Live @MoB (Part 4): The Student Athlete's Platform: Fighting for the won on and off the field w/DaWon Baker

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It would not surprise me that between now and the next presidential election that

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some team, some player that is really big is like, I'm

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not doing X, Y, Z until these things happen. And it's

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going to cause more conversation, more of a deep dive, and

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it's going to piss a lot of people off, very candidly. But they're things that

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Welcome, fam. This is Courthney Russell Jr., and I'm here with

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We are two Americans with totally different backgrounds and

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We're coming together on this podcast to dive right at the heart of the

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three things that shut down tough conversations about race, culture,

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The stories you are about to hear are meant to humanize those

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deeply involved in social justice. Welcome to the work, y'all.

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We are coming to you live today from the Museum of

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Boulder, and this is our fourth and final of

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a four-part series on Black culture in

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Boulder. And so just a little bit of context on this series, and

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then we'll introduce our guest here. So it was sometime

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in 2023, and I

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live in Boulder, Courtney lives in Estes, and we're starting

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to see some things emerging in

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Boulder regarding Black culture and Black experience

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here. And we wanted to learn more. So

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the things that we're seeing was there was the Museum of Boulder's Proclaiming

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Black History exhibit. There's national news on

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Coach Deion Sanders. There was the opening of

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the CU Center for African and African-American Studies. There

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was the success of the film This Is Not Who We Are. All

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of these things were pointing to like, what is what's happening? What's

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getting drummed up here? So we reached out to

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partner with the Museum of Boulder with the intent of exploring this

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through a live podcast series, and luckily they were game.

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So this is the fourth and final installation of

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that series, and we're honored to have DaWon Baker here

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Yay. We're

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joined by DaWon today and he is the Associate Athletic Director

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for Impact and Strategic Engagement at CU Boulder. And

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since arriving at 2021 is when you came to

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CU. DaWon has led the

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charge with diversity, equity and inclusion within the Buff Athletics.

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So supporting student athletes, coaches and staff and creating a

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more inclusive team culture. So

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he also leads the strategic planning department for the entire athletics

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department, or strategic planning for the entire athletics department,

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connecting departments and teams across multiple disciplines within

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CU Athletics and aligning their goals and outcomes to

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help move CU Athletics. Ford. And

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before coming to CU, he was the first ever

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Director of Diversity and Inclusion in Athletics at

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University of Nebraska. He's also a former NCAA

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intern and co-founder of Diversity, Equity, and

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Inclusion Council for Excellence, pronounced DICE,

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and a lifelong advocate for justice in sports. So

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today we're diving into the history of DEI and athletics and what

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it takes to shape culture from inside and how sports and

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activism intersect on and off the field. So

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before we dive into that piece, I just wanted to hear

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more about your story and like,

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were there certain life experiences or paths that

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Yes, absolutely. First of all, thank you for the invitation. Thanks for

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being here. And thanks for y'all for coming. So hopefully we

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can have a really good conversation. A little bit about my

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background, my story. Is there an event that sparked it? Absolutely. Other

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than childhood happenings that happened to,

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you know, a young black kid from St. Louis, the thing that really kind of sparked it for me was Really,

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August 2014, what you see in the national news is, if

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you know the name, Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri. I'm from

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St. Louis, Missouri. Ferguson is a subdivision, if

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you will. The street where Michael Brown is

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killed is nine minutes from where my pops lives, back home in

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St. Louis. You see the

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stripe that's happening around the community. I was

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a senior at the University of Missouri at the time. We had a lot of students who were from that

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area. And so what I saw, it was also August, so

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people are going back to school, right? And so what you saw was a lot of people that are from that

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area are coming back to school and are talking. What's going on?

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What are we doing? Are we protesting? Do things

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need to happen? And there were a lot of conversations that students

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were trying to have with faculty, staff,

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administration, all the things. And I wouldn't

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say it fell on deaf ears, because it's not true, but it really wasn't acted upon in

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the way that we thought it should happen. And so I would say at this point, I'm

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kind of, I wouldn't say one foot in, one foot out, but I was interested

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in social justice, but I wasn't invested in it. And what I started to

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see for my friends who were like deep in it is

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the way it was impacting them, what not hearing their voices did. And

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I saw what it did to our campus, right? So, um, I worked in

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a rec center. I did research, um, as

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a, like an undergraduate student, I was a former track and field athlete. And

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so all the spaces that I was operating in, I was kind of seeing the campus kind

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of pull apart. And so. I

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saw what not having these conversations did,

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and I was like, I don't like that. This is not something I really want

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to be a part of where, one, we can't have these conversations, but two, where

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The very first thing I remember is I worked

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in the ticket office for Mizzou Athletics. And

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usually this is the person that you come up to say, Hey, I want to buy a ticket to the

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basketball game or whatever. And so I'm the person at the front window. And

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so I'm sitting there one day and I wasn't at the window. I was on a

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cubicle kind of off to the side. And one

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of my then teammates,

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colleagues, et cetera, is like scrolling through the now

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called Twitter. I mean, it used to be called Twitter, now it's whatever you want to call it, but it's

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like, man, do y'all see the thing that's happening? And where's the cause?

