Matty Martinez-Mandell: 'Anyone Can Be a Peace-Builder"'

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This was made by humans. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to Austin Community Conversations, a podcast featuring discussions about the interests, backgrounds and projects animating the members of a vibrant college community. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts and opinions of Austin Community College. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. The Austin Community College Community college name and all forms and abbreviations are the property of its owner and its use does not imply endorsement of or opposition to any specific organization, product or service. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Welcome to the Conversation. I'm Tonio Ramirez. If you were to run a web search for hard conversations, tough talk, or some similar construction, you'd be met instantly with a litany of books, think piece articles, and video lectures offering guidance in addressing conflict. The prevalence of these materials is hardly surprising. Many people report struggling with direct, productive, non combative conflict resolution. This can give rise to interesting problems in the context of a higher learning environment where the exchange of ideas and perspectives, an endeavor that is predicated on the value of productive disagreement, is foundational to the purpose of the institution. My guest today is Maddie Martinez Mandel, who serves as coordinator for the Peace and Conflict Study center at Austin Community College. We discuss the role that the center plays in promoting peaceful resolutions to conflicts of all kinds, the ways in which Maddie's distinctive academic background, their work, and a few upcoming center events that merit your consideration. Let's dive in. [00:02:14] Speaker C: Maddie Martinez Mandel, welcome to the conversation. [00:02:17] Speaker D: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. [00:02:19] Speaker C: You currently serve as the coordinator for the Peace and Conflict Studies center at acc, and certainly one of the things I'd like to discuss is what the Center's role is, the myriad events that it's involved with, and your particular role there. I'd like to begin, though, by just talking a little bit about your background because it seems uniquely well aligned to this work, at least in terms of your academic background, and it just seems kind of unique outside of that. So you have degrees? Bachelor's and master's degrees in conflict analysis and resolution with a concentration in peace, tech and Modern Social dynamics. [00:03:03] Speaker D: Yes. [00:03:03] Speaker C: Okay, so full disclosure, I'm reading that because it's a bit of a mouthful and I couldn't commit it all to memory. [00:03:08] Speaker D: It absolutely is. Yeah. But it was basically, for as long as I can remember, really being engaged in, like, community organizing work and just trying to, like, address issues in my community has always been something incredibly important to me. So as I was getting closer to trying to decide where I wanted to go to school, what I wanted to major in, and that whole thing, there was something really apparent to me where I didn't want to go down like that. The sort of typical path of like, either social work or political science or international relations. I really wanted to find a degree program that was specifically suited to doing the work and understanding it at a deep humanistic level. And I'm gonna be honest, I don't even remember how I came across the initial program, the Conflict Analysis and Resolution, but somehow I did. And I ended up going to George Mason University, where they're one of, like, the oldest, most established programs in the nation, for it. And it was basically ever since then I hit the ground running with it and. Yeah, so that's sort of how I got started with it. [00:04:25] Speaker C: Okay. [00:04:25] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:04:26] Speaker C: Because when I think about an interest in organizing, you're right. The traditional avenues that immediately come to mind would be a social work degree, maybe political science. So it sounds like this was a more applied program. [00:04:40] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely. So. And that's something that I really enjoyed about the program and really glad that we kind of keep that same approach here at acc. Is it being truly a multidisciplinary approach where, you know, I would take one class and it would be an organizational psychology professor, and then I would take another and it'd be like communications, another historian, so on and so forth, where it really felt like instead of it being a specific field of study, it was, we are going to teach you how to understand conflicts and how to do something about it. [00:05:17] Speaker C: Okay. A component of the title I had to look up, and I gather this is because a lot of folks don't know about this field, but peacetech. [00:05:26] Speaker D: Yes. [00:05:26] Speaker C: This is really fascinating, the little bit that I was able to read about this, and I wonder if you might explain what that is. [00:05:33] Speaker D: Yeah. Peace Tech is sort of, as the name would suggest, it's the idea of applying technology in order to create peace, or more sustainable peace. The way that I got involved with that is sort of, you know, I was going through the program traditionally and, you know, there. There's a lot of emphasis on that sort of on the ground, community organizing, being at the community hall, being at community centers, etc. But growing up, where I really saw