Glenn DeGuzman:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs Now I’m your host, Glenn DeGuzman coming to you from Livermore, California, the ancestral homelands of the Ohlone people. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside and or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations helpful to you and restorative to the profession. We release episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find us at studentaffairsnow.com or you can find us on Twitter, and now Instagram. Now I’m particularly excited about this episode because I’m bringing four student affairs professionals who in my opinion, have been leaders and influencers across the U.S. in nerd identity, geek culture and its impact and influence on college and university campus. I happened to be a huge fan of this. So I’m really excited to introduce the four panelists for today’s episode.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I’m going to start with Al Day from University of California, Berkeley. We also have Alex Belisario from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Brian MacDonald from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Dr. Emily Sandoval from the University of Southern California. This is truly a West coast meetup, and I’m thrilled to have all of you joining me. So I’d like to start by having you all introduce yourselves. And and what do you do in higher education? And in the spirit of today’s conversation, your background and your areas of interest tied to this topic. Let’s go and start with Al.

Al Day:
Yeah, I’m happy to get started. I’m Alfred Day. Most people call me Al I am the Associate Dean of Students and Director of the Center for Support and Intervention at UC Berkeley. I’ve been involved in this work with these fine folks for over, almost over 10 years, about 10 years now. And I’m just really, really happy to be here as a as a DC comics fan. I’d like to think of us as the justice league of higher ed and geek ed stuff. Other people might say Avengers, but I would never say that.

Alex Belisario:
And you still don’t hold it against me then after all this time,

Glenn DeGuzman:
Alex, why don’t you introduce himself?

Alex Belisario:
Hi, I’m Alex Belisario. I use she her pronouns and I’m the Executive Director for College Student Life at UC Santa Cruz. And you know, there’s a natural relationship between our work in higher ed and my interest in geeky pursuits. So as a college student, I had these interests as did my friends like scifi and video games. And as a professional, I feel like it helps to make connections with students and faculty and staff. I do still play PokemonGo when people ask that question. And so much of the stories that we get in Saifai in particular, give us a way to talk about real life situations. So it’s a natural connection. And then I would also

Alex Belisario:
Say that there’s just two superheroes everywhere who are working with college students right there, their outfits look a little different. They probably don’t wear capes if they’ve seen the Incredibles, but they’re out there

Glenn DeGuzman:
Totally hear you on that. Brian.

Brian MacDonald:
Hey everyone. Thanks Glenn for bringing us together. It’s always awesome to see everybody here and to talk about this. My name is Brian MacDonald. I, use he/him pronouns. I work in residential life and student affairs at UCLA. I think for me, my interest is twofo ell, first I don’t think, I think a childhood of watching too many horror movies has prepared me for a pandemic. So I have to definitely attribute my horror fandom to my likelihood of survival in 2020. But I think it’s twofold. One, I think the role of fictional stories and characters have, they can inspire, they can guide us. They can provide hope they can provide leadership lessons and they can provide characters that we identify with when maybe there’s not somebody in our real life that we can look to. And I also think we in education can learn a lot about community from fandom and how fandom forms and how it behaves. And specifically today, I think, you know, we need to pay very close attention to representation in these stories who’s present and who isn’t. And also I think a fandom and community comes with warning labels now in terms of too much nostalgia, toxic fandom. So those are things that are on my mind as we approach today’s conversation.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And Emily.

Emily Sandoval:
Hello everyone. So my name is Dr. Emily Sandoval. I use she, her hers pronouns. I am the Associate Vice Provost for Student Affairs at the University of Southern California. And I mean, my career has been in housing and residential life and student affairs in general. So for me, this intersection is very important because many superheroes are people with super powers spend a part of their hero’s journey, trying to figure out their place in where they belong and what their talent is and how they can contribute that talent or share that talent with others or the world. Hopefully for the better. And I view the similarities with the college student’s journey in college, you know, from entering their first year, trying to figure out where do they belong? What is my talent? What does my major what good can I do after college? I really played to that and I feel like I’ve been on my own hero’s journey my entire life. I feel we all have been but very much. I’ve also learned to use my identity as a point of connection with the students and the professional staff that I work with.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Let’s frame this conversation because I think for me, when I was growing up, I wouldn’t have even understood this idea of nerd identity or Geek culture.

Glenn DeGuzman:
So can we start by, how do you define nerd identity or geek culture, and, and I’d like to hear, how did your interest in this topic emerging your personal life and eventually your professional field, Alex Al either one of you want to kick us off?

Al Day:
Yeah, I’d be happy to for, for me, you know, the idea of nerd identity is, is so inextricably tied up into who I was and my childhood, I lived, lived in the library Mercer County library. I, I was the kind of kid that even if I didn’t call myself a nerd, everybody else did. So I just had to sort of decide at some point to either use it as an insult or as just sort of an acknowledgement of who I was for me, nerd identity is really it’s about passion for, for a thing or a topic. And it doesn’t have to be tied with anything in particular. My particular one is comics and Disney and things, but it really is that thing that, that you can talk about for hours, that your friends sometimes get sick of you, but it’s just, it’s very important to you and it can be, and should be anything.

