This interview with Rick Chavolla is part of The Cultural Histories Project. This venture explores the university's changing cultural landscape over the last century, from the diversification of admissions and the tumult of the 1950s and '60s to ongoing efforts to expand perceptions of who Yalies are and from where they come. Check in with this initiative to read oral histories of important moments in Yale's past, understand the stories behind some of Yale's signature institutions, and learn about why Yale is the place it is today.

1. FALL 2020
RICK CHAVOLLA
Former Assistant Dean and Director of La Casa Cultural
Interview by Daevan Mangalmurti TC '24 OCT. 22, 2020
Could you tell me a little bit about yourself, what you
did at Yale, and what you've done since you left Yale?
When I was at Yale—I was there from 1997 to 2002—I
was one of the Assistant Deans, and then I directed the
cultural centers. The position evolved over time. When
I was hired as Assistant Dean, I was going to have a
number of duties, but in the cultural center realm, I
was going to be directing what was then the Chicano
Cultural Center. There were two cultural centers. There
was what would be considered a Chicanx, Chicana/
Chicano (although at the time the masculine term was
still used, 23 years ago). And there was a Puerto Rican
Cultural Center. There were two different Directors and
two different Assistant Deans; one directed one and the
other directed the other.
I directed the Yale College Tutoring Program; I was
a co-director of the STARS program; I directed what
was initially called the PROP program and became
Cultural Connections. I oversaw that for a few years.
I was a residential fellow because I lived on campus in
Berkeley. I assumed some duties there as well, advised
some students and did some programming within the
residential college—that was actually a really fun part
of the job. All of it was. Everything was really great.
After Yale, I worked at an association for higher edu-
cation in Washington called the American Council on
Education. It's primarily a policy and advocacy organi-
zation. We represented hundreds of colleges and uni-
versities and did our best to try to bring the issues that
were most important to universities to the national le-
vel and to legislators.
ew people have had as significant an impact on Yale's
cultural centers and cultural environment as Rick Chavolla.
In his five years at Yale, he played important parts in the
reformation of La Casa Cultural, the foundation of the
Native American Cultural Center, and the expansion of Yale's
diversity and inclusion efforts. Today he serves as the Board Chair
of the American Indian Community House in New York City.
F
ORAL HISTORY
RICK CHAVOLLA 1

2. 2THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW
After that I was working at NYU. That's when we mo-
ved here—to New York—about 13 years ago. After I
left, I've been doing my own consulting. I've done some
adjunct faculty work as well, but for the most part I've
been consulting since I left NYU.
If we can go back to the beginning: when you arrived
at Yale, there was the Chicano Cultural Center. Can
you talk about the role of that cultural center? And its
relationship with the other Latino cultural center, the
Puerto Rican Cultural Center?
It's interesting that you ask that. It had a role mainly
because the two groups that would have fallen under
Latinx historically had distinct identifications as com-
munities for a number of reasons. This was the basis for
the institutional decision to have two separate centers.
The first part is that there was a drive from different
communities to get each one of them. The first com-
munity to drive for a center were the Puerto Rican stu-
dents. And that was because there were a growing nu-
mber of Puerto Rican students in the ’60s who felt that
they needed to have representation beyond informal
collectivity. That's how the center came about. And it
was specifically for Puerto Rican students.
In the early ’70s, a larger Chicana/Chicano community
started to form at Yale. They wanted a center as well.
They eventually got one. That was the reason there were
distinct centers. It seemed to make sense for a lot of
years. The perception was that Puerto Rican students
were coming primarily, if not entirely, from the East
Coast and the island itself. And the Chicana/Chicano
students were coming from the West Coast and Texas.
Communities communicated and bonded with[in]
one another. There was not much relationship building
between the Chicana/Chicano community and the
Puerto Rican community. It went on like that for years.
When I got there in 1997, I was coming from Arizona,
and although there is a large Chicana/Chicano com-
munity in Arizona, there was also a diverse group of
Latinx students there. I felt it was a little artificial to
still have separate centers. But that was just me. And
I understood that a lot of students—particularly the
alumni—had a great deal of pride in what they formed
and what the two centers were doing.
