Woman of Steel
How a CMU professor almost won the 8th Congressional Seat
Susan Grettenberger is nothing short of a real life Wonder Woman, flying under the radar at Central Michigan University for the last 12 years.
As the Social Work Program Director, Grettenberger has made it her mission to fight for the underdog – the systematically oppressed and the disenfranchised.
Going from social worker to professor to running for the 8th Congressional District, and losing at the August primary, Grettenberger managed to take time out of her busy schedule to talk with Central Michigan Life about her life, her work and her potential future in politics.
You started here in 2002 and became the Program Director in 2006 – how did that come about?
Well it’s an elected position in the program. I started out here as the field director and internship coordinator. The person who was the program director didn’t continue and I was one of the faculty who was interested in (becoming program director).
You said before that you have your master's degree in social work from MSU. What was it that drew you to the field in the first place?
I started out as a psych major, and that was before there were many bachelor programs in social work, so I didn’t really know about social work. I started out in psychology – and psychology is a wonderful field – but part of what drew me to social work was the social justice part of it.
Social workers, for the most part, work with people that are on the edges: people that are marginalized, people that are in crisis – the populations that get hurt the most in our society are the ones that social workers work with.
Much of your work, as noted on your faculty webpage, deals with working with Latino individuals – is there a reason why you focused on that minority group in particular?
[laughs] My family moved to Argentina when I was three! We lived down there until I was eight. I started school in Argentina in a bilingual academy and my parents made us speak Spanish when we came back. Even though it’s not my ethnic background, when you live in a country from when you’re three years old, that’s what you grow up knowing. That was part of my culture, was Latino culture.
You specialize in helping victims of child welfare, domestic violence and substance abuse. Why focus on such a broad spectrum of issues?
I very, very quickly figured out that many people who are receiving (social work) that substance abuse is everywhere. And if I didn’t know about substance abuse I wasn’t going to be very effective working with people. So I went back (to school) and studied more about that and got my certificate in substance abuse and worked for a while as a therapist and a clinical supervisor – both in Chicago and here, in Michigan.
You also worked with HIV/AIDS patients for a number of years, going so far as to also specialize in the areas of HIV/AIDS. What caused you to want to devote so much of your time to that specific issue?
I was in Chicago in the '80s, when the HIV epidemic started to hit there. There are a lot of big cities that have a gay men’s chorus, as does Chicago, and I remember sitting in a fund raiser for them and looking around the room, at a point in time where there were no medicines to keep people from dying, thinking: “All these men are here, these really cool guys – some number of them aren’t going to be here in another year or two." And I was just thinking that I had to do something and make a difference.
When (HIV) first started, it’s like Ebola is now. People were terrified! I’ve heard stories about nurses who would not go in a room (of an HIV patient) they would put stuff at the door because they were afraid they’d catch HIV.
So it was a group of people, specifically gay men – a group that is already out there, judged and stigmatized – and now there was a disease that made a lot of people afraid of them. And it’s like – I need to do something to make a difference.
And what was that “something” that you did?
I volunteered! When I finished my Ph.D., I had a chance to work with the state in HIV, I volunteered and I helped where I could.
So would you cite your background and your interest in social justice as the driving force that pushed you into wanting to run for the 8th Congressional District seat and break into politics?
That was a lot of it, yes.
But what was the driving force?
There are a lot of people being hurt by the policies that are in place right now. I have, for several years, been thinking that those of us who are in positions like mine – the kind of education, the kind of privilege, and to some extent the kind of status and connections that I have – if people like me don’t get involved, we’re not going to leave (millennials) a world worth living in. Women won’t have rights, people of color won’t be able to vote, African-Americans and poor people won’t be able to vote, the environment will be destroyed – there are a lot of things going on right now that will hurt a lot of people.
Although you lost in the August primary, do you ever see yourself running again?
I’m really not sure. But I will do something. Because the goals that I have, the reasons that I have for running, those aren’t going to go away. I like teaching! I wasn’t like “I hate my job and I’ve always wanted to be an elected official since I was five,” I was more like “how can I do what I want to do what I want to do – well congress would be one way to do it.”
With the November election coming up, as someone who has been on both sides of the voter ballot, what do you think is the most crucial thing that students at CMU should know?
Next week’s election matters. On Nov. 4, you need to vote. And if you’re registered to vote and you can’t, vote absentee! Figure out a way to get home to vote in the morning and then get back up here for your classes – or take off after your classes and vote before the polls close at 8 p.m. This election matters.
Every election matters. Your vote matters. It’s kind of like cheering in a football game. You can feel like your voice doesn’t matter, but if you and 10 friends sit together and yell loud enough and then somebody else comes with their ten friends, together, you make a lot more noise.And eventually, you get heard.