Al Day:
We’ve talked about this a lot amongst the group. And we really wanted to find our identity as something that’s inclusive about bringing people into a circle. I heard a podcast this weekend where somebody talked about being a kid and really being into like Harlequin Harlequin romance novels, and how even today, they didn’t feel like they could embrace that as part of their identity. And for me, that’s, that’s what it is that, that thing that you just love and that you draw power from, and that helps you sort of make meaning out of life. It’s very important to me.

Alex Belisario:
Yeah. I think we, we got our start as geeky kid almost 10 years ago. And it was because we found that we had some shared interests across professionals working in housing, but that, that really relates and resonates for folks who are going to school or thinking about going to school. And, and when we did our first presentation at Comicon in 2011, we used the Venn diagram to talk a little bit about, you know, your like deep interests and perhaps how comfortable you felt in social situations and your the time and energy and passion that you would put into things rather be if it would even be an obsession, we’ll say, and like the difference between geeks and nerds and dorks. And it was even at that time it was becoming a little more acceptable to say that you had these geeky interests and that you could find people to be in community with. And I think it’s even more so now, but I would say more like when we were younger for most of us, you were a little bit more of an outsider, a little more reluctant to share that for fear of the connotations that people would have about you based on their perception of your interests. So I think that being able to find that connection with each other, and then to talk about how that worked so nicely with our professional life and in

Alex Belisario:
Finding our connections with students it just strengthened our bond too. And so we’ve been able to bring lots of folks in over time, and I always have to give a shout out to our other two OGs, Tyler Miller and Ryan McRae, who, you know, really were like, Hey, we love comic con. We want to be able to give back, how can we do that? And then it was like, who else can we find that have all these same interests or similar interests, and then be able to move from there,

Glenn DeGuzman:
Alex, you raised a good point about tying and connecting to the college campus. And so can you, can somebody from the panel speak and tie your professional journey to geek culture how, how do you raise awareness or how have you been raising awareness and integration between like pop culture and student affairs and what did you, what have you learned about this intersection between these, these areas?

Al Day:
You know, it’s, it’s an interesting idea. Like I said earlier, like I gotta be me, it’s the lens through which I see the world. I have without, without a judgment, used, Quoted Superman in job interviews. Like it, it is who I am. And so it’s, it’s sort of how I make meaning of the world and what I discovered years ago. And, and Brian was a part of this at a time when I was at Santa Barbara, when I made that part of myself public, when I was a resident director at UC Santa Barbara, students flocked to it.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I remember one, one weekend. I just took over a study room cause I just needed to, to rearrange comics. And so I just had the entire study room with tables and tables of comics laid out, which is funny. Cause it’s my, my collection at the time was probably a quarter of the size of it is and the whole week, and I didn’t get any organizing done cause I had student after student coming in and just asking me about it, conversations with students that I had never had before. And so that was sort of the start of it for me as a once, I sort of made this part of my self known students really responded to it. And from there it just became sort of my professional identity in a way that just created excitement for me and the work and, and, you know, created as I said before, it’s an identity I can’t pretend not to have, but it really allowed me access to not only to students in general, but to a group of students who quite frankly had not been engaged before.

Emily Sandoval:
Yeah. And I would add that intersection of identities it’s been even evolving for me. And I think back to 2011 at our first Comicon and Alex, I don’t know if you remember this. It was at the end of the panel and he had some students come up to us. I don’t remember. I think they might’ve been high school students and they were just an awe sort of wait, you’re geeks and your women and the awe their face. And I realized, you know, thinking back to 2011 where I was working at the time I was at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Polytechnic university, and even thinking before then when I was a resident, I remember hearing comments and there was one time I spent hours playing video games with my RAs. It was getting cute. And they’re like, we just spent the past like two hours getting beat by our boss.

Speaker 3:
And she’s a girl. I was like, woman, thank you very much at Cal Poly. It was interesting because they were just like, it’s a Polytechnic university. Like by definition, I’m going to find a lot of geeks there. I did and did our first Geek Week there and it was wonderful, but they were just, I remember these young men talking to me, they’re like, this is so cool. Like you understand what we’re talking about, but you’re so open about your passions and you’re a woman. Well, yeah. And now, you know, in 2020, it’s not weird anymore. At least in my circles that I run in and I’ve thought about how my office has evolved and where I am now. It’s like every year I get a little more geek collectibles in my office. My office is geeked out now, you know? And I work at USC. No one’s ever told me anything, but I mean, I have artwork. I have so many pop figures. It’s not even funny. And it’s, I don’t even think about that anymore where people see me and now it’s, Oh, I can easily talk to you and students come in in crisis or when they’re coming to talk to you and it’s not always the fun thing, but this is where my identity gets to cross over because we share a commonality, even though I may be 20 plus years older than the student

Glenn DeGuzman:
Alex, Brian, would you want to weigh in on that?

Alex Belisario:
Go ahead. Right. I know you’ve got stuff in your office too.

