Rick Luttman, November 2, 2022

Interviewee: Rick Luttmann Interviewed by: Dylan Griffith & Jackson Book November 3, 2022 - Sonoma State Library Rohnert Park 60th Anniversary Oral History Project (1962-2022) Abstract: Rick Luttmann is a retired Sonoma State University professor and resident of Rohnert Park. He grew up in various parts of the United States, and witnessed the rise in the country�s status as a superpower after World War II. He elaborates on his time as a student, from elementary to college, and notes that these experiences were essential to shaping his methods of teaching later in life. As an adult, Rick came to Sonoma State University in 1970 to be a professor of mathematics. Rick initially lived on a small farm outside Sebastopol, but has lived in Rohnert Park in the same D section house that he and his husband bought in 1985. Now in retirement, Rick splits time between Rohnert Park and Hawaii, where he and his husband own a condominium on the island of Kaua�i. In this interview, we cover Rick�s parents, his journeys before settling in Rohnert Park, his life here as a teacher, and his thoughts on the University�s choices and interactions with the surrounding communities. Rick goes into detail on the finer points of city lines between Rohnert Park and Cotati, as well as explaining just how blurred the social lines can become. We look into Rick�s legacy as a faculty member at Sonoma State with his creation of multiple classes aimed towards making mathematics more palatable for non-STEM major students, as well as his legacy in the community as part of local workers rights� and ecological awareness groups. Rick also shares his thoughts on some of the larger businesses that inhabit Rohnert Park, and includes his efforts to help his community protect itself from the overreach of some of these larger entities. * * * * * * * * * Dylan Griffith: All right, Rick Luttmann, let�s get started. When and where were you born? Rick Luttmann: I was born on the 9th of August 1940 In the City of New Brunswick, New Jersey, which is the home of Rutgers University. In fact, I was born at the Rutgers University Med School Hospital. My mother's whole family came from New Brunswick, back generations. My father was from Dayton, a small town not far away (and now a �historical district�!). He was a rural boy, a farm boy. An only child. Jackson Book: And what did your parents do for a living? RL: Well, my father went to Ryder College in Trenton, New Jersey, where he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration. Thereafter he spent virtually his whole career in marketing. His first job was for $2 a week at the mailroom of Benton and Bowles advertising agency on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. But he quickly worked his way up to Account Executive. In 1948, he was hired away by General Foods Corporation, which wanted him to do marketing for them. They transferred him to Battle Creek, Michigan, to be the Marketing Manager for Post Cereals. So my family moved there for four and a half years. Then GF wanted him to market Gaines dog food, and so we moved again, to Kankakee, Illinois. But after just a year and a half, GF decided to consolidate all of its marketing in one place, at the corporate headquarters, which by that time was in White Plains, New York. So we moved again. In the mid 60s, my father left General Foods and, with a professional friend, started a business called Creative Marketing Services. And that's what he did for the rest of his life. Less and less as he got older, but even the year before his death at the age of almost 81, he was still working part time. JB: Wow. RL: One of his great accomplishments was, you know these drinks you can buy at the market �cran hyphen something�? JB: Cran-Ocean Spray ones? RL: Yeah, like cran-grape, cran-raspberry, now there�s a cran-watermelon. That was my father's idea! JB: Really? RL: Yeah, Ocean Spray came to him and said, we can sell a lot of cranberries around Thanksgiving, but we'd really like to sell them the rest of the year too. And my dad said, Well, why don't you make juice? And they said, we already do that, but many don�t want to buy cranberry juice because it tastes too bitter. Well, why don't you combine it with something else, that's sweeter? So, there it is! JB: Wow. I gotta tell my sister that. She said she was a cran rake feed back [?] when she was a kid. DG: That's my sister too. JB: That�s really weird. RL: So then my mother -- she was the oldest of seven siblings. She graduated from high school right in the depths of the depression, 1933. Her father had been an accountant for Johnson and Johnson, which is also located in New Brunswick. But he lost his job when the Depression began in 1929. First year out of high school, my mother by family convention wanted to go to college, but she was the sole support of her family, working as a secretary at Johnson and Johnson. The folks there knew the family situation, and they would like to have kept my grandfather on. However, that just wasn't in the cards in the Depression, but at least they could pay my mother something as a secretary. The next year, her next younger sister graduated, and the year after that the next younger one; so gradually there was a little bit more money coming in. But it was very hard times for the family. They sometimes had to accept food donations from neighbors. They had to think twice before buying a 3� postage stamp! My parents were high-school sweethearts, though a grade apart, but while Dad was in college and Mom was supporting her family, marriage was not a possibility. However, in 1936 my father graduated from college, and they got married. They eventually had four children, of which I am the oldest (3 years, 8 years, and 15 years older than my siblings). My mother spent most of the next three decades as a housewife and homemaker and mother. But after my youngest sibling fledged and left the nest, by which time my father had his private business, my mother put her Depression-era work skills to use helping out with bookkeeping, secretarial work, and accounting. * * * * * * * * * DG: So what brought you, and whoever you were with, out to Rohnert Park? RL: Well, I was quite peripatetic in my first three decades. As a boy I went to college in Massachusetts. And after that I spent a year in Germany on a fellowship. And then I spent a year at Stanford and got a master's degree. And then three and a half years in Tucson, at the University of Arizona, where I got my doctorate. And then three and a half years at a small private liberal arts college in Anchorage. In 1970, I took my position here at Sonoma State. And I'm still on the faculty -- though no longer on the payroll! I'm on the faculty as a professor emeritus of mathematics with 52 years on the campus. I finished actively teaching in 2014, eight years ago. When I first came to Sonoma County, I lived on a small farm outside of Sebastopol. In 1981 after 11 years I sold the farm and took an extended leave of absence from Sonoma State. I went back to Anchorage and had a mini-career in financial planning. In 1984, we came back and rented for a year in the C section. And then the following year, in October 1985, we bought a house in the D section and we still live there. So I've seen Rohnert Park since 1970. I used to drive by it on my way to the campus. But I've lived here in the City since 1984, and lived in the same house in the D section since 1985. JB: And what were some of your first experiences when you came here to teach in 1970? Like what do you remember about the school? RL: Well, it was a very new school at the time. It had been on its current campus for just four years and there were only a few buildings. Stevenson was here, Darwin, Ives, the north half of Salazar, which was the library, and then the gym. That's all there was here. And they were no trees -- it was just very flat and bare. I came to Sonoma State because it had a reputation for being rather an innovative sort of place to teach. It would tolerate experimentation and non-traditional ways of learning. The Cluster School concept, for instance, although of the original cluster schools only Hutchins remains today. But the reputation for non-conventionality also meant that it was, at least in the perception of the County, a hippie school. I think the County today is much more sophisticated, much more progressive, but then it was very conservative -- I mean, more socially conservative, not necessarily politically. Also, I think there was a perception that Sonoma State would be �horning in� on the locally beloved and revered Santa Rose Junior College. Of course, the two schools are in different systems, but there is no question that SRJC deserves its reputation as one of the most excellent