Keith Edwards:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today is a special treat. as I get to interview one of my student affairs, mentors and heroes, Dr. Larry Roper. We’ll learn about his career, his wisdom, and his insights into student affairs and social justice. I’m so excited that you agreed to do this. Dr. Roper.

Larry Roper:
Thank you. And please, I really prefer to go by Larry.

Keith Edwards:
Thank you, Larry. I appreciate that. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast and learning community for thousands of us work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs, we hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and a restorative to the profession. We release each episode every Wednesday. Find us at StudentAffairsNow.com or on Twitter.

Keith Edwards:
And this episode is sponsored by Stylus Publishing. Stylus is proud to be a sponsor for the Student Affairs Now podcast. Browse their student affairs, diversity, and professional development titles at styluspub.com. You can use the promo code SANOW for 30% off all books plus free shipping. You can also find Stylus on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter at StylusPub.

Keith Edwards:
As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he, him, his. I’m a speaker, consultant, and coach. And you can find out more about me at keithedwards.com I’m hosting this conversation today from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is the ancestral home of the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples.

Keith Edwards:
So let’s get to this conversation, Larry. I’m so glad you decided to join us. You are a student affairs legend. As I was pulling together the questions, and other prompts. I reached out to some folks who I know look up to you and know you. And they had some great suggestions. The first was Mike Sagawa, who I think is someone who, you know pretty well. He said you’ve been doing this for a long time and wanted to know what you were thinking about. Looking back, you were the student affairs leader at Oregon state for over 20 years. How have you seen student affairs work, evolve over that time and how, how did you evolve over that time?

Larry Roper:
Yeah, you know one of the things I would often talk to my colleagues about was the challenge I have of kind of lead in the world that was so different from the world into which I was born in the world in which I was born. And at the same time, working with people whose life situations, I had not been exposed in my own formative formative years and, just the learning environment that, that presented for me and in the process, I feel like I had some of the most amazing and generous teachers or mentors and predominantly they came from undergraduate students. Students who would walk into my life and ask and make a request me that drew upon something that hit me emotionally, but didn’t connect to a knowledge space that I had. And so I would ask them to tell me, so tell me more about this so that I can support you in the best way possible.

Larry Roper:
One example was in my first second year at Oregon State, a female presenting student, came to my office and said, I need to ask you a favor. And,I said, sure, what she said, I need you to be a champion for me. I said, well, that’s my, my role, the job to be a champion. She said, but I would need to go through, a sex re-assignment process. And, I am going to go through a process of becoming Shame. And I said, so what does that mean? And so she started to, again, she, at the time began to tell me about what the surgery, the medications, the accommodations, everything that’s needed. And honestly, inside I’m thinking, you know, too much information.

Larry Roper:
What I discovered in that conversation was that in order for me to help that student, I needed to completely understand their story and to be able to hear that story. And then to translate that into the leadership imperative, that was there was being presented for me tremendous learning the work that in being able to present to my colleagues, here’s what we need to do. Here’s what’s being asked of us. Here’s the world for which we need to prepare was for me, one of those sort of an example of all the other areas where I either had no information misinformation or outdated information. And so it was this constant, responsibility and journey of learning, but not learning in isolation, right? So you learn in relationship with others so that as you want to transform organizations and system, you’ve got teams of people who are equipped to do that, not just me.

Larry Roper:
So it wasn’t just a solo, a solo journey. So I’ve seen the profession changed dramatically. But now it is basis on which we draw, you know, I mean, it was, you know, a student development theory. And I came in now, we’re talking about critical race theory. We talking about feminist pedagogy. We’re about the sources that we draw upon to inform our work. And to, you know, the idea about decolonizing knowledge, right? Decolonizing, our institutions and our structures and our policies. Those are things that, you know, 25 years ago, if you said those things, people would be looking at you like you, like you were problematic. I mean, there certainly are people who look at you, like you’re problematic these days, but in those days it would have been, this is we were student development professionals. Well, while we engage in student development, we know now that alot of the work that we do is case management, right. That were dealing with students’ housing insecurity and food insecurity. We dealt with medical issues, vulnerabilities. So it’s just a completely different world, as well as the people who comprise the student affairs profession. I mean, it’s just, it’s just, there’s nothing in what I see today that quite frankly resembles the profession that they went to 40 years ago.