Brian MacDonald:
Yeah, there’s a lot, there’s a lot, a lot to say on this particular question you know, 10 years ago and I should say too, that, you know, it’s probably one of the professional highlights of my life, of these folks inviting me to participate in this group. And I Al I don’t know if I should thank you or not that you were partially responsible for me going into my first Comicon in 2005. But you know,

Al Day:
Sorry for all that money you spent.

Brian MacDonald:
Yeah, yeah. For me, you know, a lot of my childhood and growing up in teenage years were very like fading in the back, not having community and sort of just trying to, to disappear in an effort to avoid screwing up or being embarrassed or any of those things. So for me, you know like just getting lost in science fiction and horror as a kid and having something that was an escape back then turn into such a powerful, not only community now, but something that I think we learned from quite a bit today probably talk later about horror and the pandemic, right.

Brian MacDonald:
It’s very, very powerful it’s redeeming, but it also comes with a lot of responsibility as we, you know, this call who I think have a history in fandom and geek culture, but also, you know, knowing the folks on here who have been advocating for social justice for so long to now sort of see those issues play out in fandom where I’m sure 10 years ago, maybe we would have hoped that fandom would have been a little less toxic. If you had told us 10 years ago, Hey, this thing’s going to happen with these properties called game of Thrones and walking dead. And you know, it would’ve been hard to imagine back then. But as someone, I forget who to attribute this quote to, but everybody has seen Lord of the rings, but not everybody speaks Elvish. So there are still nerds out there. And for me a big part of the nerd geek equation is like community versus disconnection. Like I’m rewatching, freaks and geeks now, and it’s sort of nostalgic and lighthearted and, you know, the, the, the nerds in the show have friends, but then you could watch Stephen King’s Carry and you see the real, like outcast side of this in a really powerful way that I think is still relevant today.

Alex Belisario:
Brian, you, you mentioned that you’ve been going to Comicon since 2005, and I know you’ve been moderating panels on key culture, I think since 2012, but I think I’ve sat in the audience and heard you speak. And before this call, you commented on the power that emerges that, that relationship, that power, that in bridges, between fictional stories, characters on an individual, can you speak more to that?

Brian MacDonald:
Sure. And I know everybody on this call has characters who they turn to. You know, in tough times, I remember going through a pretty serious depression at the same time. I’ve, binge-watched a Firefly and then serenity. And I felt like I was a part of that crew. And it got me through some tough times. In this pandemic, you know, I think about Sigourney Weaver’s character from the aliens franchise, Ellen Ripley, a lot as well as chief Brody from jaws in terms of like two people who are sounding the alarm bell of something that was really, really important that could save lives and no one listened. Right. and it’s, I think it’s worth noting too, that Ellen Ripley, that was one of the first Saifai horror characters, protagonists played by a woman. And I think it’s just really important that we look at race, gender, and other identities.

Brian MacDonald:
And I think horror has actually pushed that in a long time. That’s why it’s a genre I returned to. Even when you look at the very popular all the characters that are in you know, Lovecraft country right now, and drawing, you know, history of George Romero’s 1968 night of living dead, where he wasn’t even conscious of the way he was altering the story by casting Dwayne Jones as Ben, he, he goes on record saying he just cast somebody who did the best job in acting, which is a really interesting meta analysis of, of George Romero. Right? But the fact that Ben gets after saving a bunch of white people’s lives through that whole movie by a white sheriff, completely flipped that narrative and inspired stories. So I point to that, that character in that movie, as an example of, of such a powerful transcended moment in film, and that, you know, these characters for, especially a lot of fans out there who really invest in these characters, it really matters.

Brian MacDonald:
It matters in a very positive way. It also, you know, I, I’m not I miss the Harry Potter fandom, right. But you see the wrestling that folks are having with some of the J K Rowling’s comments on trans folks and people reckoning with their fandom for for, for those comments, right? So these characters matter to people, they develop relationships, we’ve all cried when we’ve lost a character on screen. And I think it’s because there is sort of a, there’s a connection there that really matters to us.

Al Day:
And I just to bounce it off of that, I, I personally have never been a horror person until this new wave of, of horror is centered on black lives with get out and us. And most specifically Lovecraft Country that really speaking to the holder of the black experience in the United States has really, I don’t know if it’s made me a horror fan yet, but it’s just really all of a sudden, the metaphor of horror makes sense to me in a way that it never did before, because like many other black people, I don’t understand why people stay in the house.

Brian MacDonald:
Yeah. And I think on that note too, I mean, there’s, I think there’s value in looking at there’s a censorship history in comics there’s you could argue, I think a lot of us who grew up Gen X in the eighties were taught, rated R means it’s bad or parental advisory on music means it’s bad. But when you look back to these old horror movies or, you know, black Sabbath and other, other music that was sort of stifled, there was very positive social messaging in all of these platforms that were stifled under the guise of this is bad for kids. So I just think it’s really, really good insights to that Al shared. With that show, it’s really powerful.

