UConn Students Participate in “State of Black Males in the U.S.” Panel Discussion
In honor of Black History Month, UConn students gathered this past week at the University’s African-American Cultural Center for a panel discussion featuring six panelists from two student groups, Collective Uplift and Brothers Reaching Our Society (B.R.O.S.). Panelists discussed issues facing today’s African-Americans, including how Black males are and can continue to “take control over their own image.” These words, spoken by Joseph Cooper, assistant professor in the Neag School of Education and the founder of Collective Uplift, served as the driving force behind a discussion that touched on self-image, stereotypes, resiliency, and more.
Collective Uplift, an organization designed to empower, educate, and inspire students across ethnic groups at UConn to maximize their full potential as holistic individuals, not exclusively in the realm of athletics, but also beyond, and B.R.O.S., which seeks to foster academic and professional growth for black males, partnered for the “State of Black Males in the United States: Realities and Resolve” panel. The purpose of the event was to extend a conversation about the way African-Americans navigate society and empower themselves and their communities in a society that perpetually disadvantages them, said Josh Marriner ’16 (CLAS), president of Collective Uplift.
“We wanted to get this conversation started,” Marriner said. “We want people to reach out left and right to create better relationships in the entire community, and especially at college campuses.”
“We can’t compete with each other; we need to come together as a people. Save the competing for sport and intellect.” Tyrae Sims ’18 (ED)
Marriner, a former football student-athlete who recently joined the track-and-field team, will graduate with a degree in communication this May, having completed his degree in three years. Although he keeps active in academics and athletics, he still finds time to give back to his hometown community in Virginia. Whenever he returns home, Marriner speaks to students at local elementary and high schools about the importance of education.
Fellow panelist and Collective Uplift member Tyrae Sims ’18 (ED), a prospective pre-sport management major, also spoke about taking part in community outreach. Such activities, he said, provide the opportunity to connect with others in ways that one may not have expected. Growing up in Worcester, Mass., Sims added that he noticed a great deal of competition and self-hate amongst the African-American community, which he says is connected to a systemic and pervasive U.S. culture that privileges whiteness and often times disparages efforts to unite the community and make it a more prosperous place to live.
“We can’t compete with each other; we need to come together as a people,” Sims said. “Save the competing for sport and intellect.”
Cooper said self-hate, deeply rooted in a U.S. history distorted by racist beliefs and ideas, often leads to poor treatment of others. For example, the misogynistic nature of some hip-hop lyrics paint a degrading portrait of women that reflects an underlying lack of self-respect among men. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, often times this message reinforces dominant beliefs about whiteness and patriarchial masculinity, Cooper added, which can be detrimental not only to the individuals who promote this way of thinking and those who are the focus of this treatment, but also society as a whole. The panelists combated this stereotype, emphasizing the importance of treating women as equals and showing understanding and vulnerability.
“Show women you can be vulnerable, too – that you can feel, love, and care,” said panelist Marquise Vann ’16, a Collective Uplift member and UConn football player. “You’re defined by how you give back and love others.” Marquise, summarizing the consensus among the group, added: “It is important to treat the women you encounter in the same manner you would want someone to treat your mother and/or your future daughter.”
Beyond sponsoring panel discussions like this on the UConn campus, Marriner says his mission is to expand Collective Uplift – which was founded at UConn by Cooper and a group of student-athletes – to other universities. Although he will graduate from UConn in May, Marriner is already working on a chapter at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., where his brother is a student-athlete on the football team. Marriner says his motivation to give back to others stems from his own community and family – particularly his father, a pastor.
“As a pastor, my father displayed how he cared for the community every day,” Marriner says. “But even after caring for others all day, he still came home at night and taught [his children] things that would forward us in life.”
Learn more about Collective Uplift here.
A Charter School Warning
Editor’s Note: The following story originally appeared on UConn Today, the University of Connecticut’s news website.
When charter schools first appeared in the U.S. in the early 1990s, they were seen as an exciting alternate choice for families looking to move their children out of low-performing urban schools.
Still widely popular, charter schools have become a major part of the nation’s educational infrastructure, expanding at a rate of about 12 percent a year. Nearly 3 million children, or about six percent of all children enrolled in public schools nationwide, currently attend charter schools.
But with states facing mounting pressure to ease regulations to allow more charter schools, and with the federal government and private industry offering millions of dollars in new charter school grants and incentives, UConn professor of educational leadership and law Preston Green III is urging policymakers to be careful.
In a recent paper that is receiving national attention, Green and three co-authors outline the many parallels they see between today’s charter school systems and the early days of the subprime mortgage crisis, where aggressive business practices and unchecked growth created a national housing ‘bubble’ that threw the country into deep recession.