There certainly were significant distinctions around
programming and organizations. At that time there
were really only two big organizations. On the Puerto
Rican side, there was Despierta Boricua (DB). On the
Chicana/Chicano side there was MEChA [Movimiento
Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán]. That was about it.
But over the next couple of years, more people started
coming to me interested in forming other organiza-
tions. That was when things started to change. I'll stop
there because you probably have some questions, but
that was the cultural terrain that I stepped into.
You touched on this just a second ago, but non-Chi-
cano, non-Boricua students, how did they engage
with the cultural centers? Did they engage with the
cultural centers?
That's a great question, and that's exactly why there was
in my mind a need for some change.
I guess the best way to say it is they engaged somewhat
awkwardly and somewhat tentatively. They themselves
felt that. I was an Assistant Dean in the Dean's Office;
a lot of students would come and spend time with me
there. It was primarily a white office, so that made it a
little less than neutral. A lot of times students had been
uncomfortable coming in there. The view of a lot of
students was that it was very bureaucratic and admi-
nistrative and there hadn't been a lot of comfort for stu-
dents to come in. But I really encouraged you to come
in there. Once they did, and they started spending time
in my office, I think they felt good about it.
I had a great administrative assistant at the time—who
still works there—Sylvia DeCastro. We worked really
closely together. She's from Brazil, so she was already
broadening the concept of what it meant to be Latinx
at Yale. I think that was part of how students felt that
there was a bigger scope to the work we were doing.
3RICK CHAVOLLA
A number of students who did not identify as Chicana/
Chicano or as Puerto Rican started coming and getting
to know me. We'd have conversations about how they
could get involved in the center and what they could
do. And of course I was always very open to it. I said,
"Yes, absolutely. Don't don't get preoccupied with the
name. Just know that it's your center too." I think they
started to some degree feel that way, but there's still
importance in the name. There was still a little bit of
awkwardness and there was a little bit of discomfort.
One of the first groups that came to me—and I'm still in
touch with some of the folks who were in this group—
was the Yale Latin American Review (YLAR). Most of
those students were not Puerto Rican or Chicana/Chi-
cano. Once they got to know me and saw what support
I would give them, they became much more comfor-
table coming to the center and working with the center.
I'm not sure how it had been before that. I don't believe
there were any other organizations before I got there,
outside of MEChA and DB. There may have been, but
they weren't there when I got there. Once I was there,
there were definitely a number of new groups starting
to form. They didn't know exactly how to approach the
centers at first if they didn't identify as one of the cen-
ter’s groups, but over time, from a personal relationship
with me and getting to know the other students around
the campus who also were of diverse backgrounds in
the Latinx community, it started to get more comfor-
table for people. That’s really when I started thinking
more about what we could do to be more inclusive.
As you approached 1999, was the impetus for a conso-
lidated Latinx cultural center coming primarily from
students, from the administration, from you, from a
mixture of all three?
I know some people thought it was a conspiracy on the
administrative side, but I can tell you for a fact, other
than me, there was no conversation with the adminis-
tration. Not with the Dean of Students, Betty Trachten-
berg; not with the Dean of College, Dick Broadhead.
They never talked to me about it. They certainly never
encouraged it at all. They were not trying to consoli-
date. I'll be perfectly honest with you: I don't think it
was within their vision whatsoever. I don't think they
were working closely enough with the students or the
organizations to really drive any kind of changes. That's
the honest-to-goodness truth.
It was primarily a conversation between myself; the
Director and Assistant Dean of the Puerto Rican Cen-
ter, who was at the time Edgar Letriz, and we got along
very well; and the students.
That was pretty much where the conversation was
going. I feel like it was all pretty collective. Now,
granted, when this conversation arose and the conver-
sation started becoming one of the possibility of a uni-
fied center, everybody wasn’t for it.
There were definitely students who weren’t really
behind it. There were alumni who were in contact with
me and weren't sure about it either, from hesitant to
outright opposed. That's where a lot of conversations
took place around whether we should move.
Full disclosure: I was for it, ‘cause I felt I was the one
that was communicating with students every day who
felt left out, who were Latinx students who felt they we-
ren't really included fully in those centers because of
the identification of the center itself.
