On Hollins

Crystal Clusiau: What made you decide to go to Hollins?

Sarah DeCamps: That is a good question.  Actually, I have a little bit different of a scenario, because I applied there I applied there out of high school, but I ended up going to a different school - the College of Charleston, but I just felt like, I didn’t like the community feeling.  I’m a big advocate a small community and getting to know people around you and really branching out, and so I ended up transferring to Hollins after my year at Charleston.  I basically started over because Hollins thrives on the four years, and I wanted to start with a class. 

CC: What was life at Hollins like for you?

SD: I loved it. I absolutely loved it.  I love my group of friends, you know we still see each other all the time, we just all went down to California together for a little spring break trip a couple weeks ago, and we’re all going to the beach in May.  Um, I love the small community; I love the professors.  You know, some of it gets really old pretty quickly because the politics of anywhere is like that I think.  But I really did like it; it was a happy time.

CC: What kinds of activities were you involved in at Hollins?

SD: I did orientation leaders a couple of years in a row, I was on SGA all four years, I did honor court for a while, and student conduct council, then I was chairman of the appeal board, my senior year.  I was in ADA.  Those were really the major things.  I also went abroad, which was a really big part of my Hollins experience. 

CC: Where did you study?

SD: In Seville, in Spain. 

CC: Did you have any specific classes or professors at Hollins that really effected like the kind of social work you wanted to do?

SD: Lori Joseph in the communications department was a big advocate of that sort of thing, and Bill Nye directed me a lot, and I was fortunate to have professors that let me go to for three of my four j-terms

CC: Do you feel like being at an all women’s university effected your education, or the kind of line you went into after college?

SD: Yes.  I think at a big university you never would have had the same experience.  That’s not to say it would’ve been bad or you wouldn’t have been as well educated, but I just liked being around women, and learning the things that everyone else around me was interested in.

CC: Do you think that the Hollins community has a misconception of what ADA is really about?

SD: I definitely think that the Hollins community has a misconception of what ADA is, and the reason it bothers me so much is because everybody at Hollins is always so wrapped up in not living into to a certain stigma, or a certain stereotype about any kind of minority, but then they look at a group like ADA and they just assume that everybody’s the same...  When I was like “spudded” into ADA it was very different, because it was kind of the older class of people that were involved in ADA.  It was, a lot more… vocal on campus and stuff like that.  Towards the end of my time at Hollins a lot of things happened with ADA that, sort of made it worse, in terms of the message it sent to Hollins students and I don’t know what has happened since then, but my senior year was when the whole black face incident happened.  It was really, really upsetting for everybody on campus at the time, but especially the people that were in ADA because we were being made to feel like we had done something wrong, when really it was just one girl’s ignorance.  I don’t know how ADA is now, because I haven’t really kept in touch with it a lot; a good friend of mine’s sister is in it now, but other than that I don’t, I don’t know anything.  But, I definitely think that people just have a total misconception of what it is, and obviously you can only have so much because it’s supposed to be secret.

For everyone who was in ADA, it was definitely one of their more defining experiences at Hollins, because you get to know people on a different level, you’re required to learn so much about Hollins and the history behind it, and why things are done a certain way, and history of the presidents, and why certain buildings were built, and all this stuff that… I mean, it would be good if more students learned that stuff.  Then other students just assume that we’re just off doing these exclusively clubby things, which is totally not true.

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