Alex Belisario:
I think one of the other things we talked, we tend to talk about when we’re all getting together is how thinking about geek or nerd identity can also go beyond that. So for me, like watching a lot of violence gives me nightmares and pictures in my head. So I tend to some of the perhaps less, less violent comics and things. So Phineas and Ferb I’ve been a long time of Perry. The Platypus is one of my superheroes. I tend to be a little bit shy. I’m not the biggest fan, always of public speaking. And the aliens and Toy Story also come up for me quite a bit. It’s like the heroes that are behind the scenes. They’re maybe not always in the front, but they’re always trying to do good in, you know, in their way that they can and appreciating gifts and challenges.

Alex Belisario:
But one of the things we talked on at least once a year on our panels, it’s like how these interests can be a gateway to finding the things that you’re passionate about. So maybe it is watching get out and that inspires you to want to do more in the realm of social justice or to be out there. And maybe it’s watching the X-Men and, you know, understanding how these folks with special powers who are misunderstood by society, find their community at a school together, you know, and the parallels for the kind of work that we do then just really flowing very nicely.

Alex Belisario:
Yeah. What are superhero narratives other than a story of using your privilege on behalf of others?

Glenn DeGuzman:
Right. Wow. So I’m gonna shift a little bit, Emily, you, you know, you’re into you, you shared with me that you were into geek in the Sci-FI genre, but what was particularly interesting is that you also did your dissertation on geek culture in higher education engagement. What did your research during your dissertation journey tell you, especially around building community on college campuses, through geek culture.

Emily Sandoval:
Great question. Brian, I’m going to join you in blaming Al for this. Cause we were in a parking lot after our very first comic con panel 2011, and he looked at me like you- you’re going to go get your dissertation. You’re going to go back to school and write something on this. And I proud of Al for being back at school himself. So thank you to Al for planting that seed in my brain, but I was very grateful to find faculty members who took me seriously. So talking about geek identity culture, as it relates to sense of belonging connection on a college campus that’s the focus of the study. And I probably enjoyed doing my research more than most people enjoy doing the research dissertation. I mean, you have to be passionate about it. But it’s definitely a labor of love.

Emily Sandoval:
And I got to tell I was a qualitative study, which means I got to sit down with students and staff members at a university and talk about the importance of their identity as a geek and how they’ve been able to see that manifest throughout their college experience or just as an administrator. And it was wonderful conversations and approved it basically validated the why behind all of us doing our work in higher education, but specifically as geeks. So taking that old field of dreams, quote, if you build it, they will come. I say, if you provide them the space, they will come. So meaning a lot of the college campuses several campuses that I’ve worked at, and I don’t know how it is that your respective schools, but sometimes it’s like, okay about a program happened or programming event happened in one building that you’d only get the students from that one building there, others wouldn’t ever come to that building well, until we hosted a magic, the gathering event, and we had people walk across campus, which is 20 minute walk from building to building to attend.

Emily Sandoval:
So I say, provide them the space, talk to students, find out what they’re interested in and they will give, they will tell you what they think, you know, so creating spaces for Dungeons and dragons, having people actually make those connections, opening up your lounge spaces or your dining halls for just a board game night, people will show up. And that’s why I say create the space and the students who were at universities that did that for them, meant the world to them because they felt seen and they felt heard, and they felt like they weren’t alone, that there were other people who shared those interests, which also goes into representation. And I did my dissertation, my research in 2018. It’s when I did most of my research. So just the representation for some of the students who identify as women the woman characters, there was one student who absolutely loved Carrie Fisher and fell in love with princess Leia.

Emily Sandoval:
I would also talk about the power of the character of Rey on a new generation of young kids. Aren’t, we’re seeing the force awakens. And I was like, where was Ray on my life? Although I did have Buffy. Buffy is where it starts from me. Buffy is my hero. But then going into, you know, black Panther and what that meant for our black African American students even into the Spiderverse which is my favorite Spiderman movie out there, the fact that there was an Afro Latino boy think Spiderman, like that was huge to see a cartoon movie where I was also hearing some Spanish, it was massive. So it’s just understanding that for students. I mean, if it matters for us, it matters even more for students who are trying to find their footing on a college campus and the place where they belong and they feel most comfortable to be themselves. So that was what I discovered from that research. And since that research, I’ve had a book idea in my head for two years that I need to get off the ground. Cause I’m going to need contributing authors that is still in the works.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Alex, can you weigh in on that, especially around your insights on building community on college campuses. And I know that you’ve also been a big part of these social fiction conference, which has impacted many folks, including the folks on this panel. So you can speak a little bit to that.

Alex Belisario:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, going back to our earlier conversation around being able to share a part of ourselves then helps our students to be able to open up and share more of themselves. And one of the big activities that’s happened at one of the colleges here is what’s called the social fiction conference. And our residential staff created that back in 2009 and it was meant to give students and community members, because Al has come as well. Over the years, and Emily, the ability to look at social justice issues through the lens of Spotify gaming, manga, like any of the cool nerdy, geeky pursuits. So we have had cosplay, we’ve had escape rooms, we’ve had authors, we’ve had folks talking about climate change artificial intelligence, like, and, and our responsibility as consumers of that kind of media.