Keith Edwards:
Well, I love that you’re talking about what has been critical for you to be able to lead and be able to serve students has been this learning process and unlearning. And I love that your greatest teachers have been undergraduate students, not always faculty or mentors or people you looked up to, but students who came to you needed your help or came to you, frustrated with you or the administration and all that you learned from them. Someone who you mentored along the way, Kris Winter mentioned to me, Kris mentioned to me that you had an interesting college transition and that that really shaped your student affairs work. Would you be willing to tell us about this?

Larry Roper:
Sure. Yeah. So so first thing, anything else that when I went to college, I had never spent a night away from home before. So I went to I grew up in Akron, Ohio and went to a small college in Northwest Ohio – Heidelberg University. And so when I went, I never visited even before I went there and went there, sight unseen. And so my my brother and two of my friends, drove me to college and I had a paper bag with my clothes in it, a typewriter that, had a radio built into it, a little bit of a turntable and three record albums. So that was it. So we went there, we drove through the country, you know, we’d never been out of the city. Kids never been out of the city before, you know, harassing cows, you know, get out of the car and harass cows.

Larry Roper:
So we get there, we hang out, we throw a football around and a little bit, and then they leave. And I went early a week early because I was going to play football. And literally I was the only person on my residence hall floor, and I lasted three days. After three days, I can’t do it. So I took the few things that I had walked out to the, the road and hitchhiked back to Akron. And when I read at home, I, my mother single parent greeting me at the door. She wouldn’t open the door. She is still on the other side. I said, what are you doing here? And I said, I quit. And she said, quit, what I say, quit college. She says, how are you going to put, you haven’t even started yet. And I said, I can’t do it. And so she said, get your butt in here and sit down, which was never a good thing.

Larry Roper:
And so she started interrogating me and said, so what’s, what’s your problem. And I said, I don’t like it there. And I started complaining that, you know, I don’t like the food and the mattress is it’s really hot there. And the mattresses are made of plastic and I sleep and I sweat on all this really lame, lame stuff. And she gets to see right through it. And she said, you know, you’re sitting here complaining, and for everybody back here, you’re the luckiest person. They know, you know, where your next meal was coming from. You got a roof over your head, you are going to get education. So what’s the problem. And finally, I just said, I’m scared. And she said, what do you got to be scared of? And I said, well, when I lay down at night and try to go to sleep, I can hear crickets and I can hear the wind blow.

Larry Roper:
And I say, it’s just scary. And, you know, and then she gets really compassionate. And she said, well, you know, believe me, that’s just the sound of nature. And I said, but that’s not. What’s natural to me. I’m used to hearing horns honking and glass breaking and loud music and sirens. And all of that is scary. So then she gets to her bottom line. She said, where are you going to go somewhere? So if you can go to the army, you can go to jail. You can go anywhere but you have to stay out of my house in the back room?

Larry Roper:
And I said, I said, okay, I’ll go back. And so she said so she gave me a little pep talk and everything. And then she called my cousin Harold. She said, cousin, Harold would drive you back. I’m going to give her some gas money and he’ll drive you back. And so my cousin, Harold, who was another city kid who hadn’t left Akron before, he was several years older than me though. And we’re driving through all these really small rural towns in Ohio and stuff. And he’s like looking at me and shaking and say. Now, I don’t know, bro, all these cotton, these Cottonwood trees, they be hanging brothers out here. And I said, Harold, I’m looking for courage, man.

Larry Roper:
So yeah, so we get there and he dropped me off. And the last thing that he says before he leaves me, he says, just stay Black brother. And so I went back and I struggled. I struggled really hard at midterm. Some liberal arts colleges they’ll give you your grades. So it halfway through the semester, they send us a report card and say, basically if the term ended today, here’s what you would have. I had 0.75 GPA. And I graduated the top of my high school class. So I wasn’t, nobody ever had to talk to me about my grades. So my Dean of Students call me a guy by the name of Robert Olson. And he was just very thoughtful and he says, you know, if you’re struggling and he said, if this isn’t consistent with what your grades are in high school, you know, what can I do?

