[Music]
hello there
ollie welcomes you to a special event
that recently took place on our
beautiful palm desert campus
boomers meet gen z

[Music]
we invited older ali members and our
younger university students to engage in
a heartfelt conversation about their
perceptions of each generation and
themselves
here's a short tease
amongst my generation there's a typical
joke and it's the boomer joke that oh
boomers don't know anything
we've joked
as like you have jokes um about boomers
we've joked about facebook and how we
have real friends
from stereotypes to mutual appreciation
i feel like our phones are our pacifiers
we need it all the time and i i see
the older
older generations and they're talking
and they're sipping on the coffee
shared fears my husband of 22 years died
when i was 44
and
that was a really young age at which to
lose your life partner your buddy your
best friend your colleague
as a first generation student so
education has been a very big aspect of
my life where i have struggled
i did do very well in high school i went
straight to college and then my world
came crashing down and going to school
on life having to make all those
decisions about living alone when i had
never lived alone in my life
was both thrilling and empowering and
terrifying all at the same time coming
into this panel
part of me had that stereotype in the
back of my mind and that stereotype kind
of
fled from my mind immediately

[Music]
i'm lacey kendall a professor at cal
state san bernardino as well as an ollie
instructor i helped facilitate the forum
and will also be your host for this
groundbreaking conversation
these two communities to be blunt tend
to keep their distance from each other
the younger students probably wonder
what they have in common with those old
folks as for the seniors well they
probably share similar sentiments
what took place certainly surprised both
groups and hopefully will inform and
delight you as well it began with a
conversation by harry
a retired trial attorney from chicago
who now lives in the desert there are
some remarkable things i've noticed
about your generation
things that
when we were your age we didn't
accomplish body shaming you're no longer
allowing the open shaming of students
whose body type is something other than
normal that is
heavy people skinny people very tall
people are very short people i think
that's fabulous
the second thing your generation has
done as the first generation to ever do
this is you have accepted
your peers
no matter what their sexual orientation
is or might become
my generation made fun of people like
that
and the third thing is a work in
progress that i think you're making
steps on and that is that you've done
a very good job at trying to get at
bullying
that's a much bigger problem than the
other two that i mentioned but you're
making a valid effort at bullying
i wonder if you've noticed that my
generation has done anything well that
we leave you
amongst my generation there's a typical
joke and it's the boomer joke
that oh boomers don't know anything
this is jason a freshman with a
pre-nursing major he's also been honored
as a legacy scholar coming into this
panel
part of me had that stereotype in the
back of my mind but hearing harry speak
already
i'm amazed by by that there's an actual
appreciation for what my generation is
doing
and that stereotype kind of
fled from my mind immediately
and so thank you harry for for making
those comments
my question to you was what can you
point to my generation and say we've
done well and you retreat it into your
own generation
i want you i want to know
what did we do
that you find
is valuable as you go forward in life
tell us some give us some strokes okay
thinking back to
those generations i think there was a
strong orientation around the family
and i think there was a very strong
sense of family and for me that's
something that's been so important in my
life and i understand that you know in
my grandparents generation your
generation that's something that they've
continued throughout the generations
that family is something so important
that you need to keep together and i
think it really started with the past
generations that idea of family has
changed but the message is clear that
it's something that you need it's
something that's there and it's
something that should be valued it's
something that should be treasured
to answer your question on something
that your generation has given us i
think it's the structure of hard work
that's carolina a junior with a
concentration in organizational and
relational communication
your generation takes pride in doing a
good work and has taught us that nothing
is given to us easily ruby a
communication junior brought up a cause
close to her heart
i think one of the most positive events
that my generation has lived through is
definitely with the rise of the black
lives matter movement
um
as harry mentioned earlier you know
becoming more accepting of people of
different backgrounds especially racial
so i think that's a really positive
thing that's happened currently
for me personally it would be roe versus
wade jennifer ran a non-profit classical
radio station in the seattle market to
have the ability to
have careers that the choices you can
make over your own body when that was
taken away from you
it takes away other aspects economic
aspects and my dissertation actually was
on how women make decisions when they're
confronted with a problem pregnancy
lynn is a former professor of sociology
with a passion for antique jewelry
i would say the
civil rights movement in the 1960s was a
really a turning point in our country's
history it changed laws that were in
place and broke down
so many barriers it's very hard to
imagine
the segregation that was going on we
remember
the first children
in the south that at integrated schools
that was a huge thing was a remarkable
time in our american history
i think the most significant thing
that's occurred a tragedy that gave
forth something else 911 was an attack
on our country
what i saw after 9 11 was
suddenly
everyone went in their house and found
their american flag and put it outside
the plane stopped flying the skies
became quiet people started treating
each other
in an entirely new way
we had lost
that edge that we thought was cool
because we realized we're all in this
