By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Barbara Waddell was 14, her mother was passed over for a promotion.
Her mother worked in a union shop in the Toledo area, and the job should have gone to her because she was next in line in seniority. She was the only woman of color on the line, and the job went to a white woman with less seniority. The union did nothing. The company did nothing.
When she got home she was upset and shared her disappointment with her daughter.
Waddell remembers her reaction. “That’s not fair. They can’t do that. …. I was just incensed that this could happen to her.” So they wrote a letter. They said they were going to retain an attorney. Of course, Waddell said, they didn’t know the family didn’t have money to hire a lawyer.
“They got the letter, and she got the position she was entitled to based on their own rules and policies,” Waddell said more than 40 years later.
Her belief in fighting for justice was already well developed as a teenager. “There are so many people who don’t have a voice to speak for themselves, and if there’s ever an opportunity to be that voice I want to be that person,” she said.
After 28 years of putting that philosophy to work at Bowling Green State University, Waddell is retiring at the end of the month as chief equity and diversity officer.
In that time she has been instrumental in promoting diversity and diversity training on campus and beyond. “I think diversity and inclusion has been part of my DNA.”
Waddell grew up in Toledo. She opted to attend Start High School, instead of her neighborhood Scott High. Graduating in 1978, she went on to college to become an elementary school teacher. Then she came home to Toledo, married her childhood sweetheart Perry.
When their son was born, she stayed home with him. About the time he was 3 she decided he needed the company of “people his own size.”
Waddell reentered the workforce as “a Kelly girl.” Then the company hired her full-time, and then made her Toledo branch manager.
In was in this position that she first worked with BGSU as a client. At the time, colleges didn’t often use temp agencies, so she was extra diligent in developing the relationship.
University officials were so impressed, they offered her a job. At first she demurred, but lured by the benefits, she became public information officer for the campus police in 1988.
She was the rare woman and rare African-American in the department. “The most difficult time for me was the initial years at BGSU trying to understand the culture,” she said.
The department typically only had one African American officer, and he typically didn’t last more than a year. Waddell soon understood why. “Some of my encounters with my colleagues led me to believe we needed diversity training,” she said.
On the wall was a placard she recalls with skin tones to be used to describe suspects. All were for people of color. “They did not include all skin tones.”
Through her connections with the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police, the department received funding to develop diversity training. Waddell ended up traveling throughout the state. “Not everyone was open to diversity training,” she said.
It helped that her husband was a police officer in Toledo.
She was also at the department when CLERY legislation about mandatory crime reporting by campuses went into effect.
She was on the search committee that recommended the hiring of Sidney Ribeau as university president in 1995. She said she was both surprised and pleased with the hiring of an African-American to the top job.
Her experience with the police, including seeing the investigative process up close, led to her taking a position in the office of affirmative action in 1997.
The university, Waddell said, has along commitment to affirmative action dating back to 1972. “Actually it was the faculty who got together with other constituent groups and decided there was a need for an office of affirmative action on this campus.”
At Ribeau’s request in 2002 she moved into the provost office. Here she worked on a broad range of human resource issues. Before collective bargaining, the provost was the chief human resources officer for the campus, and “the charter was really the contract between faculty and institution,” she said.
When President Mary Ellen Mazey arrived in 2011, she decided that what was now the Office of Equity and Diversity needed to again answer directly to the president as it had originally.
Mazey asked Waddell to become the chief equity and diversity officer.
One of the keys with holding these investigative positions is, Waddell said, “you have to be really careful with your relationships because you never know who you’re going to have to investigate. … Our job is to chase the facts – we don’t advocate for either party – and apply those facts to the standard or the policy. Then a determination is made whether the standard or policy was violated, and if it was, take corrective action. It’s important that those relationships remain professional.”
For her efforts, Waddell received the university’s top honor for university administrative staff, the Ferrari award.
At the ceremony, Dr. Sidney Childs, who was then assistant vice president for student affairs and director of Access Diversity Programs, said: “Through her strong sense of commitment and purpose to diversity work, many throughout the campus community have a greater understanding on the importance and great need to be a member of a community that embraces the myriad forms of difference.”
While she’s had a good relationship with all four presidents she’s worked under, Waddell had particular praise for Ribeau and Mazey. “I learned a significant amount from President Ribeau and President Mazey.”
Ribeau, she said, “put BGSU on the map” with his learning communities initiative and because he “talked about students making decisions using critical thinking. … He helped us make that more tangible so people could understand what it means to think critically.”
He also laid the groundwork, she said, for the hiring of the two women who succeeded him as president.
Mazey, Waddell said, “is very open, very engaging. She really wants to know different perspectives, different opinions, even when they differ from her own. Her interaction with her cabinet and the community is very warm. But she’s tough. She’s tough as nails when she has to be. It’s a great quality.”
She continued: “I see President Mazey opening doors for women, people of color this community in general. She wants to lift everybody up. She wants to make sure everybody has a place at the table.”
Waddell said now is the time to retire. “I’m a year on the other side of cancer.” While she’s hopeful, she knows, the disease can come back. She wants time to check off items on her and her husband’s bucket list. He is also retiring from the Toledo police at the end of the year.
While that includes travel and time with family, it also includes service.
She’s particularly interested in promoting adult literacy. It’s sad, she said, to see people who cannot read to their children or help with homework.
She said when she came to BGSU she didn’t have a goal of being chief diversity and equity officer. Her opportunities were an invitation to serve.
“I really truly believe I was put here to help people get where they want to be,” Waddell said. “These shoulders are here for them to stand on to get where they are supposed to be.”