Dean Letriz, who was overseeing the Puerto Rican
[Cultural] Center, was becoming less and less inte-
rested with the cultural center duties. He was starting
to become very interested in some other things he was
doing within the Yale College Dean's Office. He was at-
tempting to transition professionally into other areas.
He was actually fairly comfortable with me doing more
work with the Puerto Rican students and more work
with the Puerto Rican center, even before the consoli-
dation. He eventually moved into other areas of duties
and stayed Assistant Dean, but no longer worked for
the cultural centers directly.
“There were two
different Directors and
two different Associate
Deans.”
“I felt it was a little
artificial to still have
separate centers.”

3. Is there anyone—students, other faculty—you can re-
call who was also involved with consolidation?
Yeah, there were a lot of students. I can name a bunch. If
you ever want to email, I can give you a list of students
and I'm sure they'd be happy to speak to you about it. I
would give you a wide range of students: students who
ultimately became very happy about it and were very
active in the unified center, but weren't particularly
behind it in the beginning; people who were keeping
an open mind; and others who from the very beginning
were very, very much behind a unified center.
One of the people I worked with most closely was
already working in the centers and working with me on
a couple of other programs. His name is Joseph Cubas,
and he himself was both Puerto Rican and Cuban. He
already understood the complexity of identifying and
couldn't necessarily identify as distinctly as the centers
would lead you to believe.
You can stay very busy speaking to students, and I’ll
tell you, I've been really blessed. I've been incredibly
fortunate to stay in touch with a lot of the students.
And that's the remarkable thing about Yale, is those
students. I haven't worked with them for—what was it?
Seventeen, eighteen years ago that I was at Yale. There's
many of them who we communicate very regularly and
get together and I'm godparent to some of their kids.
So it's still like family among us. I am hoping that that
will be your experience after you graduate from Yale, is
that you will be able to stay close. That's one of the real-
ly, really remarkable things about Yale, the way people
stay connected and stay close to one another.
I certainly hope so. I really do.
Moving into the details of 1999, what was the conso-
lidation process actually like? What form did it take
and how long did consolidation take?
The process was a lot of communication among the
students. Probably the most important forums were
town halls. We had several town halls where we invited
all the Latinx students and anybody else who wanted
to come. In fact, people who were active in the other
cultural centers came to those town halls. They were
very interested to see the outcome of this movement.
We'd have them in one of the auditoriums on campus
or one of the large classrooms. And we'd always have
a big turnout. It would usually start with me making
some introductory remarks about why we were there
and a little bit about what I perceived as the positive
side of moving towards consolidation, and then the
few things that could be problematic. Then we opened
it up to comments and question-answers. People were
very honest about how they felt about things. There
were people that were very open about not feeling as if
this was the right time and not being entirely suppor-
tive, other people who were very supportive, and a lot
of people just hearing from other students what they
thought.
Over the course of the town halls and over the course of
conversations we had within the cultural centers more
informally and smaller meetings we had with MEChA
and DB and some of the other student groups that were
formed, there really was, slowly, consensus building to
have the centers unified.
I think a big part of it was not just that they were liste-
ning to the Latinx students who didn't fall under the
Puerto Rican or Chicano description. There were more
students every year coming in from diverse Latinx
backgrounds. That was part of it too. I knew college
demographics were changing. I knew that there were
many more Latinx students coming into colleges and
universities, and Yale was not going to be any different.
You all are busy with your classes, research and so for-
th, so you don't necessarily have time to see the studies
or to be reading the publications I would be reading as
a professional to know what was happening within the
community. And I knew very well that Yale needed to
be in front of the curve and ready for this kind of thing.
I think as students came to understand that more, that's
when I think they came to being behind it.
RICKTHEYALEHISTORICALREVIEW 5 6RICK CHAVOLLA
The other thing was that students were recognizing that
the Puerto Rican and Chicanx community was not di-
vided in the way it had been 10 years earlier, 20 years
earlier. There was a lot more relationship building, a
lot more inter-programming, a lot more socializing
between students from those two identity groups.
Even the students who had first been reluctant about
it were realizing that. They were seeing that they were
already spending a lot of time with Latinx students
from diverse backgrounds and they were already doing
a lot of co-programming. There were already a lot of
co-sponsored programs between DB and MEChA.
