President Joe Biden signed a measure Thursday that formally recognizes Juneteenth as a national holiday. Juneteenth takes place annually on June 19, celebrated by the African American community. Although the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by former President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, it was on this day in 1865 that the last enslaved African Americans in […]

It was a battle of two home teams on Friday night as Real Salt Lake faced the Vancouver Whitecaps at Rio Tinto Stadium. Vancouver is currently playing their 2021 matches in Utah due to the COVID-19 restrictions put in place by Canada. Instead of trying to work their way around those protocols, Vancouver will call Utah home for the time being. 

While Real secured their first victory since May 1, there are several key factors which affected the outcome of the match, and in all honesty, Real got incredibly lucky as they scored two goals in stoppage time, walking away with a 3-1 victory. 

1. Real Created Chances, Failed to Convert Early, But Struck Gold Late

By the end of the first half, Real had six shots, four of which were on goal to Vancouver’s two, only one of which was on frame. While the midfield was doing a fantastic job of feeding the forwards down the sides and on several through balls, the forwards struggled to put the ball in the back of the net. 

To begin, Anderson Julio missed a breakaway in the 6th minute that easily should’ve been finished as it was a two-on-one with the goalkeeper but came up empty. While Vancouver’s goalkeeper Maxime Crépeau did make a great save, Julio had the entire net in addition to an open teammate to his left, but went for the bottom right corner which Crépeau gobbled up.

In the 18th minute, Rubio Rubin ran down the side on a through ball and sent a cross to Julio but it was too far behind him. Rubin then had a wide open shot but put it right in the keeper’s chest, squandering a great opportunity.

As time continued into the 21st minute, another cross was sent into the box from Rubin to Julio but it was challenged inside the six and cleared by the defense. 

But finally, in the 43rd, Real put one away on a cross delivered from the left side, flicked on by Albert Rusnák right to the feet of Damir Kreilach, just outside the 18’, which he fired low into the back of the net. Courtesy of the goal, Real would take a 1-0 lead into the locker room.

For the majority of the second half, Real was unable to create any dangerous opportunities. While still dominating in possession their chances were few and far between. One of the better chances came in the 86th as a cross was delivered from inside the 6’ but was right at the defenders feet and easily cleared after what should have been a dangerous scoring chance.

Lucky for Real, there is a thing known as stoppage time and they were able to score twice in those few minutes, erasing their previous mistakes and propelling them to victory. While those goals were impressive and incredibly timely, Real never should’ve been in that situation.

2. Real Dominated Possession 

Through the first 10 or so minutes, Real couldn’t come anywhere near the ball. However, as the game continued, that drastically changed. 

By halftime, Real had 59% possession and were working the ball around beautifully. The backline was controlling the pace, the midfielders were feeding the forwards and chances were being created. But despite the dominant possession, they were making poor decisions when those chances arrived and restricted the impact of the one-sided possession. 

While possession did drop in the second half, through 60 minutes, Real still had roughly 56% of ball possession. However, that didn’t amount to anything as all they did was ping the ball around and failed to create anything dangerous. Additionally, Vancouver scored on a turnover, quickly working their way up the right side and delivering a cross which was placed into the back of the net in the 54th minute. 

By the end however, Real was able to reclaim 59% possession which heavily benefited their efforts as they continued to press Vancouver, scoring two goals late and claiming the victory. 

3. Better at Scoring with Their Heads Than Their Feet

As previously mentioned, Real struggled immensely to finish dangerous chances for the majority of the match. However, in stoppage time, Real found the back of the net multiple times using their heads.

In the 92nd minute, a throw-in was launched from near the right corner, finding the head of Erik Holt which deflected into the bottom left corner and gave Real the late lead. 

While the match seemed to be over, Kreilach secured the lead in the 95th minute as he scored on a breathtaking diving header which the keeper had no chance of stopping. If you can’t score with your feet, use your head.

Overall, Real dominated this match and were rewarded for their efforts late with a much-needed 3-1 victory. With the win, Real improves to 3-3-1 and fifth in the Western Conference. They will face the Seattle Sounders next on Wednesday, June 23 with an 8:00 p.m. MDT kick-off. That game can be viewed on ESPN+. 

c.bagley@dailyutahchronicle.com

@bagley_cole

The post Thoughts from the Pitch: RSL vs. Vancouver Whitecaps appeared first on The Daily Utah Chronicle.

