Jill Creighton:	Welcome to season two of the ASCA Viewpoints podcast. The podcast where we talk about the student conduct profession in higher education. I am Jill Creighton, your Viewpoints host.

Jill Creighton:	Welcome to the ASCA Viewpoints podcast. I'm Jill Creighton, and today's episode features Dr. Donald D. Gehring. Yes, that is the same Gehring from the Gehring Academy. Don is one of the founders of what was known then as ASJA, and has evolved into the present day ASCA. So Don spent some good time talking about kind of those initial days of ASJA, how it came to be, as well as some of those first moments at the early summer academies. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Don. It's pretty lighthearted.

Jill Creighton:	But I also wanted to share a little bit more about him. Don is a professor, emeritus, and past director of the higher education administration doctoral program at Bowling Green State University, so BGSU. But he's also very well published. He used to co-edit the college student in the courts periodical, and has articles in the journal of College and University Student Housing, the NASPA Journal, personnel and guidance, the Dental Educator, surgery, programming, and the college student personnel journal. So he's got quite a lot of research out there if you'd like to take a look.

Jill Creighton:	Don was also recognized as a pillar of the profession by NASPA, and spends his time now down in Florida enjoying retired life. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. Here we go.

Donald Gehring:	Anybody else on the line?

Jill Creighton:	Nope, just you and me.

Donald Gehring:	Just us two, okay, good.

Jill Creighton:	Just us two. So I'm so excited to be able to talk with you about the founding of ASJA, and kind of its evolution into ASCA. So I was really hoping you could share with us kind of the story of how you all ended up gathering after Stetson, and how it evolved from there.

Donald Gehring:	Alright, well. First of all, let me tell you that, somewhere along the line, I wrote a history of the first few years of ASJA, and it may be in the archive somewhere. And then, at one of the conferences, they had a videographer interview me and video tape it all. So you may want to look for that also.

Jill Creighton:	I will definitely go looking down the rabbit hole for that.

Donald Gehring:	Yeah, Jennifer may have it somewhere in the archives. But it was just an idea that came. I was at the University of Louisville an idea that came to me that I was going to ASPA and commission, whatever it was, 14, or something, I don't know. And they did judicial affairs, as we called it then. And there would only be one session at ASPA on student conduct. And I thought, well, that's terrible. Because we have all these federal laws and regulations, and we need to do more as a profession to help people who are doing this sort of stuff.

Donald Gehring:	And I was a professor. I wasn't doing it, so to speak, anymore. Although I did serve on a committee to hear some cases, a conduct committee. I forgot what we called it. But anyway. It was just that I was distraught at the fact that neither ACPA and NASPA had nothing, hardly. I mean, maybe once every couple years. So I said, we need an organization. And at the time, Bob [Bickle 00:03:44], who was professor of law at Stetson University college of law, had a law conference that brought together lawyers, university lawyers, or lawyers who represented universities, and people who did college discipline. 

Donald Gehring:	And they both came to his conference. And for some, the lawyers were speaking over our heads. Not everybody, I mean, some of us understood what they were saying. And some of them, like- Come on Bob. One of the lawyers who was a member of ASJA, and I'm blocking his name right now. It'll come to me. Ed Stoner. Ed, he was very in tune with what we were doing, and spoke at our level. But he was about the only one at that conference that did. So after a couple of years of attending that conference, I asked Bob Bickle, could I have a room during your conference at a certain time? And he said sure. I said, I want to see about organizing a group that does college discipline. Well, college conduct. 

Donald Gehring:	Bob said sure, and not only did he let me have the room, but he let me have another room afterwards where we could meet. So I stood up, and said during his conference, one of his general sessions. Those of you who are student conduct officers on college campuses, if you'd be interested in forming an association to deal with these problems, let's meet in room so and so afterwards. And Bob let us have that room.

Jill Creighton:	So who was in that room?

Donald Gehring:	Pardon?

Jill Creighton:	Who was in that room?

Donald Gehring:	Who was in what, the first room? The general session?

Jill Creighton:	Who showed up to the room that Bob gave you?