the early usage of social media by activists and, you know, seeing the Arab Spring and all these different social movements in the United States as well, I kind of noticed that there was this sort of big thing that was emerging, and it didn't feel like a lot of folks outside of the field were really doing anything about it. So I end up actually interning then at. It's unfortunately no longer existing anymore, but the peace tech lab, where they sort of spun out of the U. S. Institute of Peace, which is sort of the main way that we do peace building in the United States, got involved with that work in undergrad and I sort of instantly flipped a switch in my head and I was like, this is exactly the way that I want to be approaching this work. And I think this is a. Probably the way that we need to be approaching the work as a field. [00:07:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I wonder if I'm hoping I haven't framed this question in a coherent way. The notion of peace building strikes me as a really interesting way of thinking about peace in the world because it suggests that it's something that's constructed, putting something in place that wasn't there before. And that seems different from thinking about peace as the result of taking something away. So I think, you know, that's. It's natural for a lot of people to think that peace is what emerges when you make war or conflict go away. And it sounds like a peace building approach might be. Might have something rather different in mind. [00:07:50] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And that's sort of the basis of the field, and it's now sort of become a more popular notion within other social sciences. But the founder of the field, Johan Gaotong, one of his first real findings was this idea of positive and negative peace. So negative peace is exactly what you're describing. It's the absence of direct violence. So, you know, if we make sure that no one has guns, no one's dropping bombs, then everything's great. And that's sort of the approach that a lot of other fields were taking at the time. Especially, you know, this was happening in the immediate aftermath of World War II. And people said, well, we had this great world war, we did it a second time. Surely there's peace in our time. Surely there's no war happening between the great powers. Everything's great. And obviously we now know almost a century later that's probably not the case. So positive peace, on the other hand, and really the idea of peace building is the idea of not only addressing the direct violence, but getting to the deeper roots of the conflict. So whether that be basic needs or sort of generational trauma or all these other more complex factors, it's only by addressing and transforming those underlying causes can we have true positive peace. Because otherwise we're just going to be constantly playing a game of catch up. [00:09:16] Speaker C: Yeah. So there's, I mean, and the result is you end up, I gather, creating possibilities that don't automatically emerge simply from the absence of conflict. [00:09:28] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. [00:09:29] Speaker C: That's really, really interesting. So the idea of carrying this work out in the context of a community college, I wonder if there's an interesting story behind that too, because the skills that you acquire in a program like this, the work that you do at the Peace Tech Lab, for example, that could be put to use in any number of ways, I'd imagine. So I wonder, how did that end up leading you here? [00:09:57] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, if you asked me like 10 years ago if I would imagine I would be here, I would say, yeah, that makes sense. If you asked me five years ago, I would say, absolutely not. That doesn't. Like how, how did that happen? [00:10:08] Speaker C: Funny. [00:10:09] Speaker D: Yeah. But basically going back to that first story of just like finding out about the program and, you know, that first day of being in like a conflict 101 course and just these basic introductory lessons just clicked and made so much sense to me. And I had this thought of, I would have not known about this unless I, you know, however way I found out about the program, everyone needs to know about this. What is the most. What is the most effective way I can make this accessible to other people? And with community colleges and our entire mission focused on this idea of accessibility and directly engaging, engaging with the community, it was sort of a natural fit where, like, you know, if you asked me 10 years ago, this is actually the dream job. This is being in the community, creating accessible peace education, introducing this concept where for a lot of people, all of this is brand new and sort of really transformative. [00:11:08] Speaker C: Yeah. And I would imagine a moment ago you talked about as an example of creating positive peace, that some of the things that that might involve would be improving access to basic needs and things like that. So that, that does seem to align very well with what a place like ACC does, because in addition to directly addressing things like basic needs via food pantries or what have you, for many students who come here, the underlying point they're being here is to. Is to be empowered to have, you know, sustainable access to basic needs and economic opportunities, you know, for themselves. [00:11:47] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And it's not only that, but it's also the fact that, you know, as much as we think about peace building in this sort of institutionalized sense, you know, it's these big