Alex Belisario:
And also as people who are going out into the world and hopefully creating positive change, like it’s given us an opportunity to talk with students about that figure out what is of interest to them and then tailoring activities and programs that can help put it together. Right. So not telling anybody what to think or how they have to think. But have you thought about the fact that you, when you’re consuming this video game, like, what is it saying about women or about people of color, about violence? Like, you know, having these conversations, we had this great debate in the last year, at the last social fiction conference about whether or not now I’m blanking on his name in the Avengers, the bad guy with the glove, like whether or not he was really bad. Right. What, what was he trying to do?

Alex Belisario:
Is he trying to save the universe by cutting the draw on the resources? Or is he just truly evil? Right. And so it was a really spirited debate that went on. And so that’s really helped build community. I mentioned a little earlier that I do still play Pokemon, go and admit to it, even when people are like to pay stuff, do that. But you’ll see groups of students when we can all be in person together who show up at different places across campus and they’ll travel with each other and they come to know each other, Emily met some of them when she was up here, you know, they it starts with Pokemon go, but then it’s like, Hey, are you in that class? Or, Hey, do you want to go eat something at the dining hall? And then there’s community. And one of the things that I really enjoyed about the discord group is that particularly in the beginning, they were really good about making sure that if someone was coming, they were going to wait for that person. And if someone would jump into a raid early, they’re like, well, good luck trying to solo for the rest of your life. Like you need to jump out and wait until everybody’s here. And so that kind of stuff just really warms my heart. Like you, you can see how it is that they’re trying to take care of each other and doing things in the best way that they can.

Emily Sandoval:
I’m gonna, I’m gonna go ahead. I’m not gonna lie. When I go up to UC Santa Cruz, one of my favorite things to do is play Pokemon, go with Alex and her staff and students. I look forward to that, but I will add that, you know, the social fiction conference. And then also just some of the students I interviewed in the lens of being a geek also allows us like Alex was saying to talk about openly, like, yeah, I may be a huge fan of Buffy, the vampire Slayer, absolutely adore. Like that is my top, one of my, one of my top fandoms. But you can also look at it at a critical eye and say who’s missing and who’s not there. And I think having those conversations also brings some real fruitful discussions about race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality that most geeks aren’t, don’t shy away from having, we’ve been having these conversations in our fandom for years.

Al Day:
It’s, it’s actually one of the hallmarks of fandom is the ability to engage in these conversations critically. It’s one of the things I like about fandom is there’s, there’s no topic of any sort of scifi comics or, or any type of fan of that you can’t argue about, but there’s such a model built within fandom to have disagreement with sort of a level of civility. I’m going to sell anybody who’s listening to this podcast or, or participating in this on why this shit matter to you is my, my, when we, when we all started presenting together, I was in res life. And now I’m out of Reslife. And I don’t have one of the great things about being in ResLife. You have a lot of positive interaction with students. And so for me over the last couple of years, as I haven’t had that, that positive sort of directly positive, my job now is a lot with students in crisis is I found so much joy in going into these spaces and talking to these things.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And if you’re looking for a way to have a complex or complicated conversation with students using the lens of popular culture is an incredible way to get it done. When we, when we, when Wonder Woman came out and especially when Black Panther came out, because I’m the comic book guy on campus, I was involved in a lot of conversations and presentations about these. And I cannot tell you how much a joy I got out of my work with students with having these conversations, particularly with black Panther and particularly lately with, with with the unfortunate passing away of Chadwick Bozeman, that if you are looking for an opportunity to have students engage with, with critical thinking and also do it in a joyful way, this is it, the conversation you’re talking about Alex with Thanos. So many of our conversations around Black Panther were around

Speaker 3:
Was Killmonger wrong though, because I kind of don’t necessarily disagree with it.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And the ability to really jump into a space with students where they bring their joy and their, like you talked about right at Emily, like my experience was, Oh, okay. So we’re going to have a presentation about SVSH issues. So everybody, we were gonna bring pizza and really talk about difficult things. But if you then say, okay, let’s go through and find some pop culture, examples of the things we want to talk about with SPSH issues and bring it within the context of, Hey, that thing that happened Spike and Buffy, that wasn’t cool, right? When you really look at it, let’s, let’s really dig into it. You’d be amazed. The people that show up that would never otherwise show up and the joy and complexity they bring to that conversation, I get joy. And then the other piece I’ll talk about is not only for your students, I personally get joy out of every time. I’m able to interact with this group when we’re presenting a Comicon. When we just talk to each other, because it isn’t a passion of mine. And I don’t care if we share the exact same passion, the thing I’m responding to is that you are passionate about a thing. And I just get so much joy and folks who are looking for ways to bring this to their campus in a way that students are going to leave feeling that their time was valued and that it was worthwhile for them. This, this is the secret sauce.

