Running Head: INTERVIEW ANALYSIS PAPER

Interview Analysis Paper

Yasi Raouf
Seattle University
SDAD 5800: Dr. Allison Lau

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This past summer, I returned to work in late August as our departments budget for parttime advisors was limited. I perused over the 500 plus emails in my inbox and decided not to pay
attention to most of them as they didnt pertain to my work. Since we were in the tail end of
summer quarter, some days would be quite slow as far as student traffic in the advising office. I
finally decided to clean up my inbox and read through the myriad exchange of complaints
between faculty and administration about their pay and contracts. I didnt have much historical
context but the arguments on the faculty side seemed convincing and I wasnt seeing much
response from administration. I had only seen a few emails which indicated that faculty were
abusing the All-Community College listserv and violating state ethics guidelines. I had heard
murmurings that the new vice president for human resources was also a lawyer and that people
were somewhat scared of him. This is what peaked my interest in interviewing Marshall
Sampson, Vice President of Human Resources and Legal Affairs. I wanted to know him as a
person and gain some insights into his perspective.
We started our interview by talking about Marshalls career in human resources in the
private sector and his transition to educational institutions. At Green River, he oversees all the
staff in human resources, staffing, compliance, employee-labor relations, and compensation to
name a few functional areas. He also serves as the one coordinating the response to when the
school is faced with a lawsuit. Marshall deals strictly with employee relations and any legal case
regarding students follows the channels of student affairs.
Our interview moved quickly to the implications of legal issues on practice and I was
excited that Marshall decided to share about a diversity initiative at our institution. On opening
day this past quarter, Green River asked students to share about their experiences on campus and
what they feel could be improved. An overwhelming majority expressed their desire to have

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more diversity in staff and faculty. There was also a feeling that cultural consciousness was
lacking in campus environments. Marshall shared that while he wishes administration to readily
respond to these challenges, as a human resources officer, he is looking at it through the legal
lens. In the late 1990s, the state was quite concerned about discrimination and whether hiring ads
were seeking only a specific population. Washington state law, initiative 200, make it clear that
hiring cannot solely be targeted towards diversity and proceeded to ban affirmative action in
Initiative 200. To address the diversity question in hiring, Marshall said that the college sought
creative ways to attract employers. He noted that through strategic advertising, they have been
able to attract a more diverse pool of candidates that better represents the demographics of King
county. The human resources office at Green River hasnt been the only one instituting such
measures. In the late 1990s, the University of Washington had a similar idea after Initiative 200
was constituted. Seeking to maintain and increase its diverse pool of applicants, the school
maintained its racial and ethnic diversity by asking students to write about cultural awareness
in their personal statement. Tim Washburn, then executive director of admissions, noted that
"We continue to primarily be interested in racial diversity and ethnic diversityBut we cannot
do that any longer, so an alternative is cultural awareness, and that is a much broader area than
we've considered in the past (Gorman, 2000). Cultural awareness is just one factor. Perhaps the
human resources office at Green River College hasnt gotten as strategic and creative as
University of Washington, but Marshall seemed to have taken the issue seriously.
Of course diversity issues were a significant point of interest for me, as I had prepared
some quotes from case law on affirmative action to ask Marshall. And Marshalls responses were
affirming--that the law isnt always the end-all be-all, and there are ways to apply the law but
balance it with reality. But that is not to say that the law isnt helpful. As a matter of fact, when it

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came to Title IX issues, Marshall spoke to a great extent about how Title IX is a good example of
how the system can come together. We can say that the law provides a basis and then
interpretation and meanings are left to experience. Perhaps the law can at least provide a
framework, however flawed that framework may be. In order for the law to be applied on its
basic levels, we can say that individuals need to understand why such a law is in place. To arrive
at this understanding, one would need to gain knowledge, investigate, and be able to consider
multiple perspectives. I thought this is the approach I should take in better understanding
diversity issues for myself. In a recent article posted on NPR about diversity at the workplace, I
was intrigued by Gene Dembys deeper analysis of diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. He
explains that:
Over the past few years, numerous editors have reached out to me asking for help in
finding writers and editors of colorI know they mean well, but I am often appalled by
the ease with which they shunt the work of cultivating a bigger variety of voices onto
others, and I get the sense that for them, diversity is an end a box to check off
rather than a starting point from which a more integrated, textured world is brought into
being (Demby, 2015).
Perhaps it is when we want to move from superficiality of diversity to the depth of the issue-the
place of integration as Demby puts it- perhaps it is here that people feel uncomfortable. Maybe
this is why people feel threatened by affirmative action- fearing that their rights will be taken
away and discrimination will still be in place. Along with Demby, Ive been associated with
knowledge and labels that I dont really know much about. I often wondered what it really means
to be a person of color. As I started at Seattle University, I felt that there was overwhelming
consensus by our community that someone like me is a person of color. So rightfully, I should
claim that label and use it to my advantage. Because, somehow, my experiences and my past
have been codified into the label of person of color. I was never really comfortable with it, and
I never claimed to be one explicitly. In my view, some reasons as to why one skin color has been

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deemed superior or privileged has been historically a construction of the human mind- a
historical social construction. But if I were to say that, then, people would be upset because Im
disregarding years and years of racial oppression. But how could I explain that is not what I
mean at all and that as a matter of fact those are the things we need to talk about in moving
forward? So then I thought it would be best to identify as a person of color because if I dont I
would be going against a very clearly defined norm. And then I became hypersensitive. Should I
treat my white friends differently? Are their experiences less valid? And naturally I began to
profile people in my mind, validating non-white peoples experience more than the white person.
And hence I created a new kind of prejudice in my mind. Then it became even more complex
because it seemed like diversity had a very specific dimension in academia: there was no regard
for intellectual, social, emotional, or religious diversity. So then the person of color phenomenon
became an agenda I couldnt understand and we became so fixated on the term that there was no
room for re-definition or other perspectives. All of our definitions varied so much that we would
superficially pretend that varying definitions are ok by calling it dissonance.
I end this paper by the following quote. I think this quote best resonates just one of many steps I
could develop as a professional in the field of education:
Let neither (neither black or white race) think that the solution of so vast a problem is a
matter that exclusively concerns the other. Let neither think that such a problem can
either easily or immediately be resolved. Let neither think that they can wait confidently
for the solution of this problem until the initiative has been taken, and the favorable
circumstances created, by agencies that stand outside the orbit of their Faith. Let neither
think that anything short of genuine love, extreme patience, true humility, consummate
tact, sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort, can
succeed in blotting out the stain which this patent evil has left on the fair name of their
common country (Effendi, 1990).

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References
Demby, Gene (2015, November 5). Diversity Is Rightly Criticized As An Empty Buzzword. So
How Can We Make It Work? NPR. Retrieved from
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/11/05/453187130/diversity-is-rightlycriticized-as-an-empty-buzzword-so-how-can-we-make-it-work
Effendi, Shoghi (1990). The Advent of Divine Justice. US Bahai Publishing Trust.
Gorman, S. (2000). After Affirmative Action. National Journal, 32(15), 1120.