For the first time, Elon University alumni had the chance to share a little bit of their experience with the school at the Voices of Elon Oral History Booths.
The booths were hosted by the Committee on Elon History and Memory in conjunction with Belk Library and The Center for Race, Ethnicity and Diversity Education. The event operated as part of Homecoming weekend programming Oct. 10, and featured two booths, one in Belk Library and one in the Black Community Room in Moseley Center.
Alumni were given a chance to participate in filmed 10-to 15-minute interviews where they were asked two questions:
“What made you choose Elon?” and “What do you hope students today, or 50 years from now, understand about your experience at Elon?”
Emma Powell, member of the Committee on Elon History and Memory and archivist, said the booths were designed to get small snapshots of a diverse range of alumni experiences.
“It is really meant to meet alumni and get a brief overview of their story, especially because we don't have time to meet with every alumni that Elon has ever had,” Powell said. “This event allows us to kind of get little bites of people's stories and get them a bit more representation in the archive.”
Powell said by doing the booths the archives can expand its knowledge of campus life to go to Elon in different time periods.
“We're still a relatively young archive, and we don't have everything,” Powell said. “The archive only started in the early 2000s and so we have things from the ‘70s or the ‘80s, but we don't have as much as we would like, especially about student life. We really want those perspectives of what student life was like back in the day, and we really can't get that without the stories of people who actually lived those moments. “
Co-chair of the committee Lynn Huber said the booths are meant to bring to light the stories that are not a part of the official Elon narrative.
“There's not one history of Elon,” Huber said. “There are many histories, and I think we're trying to open up some of those other histories and other experiences that people have at Elon that may not make it into the official record.”
Library archivist Shaunta Alvarez helped conduct the interviews. She said many of the stories she heard from alumni were very positive.
“I'm grateful that we actually get to do this with people that we maybe don't get to hear from on a regular basis, like these are people who came and they left,” Alvarez said. “They created history here. They left legacies here.”
Ruby Thornton Bracey ‘99 said she chose to participate in the booth for this exact reason and giving her interview felt therapeutic.
“I felt that my story needed to be told and needed to be heard,” Thornton Bracey said. “There are other young ladies who may have experienced what I experienced while I was here, as well as other students or young people who didn't take the traditional route to go to college.”
Assistant Director of Black Student Success Initiatives for the Center for Race, Ethnicity and Diversity Education Abdul-Malik Harrison ‘21 said he enjoyed his experience in the booth and that people don’t always realize the history they are a part of.
“We fail to realize that every single day, every single minute, second, that we're making history, whether it feels like it or not,” Harrison said. “So to be a part of something like that, it satisfied the history nerd in me.”
Huber said while the committee may not know exactly how the interviews will be used they will become part of the archives and will be able to be shared publicly.
“We're hoping that they might be teaching resources,” Huber said. “We hope that they might be resources for talking about the work that history and memory is doing, for talking about the work that the archive is doing. We hope that they might be useful resources for getting people interested to think about sharing their stories.”