Unavailability of gender-neutral housing and bathrooms for incoming freshmen is a repeated concern.

CA implements digital system to access vaccination information

Wilfried Pohnke/Creative Commons

The California Department of Public Health announced the Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record, which has a tool that allows people to access their vaccination information with a four-digit PIN, as well as a scannable QR code. (Pixabay License: No Attribution Required.)

Days after the state reopened, the California Department of Public Health, or CDPH, announced Friday the Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record, an online tool to help residents view and save records of their vaccination.

Launched in partnership with the California Department of Technology, the vaccine record tool allows people to access their vaccination information with a four-digit PIN, according to a CDPH press release. Users can also access a QR code through the site that can be read by scanners.

“We achieved our goal to quickly produce an intuitive portal that offers Californians another way, and an easier way, to access their own COVID-19 immunization history,” said Amy Tong, state chief information officer, in the press release.

Under current state guidelines, employers and businesses may ask people for verification of their vaccination status, which can be accessed through the portal. According to the CDPH website, the online tool is optional and should not be considered a vaccine passport.

People can make a digital record of their vaccine card at https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/, and personal information will remain private and only accessible to the phone or email associated with the immunization record, the website adds.

The portal utilizes the SMART Health Card framework, which is also used by UC Health and other public and private organizations, the press release adds.

“If one of the state’s nearly 20 million vaccinated Californians misplaces their paper card, the Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record provides a convenient backup,” said state epidemiologist Dr. Erica Pan in the press release.

Aditya Katewa is the executive news editor. Contact him at akatewa@dailycal.org, and follow him on Twitter at @adkatewa1.

The Daily Californian

After it’s closing due to COVID-19 pandemic, the Statesboro Main Street Farmers Market is set to re-open Saturday. 

This farmers market convenes every Saturday through November, selling locally-made products ranging from fresh vegetables to baked sweets. 

Participants are not only local to Statesboro or its surrounding counties, rather businesses and farms located all over the southeastern region of Georgia bring their produce to this market.

The market is expecting nearly 25 vendors on Saturday and expects more vendors to follow in the coming weeks as word gets out. Farmers market sales have been solely online over the pandemic on Market2Go, their online website.

As areas open up from a pandemic-induced hiatus, the market returns to their physical location in downtown Statesboro in the Synovus bank parking lot, but they won’t be stopping their online service. Orders can still be placed online for contactless pick-up.

For more information about the Mainstreet Farmers Market visit their website

Juneteenth: When murals on city walls tell stories of Black liberation

University of Nottingham/Courtesy

On the walls of a freeway underpass, in a tucked-away alley, outside a beloved thrift store, public art is everywhere. Some murals are created for their beauty and to inspire awe, others for Instagram selfies. But, sometimes murals show us important stories, stories that tell of past milestones and memories as well as present tragedies and turning points.

The story of Juneteenth, the day enslaved African Americans were emancipated, was not always known or celebrated despite its significance — in fact, it was only recently recognized as a federal holiday. Although some Black and African Americans have celebrated the holiday for years, Juneteenth gained notable attention from organizations, public officials and everyday Americans last summer as the Black Lives Matter movement picked up steam after the murder of George Floyd. This year, as we celebrate Juneteenth — a holiday meant to bring Americans together to celebrate the day all Americans became free — we can reflect on the ways Americans have told stories of Black liberation for all the world to see — through public art. 

Public art can unveil remarkable parts of history that we may not expect or even know of. One series — the “Amistad Murals” — painted by Hale Woodruff in 1938, shows the progression from slavery to freedom, starting with the mutiny aboard a Spanish slaveholding ship on its way to Cuba. In 1839, when 53 Africans from Sierra Leone were illegally seized by Portuguese slave hunters and put on a ship to later be sold into slavery, the African captives retaliated and attacked crew members to regain their freedom. The first of six murals depicts this dramatic, blazing fight aboard La Amistad, which Woodruff paints as if he saw the scene himself and managed to capture in slow motion. 

The second mural depicts an even more unexpected part of the Amistad rebellion, when the African captives were on trial in the U.S. Supreme Court, with former President then congressmen, John Quincy Adams, representing them. While the imagery of the mural evokes feelings of tension and agitation, the Supreme Court actually ruled in favor of the African captives, declaring that they were illegally kidnapped and thus free. The third mural elicits catharsis as it shows the surviving captives returning to the shores of Sierra Leone, free and home at last. The murals read like poetry, inducing an amalgamation of emotions as we journey through this story of Black struggle and liberation. 