Donald Gehring:	Okay. At the general session, where I made the announcement that we're gonna be in room so and so, they were all attorneys and student conduct officers. The ones who met in room so and so were mostly student conduct officers. I don't think there was a lawyer in the group.

Donald Gehring:	And I proposed to them, I said, how about if we form an association or an organization for people who do student conduct, or who are interested in it. Because I didn't do it, and I wanted to be a part of it, so I said, but I'm interested in it. So we had that duel category. And therefore, people like Ed Stoner could be a member, 'cause he was an attorney, and he didn't really do student discipline, but he was interested in it. And of course, he was one of our best people. 

Donald Gehring:	And at that meeting, I said, you know, what do you think? And there were some naysayers who said, oh, the last thing we need's another organization. And I assume you're gonna have a conference, and if it meets every year, we can't go to ACPA and NASPA and something else. You know, there were some naysayers, but not a lot of them. And mostly, the people said yeah, let's do it. I said, okay. I'm gonna ask a couple people to be with me, and during the year, this coming year, and I think it was in 1987 that we met at BickleÕs conference.

Donald Gehring:	I said, during the following year before this conference, it comes up again, what we're gonna do, is we're gonna sit down and talk about the organizational structure, and develop a constitution and by-laws and that sort of thing. And then we will present that to you next year.

Donald Gehring:	So they all said, oh, go for it, go for it. Well, I was at the University of Louisville, so we said, I picked a couple people who were in fairly close proximity and asked them to come to Louisville for a day when we could do this. Maybe two days, I don't know. So several people came. I can't remember everybody, but I think Felice Dublon was there, because she was at the University of Chicago, school of art. And that wasn't that far away. Oh, what's her name at ... Shoot. Mary Sue Hufnagle. She was at Dayton. University of Dayton, and that's just down the road from Bowling Green, or up the road from Bowling Green. And I think Tim came over from the University of Delaware. And who else was there? I think Linda Tim came. She was at the University of Illinois, somewhere, one of those regional universities. 

Donald Gehring:	Anyway, we sat down, and banged out this constitution, and we structured it along circuit lines. US circuit courts, which gave ASJA a problem here a couple years ago. But that's fine. That's what we did to begin. And the reason we did that was that if we were gonna put out information, we wanted it put out on a basis of circuit courts of appeals, because that's what the law would be in that circuit. And it would differ from circuit to circuit from time to time. So we said, well, let's do it by circuits.

Donald Gehring:	And then we decided we would have a meeting again next year at Bickle's law conference again, as a kind of a subset of his conference. And I asked Bickle, could we have a room to present this to people who came who were discipline officers. And he said, well, of course. He set us up, and we had a room, and all this was at the Holiday Inn Surfside in Saint Petersburg. 

Jill Creighton:	So this is where the birth of the casual nature of the ASJA conference comes from, yeah?

Donald Gehring:	Yeah. That's it. Right across the bridge and to the right is the Holiday Inn, and we met in this room, and everybody loved the constitution, I mean, they said, yeah, fine, that's great. They were so happy, I think, to have something that recognized their work. And they said, let's make the dues affordable for everybody, including graduate students, so it'll be 20 dollars a year. So we said okay. And we appointed Bill Kibler, Brent Patterson, I think it was. We appointed Brent Patterson to go out and get a receipt book down the street at a drug store.
Donald Gehring:	So he went out and got that, and somebody had a cigar box, so after the meeting, he set up a table outside in the hallway with a cigar box and a receipt book, and people were throwing 20 dollar bills and 20 dollar checks at him for membership. And he was trying to write receipts as fast as the money was coming in.

Jill Creighton:	That's pretty fantastic. 

Donald Gehring:	Pardon?

Jill Creighton:	That's pretty fantastic.

Donald Gehring:	Yeah, oh, it was so much fun. And then after the meeting, my wife was with me, and we went out, and we said, now we're gonna go out to the pool and have a celebration. So my wife made a bunch of bloody marys, and we went out to the pool and had bloody marys. 