community colleges in the state. So there was a misfit between the campus and the community. Not, however, with Cotati because it was also a rather non-traditional sort of place -- known unofficially as Haight-Ashbury North! Lots of famous �hippie bands� and �hippie singers� of the era performed there at the Inn of the Beginning. DG: Keep Cotati weird. RL: Yeah, yeah. But I'm dyslexic, so I thought it was keep Cotati wired. *laughter* JB: It�s got a different meaning RL: Cotati was mocked by the bulk of the County as Haight-Ashbury North, and people joked about Sonoma State: it was called �Granola U� and there were rumors that you could get credit for Frisbee. In May 1970 when National Guard troops massacred students at Kent State University in Ohio for protesting the Vietnam War, then-Governor Reagan ordered CSU campus presidents to forbid student protests. But our then-President, Amby Nichols, a chemistry professor after whom Nichols Hall is named, refused to comply � and was fired for that. So he was a campus hero. And there were also rumors that one time there had been mass skinny-dipping in the ponds here. I never saw that, so it must have happened in the late 60s before I arrived. DG: It happened in �68 I want to say. RL: Oh, you know about that already? DG: By sheer chance I do. I did a project for another history class on one of the reports about the skinny-dipping from the school newspaper, well the unofficial school newspaper. They had written about the importance of keeping the students cool, in a sense, by letting them express themselves and skinny dip in the school pond. RL: Well, the Press Democrat had trouble letting go of that. They were very hostile to Sonoma State. I'm not sure that that's changed even now, judging from the hysterical inflammatory sensationalized coverage of Judy Sakaki�s husband�s indiscretions. Maybe the PeeDee has changed, I don't read it. If anybody wants to know why I don�t read it, I can give three reasons: I teach at Sonoma State, I live in Rohnert Park, and I'm an intellectual. The PeeDee hates all three. I get so annoyed at the PeeDee because decades, literally decades after that alleged skinny-dipping event, which as far as I know happened only once, they frequently write that �just a few years ago, there was massive skinny-dipping in the campus ponds �� JB: �A few years ago�, meaning 55. DG: Yeah, for the PeeDee that�s basically the same thing as �a few years ago�. RL: They've never warmed up to Rohnert Park or Sonoma State. Although the funny thing is that Rohnert Park and Sonoma State don't get along very well. I think they do better now. But I should mention that, since you want to know about the early history of Rohnert Park, the two institutions, Rohnert Park and Sonoma State, though born about the same time, the early 60s, then proceeded to ignore each other for decades. Rohnert Park was created by developers. You know perhaps, it used to be a seed farm -- the Rohnert family ran a seed farm there and produced things like zinnia seeds and carrot seeds. But the Rohnerts wanted to retire, and eventually cobbled together a deal with Hugh Codding and a few of the other big-shot real estate developers in the area. They were going to build a kind of Levittown here, a model community, aimed mostly at working-class people, like the one on Long Island NY. At that time, Cotati was not an incorporated city, although Cotati had been a recognized entity since the 19th century. By the way, if you look at a map of Cotati, you see that the area around La Plaza is a hexagon, with Old Redwood Highway running through it this way, and East Cotati and West Sierra like this, so it looks like a peace sign. And a lot of people thought, well see, that just adds to the reputation of Cotati. I don't know what people had against peace, but to many the peace sign was a symbol of disruptive forces, let's say counterculture. And the rumor was, and most people believed it, that the city had been laid out deliberately that way -- which was nonsense, because it had been laid out that way in the 19th century, before anybody thought about that symbol as a peace symbol. The �broken-cross� symbol had been around for a long time, but it was not associated with peace or hippies or anything. And the reason there's a hexagon is that the founder of Cotati had six sons, and he'd named the streets after them. They still bear the names of his sons, you know, Olaf and Henry and so on. When the developers went to Cotati, their idea was, let's talk to the leaders there, we'll get Cotati to incorporate and use it as the basis of government for this new city. Well, Cotati wanted nothing to do with this. They did incorporate, but specifically for the purpose of not having anything to do with Rohnert Park. And so the people who wanted a Rohnert Park went ahead and created it, and they incorporated it. But to this day Cotati resents Rohnert Park. One of my departmental colleagues lives there; he's now on the City Council and before that he was on the Planning Commission -- he still manifests this resentment. He doesn't have any personal hostility to me, although he knows I live in Rohnert Park, and he's been in my house for parties, but you can tell that he has a certain pride that Cotati is not Rohnert Park. There's a lot of old-timers in Cotati that feel that way. I think frankly, that it's pretty silly. For one thing, Rohnert Park has matured a lot in six decades. It has become more cultured, more intellectual, and has opened up a bit to the campus. So here's these two cities, here's little Cotati with 6,000 people and great big Rohnert Park like the jaws of pliers surrounding the smaller City on three of its four sides. To me the two cities are just one big economic unit. I don't pay attention when I drive around the area to when I cross the City lines -- although I certainly know where they are. JB: It�s so hard to differentiate. RL: It is. I shop a lot at Oliver�s Market. Yeah, and every now and then I remember, Oliver�s is actually in Cotati. So what? I don't have to change my money to Cotati currency to go shopping. And there's this long, skinny spike of Cotati that reaches out along East Cotati Avenue to just beyond the railroad track. But if you go 100 feet on either side of the highway, basically one or two house lots in depth, you're in Rohnert Park. I have a friend who's a former music professor here, who lives a couple of blocks south of Oliver's. He is right on the City line. He's in Rohnert Park, but his neighbors across the back fence are in Cotati. Does it matter? No, they�re neighbors. JB: Exactly. RL: No, it just doesn't matter. But as a result of Cotati�s hostility, there's an awful lot of unnecessary duplication. There are two City Councils, two mayors, two City halls, they have two police departments, two planning departments, etc. Everything comes in double, and it just seems like such a waste of money. But as I say there's a lot of old-timey Cotatians who just will not give up their dislike of Rohnert Park. And how enlightened is Cotati anyway? A few years ago when the City leaders proposed installing roundabouts on the Old Redwood Highway, the citizens had an uprising and actually voted on a ballot measure to prohibit roundabouts in the City. I have no idea why they don�t like them. Roundabouts are generally considered very progressive, as they facilitate moving traffic with reduced congestion. Speaking of congestion � what about that crazy plan for the Old Redwood Highway between La Plaza and the beginning of the Gravenstein Highway? It�s a major artery through this part of the County, and lots of non-Cotatians use it. Yet Cotati wanted to reduce it from five lanes (including a two-way left turn lane) to two! Another not-very-progressive idea. Fortunately it died when then-Governor Brown scotched the funding for it. Rohnert Park does remain the most affordable place in Sonoma County to buy housing. Just earlier this week, I got a flyer in the mail from a local real-estate agency. This bulletin lists the median home price of the various jurisdictions in Sonoma County, as well as the unincorporated County. I was surprised to see that the most affordable housing market in the County is in Rohnert Park. Cotati is higher, Windsor�s higher. Healdsburg, Cloverdale, Sonoma, Sebastopol, and Petaluma are very highly desired places to live, so housing is very expensive in these other cities. JB: I can imagine that it's only going to go up here in the County, with more people coming from the bay and other places. RL: Well, it certainly has been going up on an absolute scale. It's outrageous what housing costs here. M three siblings live in other parts of the country, one in Kentucky, one in South Carolina, and one in Rhode Island. And they just can't believe