organizations, it's diplomats, it's all of these things. The reality is anyone can be a peacebuilder in their community. We all experience conflicts literally every single day. And it's not just about, you Know, stopping the wars. Like, when we talk about this idea of positive peace, it's this grassroots approach of integrating peace principles and practices in our everyday life. So, you know, it's fantastic that we have folks graduating with, like, an associate's in peace and conflict studies. But it's also fantastic that, you know, our nursing students have skills to better engage with their patients, or an engineering or sustainability studies major, you know, can think about how peace principles and sustainability might impact the way that they do their job. It's that ability to access such a wide range of folks who are really just dedicated to supporting themselves and their community that is really, really attractive and incredibly meaningful for me. [00:13:00] Speaker C: Yeah. So that, that serves maybe as a useful segue, Peace and conflict studies, or if, you know, if the listener will forgive me, PACS for the acronym here. PACS is present at Austin Community College in two closely connected but separate ways. So there is an academic program, the peace and conflict studies program, and that comprises courses and an associate's degree, as you just mentioned. So students have the opportunity to interact with peace and conflict studies as a field of study. But then there's the peace and conflict studies center. And the two are closely wrapped up in one another, but they're kind of distinct entities. Maybe just talking about the academic program first. For somebody who wants to know what peace and conflict studies is as a field of study, I gather it's not unique to acc. There are peace and conflict studies programs at other institutions around the country. But if I were to explore PACs as a. As an academic endeavor, what would that look like? [00:14:06] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. So generally, like I had mentioned, it's a really multidisciplinary field where the goal of all of it is really simple. It's at least simple to say it's. You were analyzing conflicts, trying to understand the root causes and consequences of violence, and figuring out what we can do about it. So for a student that might be, you know, taking a psychology class and understanding the role that emotions might play when you're having a disagreement or an argument, that might be social work classes or history classes to teach you about the, you know, the history of conflicts and why certain things appear the way that they do now. So there's a lot of different ways that students can approach it, and I think that's fantastic because it gives folks the ability to have that flexibility and decision making power of what specifically do they want to address, how do they want to address it, and how they want to ultimately support their community. [00:15:16] Speaker C: Okay, excellent. So in this way, it's an interdisciplinary field. And in that sense, it might be similar to something like women's studies, global studies, cultural studies, where there are many different disciplines and methodologies that are brought to bear on a common theme or set of goals. What courses does or has PACs offered in the past? [00:15:41] Speaker D: Yeah, so I had mentioned a few of them. One is, and this was previously taught by the director of the center, Dr. Srin Khosrapur, is the Psychology of Peace, where it's an introductory psychology course with an emphasis in sort of a lens through peace studies. So that's one. A class that I personally love working with the students of is. I forget the course number, but it's internships in peace building, again, within the psychology department. But this idea of doing that direct community engagement work, being placed in an internship and building, doing the work, building peace. [00:16:24] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, that sounds really exciting. And I can imagine that the students who are attracted to that work would be a lot of fun to work with because it sounds like they'd be kindred spirits. [00:16:33] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. [00:16:34] Speaker C: Absolutely. Okay. So then we also had the PACS center. [00:16:38] Speaker D: Yes. [00:16:39] Speaker C: So students have opportunities to interact with the PAC center, even if they never take a course in peace and conflicts studies. And we have a number of centers at acc. These include the Asian American Pacific Islander center, the center for Government and Civic Education, a number of others for students who might be new to the campus. What is a center and what role does it play here? [00:17:04] Speaker D: Yeah, that's a great question. And the PAC center is sort of uniquely positioned even within the other centers where we fall within academic studies instead of within purpose and belonging. Generally, from my understanding at least, the purpose of the centers at ACC is to bridge that gap between academic studies, our students, and the community. It's finding ways to address the unique needs both of our students and of the community, and creating programming, both educational, to address these things. [00:17:44] Speaker C: Okay, very good. So then I guess that gives us a good opportunity to talk about some of that programming. The PAC center is involved in broad range of programming. There's a really cool film series you guys have been involved in. You have ongoing workshops and trainings that you offer. Maybe to just pick an example, there's an ongoing series called the Restorative