Larry Roper:
What can I do to help? And I just said, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Thank you. Thanks for helping them. Basically, I would say I was humiliated because it was just like, so out of character for having too much talk to me about something like that. And so I had sold my record player to pay my phone bill, so I didn’t have, but I had the three albums and I, they had record council’s at our library, steady pills where you could go and put it on a turntable. And I would just went there every night after football practice until the library closed. And by the end of the term and got, gotten the back to 2.8. And then I ended up doing very well the rest of the time. But that conversation with him struck me, you know, and during my freshman year he can’t, he approached me and said, did you think about you? I think about applying to be an RA and that did it, that got me on the path. And he has still turned out to be the most inspirational person in my career. And my career was about, I want it to be Bibles and I want it to be that in somebody’s life. Right.

Keith Edwards:
Someone who believed in you, maybe when you didn’t believe in yourself.

Larry Roper:
Yeah. Yep.

Keith Edwards:
Well you, you believed in some people I’ve mentioned some of those names. One of the people who I reached out to is Mamta Accapadi, who I believe was your Dean of Students at Oregon State for a number of years. Mamta said that you “shaped and transformed my entire demeanor and energy as an educator.” That’s a quote from Mamta. She said that,one of the things she will never forget and continues to use every beginning of the year, you started every student affairs staff meeting at the beginning of the year with the quote, “it is our job to believe in other people’s children.” And she was so profoundly shaped by that. She continues to use that to this day. So I’m hearing some of this, Bob Olson believing in you, your mother, even believing it was scary. I wonder if you could tell us about believing in other people’s children and pairing this with, someone who I would hear about you later up to 15 years ago over and over and over with Susan Longerbeam when we were both at the University of Maryland, how do we believe in other people’s children? And Susan’s question is Susan Longerbeam question was how do we create communities of care in these times, as you mentioned, a lot of what we’re doing can feel like case management.

Larry Roper:
Yeah, yeah. You know, I think student affairs organizations need to have foundational values. They need to have a set of declarations around which they do their work. And one of the things that I feel really good about was, and I’ve said it before is just the incredible people with whom I had an opportunity to work with at Oregon State University. You know, this idea that people don’t join organizations, they join people. And so when we were, when we would hire people, we would try to figure out how do we introduce them to the community of practice that we were engaged in. So that that’s what they fall in love with that community of practice. And they can see how that can influence and support them in their journeys. Because I didn’t try to bring anybody into the organization or ask us to bring any brand into, or based with the idea that that was sort of their end point, that this is just a part of their journey and that we need to be as meaningful as meaningful contributors to that, the growth during that time as possible.

Larry Roper:
So we committed to time as a community. So our staff meetings, we only met every for our student affairs leadership team. And there were probably about 30 of us who met. And we would meet from 10:30 to 3:30 with the idea that our role was to become a work team, not a staff. So we didn’t do staff meetings. We did team meetings and our was how do we build ourselves into a team of practice and a community. So we, during those times would have extensive learning. So we would commit to what our learning agenda was going to be for a particular year. We invested in, we invested in the quality of our interactions and our conversations. So we have conversation monitors. So at the beginning of each of our meetings, we would identify a couple of people to be observers halfway through.

Larry Roper:
We would stopped and have them report out. So how are we doing? And they would point out if we were doing things that weren’t community like. So we were constantly sort of paying attention to how we were with each other, as much as what we were producing on behalf of our leadership to honor the needs of our, the needs of our community. So whenever we had challenging issues, I always told them if I was in my office sitting alone and trying to figure out how to solve a problem, we were on the wrong path. If I’m sitting with a group of others, figuring out how we resolve a problem, then we’re on the right path. So I did as little solitary work as possible that I want my work to be community facing. So that if a tough question was raised, it was raised publicly.

Larry Roper:
And it was answered a couple of things that we weren’t doing secret deals. So people couldn’t come and work me on the side for resources and things like that because the organization, the resources were the organization’s resources, not my resources, it wasn’t my budget. And so one of the things that I would tell people in community is that pronouns matter, we and our is very, more important than me and mine. And so we would spend lots of time trying to shape the shape, the collective, and with the idea that it’s not about what makes our job easier, but what makes the life of the student better? And so it was like not just a matter of saying care, but it’s demonstrating caring. And the other way I think that you, show that you believe in other people’s children is the time that you give to them, right?