the housing prices here. JB: Yeah. RL: My sister in South Carolina, just outside of Charleston, has a much grander home than I do. And it cost her probably half as much as mine is worth now. JB: Yeah. It's pretty crazy, the California housing prices. RL: Yeah, well, there's one place it's worse, which is Hawaii. DG: Uhh yeah. JB: Not a lot of land to move to there. RL: But it�s perhaps the only place in the USA which is actually getting more land! (Due to their volcanos.) DG: But then you get to live in Hawaii. JB: That�s true. RL: Earlier this year, my husband and I bought a condo in Hawaii. Our primary residence remains here, however. JB: Which Island? RL: Kaua�i. We've been there five times already this year. We rent it out when we're not there. DG: How do I get that? How am I making that happen? *laughter* * * * * * * * * * RL: Let�s see, did we finish talking about your question? DG: We did somewhere in there, yeah. JB: You talked about experimental teaching styles, and this being a safe place for that. Can you talk about some of those? Like, personally, how did you incorporate those into your classroom? Or how did your fellow professors? RL: Well, for one thing, we had at the time units called cluster schools, of which the only one that's left is Hutchins. But there were several others such as the Schools of Expressive Arts and Environmental Studies. These �sort of� still exist as entities, but now they are just departments in one of the Schools. I think there may have been maybe a couple more; but anyway, cluster schools was the innovative idea. JB: Yeah. Having places where you could study in depth, and have -- I don�t know how to articulate that. RL: Well, it was basically focusing on one general area of scholarship, although of course a student still had to have general education courses. But I thought the idea of these cluster schools was great. Hutchins remains, and it has its own GE program. It's rather separate and has its own Provost. JB: Interesting, I did not know that. RL: So that's one thing. As for myself, I'm a generalist. When I was an undergraduate, which was at Amherst College in Massachusetts, I just had a field day. I had a ball. For two years. I took a whole bunch of different courses. I just loved them. I�d run from my course in Renaissance art to a class in French existential novels, or from American intellectual history to astronomy, or economics, or geology, or quantitative chemical analysis, etc, and I loved it all. And then the college said to me, what's your major? I said, I don't have one. And they said, well, you got to have a major, what's your major? I said I don't want to have a major, I�m having a good time being a jack of all trades. And they got annoyed and said look, you�ve got to have a major, you have to pick one. So I thought, all right, I gotta pick a major, what's the closest major to no major? What's the easiest major where I could just get it all out of the way and then go back and do what I had been doing? Well, I realized it was mathematics. Now, did you hear that sound? That was heads exploding all over the world, at the notion that anybody would choose to major in math because it�s the easiest major! JB: That really does interest me, and as a history major, I would never pick math to major in. My strong suit is talking and writing. So math has never, ever, crossed my mind as an option here. RL: Well, there were probably two reasons why I felt that way about a math major. One of them is, if it�s not too immodest to say, obviously I have some talent in mathematics or I wouldn't have had a career as a mathematics professor. But the other reason was really a reflection on the poor quality of the math major there. I say that with some regret, because I loved Amherst College, and I have a great respect for it. It completely changed my life to be there for four years; it enriched me immeasurably. And I've benefited from that every single day since then. But the math major was weak. It was not very demanding. They give you an assignment, you go home, read the text, do the problems, it takes half an hour, and then you can go back to your project on Russian imperial history, or whatever. They gave us no history; no biography.; we got no applications; we got no sense of the meaning and purpose of mathematics; we got no sense of the great drama and the tension in mathematics over centuries as people were struggling to understand things. Raw formal mathematics was just handed to us. And also we had no idea that there was such a thing as research in mathematics, that there was such a thing as questions we haven't answered yet, or even asked. Which is ironic, because that was 60 years ago, when probably 90% of the mathematics that's known today wasn't known and has been discovered since then. Now, I didn't realize all this at the time. I didn't know how weak the Amherst College math program was. I didn't know what other possibilities there could be. I subsequently learned; and my philosophy of teaching became: don't do it the way it was done to me! There are many interesting people in mathematics that a math major should know about. There's a lot of history about these people, and these sweeping currents of great problems that we're facing now. The worldwide community of mathematicians gradually make discoveries, they publish papers, and they come to understand things. And applications? Sure! There are many fields that use mathematics, and more and more. Today, biology uses mathematics in ways that were never dreamed of in 1960 when I was in college. Data Science didn't exist. There's an immense interest today in managing large piles of data. Oh, I should say, the year that I was a senior, the Math Department decided to introduce two new requirements in the major. I don't know how they got away with that, because � JB: Right at the very end, �before you go, two more!� RL: Pretty impertinent, for sure! First, they wanted us to do a research project. And our view was, what? what�s that? Research? You mean it's not all � JB: It's not done yet? RL: They had never given us any clue that there was such a thing, let alone what it is or how you do it. They wanted us to do a research project. So we all tried it, but floundered around for a semester. And then we finally went to the faculty as a group and said, we don't know what we're doing, you gotta do something different. So they said all right, then pick a topic in math that is already known but you don't know it, and go research it and write a paper. I did that. I have no idea what I wrote about -- which is a total shock! The other thing they introduced was a comprehensive exam. Uh oh, what�s that? We were used to their exams. You knew, when you got an exam, that it was going to be about the stuff you just studied. And the techniques that you would need to solve problems, you just studied them. So no problem. But now all of a sudden, they're going to be throwing at you questions in differential equations, linear algebra, group theory, all that mixed up, and you don't know where the questions come from, or how hard they are, or what theorems you need to solve them. We had packed our brains with �mathematical knowledge� but it was poorly organized. We had the names of theorem on our Mental Rolodex, when we should have had What They Do. So we asked the faculty, well, what's passing going to be? What�s a passing score? And they wouldn't tell us. JB: That�s eerie. RL: Well, we figured out that they probably were using us to calibrate the test. JB: Oh, to see what most people got. Okay. RL: Yeah, and it must have been an eye opener for them when they read our papers, because they finally announced that the minimum passing score was 14%! JB: Oh my, wow. RL: In my year, some of the strongest students in the class majored in mathematics, and there was an unusually large group of math majors. They might normally have had 5, and we had 20. And given that some of the brightest students in the graduating class were involved, they weren't about to flunk 20 people. JB: Yeah, everybody would know in a class of 20, too, if a couple people didn�t graduate. RL: So most of the mathematics I know, I taught myself. And all of the techniques of teaching that I know and used, I gleaned by thinking about what was done to me and saying, don't do it that way. And Amherst wasn't the only problem. I can safely say that I had universally rotten instruction in mathematics for my entire career, from kindergarten to graduate school. I can readily give you examples where, could this person really be teaching and doesn't know why when you move a three from one side of the equation to the other, it changes its sign? Are they totally unclear about what a letter means in mathematics? You know, it was never explained