Lee Deskins has learned the importance of working at a location where a person can be comfortable with who he or she is.
Now the Multicultural Center’s operation manager, Deskins worked as a civil servant for 12 years and in the Army Reserve for 15 years. In the Reserve, she worked with the military police and psychological intelligence.
“Military to me was an eye-opening experience. You cannot base your loyalty on lots of things, and you must always look out, make sure you are taking care of you,” Deskins said.
“Being a woman in the military, you had to do better than a man doing the same job – and being a gay woman in the military, I just knew I had to do a better job,” she said.
Deskins said she encountered discrimination in the Army Reserve because of her sexual orientation.
“There were people that harassed me and held it against me, and I’m also one of those kind of people that I just kind of worked around it and went on,” Deskins said. “It was known that I was gay, but no one ever wanted to ask the question because then you are supposed to take action.
“I kept my personal life and business life separate, which is a very difficult thing to do – to draw that line and keep that line – and I don’t suggest people do it. Work someplace where you are comfortable with whom and what you are – and in the military that did not exist,” Deskins said.
While working in civil service, Deskins was in charge of coordinating hotel rooms, food and transportation. Deskins said she feels that she does the same thing in a different capacity at OSU.
“I have a realm of different responsibilities. The way I see my job is that I make things happen on the floor – furniture moving, art needing to go up, classrooms to be scheduled, managing of the students, associates, ordering furniture – whatever we need for the floor to work smoothly and progress,” Deskins said.
During Operation Desert Storm, Deskins lived in Germany for six months and helped to run railroad security and ship out supplies to Saudi Arabia. Some of her responsibilities included making sure things were taken care of and people were paid, running the arms room, and seeing that vehicles requested were available, Deskins said.
Deskins said her job with the military took her all over the United States and Europe and she learned to work with a diverse group of people.
“You never knew where you were going to be, who you were going to work with, where their background was, whether it would be someone from this country, or another country, or different cultures or language,” Deskins said. “This made you adapt to a lot of different changes,”
The military offered workers an early discharge, and Deskins chose to leave.
“We did not see eye-to-eye on many of the beliefs about life,” she said.
Deskins has been at OSU for almost two years now, and she said she has found it easy to get to know people from other departments.
The Multicultural Center is a newly formed department, and Deskins said it has been successful so far.
“We are doing quite well because we are a mix between the faculty side and the student services side,” she said.
The Multicultural Center is located on the fourth floor of the Ohio Union, and Deskins said the office already needs more space.
“In some ways Ohio State is different because you work with students,” Deskins said. “I think that here, working at a student level is the time for students to ask questions, make mistakes and try out their theories because you cannot really do that usually once you are out in the work force full-time. There are not many bosses that let you ask those questions.”
Carol Kane, administrative assistant to the executive and associate directors at the Multicultural Center, said Deskins is skilled at what she does.
“You need someone like Lee wherever you go – someone to keep the work-study students in line and walks that middle line between the students and the directors,” Kane said.
Deskins is good at pulling information from different places and managing to make things flow smoothly, said Amy Friedrich, a student associate in the history department and Deskins’ partner.
Deskins said she has been busy at OSU because the new Multicultural Center has rearranged the floor and added new staff members and offices, and it is building a library.
“We are trying to have displays to educate about the different, diverse types of arts that are out there, and we want to be able to set up art from all the different cultures and gender, and identities that we have on our floor,” Deskins said.
The offices represented at the Multicultural Center include student services for African Americans; American Indians; Asians; Hispanics; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students; and women as well as the Rape Education and Prevention Program and the Men’s Initiative.