together of course the subject of
technology came up and some of the
students surprisingly weren't 100
positive about the impact of tech on
their lives and their learning
just listen
last year in 2020 when this whole
pandemic hit us hard we're all locked in
our rooms
chris is a freshman he's a techie but
hasn't yet declared a major we were
zooming
day after day and you know over time we
got lazy we got tired and we just
clicked in
some of us weren't even there you can
fake your absence really easily
i feel what you're saying
yes jennifer there are positives and
negatives to the technology
we used during the pandemic we use zoom
a lot and i hadn't done that before
we've joked
as like you have jokes um about boomers
we've joked about facebook and how we
have real friends
you know so we go out to coffee and we
actually talk you know or our wine and
um
and and that maybe the facebook friends
oh i've got you know 10 000 facebook
friends they're are they really your
friends you have in the palm of your
hand all the information in the world
literally
that's angela she's the director of the
ali program at the palm desert campus of
cal state university san bernardino
we grew up we had the encyclopedia
britannica
and by the time you got to them they
were already outdated right they were
like several years old and so
that was the extent of our being able to
do much research so everything we had to
find we had to find in books
so i have grandsons
and i went to visit them in florida over
the summer i would invite them out one
by one and try to have a conversation
with them
and i would have to elicit
information from them how are you
fine and they're all the time they're
sitting there with a uh implement in
their hand
yes carolina to add to what jennifer and
angela say i envy that of your
generation so much because i feel like
our phones are our pacifiers we need it
all the time i i see
older generations and they're talking
and they're sipping on the coffee and we
had to create something where whoever
grabs their phone first has to pay for
dinner lin my introduction to technology
was when i
was terminated as a professor of
sociology because
computer science was all the rage and
that's where all the money and the
resources and all the students
went for computer science classes and so
i was able to make a lot of changes but
every day i try to embrace it
because it continues to be a real
challenge but i view it as the blessing
and the curse
yes ruby but um one thing i think that
is really positive about technology that
hasn't been mentioned yet is the fact
that so many young people are now able
to launch their own businesses or their
own platforms through social media
essentially like social media is no
longer just social media like i know
people who have you know like started
their own t-shirt lines or who
you know are social media managers you
know people who like to do graphic
design and just embrace other avenues
than like the traditional route of like
you know going to school
not to knock it obviously i'm in
university i'm still very traditional in
that way and i love my experiences here
but it's really cool seeing people
utilize technology as a way to like
start careers and build their futures
where does each generation get their
news and information lin for one is both
old school and new school i think i get
most of my news information from
evening television news but i do limit
that
and on and off during the day i go into
apple news just to see what different
media sources are reporting and i take
some really fabulous ali classes
which cover the media not just social
media
so those are my various sources
carolina for the most part i like
watching the news the evening news or a
podcast just to keep myself in the loop
to me the greatest show on television
these days for information is the
antiques roadshow
because it covers everything that i
could think of it's commerce in its
history and it's and it's the feelings
of people for each other and family and
how we inherit things how we get things
and what's the value of things i just
love it it's the greatest jason i'm a
huge fan of the antique roadshow as well
and um i guess some other
people from my generation would call me
a big nerd
first thing i do when i get in the car
in the morning is i turn on npr so i
listen to the npr new newshour in the
evenings i listen to the bbc newshour
jennifer
so um in the morning i watched the
business news ms nbc squawk box and
everything like that and um new york
times
washington post um bbc
and pbs to see what's going on ruby
mines is definitely a mixture evening
news is a very popular one it's always
on in my house and thankfully we kind of
switch between different stations
whether it's msnbc or maybe one of the
more like conservative channels i do
enjoy podcasts as well i think it's very
cool you know especially when they're
inviting guests and then honestly even
just people going out making
conversation hearing what people have to
say what's going on in the world from
their own perspective is really
enlightening to me
angela
so there are several what they call
aggregate
sites that i like to listen to and those
are ones that get pulled their
information from many different sources
in the morning i will get my news from
a place called the war room and in the
evening i tend to go to
the television i don't watch a lot of
television news but i do watch a couple
of shows in the evening that kind of
balance out that other side
one part of life that both generations
share is a love of music i wondered what
artists affected them and why
go ahead and start it off hannah is a
senior and will graduate with a major in
communication
i am
23 years old and the most influential
artist of my time
is
taylor swift
i grew up with her
it was something that like she was
around my age when i was around that age
she was talking about things that i was
gonna go through or i was going through
so i think relatability is very much i
think a very important thing when
listening to music or artists that
affect you like that so i think that's
the reason why i think she was
influential in my life angela so there
was a group of
singers or music called protest songs uh
going into rock and roll the beginning
of rock and roll elvis the beatles the
british invasion
with the stones coming over it was an
