University of Colorado Chancellor Phil DiStefano, while speaking at a diversity seminar with CU regents on Wednesday, made comments that may make national headlines.
Sarah Kuta, of Boulder’s Daily Camera newspaper, was there to live-tweet the entire meeting and provided the bombshell quote from DiStefano for the world of social media to see. DiStefano, while sharing a story told to him by an African American member of the athletic department, revealed that some black athletes at CU refer to the Dal Ward Athletic Center as, “The Plantation.”
The comments made by DiStefano are certainly controversial. Upon speaking with someone inside the athletic department, they claimed that they’d never heard that name before from a single player at Colorado. However, unless the Chancellor of the University was lying to the Board of Regents for the sake of proving a point, it’s reasonable to assume that this person within the AD simply hadn’t been privy to those conversations between players before.
As I sit here writing this, I offer no solutions. I don’t have them. Hopefully, over time, we can find them together through conversation and critical thinking as a group. What I do offer here, is a suggestion.
Before you get pissed off at the Chancellor for sharing this story in front of a local media member, before you get pissed at him for sharing it the day before Pac-12 Media Day in Los Angeles, before you get pissed off at the players who use this term and view their life as a student-athlete in this light, just breathe.
Breathe for a brief moment and consider whether or not you see diversity at the University of Colorado as an important issue. Once you, hopefully, arrive at the conclusion that it is, thank one of the most prominent members of your university’s community for having the courage to share this story. Thank the staff member who had the courage to share it with DiStefano.
“It just sticks with me, and I’m thinking, ‘We gotta change something.'” DiStefano said.
Racial tension is not new to the city of Boulder or the university. It was well documented in the ESPN documentary, “The Gospel According to Mac” and has been covered reasonably well in the local press over the years. Racial tension is also, obviously, not restricted to CU and its community. While steps have been taken to work through these tensions on campus, through seminars and an increased focus towards adding diversity to the student body, there is a long road still to be traveled. If anything, that should be the main takeaway from DiStefano’s comments.
But it won’t be, naturally. People will vilify student-athletes for how they view the university and the system within which they operate. People will call them spoiled (or, more likely, much worse) and remind them of all those student loans they chose to take out in order to attend the university, while the athletes are awarded scholarships. Their reaction will be predictably shallow and without the slightest hint of any reasoned, closely considered thinking.
Why will this be the reaction? Because we, as a collective nation of sports fans and people, aren’t willing to be exposed to our own biases, our own privilege, and our own hypocrisy. I am as guilty of these things as anyone else.
Try to be rational. Try to have a conversation. I know it can be hard when there will be the inevitable click-bait published nationwide about these comments, but trust me, it’ll be worth it.
Jake Shapiro and Ryan Koenigsberg contributed to this story
0 Comments (3 conversations)
Its a slippery slope when you start complaining that your sport subsidizes others. They might be referring to traditionally white dominated sports, but the line of reasoning extends to all women athletes.
Agreed Gropple, and I’d feel a ton better about this story if it had been vetted by the Chancellor before he brought it up in this meeting. How is anyone to know if this wasn’t just a kid blowing off steam? Does this he know that football and basketball pay for other sports at almost every university in America? Was he mad about something else? It’s hard to tell here.
And although I agree that this is a subject that needs to be discussed, the Chancellor would have been better served to have discussed it *after* he had come up with a working solution. The fact that he didn’t makes it seem like he was surprised by the problem. That doesn’t make him look good, nor does it make it look like he’s on top of things.
1. Boulder is one of the most hypocritical places I have ever lived. For being such a “liberal” city (and CU a “liberal” university), they sure do have a lot of people who are narrow minded at best and a racist/bigot at worst. FYI – I’m not trying to make any kind of political statement by using the term “liberal” – I’m just saying that I think most people would agree that is how the rest of the state views Boulder/CU and is very much how they view themselves.
2. In addition to it being about race, the other reasons I could see football/basketball players saying something like that has to do with money. With how much money FBS schools are making off of football/basketball (especially those in P5 conferences), there is zero reason that players should not be getting a small cut of the multi-billion dollar industry that these sports have turned into (especially in instances where the university is profiting off of using their likeness i.e. jerseys, video games, ect.).
I know all the people who paid their own way through school roll their eyes every time this comes up and say stuff like “your pay is the scholarship you received”, but what these people do not seem to understand are the time constraints associated with playing college athletics at a high level. Think back to how much time you put into school/studying and how hard it was to manage that by itself (while still making time to have a life, party a little, ect.), let alone if you also worked your way through college.
Now imagine that in addition to all the time/effort/stress associated with getting an education, you had a full time job (instead of the part time jobs that most regular students have, a lot of the time only during the summer) that entailed grueling physical labor and typically required at minimum 40 hours of work a week (and often times far exceeded that). And not only was the job grueling/exhausting and had you working a ton of hours, but it also required that you travel on some weekends with you sometimes leaving on Thursday night and not getting back until sometime on Sunday (leaving you little time to prepare for classes/exams/ect coming up that next week).
I can only speak in regards to the time commitment required of football, but I would imagine this is the reality for the majority of student athletes playing at the highest level. They have time for very little else in their lives other than class (assuming they aren’t one of the guys that just do not care), practice/games/training/ect., and maybe going out in once in awhile. A lot of them would like to get part time jobs, but they simply do not have the time.