The housing bubble was particularly devastating to urban African-American families, many of whom relied on subprime mortgages to purchase their first homes. Without sufficient regulatory safeguards in place to protect them, these vulnerable families would later lose their properties to foreclosure when the ‘bubble’ burst and they were unable to meet the terms of their loans.
When it comes to charter schools, Green, the John and Carla Klein Professor of Urban Education in UConn’s Neag School of Education, is concerned that, as with the subprime crisis, insufficient regulation could result in the formation of charter school “bubbles”: a concentration of poorly performing schools in urban African-American communities.
“Charter school bubbles are most likely to form in black urban communities, because those are the communities where there is the greatest anger toward traditional public schools and the wish for change,” says Green. “It is because of that anger that these communities are most at risk of making an over-commitment to charter schools, which could then lead to the bubble we reference.”
As the lead author of the paper, “Are We Heading Toward a Charter School ‘Bubble’?: Lessons from the Subprime Mortgage Crisis,” Green advances a detailed and heavily annotated argument expressing his concerns. He is joined by research co-authors from Rutgers University, Montclair State University, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
There should be a deliberative and thoughtful process in overseeing charter schools to make sure that the choices of parents and children are honored and, in the end, meaningful. Preston Green
The paper has sparked a national conversation. Since it first appeared online in December, the paper has been reported in journalist Jennifer Berkshire’s widely-read EduShyster blog, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, Salon, NEA Today, and a host of other online media sites, blogs, and podcasts. Critics say the paper’s comparisons are unreasonably provocative. Others support its conclusions as timely and important.
“I knew it was going to be controversial, but I felt it was something that needed to be said,” Green says. “I am very concerned with where charter schools are headed. We are in a position of repeating the mistakes that we made with subprime mortgages, where we encouraged ostensibly positive goals, but didn’t put the protections in place that are needed.”
Critics of charter schools often point to individual schools and districts where problems have surfaced. Green’s paper focuses instead on larger systemic issues. The authors point out that more than $200 million in charter school fraud, abuse, and mismanagement has been identified in 15 states. Reports of private for-profit charter school management companies declining to enroll students with special needs and disabilities, instituting aggressive disciplinary practices, charging public school districts exorbitant rent for facilities, and using high-pressure tactics to recruit students in minority neighborhoods, are additional cause for concern, Green points out in the paper.
“If we’re going to have private entities involved in public education, we need to have sufficient regulation, because without those regulations, without that oversight, there could be systemic abuse,” he says. “And because of the particular issues within urban communities, the failure of providing safeguards and regulations could result in a very negative situation.”
Multiple Authorizers, Multiple Problems
One of Green’s primary concerns is the recent push by the charter school industry for states to allow multiple independent authorizers of charter schools. Advocates argue that having multiple authorizers would make the application process more efficient, and offer more options for national providers interested in opening charter schools. But Green counters that having multiple authorizers opens the door for “authorizer hopping,” where low-performing providers could go searching for a favorable authorizer that won’t be as careful screening for quality or as demanding when it comes to accountability.
Recent federal laws, such as the Every Student Succeeds Act, encourage charter school expansion, adding another element to the charter school authorization debate. In the private sector, major entities like Netflix and the Walton Family Foundation, have pledged millions of dollars in support of charter school growth.
Traditionally, charter schools have been authorized by local public school districts. Those districts have demanded quality and accountability because they are responsible for educating all students in their community and would bear the brunt of educating students returning to their district should charter schools close. Shifting authorization to independent authorizers, Green says, means handing over that authority to an outside entity that doesn’t have a stake in the game.
“If you are going to have these private entities and use these private approaches, you cannot forget the public role in this,” he says. “Under state constitutional law, governments are supposed to provide a system of public education that ensures safeguards are in place.”
According to the Center for Education Reform, states with multiple school authorizers have nearly three and a half times as many charter schools as those authorized by local school districts. A separate study cited in the paper, this one by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, found that “states with multiple authorizers experienced significantly lower growth in academic learning in their charter school students,” indicating that some charter school operators were successful in choosing the least rigorous option to provide oversight.
Charter schools already outnumber public schools in some districts. The Recovery School District in Louisiana, for example, is considered the first all-charter school district in the country. In Detroit, 14 entities that are not locally controlled have the power to open and close schools.
“What I get most concerned about is a situation where you have an all-charter school district where the authorizers, the entities that make decisions about what schools are going to come into play, are not connected with that school district,” Green says. “If you have a situation where the vast majority of decision-makers are not connected to the community, then you have a problem.”