One of the most significant times for Black Americans and American art writ large was when a New York City neighborhood became a mecca for Black creativity in the 1920s. The Harlem Renaissance gave us renowned poets such as Langston Hughes, who made us question what happens to a dream deferred, and jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, whose rhythm and influence can’t be beat. One talented Black artist and illustrator who sprung up during this cultural epoch was Aaron Douglas, whose work depicted Black life from slavery to segregation and every disheartening and joyous moment in between. 

One of Douglas’ most notable works was a series of murals called “Aspects of Negro Life,” completed in 1934. The artistic style of the mural series was inspired by traditional African artwork, which was uncommon for Americans to use at the time. The murals show various points of African American history starting with Africans living in their homeland, to the Emancipation Proclamation and the withdrawal of Union soldiers from the South. They depict hardship and disappointment, while also beautifully capturing days of jubilee and relief. 

Some three decades after the “Amistad Murals” and “Aspects of Negro Life,” the bustling city of Chicago made its own statement through public art by creating what they called the “Wall of Respect,” a mural made by fourteen artists depicting Black heroes and icons from Nat Turner to Aretha Franklin. The “Wall of Respect” became a public gathering place where people played music, read poetry and held political rallies. The effects of the “Wall of Respect” demonstrate how public art brings communities together to mourn and celebrate, to reflect and hope for the future. 

Murals don’t just bring local communities together, they connect people from across the globe and represent our shared humanity and empathy. Soon after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, murals of him appeared in cities all over the world from Naples, Italy, to Manchester, England and Manhattan, New York. These murals served as a symbol of solidarity, grief and encouragement to take direct action to end police brutality. 

As a society, we don’t appreciate murals enough. While public art isn’t always permanent — it can be painted over for something new, vandalized or simply fade over time — we should cherish the public art around us while it’s here. Public art is a visual language, a language that communicates stories of Black liberation, a language that we can all understand and a language that honors the past and present. 

Daniella Lake covers culture and diversity. Contact her at dlake@dailycal.org.

The Daily Californian

Fashion social media influencers, from platforms like Instagram and TikTok, use their status to push followers to a culture of fast fashion, moving people away from sustainability in their purchases. It is a damaging practice that preys on our want of instant gratification and negatively impacts the environment. 

Fast vs. Slow Fashion

When manufacturers mass-produce the trendiest pieces and sell to vendors for lower prices, they are taking advantage of what’s current in fashion to make quick money. This practice, known as fast fashion, costs employees fair pay and produces negative environmental outcomes through selling unethically produced and low-quality clothing. One major cause of pollution in the world is the high quantity of these poorly made clothes — landfills and garbage sites are covered in torn, tattered garments made from cheap dyes at the hands of workers who don’t get paid living wages for their labor.

To stop the pollution and exploitation created by fast fashion, brands and clothing departments need to reach sustainability. Prioritizing quality over quantity of clothing items is a cultural idea that people need to adopt if they want to stall the progression of the climate crisis.

This means keeping clothes for as long as possible, taking care of each piece, buying less and being a smarter product-consumer. This method, called slow fashion, is a more earth-friendly approach to wearing clothing and gives the mentality that fashion is about versatility, not the social internet’s latest craze. 

Clothing Culture

Social media influencers have control over their masses of followers in ways that we don’t yet know the extent of. Whether it’s purchasing clothing online or seeing an ad for a store, when your favorite influencer is promoting a product, it convinces you to want it.

Buzz created from a viral TikTok can make its way through millions of phones, which encourages fashion trends to take shape rapidly and almost subconsciously. One major factor at play in both fast fashion and social media is instant gratification. Influencers receive feedback and money from social media interaction, while those followers get satisfaction from owning what’s considered popular.

The instant gratification of fast fashion is dangerous to the environment and the way clothes are worn and treated. Not only does the production, manufacturing and transport for fast fashion cause greenhouse gases to be created, it involves a large amount of waste byproducts.