Jill Creighton:	I just wanna note for-

Donald Gehring:	That's how it started.

Jill Creighton:	I just wanna note for the listeners that our very first minutes say we'll meet in Bill Kibler's hotel room, BYOB. 

Donald Gehring:	Yeah, yeah. And one year, I can't remember, it was that year ... No, it wasn't that year. It was a subsequent year when we met at a different hotel. Our group got so big, Bickle was having to turn people away from his hotel, the Holiday Inn Surfside, because there was no more room. We came in on a Friday and stayed over on Saturday, and his people came in on Saturday, and stayed over until Sunday. Well, the Saturday was the problem. We occupied a lot of the rooms on Saturday, and Bickle said, look Gehring, I tried to help you out, now here you are messing me up.

Donald Gehring:	I said, okay. We'll move down the street to the, and I can't remember the name of the hotel, it's a big white hotel. Opposite the street that the place, we called it our ...

Jill Creighton:	The Sheraton?

Donald Gehring:	The what?

Jill Creighton:	Is it the Sheraton across the street from Columbia's?

Donald Gehring:	No, no, no, no, no. Columbia's a different area. This was, if you came out of the Holiday Inn Surfside, you turned left and went up that street. And we had a seafood restaurant there where we all used to congregate. It's probably in the minutes somewhere. Because we ended up calling it the official ASJA restaurant. And we would have fried fish sandwiches, and shrimp, and it was just a joint. It wasn't a fancy restaurant. And we all went there and gathered there and had good food and good fellowship.

Donald Gehring:	Anyway, this big white hotel caddy cornered from where that restaurant was, was where we had the conference. And one night, my wife and I went out, and we had a cocktail party in our room, and we wanted to go eat dinner at this nice restaurant somebody recommended to us. So I said, look, you guys, and Kibler was one of them. I said, "Y'all just shut the door and lock it when you leave. Turn the little handle and leave." And we had a balcony. It was a lovely room. And we came back that night, and we got in our room, and got undressed, got ready to go to bed, and they had short sheeted us.

Jill Creighton:	Oh no.

Donald Gehring:	My friends, yeah. Well, no, as a matter of fact, at first, we couldn't get in the room. Because they had locked it from the inside. And we had to call security, and security came up, and they went in the room next door, climbed over two balconies, and got in our room, and then unlocked the door. And then we went to bed, and got short sheeted. All my good friends.

Jill Creighton:	Sounds like ASJA had a bit of a seedy underbelly start. Kind of fun. 

Donald Gehring:	Oh, it was. And you know, the thing about it was, everybody, we all did the same kind of thing. It's not an easy job to put people out of school, and to discipline people, and put them on probation, all that kind of good stuff. They really bonded together because of what they did, and the fact that they all did the same kind of things, and it was no fun doing it. And you were trying to teach students, and somebody had to do it. And from the beginning, from the very first meeting, we said, this was going to be an organization not just to do student discipline, not just to know the law, but also to know student development. And it was the sophistication of student development within the context of the law.

Jill Creighton:	And if I recall, student development was one of the pieces of core philosophy that you took through the first two years of the presidency for ASJA.

Donald Gehring:	That what now? I'm sorry. There was a beep in there.

Jill Creighton:	Sure. I'm just saying that as far as I recall, and I've learned from our association's history, student development was really kind of the core of your philosophy as you took the organization through its first two years of your presidency.

Donald Gehring:	Exactly. Exactly. I was the only president that, for two years, at the end of the first year, I said, "And I will be the president again." Because we needed to have some stability over at least a two year period, not just one year. And that stability, I think, helped to cement the organization in what it was doing.

Jill Creighton:	So as you think about maybe kind of the first ten years of ASJA, what are some of the best memories that you have?

Donald Gehring:	Oh my goodness. One of the best memories that I have is that each year, it got bigger. And I also, a very good memory is, the first summer institute, and that's a whole other story there, if you want to hear it.

Jill Creighton:	Definitely.

