she came in to the Holt school office one day and I thought she just had the most tenacity and it was almost outrageous. I was like wow, she’s really brazen, she is a bold young lady. She was about eighteen years old, she walked in and she said I want to go to Rollins and I want to work here. And you know, you just sit there and say okay. Okay, this is great. I was so impressed by her tenacity and when she came in to the Holt school, she had a few credits from another college. I brought her in as a peer advisor in the Holt school and in that position you get a scholarship for being a peer advisor. She’s trained to do some of the same duties as the professional staff, and then we had a vacancy in the office and one of the administrative assistants left, and I hired her in that position. She’s working full time, going to school full time, and she got her B.A. degree and then she went – she always wanted to work in non-profits because she wanted to give back to the children’s home and organizations like that, so she went over to PNLC and went to work there. To me, it was just so rewarding watching this young lady who had grown up almost all of her life in a children’s home become a productive young woman.

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