Larry Roper:
Are you present in the life of the students on your campus? So I would…One of the reasons Kris knew my personal story is we would do, I would, I would do fireside chats in the fall, and that would give every student who attended, I would give them my direct line to call if they ever had an issue. And I would tell them that my job is to believe in you, even in those moments when you don’t believe in yourself. Right? And so anytime you are feeling blue and you need a pep talk, I get an allowance, so I can take you to lunch. I can buy you coffee. And so you know that you’ve always got somebody and it was amazing, the number of students who will call and say, Hey, remember I wrote your number down and I’ve got a really tough issue with it. I don’t know if I talked to, can I, would it be okay if we got together to talk? So I think you do at a conversation at the time.

Keith Edwards:
Right? Well, and I think just hearing that it makes me overwhelmed with all the pulls on your time, right? All these students calling you, but then I’m pairing that with, I didn’t make a lot of decisions on my own. It was really a community. And so I think you’re, you’re talking about doing the job of leading student affairs work in a very different way that, tham I’m familiar with that. And I think that we often feel like we’re supposed to, or we should – someone – you know, one of the things that challenges our communities is the current racial climate incidents of racism that are happening. I live here in Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered by police, and we have all these things happening. Someone who was really – someone else who was really shaped by you is, Jake Diaz and Jake’s question for you was with the current racial climate in mind, what would you offer today’s professionals as wisdom when decisions made by their institutions, they serve conflicts with how they think or feel personally, many of us are facing that.

Larry Roper:
Yeah, that is a really, really tough thing. And I just think back to an experience that I had when I worked at St. John Fisher college in Rochester, New York where I was the vice president for student affairs and Dean of students and the the president, there was one of the most justice focused people I think I’ve ever met in my life – A guy by the named Bill Pickett. Early on – because I’m not Catholic. And I was supervising priests and we were trying to make decisions around during the time when AIDS was really just dominating our society. And I was advocating to make condoms available to students. And, you know, everything had to go through the priests and it was like, you know, they just couldn’t, they couldn’t do it. They couldn’t see them. So there, and so I just share with him just how much it went against my personal values and in probably the most loving and thoughtful way anybody could have ever said it. He basically said, we didn’t hire you for your personal opinion.

Larry Roper:
We hired you when we were searching, we were looking for someone who could help us to advance the mission of helping us be the best version to who we want to be. And we believe that that’s the kind of leadership you can show this community. And that for me, just really hit a switch for me that while I had these beliefs, after I left St John Fisher College, they were still going to be a Catholic college. And for me to try and try to turn them into something other than a Catholic college, was it active sort of more sort of self commitment, then institution commitment, right? I’m committed to me, I’m committed to my core and not committed to that. And so part of it is that the first thing I would say is the first challenge is to find a community that hopefully as you lead on behalf of their mission, you’re also leading on behalf of the value that you would want to live out.

Larry Roper:
But in those moments, when it doesn’t to realize that different people are charged with looking at the world from a different vantage point than you, and that what you wanted to be able to say is that from wherever sphere of influence, I have, I lead with as much integrity as I can and how the president leads or the provost’s lead is a matter of their integrity, not mine, and that I can support and advance something on behalf of doing honor to my role in terms of either on the team or off the team, there is no vacilating. That on a team I will make the best of what’s handed to me as a leader. And when those instances where I have a chance to, to lead, I will do that because you would know that even as if you’re, Jacob’s or somebody, you make a decision, there are those who report to you who may say, I don’t agree with that decision, but again, that’s because of where they’re sitting in the world, where they’re being asked to look at the world in ways that you’re being asked to look at. So I just think that sort of that constant reconciling do what you can do from wherever you sit and then support others, where they sit with you with the best input that you can give.

Keith Edwards:
Right. Well, you’re reminding me of one widsom that I often received and give is that we’re all middle managers, right? As the vice provost, you still had a boss, you get, you don’t get to do whatever you want. A hall director might think the director of res life gets to do whatever they want, but they are a middle manager they have. And so how do we, how do we navigate the complexities of that, knowing that other, everybody has pressures on them. And then also this shift away from, from me to we from my ego and what I believe, my personal passions to what is, how do I be of service to the people, the community, the organization, how do I be, how do I recognize what this group is trying to do rather than advance my own agenda? How do I be of service?

Larry Roper:
Absolutely.