Emily Sandoval:
Yeah. And I’m going to add, even during the pandemic, it has been very unique. I mean, you all know, video game consults were like sold out the first couple of months when the pandemic hit, because that was a one way to stay connected. Cause people, zoom, fatigue is real and we’re all tired of zoom. Students don’t even love using zoom that much, but talking with their friends via online video game, playing, like that’s been huge even to the point where during the summer, as a staff engagement, there was staff members who hosted an animal crossing like half hour, like let’s visit each other’s islands. And I tried really hard not to buy that. And I did, it’s like just a to do list. I always have a fun to do list for like, Oh no, this is not good for my personality. So I’ve been trying to balance it out and get on my Mario cKrt, my smash brothers,

Al Day:
But it’s a way that to connect like right now. And Glen you’re, you’re the center of this, our students that did come back to campus had to be by themselves in their rooms for the first two weeks. And we were trying to figure out how can we make that? How can we build community in that space when it’s, we, I don’t think anybody who’s listening to this knows that is not the ideal way to introduce students to your campus community and figuring out ways to connect them and get them to know each other, this it’s, these, these are the methods that are available to you. Not only, but also students are gonna block stuff.

Glenn DeGuzman:
So we’re in this pandemic environment. How are you seeing students, staff, faculty connecting to pop culture in this environment? I mean, obviously everyone’s going online. Are you seeing positive impact, negative impact? What are you seeing, in your conversations with others,

Emily Sandoval:
I’m seeing positive impacts in terms of, as I mentioned, like a video game playing, but their sense of community still out there. I don’t know how we got so lucky, but like Netflix has released a lot of good content as well, but we could have a whole panel on just the umbrella Academy, season two and everything that happened in that season.

Emily Sandoval:
But there’s been showed like Lovecraft country where you could binge them right now or watch them episodically, Watchmen exactly where people are coming together and then I’m looking on Netflix. Cause I have, you know, Netflix knows you like a certain type of genre. So I was like, Oh, I’ll check this out and make sure it’s like another chosen one, but it’s still fun. So I think that’s how we’re seeing community around shows, video games, comic books, the media that’s still being produced is still serving as a catalyst for people to come together in conversation around community and also with a critical eye and to talk about everything going on with the parallels of what’s happening in the world with dependent the racial pandemic and what we’re seeing in our pop culture media as well.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Interesting. I know that, you know, as a Alex, you’re full disclosure, I to play Pokemon go, I’m a level 39, I’m getting up there. And I know that even with Pokemon go, they’ve shifted to sort of a, you know, a physical district social distancing format. And I find that very interesting because even when I’m on campus and I’m still, you know, walking between spaces or whatnot, I’m playing, I can see folks there they’re playing, you know? And so, you know, there’s this desire to continue to, to connect with their their, their chosen activity or the things that they’re really connected and passionate to. So sort of powerful. I want to shift a little bit here and ask you if a student affairs practitioner or really anyone in education wants to explore this connection, connection, particularly around identity, belonging and community development, what type of advice would you give them? Because obviously there’s been a lot of great points. But what advice would you give them to just begin their journey to connecting it?

Alex Belisario:
I think starting with the gateway, like if, if they know if they don’t know and want suggestions, like Emily said, I think people, each of us right, would be very happy to give people suggestions and they would be completely different. There’s a little bit of overlap, but I think there’s lots of ways to, to get involved. So to figure out, you know, just try a little bit of this and that, like for me, I watched an episode of game of Thrones. Cause some friends were like, it’s not that violent. The violence has a purpose. I know I watched half a minute and I was texting him going, are you kidding me? This person got beheaded in the first half minute. And so that wasn’t speaking to me. And so it’s fine. I, you know, I, I went through a whole season just to see and then realized that that wasn’t it for me. But you know, Buffy the vampire Slayer absolutely. In there. A lot of the Disney animation is very fun and engaging for me. And so, you know, I have lots of staff members who are talking about Korean soap operas. That seems to be speaking to them at the moment. So figuring out what that gateway is, and then figuring out who is doing that,

Alex Belisario:
Who else is interested in it and building the community around that. And then as Emily said, right, you get other suggestions that are, are speaking to you. Cause that’s in your algorithm. The more people that you can connect with who have a similar interest will have other interests and so on and so on. And so then you’re in,

Emily Sandoval:
and what’s unique is some of our gateways are still very relevant. So as a child, like when I say what made me a geek, it was star Wars, the original trilogy and Shira, and then mobile back, which was nothing like my 90, 85 shooter, but it was so much better. And it was so amazing and so well done when you talk about representation. So it is trying to find out if people say, well, I geek out about rappin’ musicals. You know, I got about books. I was an English literature major. So like what makes you really excited? And then let’s talk about that. And you could get someone talking about something they’re excited about for another 30 minutes and they start asking questions that help them even think critically about why they connect.

Al Day:
Yeah. I mean, I think the key is really that internal excitement about a thing. One of the things we talk about a lot when we’re presenting is, and this is, it goes to Brian’s point earlier about toxic fandom. You know, here’s a, here’s a way to engage in it in a really sort of positive way is when you’re sharing the thing you’re passionate about, do it in a way that’s bringing people into the circle instead of ex excising people from the circle, I’m a comic book fan. And I once had somebody come to me and say, Oh, I like Batman too. I’ve seen all the movies. Now my initial impulse was to be like, well, you haven’t read the comic books. You’re not, you’re not a comic book fan. And a lot of fandom has that reaction where it’s sort of like, you have to prove to someone that you’re a fan of a thing.