In a New York Times article called “How Fast Fashion Is Destroying the Planet,” writer Tatiana Schlossberg said, “More than 60 percent of fabric fibers are now synthetics, derived from fossil fuels, so if and when our clothing ends up in a landfill (about 85 percent of textile waste in the United States goes to landfills or is incinerated), it will not decay.” It’s not just a matter of production costs, as fashion increases carbon emissions and water usage, but how our waste habits damage ecosystems. 

Human Impact

The validation that influencers receive from likes and comments reflects on their viewers and triggers similar behavior. This hurts our wallets and perceptions of wearing fashion, alluding to the belief that having more clothing equates to having better style. An endless cycle continues, as big shopping hauls of cheap fashion lead to poor conditions for laborers and strain on resources. The time has come for sustainability and slow fashion to rise as the majority practice. 

As a consumer, don’t fall victim to inexpensive runway looks to buy more for your buck. Of course, nobody is perfect, and neither is every brand that promotes sustainability in its production. Still, for the sake of society as a whole, people need to adapt to a different mindset of understanding the importance fashion plays in our lives.

Whether you love or hate fashion as a concept, everyone wears clothes and participates in the industry, which is designed to produce what’s in demand and what’s in style. It’s a domino effect — as sustainability in fashion production becomes higher in demand, it becomes the new normal. This puts the responsibility on consumers to shop smart. Fashion can then mean more than simple trends, but as something that lasts. 

india.bown@dailyutahchronicle.com

@bown_india

The post The Promotion of Fast Fashion from Influencers Is Problematic and Unsustainable appeared first on The Daily Utah Chronicle.

Appointments are available for a public COVID-19 vaccine clinic being held at Moby Arena on Friday, June 18 from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. According to an email notice sent by the Colorado State University Pandemic Preparedness Team, the clinic will be administering first doses of the Moderna vaccine at no cost to recipients. A second […]

Extending the body positivity movement to skin

Most of us have seen the body positivity movement blow up, a push to deconstruct societal ideas of the perfect body — the thin, Eurocentric, size zero model — and promote self-love and body acceptance for women of all different shapes and sizes. Celebrities, influencers and everyday users of social media alike are taking to TikTok and Instagram to post unedited pictures and videos of themselves without flattering lighting and angles as a way of celebrating how their natural bodies really look on a daily basis, thereby teaching us that stretch marks, fat rolls, cellulite, body hair and other so-called “imperfections” are all perfectly normal and beautiful.

A corollary to the body positivity movement — the acne positivity movement — has started to pick up steam as well, sparking conversations about acne representation in the media and popular culture. The movement seeks to destigmatize acne and redefine beauty in a way that normalizes not having crystal-clear and dewy skin, but rather embraces pimples, scars and other blemishes. 

I remember my middle school years as a time when everyone around me was going through the motions of puberty, which more often than not was also accompanied by the development of acne. As a late bloomer, I prided myself on my blemish-free complexion, that is until I started my freshman year of high school and watched as my hormones worked to create constellations of pimples that dotted my forehead and cheeks. 

The pain of having acne is both physical and mental. The culture of shame and embarrassment that surrounds such a common condition led me to feel less beautiful when my skin was breaking out. I constantly needed to apply concealer on any red “imperfections” I saw on my skin before I left the house, afraid of baring my naked face in public and being mercilessly judged for any perceived flaw. For so long, I let acne undermine my social life, bailing on plans to go out with friends when I saw a pimple I couldn’t cover up. Making eye contact during a conversation was a daily battle for me, my mind anxiously working to determine whether or not the person I was talking to thought I was disgusting for the pimples adorning my complexion. 

My bathroom cabinets still overflow with all of the skincare products I tried over the years to permanently get rid of my acne and acquire that airbrushed glow without makeup. The experiences I missed out on and the memories I failed to make because I was too self-conscious about my skin still haunt me. 

As I’ve aged, I’ve finally learned to accept that some days, my skin may appear agitated and inflamed, and other days, it will look calm and clear. The intricacies of my hormones, diet, water intake and stress levels all combine to determine how my face looks one day versus the next.

I no longer subscribe to labels such as “good” or “bad” skin, but rather see skin for what it is: a protective barrier that helps shield and protect us from outer threats. I’ve shifted my perspective on my acne from a “dirty anomaly” to something completely normal and natural that I refuse to let burden me with shame or anxiety. I’ve entered into the realm of “neutral ambivalence” rather than a hysteric frenzy whenever I see pimples crop up. I now understand that my skin doesn’t define my beauty — especially not my skin on some random Monday night before I start my period — and doesn’t deserve to hold me back from living my life to its fullest. 