Keith Edwards:
Well, as we’ve talked about the current racial climate, one of the things that I have really, continued to learn from you over and over is thinking and rethinking how we go about social justice work. UI love your talk concluding NASPA a few years ago, about the about hope, and how critical that is. And many years ago, I think it was in 2009, you did the closing keynote for the residential curriculum Institute at Macalester College, which I was co-chairing and happy to have you there. And I remember sitting there next to Vernon Wall, who was in the ACPA office at the time. And you said something in that talk, you said we need fewer activists and more strategists. And Vernon grabbed my arm sitting next to him and we both gasped and we both wrote that down. And I just want to use that as a bit of a prompt to see if you could talk a little bit about your thoughts, about how we go about social justice work. You’re bringing about the kind of equity and community, that we aspire to, but often fall so far short of.

Larry Roper:
Yeah. You know, it’s just one of those things where it’s sometimes I think we have to stop and make certain admissions to ourselves. So for me, as I tried to do social justice work, I had to sort of make some admission to myself was that, I am approaching that work from being a flawed person, but there’s so much of my own consciousness that needs work. And I will encounter others with their own flaws, that show in different ways. And that we have to think that if we want to be adjust world is not just about carrying forward with us. Those who are with us, who we think are with us right now, but it’s building a tent that has spaces for people who can grow into being justice minded and justice oriented in their work. And some of those would be people who show up in ways that they’re reflecting the degrees or the ways in which their, their spirits are damaged.

Larry Roper:
They’ve been mis-educated their, their souls have been poisoned and it’s going to be the nourishment, the care, the thoughtfulness of others. That’s going to bring them into a justice community or more justice like behaviors, justice oriented behaviors. So it requires a huge amount of humility, but also the capacity for forgiveness that I can think about some of the most difficult situations. And when I want, where situations of trying to resolve heinous racial incidents that happened on our campus largely involving African-American students being targeted. And the first thing I had to put aside was Mike going off that could’ve easily been me, or could easily be my son, or could have easily been right. So I have to take that out of it and say, so when I meet with the African-American student and I ask them how they’re doing and what I can to be helpful and explain to them are the processes and the supports and all of the things we can do for them. I then have to go to the perpetrators and ask them, how are you doing?

Larry Roper:
And what can we do to help you learn, grow, restore, and contribute to the restoration of our community? So the, the work of of justice is much like all the other work that we do in our organizations, relationship building is all about creating space for people’s stories and figuring out where you can enter their story to add value to them, getting better to them, growing into them, learning. And I think that’s one of our biggest challenges that we hear people. And we think about sides that they’re there on the other side. And when we do to quiet them down, what I think the reality is, what do we do to get them to talk more so they can better understand what the education and responsibility education I’ve challenged, educational opportunity here that’s being presented for us.

Keith Edwards:
I think that’s really profound and so hard to do, particularly when we’re hurting or when we see other people hurting is to create space for compassion, for the people who are doing the hurting. It’s so hard to do, but if we don’t, then it’s not really the, then we’re not in the business of transformation and growth and equity. We’re in the condemnation business.

Larry Roper:
That’s like doctors saying they only want to work with people who are already healed, right? If you’re a doctor and you’re afraid of illness, or you’re in the wrong profession, well, if you’re an educator and you’re afraid of ignorance, or you’re repulsed by ignorance, then, right, what business are we in?

Keith Edwards:
If you’re a social justice educator, and you only want to talk with the students who get it, or who are woke, who have critical consciousness around the issue that you then, then you reminding me recently with everything going on the world – I listened to Nelson Mandela. And he talked about coming out of prison for 27 years and creating a reconciliation process. And the person said, why did you do that? Why not just create a black government and to paraphrase he said, we didn’t do a reconciliation process because they deserved it. We went with reconciliation because we deserved it. And I think that’s the part that you’re talking about. Forgiveness is not for them. Forgiveness is for the growth and the learning to create more justice and more equity down the road.

Larry Roper:
Yes, absolutely.

Keith Edwards:
Oh, wonderful. My head – my neck is sore from nodding in agreement with everything that you’re saying. So I love this. Someone else who has learned an incredible amount from you is Jamie Washington, Reverend Dr. Jamie Washington said that you had taught him about the importance of managing others reputation. He said all you have to do is mention that to him and, and he’ll tell you a story. So what does managing others reputation? I’m fascinated.

Larry Roper:
Well, you know, one of the things that, we know is that, one of the things that we say about others to others influences the kind of regard to people are extended. And that sometimes we have, if we have a relationship that’s not going well with somebody, they would pretty much free. We free ourselves to share that with others, about how somebody has disappointed us or how they said something that we thought was insulting or reflected their ignorance or, and so we, we leave encounters with stories to tell about other people and in the process of doing that, we mismanaged their reputation. And so one of the things that I would always suggest to people is that you manage other people’s reputation as you would your own, because for most people, your reputation is the most prized commodity that you have. Cause that’s like, what are the stories that people tell about you, your reputation that you make.