to me that �a� or �x� or anything else that you use in mathematics is not really a letter. It's not being used as a letter, I mean. Letters are symbols for sounds, right? But that's not what they mean in mathematics at all. And you don't have to use letters. It's convenient to use letters because they're on a keyboard. But you could use squares or you could use glyphs, or you could use Thai letters, or Sanskrit or � DG: It�s not about what it is, it�s about what it represents. RL: And that was never explained. JB: That�s so interesting to me that even after all this time, you said some of your instructors had shortcomings, but you still ended up in that career path after all of that, and it took until afterwards to, you know, right the wrongs of the people before you. RL: I never realized what letters mean in mathematics and I was never able to articulate what a letter meant in mathematics, until I had to teach others myself. When I was in graduate school, I had a teaching assistantship. And my first assignment was teaching a course in college algebra. Now, I thought, I've got to explain to these people what letters are in mathematics. And I had to think about it a long time. They are just symbols for blank spaces into which one can place generic numbers. And in the course of the first maybe 10 years of my teaching career, I was learning the material myself, staying maybe two weeks ahead of the students, trying to figure out what the hell is this all about anyway? One other thing, going back to your original question. I have explained that I have very broad intellectual interests. That's true within mathematics, that�s true within the academy, that�s true within life generally. One of the things I've been able to do in the mathematics department here is to introduce some unusual general education courses. Because I take the point of view that, ok look, everybody's got to take a math course, to get out of here. And some of the people are majoring in STEM and for them it�s no problem. But then there�s a vast bunch of people who already know they hate mathematics. They're not good at it � JB: Yeah. *laughter* JB: I took my one and done. RL: And they've had bad experiences in pre-college education. I can see why they wouldn't like it, and they would not think they were good at it. And they would think it was totally impenetrable. Which largely is false, but I can understand why they get that impression. So I figured, well look, they're gonna take a math class anyway, but they don't have to take a traditional algebra class. We already know they don't like it, and they would be thinking how will I get any benefit out of it. So I created, in the course of time, four unusual general education classes. They're legitimate mathematics, but non-traditional, and they fall across a spectrum, and so -- I won't say there's something for everybody, but there's something for a lot more people than a normal range of math courses. I'm very proud of these courses. The first one is called Symmetry in the Arts and Sciences. Because it turns out there's an immense role for symmetry to play in all sorts of human endeavors. Not only the sciences, chemistry, biology, geology, but also for example literature. What is poetry? Basically, its articulation of ideas, but with symmetric patterns, rhythm and rhyme. In the way they are expressed. There�s symmetry in music, symmetry in architecture, there's symmetry in all kinds of places. So we study symmetry mathematically and think about what kinds of symmetry there can be. But we also think a lot about manifestations of symmetry, why they're important. It's not an accident, for example, that a compact disc is a circle. Vinyl records, in the old days -- not an accident that they were discs, because they had to go �round and �round. Then I took over a course my politician-colleague, a former Santa Rosa mayor, had created: Math in Politics. We look into Voting Systems, Measures of Power, Weighted Voting, Apportionment, and other matters to which mathematical analysis can be fruitfully applied. I also created a course called Ethno-mathematics, in which we look at the mathematical achievements of indigenous cultures around the world. We look at their calendar systems, their games (of chance and of logic), their art, their number systems, their conception of space, their social and kinship structures, etc. And finally I taught �On Growth and Form�, which is basically biology -- we look at why creatures are the size and shape they are, and how these relate to their functions. JB: Yeah, I'm jealous I didn't do my Gen Ed courses here when you were here. Wow. Would have saved me some time, I had a really boring stats in community college. RL: Yeah. Well, I think it's important that the department still offers these. I spent 10 years as a Volunteer Mathematics Instructor at San Quentin State Prison. I loved working with the guys there who attended PUP (the Prison University Project), because they were extremely serious students. Many of them very strong, but all of them very dedicated. They were self-selected out of the prison population, and it�s clear they were motivated by the recognition that there was some dysfunctionality in their lives and it needed to be rectified before they got released or they�d soon be back. It was an interesting experience to teach at San Quentin, and certainly a contrast to the pedagogical experience at Sonoma State. The PUP was one of dozens of volunteer programs to assist prisoners in dealing with their lives� problems � alcohol and substance abuse, anger management, meditation, how to be a better father, etc. I credit the advent of these programs to the remarkable warden whom San Quentin had in the late �90�s, Jeanne Woodford, who I�m proud to say is a graduate of Sonoma State, indeed a Distinguished Alumna. She had a very unusual and highly enlightened view of Criminal Justice Administration. Then I was also involved in the War and Peace lecture series. It had little-to-nothing to do with mathematics, but I was one of the creators of the series. Then, when everybody else flaked, I became the de facto Chair of the program for 25 years. But I think it no longer exists -- too bad. JB: And what did this War and Peace series entail? RL: Well, back in the mid 80s, there was an organization out of Palo Alto called the Beyond War Foundation, whose motto was �working together, we can build a world beyond war�. One time at a faculty gathering of some sort, a bunch of us started talking, and we realized that a lot of us were in this organization. But then we also realized that we weren't doing anything in our teaching here, anywhere in the curriculum, to deal with the problem of nuclear war. In our current day, climate change has somewhat eclipsed nuclear war as the world�s most important problem, although nuclear war is certainly still a threat. But at the time we already knew that we, the human race, have these bombs � in fact we had already dropped two of them on Japan. In the 1980�s, still in the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States between them had about 3,000 megatons of these bombs on hair-trigger alert. This is the greatest problem that humanity ever faced. And since universities are the stewards of the accumulated wit and wisdom of civilization, why aren't we dealing with this problem? Well, the more we talked about that question, the more we realized the answer was that the problem is too big, and it doesn't fit usefully in any one discipline. It has to do with physics, biology, economics, anthropology, politics, history, music even; you can say it has to do with literature and poetry, because there's a lot of both on war. Of course we're not dealing with the nuclear war problem, because any one discipline couldn't deal with more than maybe 10% of the problem. So let's get together and let�s do it. We had a large group of faculty, initially maybe 35 to 40 people, who were interested in meeting. We decided what we would do is have a public lecture series, and each week we would deal with one aspect of the topic. A week on biological warfare, a week on the press and its role in what people know about war, a week on economics and the role of capitalism in fomenting warmongering, etc. We�d invite a lecturer in to give a presentation on Tuesday afternoons. And then on Thursday, we�d break up into sections and we�d discuss things related to that topic. Though it would be a public lecture series, it would also be possible for students to get credit for it: we would require students to read a daily newspaper, we would also have a handbook of other readings, and there would be writing assignments. We had faculty in our group from all over the campus, so each of us was charged to go back to our departments and