Donald Gehring:	Well, I was at Bowling Green at the time, and I said, okay, at the board meeting, we said, we need to have a summer training institute to help people get up to speed, so forth. We said, okay, great. Denise Dickerson Gifford, I think it was Denise, she was on the board at the time. She was at Louisville, and she was doing campus discipline. And she's now the vice president for student affairs at Widener College in Pennsylvania. And she said, well, I think we ought to have it some place that's really beautiful and nice. So we said, yeah, well, okay, what do you suggest?

Donald Gehring:	Somebody, I don't know if it was Denise or not, somebody suggested the University of Colorado. Oh, that's gorgeous. So we said, yeah, and I think Denise was in charge of it. She said, we'll put members of the board as the faculty. And well, you know, members of the board aren't always as knowledgeable as they ought to be about the law and such as that. 

Donald Gehring:	But anyway, so okay, but we didn't have names of anybody except the board members. And we didn't have any big names, because there were no big names on the board. There was no Gary Pavella, no Ed Stoner, there were no Charlie Carlettas, nobody like that.

Jill Creighton:	Everyone's emerging still.

Donald Gehring:	Yeah. So I drew a, I took a map, and I took a compass, and I drew about a 200-mile radius around Bowling Green. And I sent information about this upcoming conference that's gonna be at Bowling Green, and it's on student conduct, and we hope you'd come, and here's the price, and this is what you get, so forth. What you get in terms of, you know, two days worth of instruction. But nowhere did I say anything about who was gonna do the instructing. Because I didn't know. And I didn't say what the topics were gonna be at that time, because they hadn't told me. 

Donald Gehring:	So I just sent this thing out, 'cause I figured at 200 miles, people could drive in. And we'd have kind of a drive in conference. Well, we didn't get enough people to sign up to pay for it. I was working with the continued education director at Bowling Green. And she said, Don, you gotta be more specific. You gotta do this in a better way.

Donald Gehring:	So the next year, I told the board, rather than Colorado, I can do it, let's try it again. I'll do it at Bowling Green. There are no beautiful mountains, there are only corn fields, you can see from the third floor of my education building all the way to Chicago. I mean, it's boring as hell. But you know, maybe that's what we need for an academic conference.

Donald Gehring:	So everybody said, yeah, okay, go ahead and do it. I said, alright. So that year, I sent out the brochure to, I think I extended it to like 250 miles or something. And I put down who was going to be there, what the topics were going to be that would be discussed, and so forth, and so on. Sent that out, and we got all kinds of responses. 

Donald Gehring:	Well, the continuing education director and I, I said, I don't wanna, I need a room. I need some rooms to have a bunch of people in it, and do lectures, but I don't want like a lecture hall in the chemistry building, or the math science building. We had these theater type things. I said, I don't really want that, I want a more intimate environment. 

Donald Gehring:	So she said, well, the only thing we've got open is the top floor of such and such dormitory. It's a big open room. I said, that sounds a whole lot better. So we scheduled the conference at the institute for up there. We got a ton of people who came. There were too many people for the room. And it was probably the hottest day in July, and the building was not air conditioned.

Donald Gehring:	I mean, we've had our ups and downs.

Jill Creighton:	We've come a long way since the first summer academy.

Donald Gehring:	Oh yeah, yeah. Absolutely. But we were trying to get our foot on the ground, and we did. We got fans up there and everything else. And finally, I gave in. I said, okay, let's go to the theater in the chemistry building where it's air conditioned. So we went over there. I mean, we were all soaked with sweat, it was so hot up in that top story floor. And heat rises.

Donald Gehring:	So anyway, the rest of it came off fine, and everybody was delighted to be in an air conditioned space, whether it was theater style or not. So we said, okay, let's do it again next year. Well, another thing. I had a key note speaker for dinner on Friday night. And her father was very ill, and she couldn't make it. So I went to my office file, and I pulled out a speech that I had made somewhere else, and I was the key note speaker.

Jill Creighton:	You're the accidental key note speaker.

Donald Gehring:	Right. Okay, next year, we said, let's do it again, and we said, okay, we'll do it again. It was so successful, and the board loved it, 'cause it brought in all kinds of money.