Al Day:
And what we ask people to do is flip it. If you have something you enjoy, don’t try to judge whether someone is a fan of someone says, Oh, I’m a big Batman fan from the movies. You’re great. I love those movies too. Let me loan you a comic book. Cause you’re PR if you love the movies, you’ll probably love that. Or to Alex’s point. I don’t really like horror to not be like, Oh no, no, you’re dumb for not liking horror, right? That is not a way to bring people into a circle. And that’s the beginning of toxic fandom, which I think we all can agree is a terrible, terrible thing, but whatever you love, whatever you have passionate about. And I think everybody on this call knows, and I, what I have found is most people I’ve interacted with in the world have a thing that they’re really into.

Al Day:
And Brian and I have talked about how a lot of us learned to push it down, but a thing that you love that you could talk about until the sun goes out, that’s your thing, embrace it. And let other people know that you’re into it. And if you get sort of some flack for it, those are toxic people that you don’t really want to engage with. But I guarantee you, if you’re in student affairs and you’re interacting with students, there’s a student out there who sees that. And there’s a student out there who is going to be like, like Alex and Emily talked about, which I remember that moment at our first Comicon presentation. And I was just floored of women coming up to them and being like, Oh my God, you’re geeks. But you’re, and I think they said girls and just for them, and to see the two of you to me, I was like, if we never do another panel in our lives, that’s why we’re doing this.

Al Day:
I mean, I get, you all know me, I get super stoked about this. And this brings me a great deal of joy. But at the basis of its joy is so many people have repressed this part of themselves. And there’s so much joy and satisfaction in it for them. That part of, I think what we collectively are trying to do is give you, give people the space to be open and say, Hey, you know what, no, I’m geeky about this. And like, I don’t care if it’s Harlequin romance books. I don’t, whatever it is, just, you know, that’s your thing. Talk about it, be it. And you’ll find community somebody somewhere I grew up where I didn’t know any other kids that, that like comics and that was a really lonely existence. So to find particularly black kids. So to find that community is so, so critical,

Glenn DeGuzman:
You know, I’m out. It’s interesting because, Oh, go ahead, Brian.

New Speaker:

Brian MacDonald:
Stay on that thread. I can jump in after. Go ahead.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Well, I was going to comment on similar to many of you Al has been integral in getting me connected to this culture and really kind of exploring it. I know he took me to my first Comicon about eight, nine years ago, and it’s now kind of rolled into my family. So my family role is to come upon and they’ve, they, you know, when I said, do you want to go to Disneyland and Comicon? They look at me funny, like Disneyland, no we’re going to comic con, but I think in part because of the diversity of areas and topics and interests, because even today, when, you know now, obviously not this past year, but in the past when we go to comic con as a family, I don’t see my family at comic con because we’re all going to different things.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I’m really into Asian inspired anime, my kids, my daughter’s in the art and the illustration section. And my son is really into Manga and gaming. And so it is a really fascinating thing when you speak about fandom and the different areas and subjects. So yeah, I want wanna I want to kind of turn Brian, you want it to weigh in on something, or did you, was there a topic or thought that you had?

Brian MacDonald:
Only that in addition to what everybody else said, I think you know, we’ve lightly touched on this, but unpacking like villains, I think is really important in a lot of these stories, both in terms of you know villains who weren’t necessarily like people who have been villainized over time. So sort of unintentional villains that maybe some of us actually relate to from earlier stories. As well as like unpacking the negative experiences, you know led down, led folks down a certain path. I mean, we’ve mentioned Thanos, you’ve mentioned Killmonger. Those are all very relevant, but I think, you know right now there are some scary, like for me, climate change is as scary as Galactus. Like that’s a real thing or like censorship, some of the things that we’re seeing that we’re now being told, like, if you want a federal grant, don’t talk about critical race theory. Like these are real superhero moments that I think in addition to supporting our students, I think those of us who are, you know, for me, like 42 years old, like in more leadership decisions now that I I’m like, why does anyone trust me with this decision? I shouldn’t be affecting lots of people’s lives. I think that’s something that many of us go through. And for those of us on this call, kind of remember a time where we worked these things out, these like these crazy disagreements within fandoms in person, but there’s like these super powers that all of us have with access to the internet and phones and pushing that button is probably a power.

Brian MacDonald:
Many of us couldn’t have, like, I can communicate my thoughts to the whole planet. What and I think we’re reckoning with those now too. And where are the stories that can help us get through data privacy deep fakes all these sorts of things that are going to be affecting us for a very long time,

Al Day:
The rise of fascism, super villains and the presidency. I mean, I read those books in the nineties.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Yeah. Yeah. So I’m looking at time, we’re running out of time. Y’all and so what I want to do is I want to kind of wrap this up and give you all about 30 to 60 seconds. If you were to meet up with this question, if you were to meet up with a student affairs professional, or an educator really and wanted them to geek out and nerd out with you on something specifically that that’s meaningful to you, what would you invite them to join you in your adventure? And let’s go ahead and start with Emily put you on the spot here.