Larry Roper:
And so what permission are we giving ourself when we say, I want to now manage this person’s legacy in a negative direction, right? By somehow creating my own narrative about who they are and doing that. So I would always suggest that one of the things that happened when we mismanaged somebody else’s reputation, we also mismanaged our own because then people know that we are capable of, as my grandmother would say, spitting poison on other people, right. And they know that if they want to talk bad about somebody, they know where they often have a willing receptacle with that. So people are coming to you with gossip, but with rumors or with negative thing, but somebody else they’ve not made a determination about what’s okay with you and what reputation you are fine having about how you will talk about others.

Keith Edwards:
Well, I previously had an opportunity to have a conversation with Susan Komives very much like this. And you were very kind and offering you a little nudge and suggestion. And one of the things you said is, you know, I really understood her when I met Ralph and Jeff, her son, and be sure to ask her about Ralph and Jeff. And she was just thrilled that you had shared that and shared a story, as I believe the two of you were about to give co-keynotes at the end of a NASPA many years ago. You speaking about your own son. And so she said, I should ask you about your role. This was even before I had mentioned your question about your role as a father to your son. Not just personally, but in professional settings, you’ve talked about your son often, publicly, nationally. How has being a father shaped you as a leader?

Larry Roper:
Yeah. You know, one of the things that, Idid, first of all, was that because when I was starting my job at Oregon State, my son was born during my first year there. So, you know, I’m the only person on the cabinet with an infant child. You know, cause I’m still sort of a young age at that point, and having different obligations, but what it did at made me really sensitive to the people who have parenting and other care focus roles at home and realizing that the kinds of things that I did, like when you send emails and when you call meetings and all those things influence what people, the expectations you have for what, when people are at work and what they do. And so we began to reshape our own organization’s policies and guidelines, even with ignoring some of the union stuff around us, to be able to say, we’re going to free the units out to go with whatever kind of flexible scheduling is necessary to accommodate the workforce and their units.

Larry Roper:
So we began to have people back in you know, back in the 90s to do these sort of variable variable days where some people who would, you know, it’s like used to be that everybody comes in at eight o’clock, you know, offices open at eight and then, you know, they go to a five or whatever, but then we also began to realize that students weren’t showing up at eight o’clock, right. They, they were sometimes saying, well, how come you don’t have some kind of evening hours available and stuff. So we started to have some, some very units that began to say, yeah, we can do some evening hours. So we began to find that as people began to accommodate the lifestyles needs of the members of our community, we also began to really be able to be more responsive to the needs of the student community.

Larry Roper:
So, so that was the, the other piece of it. The thing that probably, and I, this is a story that I told, I think I told when when Susan suggested, I tell a story that actually had a huge influence on me was my son when he was about seven years old or so we were sitting at the breakfast table cause we had a rule that, you know, we would always have breakfast together that, you know, my wife and or I would always be with him for every meal. And then we always had family dinners together, but we were sitting and he said, so dad, I want to tell you about the ingredients in the crabbing patty. But I’m not good, like Sponge Bob. So to, if I hesitate, don’t steal my pause.

Larry Roper:
And I said, well, what do you mean steal your pause? He says, well, sometimes at the Montessori. So he went to Montessori school, he said, I’ll be telling the story and I’ll hesitate and somebody will steal my pause and then I’m not going to get to finish my story. And the bad part is all the good stuff comes after the pause. What did it remind me of? And what it really helped me to focus on are the times in meetings when somebody will be talking and as soon as they hesitate, they give up the floor, not because they wanted to give up the floor, but because the rest of the group was impatient to see what’s coming on the other side of them pausing, thinking, and reflecting where you have a student comes into your office and they’re telling you something, and then they’ll go quiet and they’ll sit for a minute. And it’s like, it’s in that moment that they’re making a really important decision. Do I trust this person enough to tell them what’s on the other side of my pause or does he, you know, or just his moment of reflection and, so it really made me focus on conversation dynamics being fully present for another person’s story. And just the discipline that it requires, then that a person complete their thought.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. And silence is such a great tool for listening to let that space fill in. Well we’re, we’re just about out of time, but I want to return to Mike Segawa for a last looking back question. He said he had just gotten you to do a last lecture for, I believe a NASPA regional or something like that, that you would have recently have done that. And then you might want to look back. So we’d love to get any advice you have for new professionals, or what advice would you have for yourself as a new professional?