Listening Circle. What might I expect that to involve if I were to come out of curiosity? [00:18:14] Speaker D: Yeah, so that's a fantastic program series that we do with the art galleries here at acc. Tag. Basically, whenever there's a new exhibit that TAG hosts, we partner with them. And the first part is typically just a basic gallery tour introducing Students and members of the community to the art, talking through, how students connect with it, what it means to them. And then we follow that up with a restorative listening circle. This is basically we all get in a circle and using various restorative justice practices, go around and on equal footing, talk about what matters the most to us and being able to do so in a way that is where you're not interrupted, where you're really given the opportunity to speak and hear from folks that are within your community and who you directly engage with. So that's basically the event. And as broad as that might sound, are surface level as that might sound, it really is one of those things where when you're doing it, when you're in the circle, when you're doing the restorative justice practices, it sort of clicks and the magic happens. [00:19:38] Speaker C: Sure. And I imagine that by design, the. The actual feel of the event can vary quite a bit depending on who's there, what they bring to the conversation that evening, or what have you. It's a very live kind of. [00:19:52] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And that makes it fun as the facilitator to, you know, I never know what the next person is going to say. Yeah. So sometimes, you know, I can go a little bit on autopilot. Just everything's going swimmingly. It's kind of going as I predicted, but that's very rare. More often, it's someone, you know, I might design a prompt or a question in a specific way, and then the person who goes first immediately reconceptualizes what the question is and goes down a new rabbit hole and the next person does the next thing. And. And that goes on and on. Where. Then it comes back to me, and then I have to find a way to tie it all together to make sure everyone feels heard and that their thoughts and concerns are reflected and understood. So it's really fun and really unique where even if, you know, I hosted the same circle 10 times, we'd probably get 10 very different circles each time. [00:20:46] Speaker C: Yeah. I want to just take a moment and call out and if there are any instructional faculty who might be listening to this conversation, that something was snuck into your response that I think exemplifies your training and is also probably a useful tool for instructional faculty like myself. So you describe people as reconceptualizing a question that you asked. That's a beautiful turn of phrase. It's a nice euphemism because I think that a lot of faculty probably have experience with something like this, but we usually receive it as asking a completely unrelated tangential question that is derailing what I'm trying to do here. So I think maybe this, this does kind of exemplify the approach that you're, that you're modeling here. What could be received as conflicting with being at odds with what I, the facilitator I'm trying to do here is in fact welcomed and incorporated into and informs the conversation that you end up having. [00:21:48] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. That's something within the field of peace studies. We try to teach folks really early on is this idea of, you know, there is definitely a space for this sort of banking education. This model of I am the instructor and I'm going to impart or put wisdom into you and you are a cup and you will accept it and you'll be grateful of it. And you know, there are certainly times where that might be necessary. But in peace studies, on the other hand, we take the approach of learning is a two way street. It is something that is constantly negotiated and altered. And as a facilitator, it's not my purpose to guide it in a specific way or have a specific opinion. It's to meet the needs of the folks that I'm facilitating with. [00:22:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:22:37] Speaker D: So for example, and this was one of the first circles I ever facilitated. So this really taught me the lesson where it was just with a group of student, an undergraduate student group, it was a listening circle and it was, the theme was focused on forgiveness. So we had a very specific way that we thought the circle was going to go and we open it up. The first question was pretty lighthearted, just to kind of set the tone. And the first person who goes talks about how their friend had recently passed and how frustrated they are. And in that moment, as a facilitator, you could potentially intervene and say, well, that's not actually what we mean here. But doing so sort of neglects the need. The point of restorative justice practices, the point of peace studies as a field is to get to those deeper conflicts, to get to those deeper meanings, those deeper issues that people are experiencing and address those. As much as I have studied in this field and I have worked in this field, the people who understand the conflicts that they're experiencing the best are the people who are experiencing it. It doesn't matter that, you know, I have a graduate degree and I could analyze it in 12 different ways. The reality is the conflict that a person experience is experiencing is exactly what they're experiencing. [00:24:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Would it be appropriate to say then that, that what students are learning or Participating in, when they, when they