Contact Madeleine Lorie at mlorie@dailycal.org.

The Daily Californian

When a high school student decides to play a sport at the collegiate level, signing a letter of intent means more than just new opportunities. In the world of varsity athletics, teammates train side-by-side in practices and spend hours packed together in buses for travel games. Committing to a team means committing to its community — and the social dynamics that shape it.

During his high school recruiting visit with Brown track and field, Philip Batler ’20 came to campus bearing in mind the question of how his identity as a queer athlete would fit into the team culture. He first became interested in running competitively in middle school, and throughout high school his growing passion pointed him toward a collegiate athletic career. But Batler knew that there was more to athletics than just competing. As he met potential teammates and coaches on College Hill, he also paid close attention to the social atmosphere.

Navigating interpersonal relationships as a queer student-athlete can be complicated by identifying outside of a presumed heterosexuality still predominant in the American mainstream. Within this environment where individuals are expected to be cisgender and heterosexual, every relationship requires deciding whether or not to voice one’s identity and brace for the ensuing response.

But when Batler visited the team, something surprising happened: he met another gay track athlete for the first time. Although the two were never on the team simultaneously — he was a senior on the team when Batler was visiting as a senior in high school — they stayed in touch, and Batler came to view him as a mentor.

“It’s just been amazing because he essentially lived my experience, just four years earlier than I did, and so I would always go to him for advice,” Batler said.

Similarly, Gus Hirschfeld ’21, who was a part of the men’s crew team until his graduation this past May, found that the presence of other queer rowers shaped his experience on his team and made him feel more comfortable eventually coming out.

“Every single year I was on our team there was always an out athlete, so it wasn’t like I was going at it alone. There were always people on the team before me and after me who were also identifying as queer,” he said. “I felt very fortunate to be on a team that had a culture where I didn’t really have to think twice about how I was presenting.”

Visibility and embracing identity

For Batler and Hirschfeld alike, there was always someone to turn to on their team to talk about queer issues. The visibility of other queer athletes helped them embrace their queerness, as teammates’ coming out brought to light an often unseen diversity that challenged heteronormativity.

“That mentorship of somebody who lived that experience as a queer athlete is really just a priceless friendship and mentorship that I’m just so grateful for,” Batler said. “He really did teach me a lot about how to be myself.”

But while, for some, queer visibility in athletics came to serve as a bridge between their individual identity and team culture, for others, the absence of openly queer athletes on their varsity team reinforced a culture of heteronormativity, making them worried by the thought of being the only “out” person on their team.

“Coming into school, I was almost banking on the fact that there would be another girl on my team that would be queer — especially playing field hockey, traditionally a pretty queer sport,” Calista Manuzza ’23 said.

For Manuzza, who grew up in New Jersey playing a variety of sports with her older sister, athletics had always been tied to her social life. Most of her friends in high school played field hockey. But in her first semester at Brown, she found no openly queer athletes on her team: something she found alienating.

“I was really hoping that when I got to school that one of (my teammates) would be obviously queer and I could just bond with that person,” she said. “When I didn’t have that right off the bat, I was devastated. I was like, ‘How am I going to reach out to anyone?’ I felt like that was my easy in, if I could find another person.”

When queer athletes are faced with the possibility of being the only queer-identifying person on their team, it can be isolating and make embracing identity all the more challenging, she explained.

“I realized it was really easy eventually to come out, because no one had a problem with it,” Manuzza said. But knowing there were other queer athletes on the team “definitely would have made it a much easier experience and a much less anxious experience.”

Jack Walker

Performing on and off the field

For many queer athletes, heteronormativity is often embedded in the culture of their sports.

“Athletics in general are very competitive,” Hirschfeld said. For male athletes, “tied to competition a lot of the time is being alpha about things and obviously just like ‘beating up’ on your opponent or things like that.” According to Hirschfeld, even phrases like “beating up” used to describe competition in male athletics are rooted in a performance of a certain ‘macho’ form of masculinity.

According to Batler, sports often fall within a gender binary, where contact sports like football, basketball and hockey are perceived as more masculine. This can reproduce the desire for athletes in non-contact sports to perform masculinity and heterosexuality in a way that can be alienating for queer athletes.