incredible time i mean
uh iconic time so it's very hard for me
to pick one i would just say um the 60s
and 70s probably the 60s was a
tremendous time of change in american
music
francisco is an undeclared freshman and
not afraid to speak his mind
so i'm 18 right and i feel like the one
that was really really strong is
kendrick lamar kendrick lamar talked a
lot about the black community right and
discrimination against like other
coaches like us mexicans blacks asians
you know just other ethnicities besides
whites so i feel like he really tried
giving out his lyrics and speaking to
the people so it was really really
affecting on me because my father he is
a black person so he understood that and
my mother mexican so i feel like it was
really really connecting and i just
understood i'm like i got some of the
words he was saying and i saw in general
what he was talking about and how we're
being treated and like the privilege
that some white americans have than
others like us that are colored people
harry what do you think i play guitar
and i sing
when i'm going to pick up my guitar and
play for myself
i'm going to play paul simon
and i'm going to play bob dylan every
guitar player does this there's a couple
of things we warm up with and it's kind
of it kind of gets your jones going
there's a song that paul simon wrong
called the boxer
and it's a slow
eerie beat of a song and the song just
does it for me but but um they're my age
those people and um they have incredible
talent and they speak to me
carolina my parents were the people that
would kind of control the radio
so
everything i know is
that
it's so they never really let me have my
own identity when it came to music so
everything is based on what they like
like los tires el norte and the
struggles that you know lost it's a
mexican band that talks about the
struggles of immigrants coming to this
country so every time i i felt i had an
emotion they would play that song and
they would tell me well look this is
what we went through so get over it
yeah
jennifer
mine would be paul mccartney
just a couple months ago we watched a
documentary that he just did and he's in
his 70s now he's relevant he's coming
out with albums um or records or
whatever you come out with now
his music is about love
mostly and life and i just think and and
on top of all of that he's a businessman
so he's
not just an artist he knows how to make
money out of his art and he's a marketer
so i admire that too lynn who's your
artist
joan baez and bob dylan um i was very
involved when i was felt like i was
starting to wake up in life in my life
in my world
civil rights was going on strong and the
folk songs dylan
were speaking to the things that were
really important to me that i was really
concerned about and so i guess i'd have
to choose the two of them jason any
thoughts oh gosh i am such an outlier in
my generation when i was a a child a
young child a toddler my lullaby was
strangers in the night by frank sinatra
so that was my lullaby
a perfect family
what do you see
carolina one thing that i think of any
household and whatever the
the the setting is whatever i just think
equality should be ideal
anna
i always thought oh you have you have to
have a mom and a dad and you're their
daughter you're their son so like that
even in like preschool they make you
draw your family and everything people
are like draw your family i'd probably
put my friends there they're part of my
family or i would put like if you had a
pet some people think
or believe their pets are like part of
their family so i think
oh your family is just parents and your
blood relatives i think that also has
evolved as we have grown up or changed
my youngest daughter is a nurse lawyer
and two years ago she had a
girl by ivf and seven weeks from now
she's going to have a son and i wonder
what my role should be
uh as the grandfather of this
of these two little children
since my life expectancy isn't so great
i want to have some impact so they'll
remember me thanks
i'm like you harry i'm thinking you know
i really want to be part of my
grandchildren's life i didn't get to
experience it my children didn't get to
experience it i would really like to
give that gift to my to my grandchildren
and i i want to bridge that gap um and
it's kind of hard to do it via text
messages and you know zoom calls
lynn there were five of us in our
nuclear household but i grew up in a
small community in the midwest and the
community was basically my family
everybody i mean even the chief of
police the police knew who we all were
um everybody knew everybody and it was
very very comfortable to me that's
family community is family
something that i grew up with was a
large hispanic household
you know cousins are like brothers and
sisters aunts and uncles are like your
parents you call them compadres
co-parents that was just always staring
me in the face and i just never made
that connection that
that's my family
i tell my neighbors
who
are going to deal with
the pool
service people and the gardeners and
things
the first thing that you say to hispanic
people
is commercial media how is your family
he may not know anything about his
family but his life is his family
and that's the great thing
that's demonstrated day in and day out
in our community
for everyone is that we have a group of
people who are living
as family in a wonderful way
i am an immigrant i am a naturalized
citizen of the us
now but i was born in mexico and i grew
up there
until i was about six and i
my parents brought me here um to the us
and then we moved back and then we moved
here and then we moved back and then we
moved here and now i'm here now i'm
settled um but i think
all those changes adapting to a new
country a new language a new school
system
it's still hard for me even today
my mom
finished elementary school my dad he did
attend middle school but that's where
his education stopped so education has
been a very big aspect of my life where
i have struggled i did do very well in
high school i went straight to college
my world came crashing down but it
brought me here and then i learned oh
this is this is my place this is what i
want to do and now i'm here and
hopefully thriving and not going to fail
again so yeah
the most difficult uh situation that i
had to confront was my husband of 22
years died when i was 44.