Larry Roper:
Yeah, the first one that I would give myself is to learn, to hear and speak in multiple voices. I spent so much of my early career, again, thinking I was just because I thought I was, they had been telling us that we were student advocates, right, listening for the student voice and trying to speak in the student voice. When I moved into the Dean, my first Dean’s role real early on in my career, I was getting calls from parents. I would have to do presentations to the trustees. I was having to go into our vice president with a budget to make requests. And I didn’t have the language. I didn’t have the voice because I had spent so little time listening to the needs and the perspectives and the views and the values. And oftentimes I was in a position of judging them that they don’t get it.

Larry Roper:
But it ended up in the same and listen to what the president is saying because the president isn’t just talking to me, isn’t just talking to the students. This President is talking to a lot of other people who will come up afterwards and say, and what about, and why did? And so I think this ability to be multi-lingual is a really important tool to have, to be able to speak effectively in a voice with a person. Because if you want to make a case, you’ve got to speak in length that they’re going to understand right here. The other thing, the final thing that I would say is really learn to love what you get to do, but don’t love your job.

Keith Edwards:
Oh, that’s too good. Say that again.

Larry Roper:
Love what you get to do, but don’t love your job because you can do what you do at multiple places. It’s not always under your control when you get to keep that job. And it’s one of the things I actually share with my friends, like my friend, Kris Winter, you know, I was just remember we were at lunch once and I just told her, I said, you know, don’t love your job. You know, save your love for something that can love you back. Right? But love your colleagues, love what you get to do, but still don’t fall in love with your job because sometimes that keeps you frozen at a place longer than you need to be there.

Keith Edwards:
So I’m so curious because you were at Oregon state for a really long time, but what did, even though you didn’t shift and you didn’t move, what did this perspective allow for you? I see how it may be allows others to move and go on to another opportunity. But what did it allow you, even as someone who didn’t decide, that’s what you want to do.

Larry Roper:
Because I made my job every day to fall deeper in love with my colleagues.

Keith Edwards:
But not the job.

Larry Roper:
But not the job. So if there’s is a time that I could walk away from the job. So I made a decision that I to move on and do something else, but I still loved my colleagues. I love what I got to do. And, and oftentimes I got to do more. And so I kept getting, you know, they do different roles along the way there. But so yeah, so it was good. It was about the relationships. And so even after you leave the job, you still have access to those relationships, not maybe on a day-to-day basis, but if those relationships are real, you have access to them.

Keith Edwards:
Well, again, that’s a reminder to let go of the ego and the title, but to be focused with being of service, to be focused on the colleagues and the process and the students in this, which is something that you’ve come back to, not just because it’s nice to do, but because it makes you more effective, make you more effective leader makes you more effective with students. It makes you more effective at creating social change. These are such powerful lessons. Larry, I am so grateful that you gave us this gift of your time and generosity and wisdom with, with me and those folks listening to Student Affairs NOW. I also want to thank my co-conspirators in this. There were many Kris Winter, Mamta Accapadi, Mike Segawa, Susan Longerbeam, Jacob Diaz, Vernon Wall, Jamie Washington, and Susan Komives who all wanted to chime in with what they wish they would have gotten to ask you.

Larry Roper:
Well thank you, I love all of them. Again, that’s part of it, right? You get to have the chance to have this relationship with such incredible people. Yeah.

Keith Edwards:
What a gift, what a gift. And you’ve given so many gifts to them. They were, they were so appreciative. Thank you so much to our listeners. You can receive reminders about this and other episodes by subscribing to the Student Affairs NOW newsletter or browse our archives at StudentAffairsNow.com. Thanks again to our sponsor today. Stylus Publishing. Please subscribe to the podcast, invite others to subscribe, share on social or leave a five star for your review. It really helps us reach more folks and make this free to folks like you. Again, my name is Keith Edwards. Thanks again to our fabulous guest and all your wisdom they shared with us today and to everyone who is watching and listening. Please make it a great week. Thank you so much, Larry.

Larry Roper:
Thank you very much, Keith.