work with you and they work with the center obviously addresses interpersonal conflict, but that it can also address intrapersonal conflict conflicts that I feel within myself, let's say, about my own emotions or experiences. So does it, did you find that people, when they reflect back to you on their experiences in restorative listening circles, it seemed like they're doing that kind of work too. [00:24:50] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And that's sort of the purpose of the work. As much as we might get in conflicts with other people, the reality is the people that we are, the person that we are in conflict with the most is typically ourselves. Yeah, we're constantly negotiating with ourselves of, you know, do I get a coffee? Coffee or a latte? Do I, you know, fulfill my New Year's resolution and go to the gym like I promised I would, or am I going to stay on the couch? [00:25:15] Speaker C: I've already experienced that conflict this year. [00:25:17] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it's. As much as we want to teach folks how to build better relationships with their friends, with members of their community, if you don't have a good relationship with yourself, if you don't have the ability to be introspective, to be reflective, to understand why you're frustrated in a specific situation, then it doesn't work. [00:25:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. These skills, I often hear faculty and staff, everybody who works with students at acc, expressing an interest in cultivating these kinds of skills. I think that, you know, being able to welcome students where they're at and to develop a two way kind of learning is something that just about any instructional faculty member will want to cultivate. Are your events open to faculty and staff? Do you find that they come? [00:26:08] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. So essentially all of our events are open to anyone who wants to attend, whether you're student, faculty, staff, member of the community. There are times where we have specific events for the ACC community exclusively, but always if you're a faculty, staff or a student at acc, you're always welcome at our events. [00:26:29] Speaker C: Okay, that's good to know. This past fall, the PAC center held an event. It was billed as part one of a series, I guess, called how to have Difficult Conversations. And if I understand correctly, the second episode of this, if you will, is going to be coming up rather shortly here. I wonder if you could talk about that series. [00:26:51] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. So the Difficult Conversation series really comes from last year we did a needs assessment of our community where we really spent time talking to folks and understanding what are the issues the ACC community is facing the most. And overwhelmingly what we saw was that folks not only desire the skills to have these sort of difficult conversations, it's also the confidence to do so. So the point of the series is to address both of those things. It's to not only present folks with the skills to have difficult conversations, but also being able to practice them in a safe, facilitated environment where you can gain that confidence so that when you eventually have that conversation with your roommate or your romantic partner or whoever, that you have that experience of saying, you know, I've had this conversation before, I've practiced this. It's not so scary. I can do this. So part one was really laying that groundwork of getting folks comfortable with difficult conversations and getting comfortable listening when you're in those settings where part two, which we will be hosting on January 22nd at the Truth Community Healing and Rec and Transformation center, that's going to be the next step is understanding what a difficult conversation is actually about. What are those underlying issues? How can I both identify them for myself and then communicate that to someone so that you know, as the. The title says of the event, how to Be Heard. [00:28:31] Speaker C: Yeah, okay, that sounds really exciting. If I may assume the perspective, let's say, of a hypothetical person who hears this and says, wait, so I'm going to go of my own free will and time to participate in hard conversations. That sounds scary. What's this actually going to look like in practice? [00:28:53] Speaker D: Yeah, so it's not that scary, I promise. But basically what we'll be doing is, as always, coffee, snacks, great way to get folks in. But then we'll do just basic introduction of what a difficult conversation is and then introducing them to specific peace and conflict studies skills. And then in safe, controlled, facilitated space, get to work and practice it with things that aren't nearly as high of stakes. So for example, at our last one, even though it was focused on being heard or how to listen, and while there are a lot of difficult things that we could focus on, instead it was what do you like about Thanksgiving? Like how. How can I listen to someone when you know they have a different favorite football team than me? It's basically the skills you use are always the same, but it's taking it down a notch where in these less activating topics so folks will have the opportunity to practice those skills. And then ultimately what we're going to be doing with this next one is hosting a listening circle as well, where like with all other listening skills or listening circles, you'll be provided the opportunity to speak without being interrupted, really be heard by everyone and be on equal Footing with everyone in the community and everyone