UWM Student Association during COVID

UWM Student Association during COVID

As the COVID-19 pandemic forced colleges across America to deal with unprecedented challenges, the UWM Student Association was an example of an organization trying to navigate those challenges alongside the existing and unique relationship it negotiates between students, faculty, and administration. That unique perspective is an excellent vantage point from which to see connections with the changes taking place more broadly throughout the university. Because the Student Association exists at the intersection of these various categories that define the university as a whole, I felt it would be valuable to attempt to document and preserve that perspective.
Collected by Ben Schultz in partnership with Student Association members Clarence Kinnard and Emma Mae Weber, this collection aims to illustrate both the personal and professional experiences of those two members and their colleagues. Kinnard and Weber played a major role in defining the terms of the project and exercised their own discretion in identifying themes and moments of which they saw fit to provide documentation. As a result, what the collection documents is not only the raw experiences of these UWMSA members, but also their own retrospective reflections on those experiences at a time when the pandemic was felt to be coming to a close.
Particularly crucial to the overall collection is an oral history interview Schultz conducted with Kinnard as part of the project. Among the topics discussed is his role in pushing the university administration to make relief payments to student workers laid off during the pandemic, an effort which coincided with similarly successful efforts to have the U.S. federal government do the same.

Clarence Kinnard and Emma Mae Weber

Ben Schultz