“Whether it was middle school, high school or college … (in other athletes’ perception) track definitely falls more on the feminine side, because it’s a non-contact sport, a lot of us wear either short shorts or Spandex (and) it’s not one of the big four (hockey, basketball, baseball and football) that you have on primetime TV,” he explained.

As a result, many athletes feel the need to overcompensate for the feminine perception of their sport, Batler said, by exceedingly putting masculinity on display. 

While Batler noted that, for him, this issue was less prevalent at Brown, it still created pressure to present in a way that did not align with how he personally identified.

“I was very much into this concept of, ‘I’m gay, but I’m not like other gay people,’” he said. “I was really yearning to be liked and to fit in with straight men, and my teammates.”

But, for Hirschfeld, playing a non-contact sport was freeing. Because the perception of crew landed outside of traditional notions of masculinity, he felt more comfortable expressing himself. “It really didn’t matter who I was with,” he said. “It really was the epitome of a team sport.”

This performance of gender also extends into social life, Claire Pisani ’23 MD ’27, a member of the women’s water polo team, explained. Varsity teams often socialize with other teams, hosting parties and mixers together. For Pisani, this social scene can be a highly heteronormative one in which women are expected to present in a traditionally feminine way and be desirable to straight men.

This social environment, paired with water polo’s perception as an aggressive, more masculine sport implicitly pressures female athletes to “dress a certain way and act a certain way with other men’s teams,” she said. 

Pisani doesn’t fault her teammates for the alienation she felt, but rather the reality of the lack of queer representation on her team. 

Before she came out, conversations on Pisani’s team were often centered upon relationships but were rarely inclusive to queer student-athletes. “The norm was very, ‘Oh, what guys have you been hooking up with?’ and ‘Oh, what men’s team are we mixing with?’ and ‘How do we get this men’s team to want to mix with us?’” she explained. 

Manuzza agreed, adding that “mixing with teams is so heteronormative.”

“My team has mixed with tons of teams, and it’s always our team and a male team,” she said. “Because a lot of girls on my team will complain that they don’t have any friends that are girls outside of the team, I’m like, ‘Why don’t we mix with another female team?’” But the response from her teammates was lukewarm, she said.

Manuzza also noted the issue of male athletes crossing boundaries with her in social settings, disregarding her sexual orientation. “I’ve talked to some of them and been like, ‘Hey, would you ever do that to another guy who likes women?’ and they’re like, ‘No, of course not,’” she said. “Well, I should be comparable to that because I’m not interested in men, and I don’t want you to grab me.”

Even in drinking games at parties, Manuzza found that she was expected to fit into a heteronormative ideal — one that was not easy to break free from.

Many drinking games with other teams put her in provocative situations oriented toward heterosexual students. She felt that, despite being queer, if she were to opt out of the demands of the game, it would be “a little taboo.” 

When she pushed her teammates to make these games more inclusive, they saw little value in altering the rules for just one person. 

‘Well, why are we going to change it just for you?,” she recalled them saying. “You’re the only one.’”

“It’s easy to forget that there could be other queer people if there’s nobody who’s actively out,” Pisani said. “Sometimes things are said when they forget there are queer women or gay women who aren’t as feminine.”

“There’s only a few of use who are willing to stand up and say, ‘Yes, I’m queer,’” Manuzza said. “It’s definitely an uphill battle.”

Jack Walker

Challenging the student-athlete stereotype

Despite the challenges of being a queer person in a heternormative space, many queer student-athletes find that their teams are supportive and help them feel more comfortable expressing themselves. For Pisani, the women’s water polo team has been a support system as she navigates Brown as a queer person.

But perceptions of athletes as close-minded or homophobic from those outside the athletic community can make queer student-athletes feel sidelined, discouraging them from calling attention to negative experiences out of fear of reinforcing stereotypes. 

Stereotypes deeming athletes close-minded can also make it harder for athletes to feel accepted and socially integrated within the University as a whole, Pisani explained.

“A lot of my teammates have expressed feeling very isolated and looked down upon by even regular students who think that they just got in because they’re good at sports,” she said. “I think there’s a big impostor syndrome, a collective impostor syndrome, among a lot of my teammates and other athletes I’ve talked to.”