in the circle. [00:30:26] Speaker C: Okay. [00:30:27] Speaker D: So that. [00:30:27] Speaker C: That really helps to give some kind of context because, you know, again, I'm assuming the perspective of somebody who knows nothing about this. And I can imagine being really worried that, like, wait, so are they just gonna, like, pitch some, like, very contentious, you know, culture war topic at me or we're gonna talk about foreign policy or something, you know, so this isn't. This isn't like, I sit in the circle and Mattie says, all right, capital punishment. What do you think? [00:30:50] Speaker D: No. [00:30:51] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. No, that actually sounds like a really fun event. And I can imagine that getting a chance to talk about something like Thanksgiving ends up being fun and enlightening. [00:31:03] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. And that's sort of what we were noticing with this most recent event was as much as difficult conversations can be, the scary thing, this anxiety inducing, I don't want to deal with it. The reality is we all actually have to have these difficult conversations. And talking to a lot of our students, they want to have these conversations. They just don't know how to do it. So the point of the series is to provide them with the skills and that sort of lived experience of you can have these conversations and they're not so bad to get them comfortable to do it within their own life. [00:31:37] Speaker C: That sounds really rewarding for our students. But I'd also like to emphasize that it's potentially really rewarding for faculty and staff too, because the phrase we need to have difficult conversations has almost become an empty cliche at this point in academia. And I worry sometimes that it's become a cliche precisely because it's easier to talk about doing it than to actually do it. [00:32:05] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. Where, you know, at acc, in any professional environment, that's something you never really want to do. It's difficult to go up to the person you sit next to in an office all day, or go up to your boss and say, hey, we need to talk about this difficult thing. Right? That's really scary. And oftentimes we want to do anything we can to avoid that. So for faculty and staff, this is the same opportunity of practicing those skills, and in this context, practicing it with other folks at acc, other employees, other faculty member, where, you know, you can see and build those relationships so that it's not so bad when you might have to actually have these conversations. [00:32:50] Speaker C: That component of building relationships strikes me as one that it's wise not to lose sight of that. So surely the skills of being able to engage in difficult conversations, the value of that can be seen as helping me to engage in something that would otherwise be painful. But there's another side of this, too, is that there's a kind of relationship building, a kind of closeness, a kind of understanding that we can have of one another that actually makes those difficult conversations desirable in a way. If I can get over the hump of being afraid of them, it wouldn't be something that I'm diving into because I need to get it over with, but rather something that I might look forward to in a kind of paradoxical way. [00:33:40] Speaker D: Yeah. And that's really funny because the sort of original authors and practitioners of Difficult Conversations, the way that they phrased it, is how to talk about what actually matters. Yeah. It's this idea of, well, difficult conversations because of the name. You know, it's this sort of scary notion, but in reality, it's talking about the things that don't just go in one year and out the other. It's not just the sort of, how's the weather? You know, how was your weekend? Stuff like that. It's genuinely being able to get to this deeper level of what are my concerns? What is my relationship with you? And being able to communicate that in an effective, healthy, productive way really provides folks with the opportunity to build those connections, to go beyond that surface level of just asking someone how their weekend is, but building the conditions necessary to have a relationship. [00:34:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, that sounds like a set of skills that has obvious value, but I think more than that, a really important and kind of fundamental place in the general curriculum that we want to have for. For educating our students as persons. In addition to the the Difficult Conversations series, are there any other events coming up this semester that students might look forward to? [00:35:06] Speaker D: Yes. So the center, we're planning on hosting four events this month or four events this year. [00:35:11] Speaker C: Okay. [00:35:12] Speaker D: With one each month. So we'll be hosting the Difficult Conversations Part 2 in January at Highland. Then we'll be hosting an event in February, March and April. [00:35:23] Speaker C: Okay, outstanding. And for folks who are looking for further information on that, what's the best URL? [00:35:29] Speaker D: Yes. And shout out to our fantastic team. We have a great URL. It's AustinCC.edu. peace. [00:35:37] Speaker C: Peace. [00:35:38] Speaker D: Really easy. [00:35:38] Speaker C: Yeah, really easy. [00:35:40] Speaker D: Just exactly in the name. [00:35:41] Speaker C: It's hard to forget that one. Okay, cool. Well, Matty, thank you so much for your time. I do appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing how these events play out this semester. [00:35:49] Speaker D: Thank you so much. Sa.