There were a lot of common issues we were all facing.
I think that was a big part of it as well. People, over
the course of those months, started to recognize that
it made sense from a cultural logic standpoint as well.
That was the process: both informal conversations and
very formal and announced and publicized town halls.
The eventual consolidation and move into what used
to be La Casa Cultural Julia de Burgos—did that re-
quire university approval? How was the Chicano
[Cultural] Center shut down? How did that work?
That's when we started communicating more with the
rest of administration. That's when I would start talking
to all the deans, including the residential deans. Many
of the residential deans took a very active interest.
The conversations I had with Betty Trachtenberg and
Dean Broadhead revolved around this movement
towards consolidation.That's when we started to ask
what would it mean, physical space-wise. At the time
the Chicana/Chicano center shared a physical location
within the Asian American Cultural Center on Crown
Street. That was a dual center—which is the other thing
that I personally thought was an advantage.
At the time, with really only one organization in the
Puerto Rican Cultural Center, that being DB, there was
a tremendous amount of space that was either unuti-
lized or underutilized. There were big portions of the
center, especially as you went up the floors, and the top
floor in particular, that had just been used as storage.
There was just a bunch of stuff in there. They could
have been great meeting spaces, but they were never
anything. Perhaps they'd been used that way, but it'd
been some time before I had gotten there. That's the
other piece of information that was discussed a lot:
"Yes, we're bringing people together. But you're going
to get more space. There's gonna be more possibilities
in terms of meeting and programming." There was also
a huge basement that had never been used, and we ulti-
mately had dances down there and social events.
For me, the big push was, “How can I get resources
where we can renovate and clean out La Casa so that
we can utilize the entire center?” That's actually quickly
where the conversation went. "How can administration
help us do the work [that] needs to be done in La Casa
to make it a viable space for not only the centers, but
the growing number of organizations?"
By that time, there were already more organizations
coming to the fore, including YLAR, Ballet Folklórico,
a number of other organizations. There were a couple
of Latinx identity groups that were interested, a frater-
nity and sorority that had formed. Groups were mul-
tiplying. It was imperative for me to make a case that
whatever space was in that center had to be available to
the consolidated center and all the organizations in it.
Ultimately, that case was successful.
Going into the 2000 school year, is that when the
consolidated center began operations?
Yep. And I'm gonna be really honest, ‘cause it's im-
portant history: the support for making that cultural
center a renovated center—there was resistance. There
really was. It was something we had to work very, very
hard for. My wife and I were the first ones to do a lot of
the work in that center—the labor. The summer of ’99,
after we knew consolidation was gonna take place, the
students were gone, we had a little more time on our
hands, and my wife and I literally were moving things
out that we knew were trash.
“There really was,
slowly, consensus
building to have the
centers unified."
“It took kind of
putting our own bodies
on the line.

4. THETHE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW 7
The one thing we got is they brought a big garba-
ge—those huge containers that they use for construc-
tion. They parked one of those outside of the center.
We got some help from a couple of students who
were around in the summer, but I'm being honest
with you. I'm not saying this in a boastful way—just
to make the point that it took some advocacy and it
took kind of putting our own bodies on the line be-
fore the rest of administration started realizing,
"Okay, better give Rick and Anna some help here cause
they're pretty serious about this, they really want to
see these changes take place." That's when they started
yielding in the budget, bringing in construction people
and making repairs, that kind of thing
And why do you think there was that resistance?
I think it always comes down to the money. It's not
that Yale doesn't have the money. I think this is what it
usually is—here's the administrative logic. They think
if they provide additional resources for one group on
campus, other groups are going to ask for the same
thing. There's certainly some truth in that, because
there were other centers. There were the women's cen-
ter and other cultural centers, there were a number of
other spaces around campus being utilized by students.
I'm sure students, their supporters, faculty, administra-
tors, whoever—I'm sure they all would've liked some
improvements there as well. I think that's the worry. If
you give to one group, then there's gonna be a long line
of requests from others.
So you left Yale in 2002. In the two years between
consolidation and your leaving Yale, what did you
work on? Did you feel like you accomplished what
you had set out to achieve with the consolidation,
which was creating a broader, more inclusive space
for the various Latinx students?
