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| The fence where Matthew Shepard was tied and beaten |
So I had the amazing opportunity to interview Mrs. Stephanie Long. A drama teacher who is a Laramie Native and has been involved with the whole Laramie Project from the beginning. I received her permission to record an interview and post it on this class blog. The following is what I recorded over the phone when I discussed with her what I was doing. A special thanks to Mrs. Long for her willingness to help me out with this project.
“So the murder took place in October. I would say only a couple months after the murder, Tectonic Theater company came in to town. After contacting members of the community, they came to our Theater Director, Rebecca Hillicker, and asked her to interview us. She hooked it up. Jedadiah Schultz, one of my good friends, is a bigger character in the film. At the time, it was my second semester of my freshman year. The theater company was in Laramie conducting interviews and doing research for a little over a year, with our drama class being one of the first places to be interviewed. From talking to my friends who are characters, they say that the play is a bit more accurate than the film. They did take real transfers from the interviews, they took them in context and used actors to play those roles. Yeah, I think that everything that took place is extremely accurate. All of those quotes were real. They came from real people. Those are all original words. However, everybody’s reality is different. Everyone has a different perspective of what happened. It had a different impact on them. They just discuss what happened in their eyes. I think it was all a pretty cool concept.
Yes, I am a Laramie Native. The affects of Matthew Shepard have been pretty dramatic but in a good way. It has definitely stuck with everyone. You see, growing up, my dad was a professor at the University of Wyoming. A Language professor to be exact. Matthew Shepard’s German professor in fact. I have always been involved in that scene. I have always felt more part in that community. The town is somewhat split. The university is on one end of the spectrum and then you have the community who isn’t involved with the university on the other. I am still involved in the University and have been involved within that community for a long time. I think that everybody is still pretty active in raising awareness and making changes. This brought LGBT issues in to the forefront. If anything positive came from this, this needed to happen. After the events, everyone desired to make changes.
What was eye opening is that Jonas Slonaker discusses in the movie about moving to Denver. Yeah, Laramie was his community but it isn’t a place where he would want to live. He discussed the shift in the town and how people were really frightened for a while. That fear evolved in to becoming more supportive. To this day, we do have active LGBT groups who are heavily active on campus. I work in the Campus Activities Center and I have known a lot of active groups that get involved. They put on cool events and raise awareness. We also have the Rainbow Resources Center, QUAN, and the Registered Student Organization. I am also a part of the Counseling Masters Program that also help and support members of the LGBT communities as well. We want to make sure they have a place to talk. There has been a lot more awareness. However, there is definitely more progress to be made. Every time I hear someone say, “That’s gay,” that’s a point where I realize that we have not come as far as we need to.
We have a pretty safe, small community here in Laramie but at the same time, in particular these two guys who are in prison are also local guys. We went to high school together, you know. It’s not really that surprising, frankly. We’re not just all in the know, or educated, or have dealt with those issues or have been confronted by multi-cultural competence. Because we are isolated. On one hand, they discuss in the movie, that we have this “live and let live” attitude. Where it’s “you can do whatever you want in the privacy of your home,” but it needs to be beyond that. We need to support each other in the decisions we make and the lifestyles we live because it’s our human rights. I think that attitude is shared by a lot of people now.
There have been a ton of effects of this on campus. Yearly we do the Shepard’s Symposium for Social Justice. It is a weeklong event where we bring various speakers who discuss social justice for groups here on campus. It happens every year. This year, we are having Tim Wise speak. We get fairly prestigious speakers come. This not only effects the campus, but they do an educational session for the local teachers at various junior high and high schools. This has been a huge success to where we have come. Laramie has come a long way but there is always room for improvement.
What has been a little upsetting was when a bunch of us from the reading of the 10 year production addendum of The Laramie Project at the university and we talked about a New York Times Article. My dad, who was mayor at the time, pointed it out. The New York Times did a piece on the progress, or lack thereof, of what has happened in Laramie. The piece was scathing. They discussed the community and how nothing has changed. They said the legislation hasn’t changed. One thing culturally about Wyoming is that things move VERY slowly. Do we need changes to happen? Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. We are working on it, but it’s not just going to happen overnight. When doing those readings, there was actual legislation that was passed by Obama which improved partner benefits and such. It was powerful.”
-Stephanie Hanson Long
Theater Department at University of Wyoming