ask if this could be an elective. I had been very enthusiastic about this proposal, but I realized there was very little I would be able to say as a mathematician. There is some �mathematics of warfare�, and I've even given lectures on the mathematics of warfare, but it's not the sort of thing that most people would benefit from hearing. And anyway, there's many more topics that we could deal with that probably took precedence. I figured I'd drop out at some point, but every time I got close to dropping out, some other people dropped out first. I said, well, somebody's gotta sit here and mind the store. Pretty soon everybody was gone, except for three of us. And they wanted me to be the chair, so ... JB: Can�t back out now. RL: Can't back out, so I ran the program and when my last colleagues retired there were some others in the campus community who joined in. DG: You got stuck with it. RL: I felt it was important work. I kept this up till 2009, when I officially retired. Do you know what FERP is, the Faculty Early Retirement Program? You never heard of that? Well, it�s a program where we can officially retire, but continue to teach for another five years half time at our same salary base and title. I did that starting in 2009, for five years. In 2014 when my FERP was up I completely retired. That is kind of a funny thing, because during that five years, I was sort of retired and sort of not. JB: Still doing a lot of things on campus? RL: Yeah, but I could teach only half a year, and I really thought that should be in mathematics. So I turned over the war and peace program to one of my colleagues, who ran it for a while. And he struggled very hard to keep it alive, but he told me recently that he just got tired of fighting with the administration about it. I never understood that. Everybody always thought it was such a great idea, and we oughta do this, especially as a liberal arts college. And it was pretty cheap to run because, except for some off-campus people we gave a token honorarium to, we had a lot of faculty from the campus who spoke, and they just did it for free, as part of their University service. Andy Merryfield, was a professor of political science, a very, very good lecturer. He would come in for free. Lynn Cominski in the physics department would talk about nuclear weapons. Jim Christmann from the Biology Department would talk about biological weapons. Judith Volker, who off campus is active in the ACLU, talked about civil rights and democratic processes. We filled Warren auditorium, that's how many people enrolled. So what's the complaint about? JB: Yeah, it's a real shame that the series is gone because we're in a Cold War again. In my senior seminar right now, that's our final, our big final paper for the History Department. And the scope is just so big, it's daunting to choose what you want. I think those lectures would have been really helpful. It's a shame, but I think it's great that you kept it alive for that many years. RL: And unfortunately, we�re going back to a Cold War. We're going back to a nuclear threat. I just don't understand what Putin is all about. What does he think he's going to accomplish? What, even before the war started, did he think he was gonna get out of this? And now that he�s clearly getting his ass whipped. If he ever did �conquer� Ukraine there would be nothing left! All the agriculture destroyed, the people gone, bridges bombed, hospitals, schools, power plants � a wasteland. But he�s not winning. I read that recently somebody asked Zelenskyy, What are you going to do when you win this war? He said the first thing I'm going to do is go take a swim in the Black Sea off Crimea! * * * * * * * * * DG: Do you think that Rohnert Park, and maybe Sonoma County in general, could today be even more involved in what Sonoma State does and is about? RL: Yeah, it's a strange thing, really. Here's this University, one of the 23 California State University campuses -- we have a very good reputation in some respects, we are known as a liberal arts college, we're a member of what's called COPLAC, which is an acronym for Consortium of Public Liberal Arts & Colleges. We're the only campus in the state that belongs to COPLAC. Wouldn�t we think that the community would be happy to have an institution like that here? Rohnert Park right over across the fence there, that's Rohnert Park. Sonoma State is not in Rohnert Park, it's in an unincorporated part of the County, but we're right adjacent to it. And you know, there's communities all over the state that would love to have a state institution with a $2 million a month payroll on their borders, but there�s communities that have to put up with prisons. And OK, prisons bring in a lot of money too cuz they have a big payroll. But do you want the prison or do you want a University on your boundary? JB: Yeah, I�m from Folsom, and Folsom Prison is there of course, but I�m sure they would love a University. They have the community college, but a lot of towns would fight tooth and nail for a University. RL: Well, one of the problems here is that Santa Rosa has Santa Rosa Junior College. They're very proud of it. And well they should be, because among the community colleges in California, of which there are about 104, it's one of the gems. It's a gem, and I can certainly speak to its math department. We have very close connections with their math department. Some people teach for both us and them. Many of their graduates come here. Some of our graduates are teaching there. Just this afternoon, I had an hour and a half conversation with one of my colleagues there. He was here yesterday to give a talk in our math colloquium. One of the most brilliant lecturers I've ever heard. I think of myself as a very good lecturer. But I have to say, he does a better job than I do. *laughter* DG: That�s on record, you can�t take that back. RL: Well, I could add that he thinks the opposite. JB: He�s very humble? RL: Both of us are humble, yeah. I think there was some resentment in Santa Rosa that a University would come along � a four-year school, whereas SRJC is only a two-year school. �So they think they're better than we are�, or something. Several communities wanted Sonoma State to be located in their City or their community. And none of them got it. It would have been Santa Rosa, Petaluma, or Sonoma. And in the end it was built on an alfalfa field on unincorporated County land. Remember, in 1960, there was only Cotati two miles down a country lane. The A and B sections of Rohnert Park had hatched, but there just was no love between Rohnert Park and Sonoma State. This sort of continues to this day to some extent. A couple of years ago, I had a Christmas party at my house, for the California Faculty Association, which is our union. One of the people that came was a professor in Kinesiology, who lives in Penngrove. �Wow,� she said, �there must be something about Rohnert Park. I haven't considered, I haven't noticed, I haven't discovered, if Rick Luttmann lives here.� I said, �Well, I'm probably not the best exemplar of a Rohnert Park resident.� I live in the City but I don't really participate very much in the City. It's not because it�s this City, it's that I�m not a very City-oriented person. I don�t like nightclubs, I don�t go to movies, and things like that. And as to culture, well, I get a lot of culture on campus, plays and symphonies and stuff like that. A recently-retired colleague from the theater arts department claims that I was their greatest supporter and I came to every one of their plays. Well, I am one of their greatest supporters, I don't know if I'm the greatest. And I certainly didn't go to all of their plays. It�s part of what I was saying before: I have very eclectic interests. And yeah, plays, concerts and things like that, I'm gonna go to them. JB: Yeah it seems great for that. The Green Music Center has a lot of stuff, always something interesting there. DG: The Green Music Center is very important for Sonoma State, at least in my opinion. I think it is really good for the University to have a larger and better home for their music program. RL: Of course, across Snyder Lane is the Rohnert Park Community Center which has a nice auditorium. They�ve done a lot of good things there, like their recent performance of �The Music Man�. They were very concerned when the music center was built that it was going to compete with them and it probably does. But on the other hand, it's a testament to Rohnert Park that it has one, that it has a center like that. I think Rohnert Park has matured. First of all, about, when was it maybe the 80s, early 90s? The citizens overthrew the cabal of developers who had controlled the City. Of course every citizen got to vote for the City Council, but few paid much