Jill Creighton:	So thinking about where the academy is today, it's named the Donald D. 

Gehring academy, in perpetuity, and in our profession, when you just say, I'm going to 

Gehring, people know what that means. They know that it means it's the premier educational experience in student conduct, they're excited to go. So what does that mean to you now that you're retired, to know the impact that you left on the field?

Donald Gehring:	It just means that I'm eternally grateful that it worked out well, and that people are benefiting from that summer learning experience. And I can remember even after the first one, people said, you know, I didn't mean to pay this much money to get this kind of information. That wasn't what they said. You know, they said, I'm getting more than I paid for. That was it. I'm getting so much more than I paid for. 'Cause we worked their tails off.

Donald Gehring:	And even today, I think, people are told, you know, you're going to Gehring academy, you better be ready to work.

Jill Creighton:	Better be ready to work and listen.

Donald Gehring:	'Cause they're gonna work your tail off.

Jill Creighton:	For sure. It's not a conference, it's an intensive learning experience.

Donald Gehring:	Right. It's a school. It's an academy. In fact, it used to be the institute. Summer institute. And I think it was at Maryland, John Zacker, who was president. He said, you know, this is more than an institute. And let's change the name to the academy. He first asked me, Don, it's named for you, what do you think? And I said, I think that's a great idea. Go ahead. 

Jill Creighton:	Excellent. Now, looking at where the association is today, obviously we went through a name evolution, we're now ASCA. But we also went through a restructure, kind of moving away from circuits, especially as we've added international components. What do you think of where we are now?

Donald Gehring:	Oh, I think it's great. I think we're in a good position, and you won't believe this, but in the beginning, I told my friend Parker Young. I said, Parker, I'm thinking about trying to get a bunch of people together and create this organization for student conduct. People who do student conduct. I said, and I think it could be the kind of thing that advances, evolves, whatever you want to say, until one day, we're gonna be like NASPA and ACPA. We'll have our own office in DC. And now we have an office in DC.

Jill Creighton:	Yes we do.

Donald Gehring:	And I'm no great prognosticator or anything, but I just saw the need, and I told people one year, it's like the movie about the baseball team. You build it, and they will come. And so we built it, and they came.

Jill Creighton:	And they stayed.

Donald Gehring:	And they came, and they came.

Jill Creighton:	Definitely. 

Donald Gehring:	Because we fulfilled a need. It's so obvious that that need was there. It was obvious to me, and here it is.

Jill Creighton:	What do you hope for the association as it grows and moves forward?

Donald Gehring:	Well, what I've hoped for from the very beginning. I hope that someday, and I think we're getting there, we're almost there, we've got a foot in the door now. But when the federal government starts to think about laws and regulations dealing with student conduct, that they contact our leadership and have them talk to them about whether it'll work, whether it won't work, why it'll work, why it won't work, so forth. And ask our advice. Which they never did before. Now they're starting to, in a very small way. But we've never been recognized before like we are now, and having that presence in Washington, I think, will contribute to our being called upon to give our advice of the people who are doing what they're talking about.

Jill Creighton:	I think we hope for that too.

Donald Gehring:	Rather than a bunch of bureaucrats, sitting back, making a bunch of regulations.

Jill Creighton:	Yeah, I agree. I think starting with past president, Chris Loschiavo, he was really the driving force of getting us into DC. And it was carried forward by president Matt Gregory, and president Laura Bennett, and as we've seen a change in the US presidency, we are hoping that we can continue to have a relationship with the department of education and office of civil rights.

Donald Gehring:	Yes. Absolutely. From the beginning, that's what I always wanted. That they would call on us and ask us, 'cause we were the experts.
Jill Creighton:	We like to think that we are, and I think that we do a good job of that. But you know, we're all still learning as professionals, and that's one of my favorite parts about ASCA, is that everyone comes to the table all the time willing to learn from each other.

