Linda Wlazlowski, Class of 1974
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Posted Date
2024
Keywords
Undergraduate, Class of 1974
Recommended Citation
Wlazlowski, Linda, "Linda Wlazlowski, Class of 1974" (2024). The Memory Project. 2.
https://scholarship.shu.edu/memoryproject/2
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Transcript:
Good morning fellow pirates. I am just going through taking pictures today and reliving my time 50 years ago when I graduated from Seton Hall University. my time at Seton Hall was just memorable, is what I can say. I was the first female accounting graduate. I graduated in December of 1973, and there was only one other gal that was in my class.
It was special. but I will tell you, it was also very, very memorable. the professors were incredible, open door policy, small classes. But what Seton Hall did is really get me ready for life. I was going to be an accountant, and there were not very many of us back in the early 70s. Seton Hall made me comfortable with dealing with men.
They became my friends, not necessarily my lovers, and it just it it just everything really worked for me with with the experience at Seton Hall. But a couple of memories. When I first arrived, we didn’t have a women’s dorm, so I had to rent a house with eight other girls down across from the VA hospital.
We needed to walk there because we didn’t have cars then. Well, we had cars, you know, it wasn’t, I’m not that old, but we couldn’t afford cars, to be very honest. So we walked. Having a night class was difficult. As you can imagine, walking down or going by that VA hospital. But for some reason, we never really felt threatened.
We usually walked in a group and it was great. We did a strike at one point for women’s dorm, but there was one in progress and I remember my parents taking a look at opening the Star-Ledger one morning on a Sunday and see my face, my face with a picket sign about the need for women’s dorms the following year.
So, needless to say, women’s dorms opened. They opened it and they were not fully constructed, so we had to be four in a room. We had to change rooms on a regular basis as they completed the dorm. But it was a wonderful experience and it was so nice to have the dorm. When I went to Bayley Hall, which is where the business school was then we didn’t have a female bathroom, okay, for students.
So I went to the dean and said, okay, I’m just going to use the men’s room because I’m not going to walk over to the library with ten minutes between classes, and I will just take a good look on my way in on to the stall you know, at the stall, while I go to my stall.
Needless to say, they did convert one of the bathrooms to a female bathroom. We had a pub. Okay, that was a really fun experience because the drinking age was 18. The pub I think is now Starbucks, so I guess a little bit healthier. So life here was just phenomenal. It was much more of a commuting school than it is today.
I mean, I’m looking at the number of dorms, but I will tell you the experience. And, one of the things that, the dean of business, who is John Dean at the point arranged for me to have an internship with the Internal Revenue Service. So I actually became a field agent, with the Internal Revenue Service, with all the training in the summers.
Working at the Internal Revenue Service during my time here. And so when I graduated, it was, you know, I had already accomplished so much the internships and the experiential learning here was incredible. That actually changed my my whole trajectory of my career. I was a tax accountant. And when one of the divorce attorneys heard that I had the experience of the Internal Revenue Service, they asked me to become involved in a case.
So in 1984, I will tell you that we just really slammed somebody. It was a, nursery, the guy had a second set of books, which we carried in a, a copier in the middle of the night. We, took a copy of the records from that. We saw how much money we he made, in my experience at the IRS allowed us to find realized that he had other assets.
So doing some asset searches, like I would do at the IRS. Basically, we found a second home that we found a mistress, we found a daughter that was 18 that he’s been supporting. So the guys we had a woman attorney, a woman, we were representing, and I was obviously a woman, the gentleman or the attorneys across from us called this the Three Musketeers.
After several days and trials, I will tell you, our client prevailed. And that was the start of forensic accounting for me. Now, forensic accounting was not anything that was popular at that time but I became a forensic accountant and did that up until nine years ago, just in the divorce area. So Seton Hall’s experience has allowed me to bloom as a person.
Okay. It has allowed me to continue my spirituality, and doing business with ethics and just to grow as a person and have a fabulous career. So I thank all of you who are involved with my career development. I encourage all the students to just take advantage of everything that Seton Hall has to give. And for my fellow Pirates who graduated with me, I ask you to look at contributing okay, to the growth of Seton Hall University.
Thank you.