attention to it. And it was just the good old boys who had founded the City, the real estate developers, who ran things. But there began to be some dissent and concern about this. I think the Council we have now is remarkably diverse and remarkably progressive. The current mayor of Rohnert Park, whom I know personally because we worked together on the United Nations Association before she even got into politics, is a young woman, who is Black, and in fact, was born in the Congo, in Africa. Her native language is French. She's the mayor! And right now, of the five members, four are female. One is Latina. And not the first Latinx, because Armando Flores was on the Council for a long time, a Hispanic man. JB: He's on the interview list as well. Somebody's getting him on the interview list. A couple of those people that you mentioned -- I don't think the mayor is but a couple of the City Council members -- are being interviewed for this project as well. RL: Jake McKenzie, you know his name? JB: Yep, also being interviewed. DG: He�s one of the people who kind of spearheaded the program for this interview series. Funny enough. Jake and Barbara were very closely involved, because Barbara is so close with the Rohnert Park Library. RL: Well, Jake, and I have known each other for three decades. We were members of the first Bicycle Advisory Committee in Rohnert Park. About 1990, the federal government made funds available for development of bicycle paths. But the condition was that your City had to have a Bicycle Advisory Committee to talk about issues from the point of view of basic citizen bicyclists. Jake and I were on that; he was the chair and I was the vice chair until he ran for the City Council in 1996 when I took over as chair. And I think just the fact that we did that, just that we had a Bicycle Advisory Committee, but also the fact that Jake Mackenzie got elected to the City Council in 1996, speaks volumes about change in the City. Because he and I and many others had been harsh critics of the City Council. So things developed, I think in a progressive direction. Naturally it's not just a straight line up, there are bumps in the road. One of my neighbors, pretty much across my back fence and down a little bit, was on the City Council until two years ago when he was defeated for re-election. But then there was redistricting, and now he's running again. And I'm sorry, but he is the last person I�d want to vote for. The City Council is nonpartisan, candidates don't declare whether they're Democrat or Republican, but it's quite clear he's very conservative. In his testimony at some candidate forums, it became pretty clear he doesn't even believe in climate change. Because he said something like, �well, for those of you who believe in climate change� and then wrinkled his nose. We had a big fight here about 10 years ago over Walmart. I was at the time very active in North Bay Jobs with Justice, which is a vocal group, a chapter of a national group that speaks up for working class people. And unemployed and underemployed people who generally don't have very much power and don't have very much voice, and they're afraid to participate in the political process because their jobs are so fragile. We speak up about things like wage theft and the right to unionize, and so on. We've had some very successful Workers� Rights Boards hearings. We don't have any authority, we just come in and say, Well, we're gonna have a hearing here. We'll invite management and we'll invite labor, although management never comes. But we hear from the workers about their problems and then we digest the testimony and the Board writes up a report and says, �This is what we found, and this is what we recommend.� And then we publish it and distribute it to City Councils and State legislatures, and of course management. The workers will get bunches of them to pass out as they find useful. And these hearings are so effective that sometimes just the threat of holding a Workers� Rights Board is enough to bring management to the table. I was amazed at the power we generated without really much work. JB: That's really awesome. RL: There's been a Walmart store here in Rohnert Park for quite a long time. I don't remember when it got here. If I was aware of it at the time, I probably would have fought it because I hate Walmart, I think it's a big evil greedy company. Sam Walton would be turning over in his grave if he knew what has happened to it. Because he was a very honorable man, a very thoughtful man, a very community-oriented man. He was from the Ozarks, you know, a very poor region of Arkansas. And he realized that his people, his community, was being left out. There were pockets of the country where people had money and they could buy fine things. But the Ozarks people couldn't do that. So he went into retailing and became a remarkably successful retailer. One of the things he did was to turn the tables on the wholesalers, because everything had been set up so that they would just walk into the store and tell the retailer, this is what you're buying, this is how you're going to display it, and so on. And besides, most shopkeepers had no idea what they had in the store. Walton said, first of all, I'm going to inventory. Whenever you have a store you gotta have inventory control, so you�ll know what's here and what's selling and what's not selling. Secondly, I'm going to tell the wholesalers what we want, what we think we can sell, and not let them be in charge. His methods revolutionized retail. He also persuaded people to work for him for relatively low wages on the grounds that they were helping to bring to their community the good things of life that were enjoyed by people elsewhere. And that's the message that's gotten out of hand since then. You work for Walmart today, you will still get that speech. But the fact is, Walmart is a huge company, making billions in profits. The children of Sam Walton are among the richest people in the world, in fact together they're the richest family in the world. And yet they treat their workers so abysmally. It's a serious problem for the rest of us taxpayers too, because the people who work there don't make enough money to have a living and so they get helped by public-assistance programs like food stamps and medicaid and childcare. In other words, their lives are subsidized by us taxpayers. Yes, what's actually happening is that we the taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart. They should be paying their workers enough that they can live, and if they don�t, and they�ve forced the burden onto everybody else, it�s sort of like capitalism for the profits and socialism for the expenses. * * * * * * * * * JB: You talked about workers rights: A lot of those movements that you end up doing, are those hearings local or are they around the County? RL: Oh, they are around the County, in fact, even in Marin and Napa. We call ourselves North Bay Jobs with Justice. We are pretty much centered in Sonoma County but we do things in Marin and Napa as well. I've been over to Queen of the Valley Hospital picketing with the workers there because they were not getting a fair contract. JB: We need to see some more of that definitely. RL: So I got started talking about this because of Jake Mackenzie. I want to finish that up. So Walmart was built here, but then in about 2009, they decided they wanted to expand their store into a superstore. We figured the Walmart we got is bad enough, we don't want to expand it. And so we fought tooth and nail against Walmart�s expansion plan. And we got nowhere with the City Council, except for Jake, who was the lone voice in our support. The rest of the Council were pro-Walmart. Now, an expansion proposal like this goes to the Planning Commission first. One person was absent the night they voted on it, but oddly enough by 4 to 0, they turned it down. Well Walmart appealed that, of course, went to the City Council, which overturned its own Planning Commission's decision by a 4 to 1 vote. So then a bunch of us sued. We had mixed success in court. But the court did order them to do another environmental review. The judge said it's not adequate, you haven't dealt with a lot of the issues, these people that are suing have valid points. And then, before they could come back with another proposal, Pacific Market, which was in the Mountain Shadows Center, folded. One of the things that we had pointed out to the City Council was that Walmart was already a threat to local markets, that Pacific Market would probably go out of business if Walmart were selling groceries just a mile away. Well, for whatever reason, Pacific Market went out of business anyway, although I think still the threat of Walmart was a factor there, and it was probably part of the problem. But anyway, then Walmart took over that space, and Walmart is still there. And we thought, well, they're shooting themselves in the foot now. Because the City Council is gonna say, why should you sell groceries there and close by over here as well? And there were other considerations, like a regional market is going to attract a lot of people from other areas, there�s gonna be traffic problems, it's a violation to the City's general plan. But none of this changed the minds of the other four members of the Council. And one of them was this guy that I was talking about who is running again now. He�s my neighbor but I�m not voting for him just because he's my neighbor. He�s said some really weird things like, well, we can't tell a private business what to do. Oh really? You�re the City Council! JB: That�s kind of a backwards way of thinking of things. RL: We elect you five people to represent 50,000 of us who live here and to protect our interests and to protect our values, and we've made it quite clear, we don't like this. �Who are we to tell Walmart what to do?