Donald Gehring:	Yes, yes. You know, I had a professor in graduate school, my outside area was management. And he was a very revered professor of management. And he said one day in class something, and this has been umpteen years ago, okay. Never forgotten. He said, we all exist in a state of relative ignorance. You know things that I don't know, and I know things that you don't know. And the best way to learn is from each other. 

Jill Creighton:	That is really sage advice. Do you have any other tidbits of wisdom for the current members or the listeners?

Donald Gehring:	No, that's my favorite right there. 
Jill Creighton:	I appreciate that so much. Is there anything else that you'd want current members to know, or up and coming conduct officers?

Donald Gehring:	No, I can't think of anything right off the top of my head. I think I've told you some of the cultural stories, historical things, that make up part of our culture. And I think that's what we have, that is going for us, is that culture of bondedness, and people who bond with each other. And can understand, you know, you're going through the same thing I am. And when new people come to the conference, I think it's so neat that we have senior officers or people who have been in the field for a while, who kind of take them under their wings. Not even in a formal way, but we do it formally, also, sometimes, but informally. I've just seen it happen, and it's so good. Here, I want to help you learn, and this is what we do, and who we are, and how we operate. I think it's great.

Jill Creighton:	We are so glad to have you kind of active and around in our association still. Very few organizations get the opportunity to spend time with their founders, and so it's just a really great opportunity for us. So I really appreciate you being willing to talk to the current folks.

Donald Gehring:	Well, thank you. I enjoy it. When I was in the navy, after I got out of college, and my captain wanted me to stay in the navy, he said, I'll get you an executive officer's job, which is right under the commanding officer of a ship. And I said, no thank you, sir, I really appreciate it. I know that's a great opportunity for me, but I want to go back to school and be a teacher. And he said, well, you're not interested in making a lot of money. I said, no, that's right. My father's been telling me that for years. 

Donald Gehring:	So I guess I just always wanted to be a teacher. And I were one.

Jill Creighton:	I absolutely appreciate so much that, what you've done for the association, and the teaching that you have offered to conduct officers all over the world, at this point. So again, just so grateful to have you on the podcast. 

Donald Gehring:	Well, thank you, I appreciate that. And be sure to look for the history. I think in one year, I think we put out a directory. And the history was in the front, inside flap or something. But then there's that video that was made, and I don't know where the two of them are, the history that I wrote. Of course, it's gonna be an older history, 'cause I wrote it years ago.
Jill Creighton:	I believe you're referring to the monograph, which was released at the 25th anniversary. The blue book. And so I do have a copy of that, but I've never heard of the video. So I'm excited to go back and ask Jennifer what it is.

Donald Gehring:	Oh, yeah. Delighted to do it, and I'm so glad to be able to share those kinds of moments that I and the association had over the years. It was just truly a blessing, to me, anyway, and I think to a lot of people to have this organization in their lives. 

Jill Creighton:	Sure. Well, thanks again.

Donald Gehring:	Thanks, Jill. You take care now, and have a wonderful day.

Jill Creighton:	You too. Thanks, Don. Bye bye.

Donald Gehring:	Bye bye.

Jill Creighton:	Next week, on the ASCA Viewpoints podcast, we welcome Laura Egan. Laura serves as the senior director of programs for the Clery center. The Clery center is a nonprofit organization that partners with lawmakers in higher education campuses to work through technical assistance and training on the Clery act. For those of you on US-based campuses, our annual security reports are coming due on October 1st, so we'll be talking all about those, as well as how the Clery center can partner with your campus on how to engage with the Clery act in ways that you may have not thought of before. We hope you come back and join us.

Jill Creighton:	This episode was produced and hosted by Jill Creighton. That's me. Produced, edited, and mixed by Colleen Mater. Special thanks to New York University's office of Student Conduct and Community Standards, and to the University of Oregon's Dean of Students team for allowing us the time and space to create this project. If you're enjoying the podcast, we ask that you please like, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps others discover us, and helps us become more visible in the general podcasting community. 

Jill Creighton:	If you have suggestions for future guests, or would like to be featured on the podcast yourself, please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter at @ASCAPodcast, or by email at ascapodcast@gmail.com.





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