That's a great question. You never do everything you
want. It's never entirely satisfying. But I think we were
all pretty happy with how things progressed after that.
I think there was a lot more work between organiza-
tions. There was a greater sense of unity among Latinx
students. There was a greater power of advocacy—the
other big reason I wanted them to come together. I felt
like we had a bigger voice, a stronger voice. A consoli-
dated and unified voice was a stronger voice for more
resources, for more programming, for more student
support, for more faculty, for curricular changes.
We found success in terms of the sense of inclusiveness,
no question about it. There was just a mushrooming
of organizations. It affected the rest of the campus and
affected the admissions office. They would talk to me
about this. At the time, Richard Shaw was the Dean of
Admissions. We worked very closely together and he
said, “Now, when I talk to students who are Domini-
can or of Guatemalan heritage or Honduran heritage, I
could say we have a center for them.” He would say for
his people—admissions people—it was a little awkward
when he would speak to Latinx students who didn't fall
within the Chicana/Chicano or the Puerto Rican ru-
bric. How do you explain your institution in that re-
gard? It facilitated their discussions in good ways.
I think when we had the programming that goes on for
the students who are either considering coming to Yale
or who have already accepted, [they] were able to come
to the center and it was a center they felt was theirs.
There were organizations that had representatives and
leaders who were from [those students’] cultural back-
grounds. I felt there was a greater sense of inclusiveness.
It brought the groups even closer together in unders-
tanding some places where they did have a common
vision and common goals, and certainly didn't erase
any of the distinctions they thought were important.
That's one thing I always emphasize. We're not trying
to make everybody the same. This is still a multicultu-
ral center. But there's also a really strong foundation for
doing things in a very collaborative way.
So I felt really good about that. All those things.
8RICK CHAVOLLA
Great. I've taken up a lot of your time—I apologize.
Not at all. I think this is really important stuff and I ap-
preciate it because nobody from any of the publications
has ever approached me about these things. I'm sure
they've been written about, but I just really appreciate
that you came to me, because I was there during all this.
I was the one who from an administrative standpoint
was responsible for seeing this thing through.
That's very true. And it's very clear from what you've
been telling me about the process and your role.
I don't want to keep you too much longer, but I did
want to ask if there's anything else you wanted to tell
me, or if there's anything you wanted to share about
the NACC before we finish.
I think that's another conversation—it's well worth it.
[But] I'll give you, as they say, a bit of a teaser. When I
arrived in 1997, regardless of what you see anywhere
else, hear anywhere else—and this can be easily ve-
rified—there was absolutely not a Native American
Cultural Center. In fact, the administrators—Student
Affairs and the Dean of Yale College—were very, very
clear and very vocal that there was not to be a Native
American Cultural Center.
I have an intersectional, multiple identity; I'm both
Chicano and indigenous—my mother comes from in-
digenous heritage, she grew up in a reservation—when
I got there, the native students were there. They were
small, but a very, very active, very energetic cadre of
students whom I'm still in contact with.
There had been protests the spring before I arrived, the
spring of 1997. In fact, if you go into the Native Ame-
rican Cultural Center there used to be—I’m not sure if
it's still there—on the second floor, one of the meeting
rooms. They framed an article about the protest that
took place, led by the native students, in the spring of
1997. When I got there, the students were still there and
the protest was still there. They still wanted the center.
So we went to work on that. That was another big part
of the advocacy and the work that we all did collec-
tively. As an administrator, I was completely behind
the formation of a native center, and I was very open
about that with all my supervisors.They knew from the
beginning that I wanted a Native center, and we started
having meetings. This entire first year I was there, both
the Dean of Yale College and the Dean of Student Af-
fairs uniformly said, "No, we are not going to have ano-
ther center of any kind, much less a Native American
center."
The story will continue if you ever want to do it. It'd be
great to do that, because I don't think anybody's really
chronicled that piece of history either.
I would love to talk to you about that at some point
in the future. Thank you so much again for your time.
Absolutely. And if there're any follow-up questions,
don't even hesitate. It's an interesting piece of history.
“We're not trying to
make everybody the
same. This is still a
multicultural center.”
“I felt like we had a
bigger voice, a stronger
voice.”