� he nonetheless said. I tried to point out to him, to no avail, that sure, I know you regard yourself as a pro-business candidate, and you probably think we're anti-business though we're not. But the problem is, you can't just be pro-business. You've got to decide whether you're pro big business or pro small business, because these two groups often have antithetical interests. In particular, Walmart has a history of driving small businesses bankrupt all across America. They'll come into a community and build a big box, start selling stuff real cheap, and the retailers in the city can't meet their prices. And then because so many people in the community aren�t making any money anymore, shopping falls off at the Walmart, so they close it and now there's no place to shop and there's a big ugly empty box sitting there. It's just outrageous. So, Mr Councilmember, were you elected to serve the interests of the billionaires of Bentonville or the small businesses of Rohnert Park? Well, anyway, let's talk about something else. DG: We are actually right about wrapped up Rick, I think we�re about good to go. JB: Yeah, did you have anything else in particular you wanted to talk about? DG: This is your time, if there�s anything else you wanted to dive into. RL: There were so many questions in here, we couldn�t possible have gotten into them all. JB: On the last one we only got to five. I think on this one we got six or seven official ones in. DG: We scratched the surface at the very least. * * * * * * * * * RL: Well, yeah we talked about the relation of Cotati and Rohnert Park, and of Sonoma State and Rohnert Park, and of Sonoma State and the County. You asked about Hewlett Packard -- we were glad to see that come in, disappointed that it left, but I have high hopes for the Sonoma Mountain Village that�s taken over the property. I think that�s very progressive. JB: And HP is the type of big business you would want to see invest in Rohnert Park? RL: Yeah, there's no question we need business here, our citizens have to work, have jobs, make a living. Our view -- by �our� I mean, these environmental and workers� rights groups that I've been associated with -- our view is that we're not opposed to growth, per se. That's a rumor we're constantly fighting. But we think that growth oughta be smart growth, meaning growth that solves problems and doesn't just make them worse or even continue them the same. Rohnert Park had a problem for decades, that the people who work here were people like grocery clerks at Walmart who couldn't afford to live here, so had to commute here from some place where housing was cheaper. And on the other hand, the people who lived here didn't have places they could work here commensurate with their skills and training, so they would have to get in a car and drive somewhere. That's bad. What you want is a community where there's a match between the kinds of employment that's available and the wages that are being paid, on the one hand, and the housing that's available for such workers on the other. I was very disappointed with this University project across the Expressway. For many years I commuted from Sebastopol in 1970. At that time, there was nothing between Cotati and here. I kept thinking, well, someday the land around here is going to be developed with something. And I began to think of college towns like Chico, Arcata, Davis, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo, Boulder CO. These are college towns, where the college and the town are tight. Chico, for instance -- there's no boundary between the City and the campus. JB: It is the college, yeah, I�ve got friends who go there and say the same thing. RL: Arcata is across the freeway from Humboldt State, but it�s walking distance, you know. And so I pictured that this area that's now the �R� section around the high school and the area across Cotati Ave would become little centers where there would be coffee shops and laundries and bookstores and things that might be of interest to the campus. And if nothing else, at least housing developed in the area that would be affordable to those students who wanted to live off campus, and to young faculty. We didn't get that. In fact, when �R� section was built -- it goes back to 1989, ironically the year the Berlin Wall fell! -- not only did we not get any of that stuff I was looking for, but they put up a wall that ran from East Cotati Avenue, just on the other side of the dorms, to the high school athletic fields, and then it turned and went down alongside a path on the south side of the high school. That wall is impenetrable. There are no gates in it. If you live in that section, and you want to get to either the high school or the campus you have to walk out � JB: And come back around, yeah. RL: I thought that was a waste. And then that land on the other side of Copeland Creek, between the J section and the Green Music Center parking lots -- there�s 20 acres there and that was something we thought someday the University could buy to build housing there affordable to students and young faculty. You know, housing is a real problem for the campus. Although we actually have a higher percentage of our student population living in campus housing than any other CSU, it's still only about a third. And then we have problems finding housing for young faculty. We've had faculty applicants come to the math department, people who wanted to work for us, we interview them, and it's a perfect match. We love them, they love us. And then they check the housing availability here and they say, wait a minute, what? JB: Where am I gonna live? RL: A condominium is $400,000! �Yeah, I'm actually wondering if you're gonna pay me a commensurate salary.� JB: Not that, yeah. RL: It really changed dramatically over the time that I've been here. When I bought a house, in 1970, at that time, my salary here was $900 a month. So under $11,000 a year. JB: Really? Wow. RL: But you could buy a median two-bedroom home in the County for somewhere around $20,000 to $30,000. I stretched myself and bought a $37,000 mini farm in Sebastopol, and honestly it was such a stretch that it hurt for about two or three years. At that time we got guaranteed raises at 5% every year, so my problem eased up after a little while, but it was tight. The price I would have paid for a house that was really affordable to me, would have been on the order of two or three times my annual salary. Well, today, it's more like nine or ten. Housing prices have gone up, and salaries have gone up too, but not enough. You come here, as a beginning faculty member, you're gonna get probably $50,000 to $60,000, which in today's world isn't much, that's barely even median income. So anyway, we thought that parcel over there would be a great place for the University to buy some land and build housing for students and young faculty. The University has made some steps in that direction; they owned a bunch of houses over in the M section. (For some reason they've sold them, I don't quite understand why.) They also bought an apartment complex down by the Marina in Petaluma, across from the Sheraton. And that was supposed to be affordable housing for faculty. But they started renting it out at market rates. Well, what's the point of that? Faculty can't afford market rates in the private sector, so duh! they're not going to be able to pay the same thing to the University. It doesn�t matter the University owns it, who cares who owns it if it�s unaffordable? And the University has taken a hit on that. But that property over there north of the campus -- the University really tried hard to buy it, but they just couldn't get a reasonable deal from the