Emily Sandoval:
I would invite them to binge watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer with me and, but both read the comic books. I’m actually just finishing the comic books that are tied to Joss Whedon, but just to talk about, you know, having that character in 1997, when it came out, yes, the movie was before that, I’m not going to talk to Sarah, Michelle Gellar, both of them Slayer and kind of what that meant. Like for me, I was a year older than the actual character of Buffy, which is why I connected so much with her, but the, the villains she fought and the metaphors that was to high school life to real life. And just the learning that could come from that as well as also taking a critical eye. I was actually not a spike mucky band, very much to what Al had mentioned before. Cause people look over that relationship violence aspect of it, but it’s, there’s so many important lessons that equate not just to high school students, but to college students as well. So I Geek out over Buffy

Alex Belisario:
I have so many things, but right now Lovecraft Country, Lovecraft Country did not come to play with you and your little friends. Okay. Love country is putting out some stuff that my whole life as a 51 year old black man, I would think nobody is, nobody’s going to say this out loud about sort of taking the, one of the core texts of, of horror and Saifai fandom that everybody talks about and really sort of being like y’all know that’s racist, right? Like, and really like not even doing it in phrases of analogy, but just blatantly being like, we’re going to show you the racism inherent in this. The sci-fi tells you have love. We’re going to show you the real experience of real life terror, that black people experience in the fifties and today. And, and we are not gonna play with this, this narrative. And we’re also not going to have heroes that are pure good that never do anything bad. Some of the heroes in this shoe do awful irredeemable actions and it’s complicated. There was an episode where at the end something, I don’t want to spoil anything, but something really awful happened that I didn’t know if I could come back for the next episode. Lovecraft Country did not come to play with you, your low friends or slim around the corner. Lovecraft Country is insanely good.

Brian MacDonald:
What’s my budget, Glenn? I would say, you know, one of the, like I, despite like, you know, being public comfortable, public speaking and, you know, being tall and all that, like, I, I really tried hard not to stand out as a kid. And so while I’ve been able to like hack my brain to do certain things that make me look extroverted, I I’m still quite introverted. And there’s certain things that still like will make me implode if I think about them. And one of them is like dance performance, all those things. However you know, I would say if you’re now at, if you’ve now achieved some level of your life where you can invest in your fandom, you know, I invested in cosplay and I have a predator cosplay from the 1987 movie of the same name created by Stan Winston. And when I put that like mask and everything on, like, I can do things that I can’t do when I’m just like this in a crowd. And so I would take somebody, I would find out what their fandom is and then I would immerse them in cosplay and provide them the joy of what happens when you walk through a big crowd, a hundred people want to take

Brian MacDonald:
Pictures with you and you can, you can correct things in fandom with cosplay. Probably one of my favorite things similar to what I was talking about with some of the course correction of HP Lovecraft stories is that people course correct things with cosplay and fandom that I think is really powerful. So that’s what I would do. Thanks,

Glenn DeGuzman:
Brian, I’ve seen you in that Predator outfit and it’s amazing Alex, take us home.

Alex Belisario:
It is amazing. And I just want to say to Al that I think that that notion of not all heroes are always good and perfect and not all villains are always bad is so important, particularly as we’re going into this political time. I think that people are so ready to either hate someone or love someone and, and we’re all flawed, right. Gifts and challenges, but that’s so important. But what I have been into for the last several months is the Mandalorian. It it’s a long, the Star Wars genre, but also my nieces and nephews love it and they can watch it. And so it’s like getting a whole new generation and to Star Wars in a way that, because we’re all at home, like we could be watching it at the same time. Even if we’re not in the same place, I know I have a little baby Yoda as well.

Alex Belisario:
So I think that that is one of the things that really speaks to me. And again, this notion that some of the most powerful superheroes don’t have to be real big, they can be real small and real quiet and it still has a giant impact. And then the other thing I would say in terms of being distant from each other, Emily and I participate with a group of people who play zoom trivia once a week, and that’s modeled off of a pub that used to exist here and sadly went out of business during the pandemic. But it helps us to take all those genres and put it in there and test our, our knowledge with each other all in. Good fun.

Glenn DeGuzman:
That’s incredible. That’s pretty cool. So I’m looking at time, we’ve run out of time. I want to thank this panel, all of you for your time and just helping with this episode on Student Affairs Now if anyone in the audience wants to connect with any of the panelists, their contact information, their Twitter is on student affairs now.com. You can also receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to student affairs now, newsletter, which you can find on our website. We just launched. So I’m really excited about this. Please subscribe to the podcast, invite others to subscribe, share this on social, leave a five star review. It really helps conversation like this, reach more folks and build community so we can continue to make this free for everyone. If you have any topics that you want me to personally explore, please reach out. You can find my information as well on the website. Again, my name is Glenn Guzman. Thanks again to everyone on this panel. And I want to thank everyone also for watching and listening. Be safe, be well, take care.

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