In the paper, Green lays out his concerns clearly: “Charter school boards have the responsibility … to ensure that their schools follow all applicable laws, and that the schools spend public funds in a fiscally accountable manner. By contrast, for-profit [management entities] have the incentive to increase their revenues or cut expenses in ways that may contradict the goals of charter school boards.”
Subprime Similarities
Green compares the shift in charter school authorization to the start of the subprime crisis, where the federal government, seeking to increase homeownership for minorities and the poor, deregulated the financial industry and encouraged the distribution of subprime loans.
Traditionally, mortgage originators such as banks screened loans carefully, because they assumed all of the risk if the loan went into default. When the subprime industry emerged, banks and other mortgage originators no longer screened loans as closely, because the loans were guaranteed by the federal government and they were allowed to sell them on a secondary market, spreading out the risk. In essence, the originators of the mortgages no longer had any skin in the game.
Despite all of his concerns, Green remains a believer in the charter school concept. He insists that the paper he authored is not meant to be an attack on charter schools, but rather an exposé highlighting issues of concern.
Green believes the country right now is at “ground zero” with respect to the growth of charter school bubbles. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for greater federal and state oversight, including more transparency in charter school approvals, improved quality assurance, and sanctions against schools that exercise low standards.
“What we are saying is that there should be a deliberative and thoughtful process in overseeing charter schools to make sure that the choices of parents and children are honored and, in the end, meaningful,” he says.
The flip side of that scenario is daunting. “If charter schools aren’t sufficiently regulated,” Green says, “we could see a proliferation of poorly monitored schools in these communities. The proliferation of these poorly regulated schools could gather such momentum that it could be a while before people start to realize there are problems, and by then, it will take some time to dismantle all that.”
Just like what happened in the subprime mortgage crisis.
The paper – “Are We Heading Toward a Charter School ‘Bubble’ ?: Lessons from the Subprime Mortgage Crisis” – is scheduled for publication in print in the University of Richmond Law Review next month.
A Charter School Warning
Second Graders Raise $380 for HuskyTHON, With Help From Neag School
Josh Marriner Hopes To Have Made A Difference At UConn
Suspensions Down in Greenwich Schools; Minorities Disciplined at Disproportionate Rate
Greenwich Time (Tamika La Salle quoted)
UConn Plans Learning Community to Support Academic Efforts of Black Men
Opening New Vistas for Talented Kids
‘Playing it Out’: LGBT Issues in Sport
Whether it’s the MLB, NFL, or NHL, the world of sports has been cast as a hypermasculine, hypercompetitive environment. While this atmosphere may build toughness and encourage physical fitness, its acceptance toward athletes who identify with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community is still in need of practice.
Neag School faculty member Laura Burton is working to change the athletic world’s perception of LGBT athletes – starting with her own students. The sport management associate professor says change must be implemented in every level of sport. LGBT issues in sport is a key topic in her Introduction to Sport Management and Management of Sport Services courses.
From the time children begin playing sports, Burton says, they are often exposed to language that is negatively charged toward LGBT individuals, but unfortunately commonplace in athletics. For example, parents and coaches may find it acceptable to call kids “fags.”
“We need to educate parents and coaches to watch their language to make the environment more supportive and welcoming, so it’s safer for kids to come out,” Burton says.
A supportive environment is what Burton discovered to be the winning recipe in the coming out of LGBT athletes. One of her research studies, titled “Playing it Out: Female Intercollegiate Athletes’ Experiences in Revealing their Sexual Identities,” studied “out” lesbian or bisexual female intercollegiate athletes. The qualitative study, which comprised in-depth interviews with 14 athletes, found it was easier for athletes to come out if other teammates had previously done so. It also discovered that once athletes were out, female teammates were generally accepting – a reaction that took many of the “out” athletes by surprise, but led to greater happiness afterward.
Similar research was conducted at Texas A&M University surrounding workplace culture and LGBT employees in college athletics. In alignment with Burton’s study, a 2015 research paper titled “Creating and Sustaining Workplace Cultures Supportive of LGBT employees in College Athletics” concluded athletic departments with more diverse and welcoming climates were more successful. LGBT employees who could express their true identities and had employees who celebrated those identities had a positive and successful work experience.
‘Lean into the discomfort’
As essential as acceptance is to creating a pro-LGBT environment, Milagros Castillo-Montoya, a Neag School assistant professor of higher education and student affairs, says mere acceptance of LGBT individuals is not enough. In her Leading Toward a Multicultural Educational Environment course, she and her graduate students discuss issues of difference in higher education, including sexual orientation. An early component of the course is analyzing the effect a campus’ culture has on LGBT students.