seller. The closest they came together was the University offered $3 million for it, and the developer wouldn't take any less than $12 million. JB: Oh, so not close at all. RL: Yeah. Then the University made a grand mistake and bought a piece of empty land on the west side of Petaluma Hill Road, pretty much opposite where Crane Canyon Road comes in, and they were going to develop that. They had this interesting scheme where the University would maintain control of the ground, of the land, but the University would build houses and faculty would own the houses. And when the faculty wanted to sell, the University had the first right of refusal, so the University could keep it in the family, so to speak. But the University didn't think through carefully what they were going to do about utilities, particularly water and sewer. The land is not within the Rohnert Park City limits. The City could have agreed to provide water and sewer for it anyway, but the citizens of Rohnert Park had voted for an urban growth boundary. And this property lay outside it. Now, the City Council could have done something to get around that, maybe have another vote or something like that, but there was such an antagonism at that point between the City government and the President of the University, who alienated everybody. The City just said basically. fuck off, it�s your problem, you�re on your own, dig a well or something. That was thanks to our beloved then-President Ruben Armi�ana. You probably came here after he left, didn�t you? JB: Oh yeah, I�ve only been here for a year and a half. RL: Well, you missed quite a show. DG: I was gonna say, it sounds like we missed out. JB: Yeah, this whole project has been fun I would say, learning all this stuff. I didn�t know any of this stuff, I�m not from around here. DG: I�m a Rohnert Park native and I didn�t know, gosh, 80% of what we�ve even talked about here. RL: Where are you from? JB: Folsom. RL: Oh that�s right, you said that. Well Ruben Armi�ana was the president here for 25 years, which is 24 years too long. At the time that he left he had been president for half the University's life. He was a very difficult person to get along with. He was very fascistic; he actually treated the place like his own feudal kingdom. JB: Everyone was the serfs? RL: Yeah. I had to work with him because I was in faculty governance; I was the chair of the faculty for a while. And I had heard, before I took the job, about the way he treated some of my predecessors. They�d go to his office to talk to him and he�d wind up shouting at them and screaming and pounding the table. I didn't want to go into anything like that. Let's just say you're fortunate that you got here after he left, because he was a classic tyrant. Everybody loved Judy Sakaki when she came in, mostly, however, because she was the non-Armi�ana. I thought she did a relatively good job of being President, though not by any means perfect. And I thought that the factors that contributed to her leaving were overblown. I think that, here again, the Press Democrat played a role, fomenting unrest in the community and on the campus. Just for one example, the president's home, up in Fountain Grove, burned down in the 2017 fires. She barely escaped with her life, ran out of a burning house with not even any shoes on. Well, among other things that burned were some art pieces that belonged to the University. Everybody knew they were there. It wasn't a secret -- she had gone through the procedures to have them there. And everybody knew that they burned up, because that was not a secret at the time either. But when the scandal involving her husband came up, the Press Democrat resurrected that story just like they resurrect the skinny-dipping story, dredged up the past. You see, you can know too much about history. I hope you will be a responsible historian. They didn't have to do that. It was not relevant. just not relevant. It was not a secret. It was not illegal. But they made it sound like it was part of the scandal. JB: Yeah, just some juicy press. RL: Yeah. * * * * * * * * * JB: It�s unfortunate. We got about five minutes in the room before people kick us out. DG: Should we call it there, Rick? Feel like you got your piece in? RL: We didn�t talk about Graton Rancheria. Well, let me just say a few words about that, because it's been part of the history of Rohnert Park. JB: Sure. DG: Sure. RL: Now, as a mathematician, I never gamble. I know too much about probability! JB: You didn�t try to go for the Rain Man? Counting cards? RL: No! I would let it go at �I don�t gamble�, and just say, well to each his own -- if it weren't for the fact that I think the existence of gambling opportunities is a social ill, because gambling appeals most to people who are most threatened by using it. Do you think Bill Gates buys lottery tickets? Who buys lottery tickets? Well, here's a guy who just came into $5, and he could go down and buy a Big Mac, but he figures if I buy some lottery tickets, I might win $20 or $100. Yeah, he might, but probably not. JB: Probably gonna walk out with $5 less than he already had. RL: Yeah. So I think of gambling as a social ill. I think the wrong people gamble. And it's not my opinion of gambling intrinsically. If somebody who can afford it wants to gamble their money, and they enjoy it, fine. I don't enjoy it. I don�t see any point in it. But okay, you want to do it, go ahead. However, Rohnert Park did not have very much clout regarding that property, because first of all, it's not even in the City limits. But even the County didn't have much authority over it because Graton Rancheria is technically an independent country. Indian tribes, as the original inhabitants of this continent, are regarded as entities over which the federal government has little to no authority. So the Casino was going to be there, whether we liked it or not. There was a lot of opposition to it from the City. Some of it from the blue noses who just think gambling is a sin. But there was a lot of suggestion that the opposition was really pretty much racist, that the opponents don't like and don't respect Native Americans. I don't know whether that�s true. It�s hard to document, because nobody said that explicitly. You get this impression. It's worked out pretty well, though. But the principal reason it's worked out, is because of who's the president of the tribe: It's Greg Sarris. Is he one of the people you're interviewing? JB: No, but the person we interviewed early, Tony Mckay, is very close with the indigenous tribes and his aunt worked closely with Greg Sarris as well. So we got some of that insight in our previous interview. RL: That�s nice. Well, Sarris is a faculty member here. He just retired, and he's on the new emeritus list. (We're having a big celebration tomorrow, by the way, at the Green Music Center, to welcome a bunch of new emeritus faculty to the ranks.) But I think if you got to have a casino on your border, you�d be damn lucky to have Greg Sarris as the one in charge of it. The tribe runs the Casino in a very enlightened manner. For example, they share their profits with all the other non-gaming tribes in Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties. And they also give money away, too -- they give Rohnert Park money, they give the school board money, they give money to the Sierra Club, and Sonoma County Conservation Action, and they sponsor gambling addiction programs. It's very, very enlightened. It's unfortunate, though, that Greg is also a rather difficult person to get along with. He and I should be great friends. First of all, we're both on the faculty. Secondly, we're both gay. And although I'm not a Native American, I think maybe he�s not either. Wasn�t he adopted into a Native American family? Well, in some sense, I have been too. My husband is Eskimo, so he's a Native American. But anyway, as far as the Casino is concerned, I think it's worked out pretty well. I don't see problems; a lot of the problems people thought they were gonna have, they haven�t had. DG: Right, if they have had problems, it�s been mitigated fairly well by the Casino�s hand and in a positive way. They�ve worked hard to maintain a good status with the City. RL: Yeah. And they have been very kind to their workers. Employers don't form unions, but if an employer�s workers want a union, the employer can oppose it, like Starbucks is doing, and Amazon. You�ve probably been hearing in the news about these struggles. But Graton made a commitment from the beginning that, if its employees wanted to organize a union, go for it, they wouldn�t stand in the way. And so the Casino does have unions. All right, well, I don't know that I need to say anything else about the Casino. DG: That�s all right, thank you for your time, Rick.