Batler added that while, on one hand, the only time he heard homophobic slurs used on campus was in the locker room, outside of the athlete community he felt athletes were stigmatized as homophobic or close-minded in a way that did not fully encapsulate his personal experience.  “It was really frustrating to have this community that I was actually really proud to be a part of … be painted as homophobic when I had teammates that loved me. They accepted me,” he said.

At times, the stigma of athletes as homophobic can even contribute to the erasure of queer athletes. When all athletes are presented as homophobic or close-minded, Batler said, it reinforces a heteronormative perception of athletes that can make it harder for queer student-athletes to express themselves and overlooks their contributions to the athlete community.

“Sometimes people just generalize athletes as this monolithic community,” Batler added. “There’s a lot of complexity to us and we contribute a lot more than just being the jocks in the room.”

For Manuzza, despite being queer herself, these stereotypes made it challenging for her to feel welcomed in queer spaces at the University or get to know students outside of athletics.

“There is definitely a little bit of a boundary between the athletes and the non-athletes at Brown,” she said. “I found it hard to make friends with people, because as soon as I say I’m an athlete they kind of detach from the conversation … so I found it really hard to make other queer friends in that setting.” 

Creating community

For many, spaces created by and for those understand what it means to be a queer student-athlete are needed.

In the fall of his junior year, Batler reached out to faculty within the athletic department with the idea for a new club: the Student-Athlete Gay Alliance. While it was hard to get people to come at first, over time the organization provided a meaningful space for queer athletes to talk about their experiences and be themselves.

“Being surrounded by people who knew exactly what you were going through was really incomparable, a phenomenal experience and just something I really valued. Not to be arrogant, but I’m really proud of how we built it,” he said. “I really feel like it was a community and group of people I was so fortunate to have gotten to meet and share that space and time with.”

Today, SAGA still faces challenges in maintaining membership — Pisani and Manuzza noted that few male athletes come to events — but it continues to offer queer student-athletes a space they may otherwise lack.

“Having someone who understands the intersection of (the queer student-athlete identity) when there’s not that many people in that space has been such an amazing experience,” Manuzza said. 

Moving forward, there is still room to for the University to improve the queer student-athlete experience, including from an administrative level. In March, Athlete Ally released its Athletic Equality Index, which considers “nondiscrimination policy, trans inclusion policy, sexual harassment policy, fan code of conduct, collaboration with activist groups, LGBTQ+ educational resources and pro-LGBTQ+ training for staff and athletes” in collegiate athletic programs. Brown received a score of 45 out of 100 — the third-lowest in the Ivy League.

“We want to make sure that LGBTQ-identified student-athletes, like all LGBTQ-identified students, are supported by the wide range of resources in the Division of Campus Life,” Eric Estes, vice president for campus life, wrote in an email to the Herald. “It’s important that our LGBTQ-identified students see themselves as represented and affirmed across the staff that support their experience outside the classroom.”

Estes emphasized that the University has taken measures to increase support and representation for the LGBTQ community at an administrative level. This has been reflected in an increase in the staffing and budget of the LGBTQ Center, including an annual budget increase of 276 percent for the LGBTQ Center since Fiscal Year 2016, and a focus on “compositional diversity in our hiring in Campus Life over the past five years,” he explained.

“These and other important commitments of resources and support … lift up and benefit the entire LGBTQ community, including student-athletes,” he added.

Meanwhile, the intergenerational work of queer student-athletes building support in their community one person at a time is changing the way queer athletes experience Brown.

“I’m hoping that when they get to Brown, there’s more of a greeting for queer athletes right up front. I felt like I had to wait a few months of being at Brown before I was even exposed to the fact that we had a queer group for athletes,” Manuzza said. “I’m just hoping that it will be something people will be proud to say they’re a part of.”

Batler hopes that future queer athletes and their intersectional identities will be welcomed wholeheartedly.

“It’s not that it’s brushed under the rug, it’s that you’re celebrated for it. Like, yes, we love that you bring this to the table, not just as an athlete, but we love that you contribute this other voice to the community that we build as a team,” Batler said. “What I hope for is just a level of openness that has never been seen before.”

And, for Batler, seeing his younger teammate kiss another boy at a track team party gave him the sense that, one way or another, progress was being made.

“I was like, wow, I don’t think I would have been that confident to do that” as an underclassman, he said. “That just made me feel excited. I hope — no, I don’t hope, I know — that it’ll just keep getting better for each incoming class.”