This means individuals should not only be accepting of LGBT peers, but also able to discuss their identity differences in an honest but noncombative manner. Castillo-Montoya encourages students to first become self-aware and consider their own multiple identities – both the privileged and the marginalized. She uses what is called the LARA Method to teach students the process of effective dialogue: listen, affirm, respond, and ask more questions. With this approach, students can engage in more truthful and meaningful conversations about different identities, such as sexual orientation, race, religion, and ability.
“I ask students to lean in to the discomfort of having conversations across differences,” she says. “They learn to confront the idea, not the person. By doing this in a classroom setting, they build the capacity to talk about and through differences.”
Coming Out in Professional Sports
Transitioning from the classroom to sport, Burton says publicizing one’s LGBT identity can be easier once professional athletes get the ball rolling. When Bryant University men’s basketball coach Chris Burns this fall revealed to USA Today he was gay, the news was welcomed by the public. As he was already well-regarded, Burns’ image did not change.
“People say, ‘Oh, I like him, he’s a good guy; I know him,’” Burton says. “When athletes or coaches at the professional level [come out], it trickles down to the youth level.”
Burton says this trickle-down effect makes the process of coming out seem more attainable and acceptable to college, high school, and youth athletes. She also referenced the U.S. women’s soccer team, which had three players and one coach publicly out at the 2015 World Cup.
“Differences make us stronger as a team.”
– Jenny Gobin ’14 (ED), UConn women’s ultimate Frisbee team coach
Such an inclusive environment has been found in UConn women’s athletics, too. Jenny Gobin ’14 (ED), a graduate of the Neag School’s sport management program who now works for ESPN, has experienced firsthand the power of supportive teammates in making LGBT athletes feel not only accepted, but normal. As an “out” lesbian, Gobin says she was treated just like any other student while at UConn, where she was a student manager of the women’s basketball team and a founder of the ultimate Frisbee club. Today, as the coach for the UConn women’s ultimate Frisbee team – a national contender on the club sports scene – Gobin continues to work closely with lesbian and bisexual athletes.
“We just have to be aware of [differences] and make them seem normal,” she says. “Differences make us stronger as a team.”
However, publicizing one’s sexual identity is at times met with varying reactions based on gender. In an environment where a “macho” mentality is the norm, the process of coming out for male athletes is associated with a legitimate, physical fear of being perceived as incapable or weak. Female athletes don’t face this same fear of ostracization because being lesbian isn’t seen contradictory to being a successful athlete.
LGBT in Sports at UConn
Although Burton says most athletes wait until after college to come out, she’s found UConn to be a safe, supportive environment for those who choose to do so.
“UConn has become a more welcoming place for LGBT athletes and those who are LGBT in the athletic department,” Burton says. “I haven’t heard of negative responses.”
There are resources on campus for LGBT student-athletes, as well as those who aren’t athletes, including athletics support groups, the Rainbow Center, and various cultural centers. UConn’s cultural centers, Castillo-Montoya notes, frequently engage with University faculty regarding all forms of marginalized identities, including the LGBT and student-athlete populations, and are intended to better prepare faculty to lead effective dialogues with their students.
However, Gobin says many athletes prefer to look for support from those they trust most – their teammates and coaches.
“I had an athlete who told me the reason she came out was because of the ultimate [Frisbee] community,” she says. “It’s welcoming, open, and progressive.”
An area that requires more focus, however, is that of bisexual and transgender athletes. Research regarding these identities is less developed than that of gay and lesbian identities. Burton says bisexual individuals experience a sense of invisibility, as they are caught between heterosexual and homosexual identities.
For transgender athletes, questions regarding athletic eligibility are at the forefront of discussion – within the past five years, the NCAA has implemented policies regarding these athletes. Current NCAA policy allows trans male (FTM) athletes to compete for men’s teams, but not women’s teams. Trans female (MTF) must continue to compete on a men’s team.
Gobin recalls an ultimate game in which UConn was playing Smith, an all-women’s college. Smith’s team had one trans male player; because the game was at the club level, the transgender athlete was eligible to play.
“It was interesting and enlightening for my players,” Gobin says. “We had never had that experience before, so it was good to expose that to them.”
Tackling LGBT issues that occur both on and off the playing field has allowed Burton and Castillo-Montoya’s students to become more aware of themselves and of others. Castillo-Montoya’s students write reflections throughout the semester, a “satisfying” indicator of their transforming ability to discuss sensitive subjects regarding diversity.
Meanwhile, Burton reminds her students they must keep in mind that the LGBT community is one of many groups impacting decision-making when it comes to implementing policies in sport and sport management. By representing this community on a level playing field with other groups, more equitable policies will be made.