and
that was a really young age at which to
lose your life partner your buddy your
best friend your colleague
and
what i gained from that loss was 22
wonderful years with him but also how
community
showed up for me almost out of nowhere
and while i looked out the window and
couldn't believe that life was going on
it was a message that life goes on and
that life is for the living and it was a
great lesson to learn you know change
happens in life and it's scary when
something ends you've heard this before
something else opens doors open and the
possibilities it turns out are endless
that's the good news
so in 1989 i lived in san francisco in
the marina and there was an earthquake
and i lost everything
but the devastation that it makes you
feel that you are so vulnerable because
i was 28
and at that time i thought it was pretty
cool
and all of a sudden it's just this
devastation
and much like lynn said um
it's been over 30 years now since that
happened oh my gosh i'm so gl not glad
it happened but
you know the benefit
there is a benefit to something negative
happening which is
i was able to see that um you know
maybe i needed to think beyond partying
i mean i was working hard and building
my life but
you have more empathy for other people
when something terrible happens to you
i just wanted to add to what jennifer's
saying i was in the bay area
when the earthquake happened it was five
months after my husband died i all we
lost all kinds of stuff
and uh neighbors came over and helped me
move it outside and each piece of broken
anything that i took out i just realized
it was a thing that was another big
lesson for me
i think the most difficult transforming
moment of my life was getting out of a
very
abusive in every single way marriage
planning my exit because
um it was a very difficult situation
having to strategize my exit without
causing any
um hint that i was leaving but
that moment where i was
having to spend
to sign
for an apartment to put my name on the
line knowing that i was going to be the
one that had to
pay the rent and then
having to make all those decisions about
living alone when i had never lived
alone in my life
was both thrilling and empowering and
terrifying all at the same time it was a
very transformative moment because it
gave me the courage to say
i can make decisions and i might make a
bad decision but the decision is mine
and that inspired me to go back to
complete my college degree and then so
many more things came from that one
first moment of making that decision
my my family has a history of cancer
various types of cancer
so i've seen death from a very young age
it motivated me and inspired me to
pursue
a career in health care
i want to be part of the solution
even if i can't come up with a cure i
want to be part of the treatment
because it's also
social
and it's amazing how much they are able
to not only treat a patient but to treat
the family
and that's why i want to be somebody's
nurse and this is why i'm attending pr
in a pre-nursing major at this campus
and i would love to give back to this
community that has given me so much
going to school on lives well lived our
ali members shared some simple and
succinct life lessons they open-minded
i think if your auras aren't in the
water you're drifting pull yourself
together and keep going
what are your core values like harry
mentioned and jason said some wonderful
things about wanting to give back to the
community because there's always going
to be crisis there's always going to be
drama but your core values figure out
what they are
that let them guide the major decisions
in your life and also see you through
the difficulties that are coming
two generations on our campus a first
conversation to close the gap anna said
it best
you see the people roaming uh older
people roaming the hallways and you're
like oh well
maybe maybe if there's a program maybe
there's a little bridge then i can be
like oh hey
i know you're from somewhere

[Music]
i don't think it's lost on this campus
that these two generations have so much
in common when you think that
on this campus
there's a college radio station
[Music]
and a bunch of millennials and gen z
students play classic jazz
as the format on the station
which is
traditionally listened to by more
baby boomers than young folks but they
selected that as as the format and what
a wonderful experience that we have this
campus where we have students
kids of all ages some a little bit older
than the other kids but that we all get
to walk this campus together as students

[Music]
our thanks to cal state university san
bernardino in palm desert the
communications studies department under
dr michael salvador dr eric vogelsen at
csusb an expert on aging and the life
course who advised the students on their
approach to the conversation we'd also
like to thank the ali administration at
the csusb palm desert campus and dr
kevin sweeney and his curriculum
committee for their enthusiastic support
of this important project
i'm laci kendall

English (auto-generated)