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Somewhere in Missouri, I'll say it's Ferguson, right? And had

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an opinion like, well, probably should've complied, right? And I'm like, there's

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probably a little bit more to that story that we don't know. That was the first thing. And

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that was at this point, late August, early September. And as I

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went through the rest of that fall, People

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at work are talking about it, professors are talking about it, there are

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demonstrations on campus. And one of the things I remember very vividly was

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there was a platform called Yik Yak, which

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is like an anonymous platform where people can send a message for

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people to see. So you broadcast a message, everybody sees it, but you

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don't see who did it, right? And there was a protest that

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was happening in the student center. And there were students

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who were essentially enacting a die-in. So they go into the

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student center, they fall on the floor, and it creates, you know, this, I don't

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want to say diversion, but it creates an opportunity for people to like stop and pause and

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like, why are there a hundred people sitting on the floor, right? And they

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were enacting somebody basically being dead on the floor, being shot down by

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the police, all these things. And there was a Yik Yak message that said a

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couple of things. The one that kind of caught me, I'm like, whoa, this is kind of out there.

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One said, Get

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the get the fuck out of here with all this stuff. We don't care about that. I'm

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just trying to eat lunch, right? So to me is pretty tame,

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but the thing that kind of caught me was our Black Culture Center at Mizzou

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is across the street from the Student Center, three minute walk. And

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at that time, there were some damage

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that was happening to the places in St. Louis. People

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were calling it rioting, looting, all these things. And somebody put a message on TikTok, not

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TikTok, YikYak, that said, maybe we should burn down a Black Culture Center

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so they know how it feels. And I'm like, oh. This

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is not, yeah, this, I ain't with it, right? And

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so very, very clear that there

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are opposing opinions. People can have their own opinions. I think some

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opinions are wrong, but it was very clear that these conversations were

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not happening in an effective way. And it started to really kind of pull at the campus

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community. What I also saw specifically at that same demonstration was

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at the time I was done competing, I was a track and field walk-on athlete at Mizzou.

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I would see former athletes that I knew from other sports who would come

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to these protests and come to these demonstrations, come to these conversations, and

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they would hide in the back with their hoods on. And so I'm like, and I had

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seen it a couple of times. So I'm like, okay, there's people who want to talk or they want to see

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what's going on, but there's no voice or they don't feel comfortable

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to show their face. Maybe they don't want to be in the spotlight. There's a

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lot of different reasons, but I saw that firsthand. And couple

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all that with, at the time, I'm also doing research as a

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student. I was in

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this thing called McNair Scholars Program. It's a federally funded grant

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program to help students to pursue academia, specifically

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first gen, minority, or

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lower SES students to get into academia. And so I was doing research

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specifically on Black athletic directors. And

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at this time, as a senior, I'm like, OK, I'm seeing all these things that are happening in

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my personal life of people who have these perspectives, opinions of what's happening

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around race, police brutality. I'm seeing what's happening

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on campus of us not having these conversations or not having a

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directive as to how to have them. And it's kind of pulling away at, you

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know, the fabric of how people are interacting in the university. And

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I'm studying all this stuff in sports, specifically about how there's a lack of

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specifically professional Black people that are in athletics who are running or

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leading these departments. And so it creates this unique blend, right, of

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all the things that I'm interested in and pursuing. At the time, I thought,

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This is not really a career. I'm probably gonna have to go be a professor, right?

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Go get a PhD. We'll see how that goes. And

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still have a plan to do that, but it's kind of pushed a little bit.

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And the thing that really kind of pulled me in is I

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go off to grad school. And in my orientation, I went to

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the University of Central Florida. The first speaker I hear from is

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a good friend and I won't say mentor, kind

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of mentor-ish, but really good friend now. His name is Vince Pearson. At the time, he

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was the director of diversity and inclusion for minor league baseball. And

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he was the first speaker that we heard. And I'm like, what

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the hell kind of job is that? I didn't even know

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that existed, right? And so he's like, yep, I graduated from,

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we graduated from the same grad program. He was two years removed, so still a little bit

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younger too. And he's like, yeah, I graduated from the program and got hired

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into minor league baseball to build a strategy out. This job didn't exist before. And

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after talking to him, I find out like, oh, there's somebody at the NBA that does this, at

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the NFL, at the MLS, at the NCAA. So I'm like, oh, there's a real

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pathway of what this looks like. I didn't know that until I got into grad school and

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really explored it though, right? And so from that point, that's where I'm like, okay, there's

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some work that is happening and I want to be a part of it. What does that look

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like? And I can get more into the details of

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like how that's probably way longer than we have time to, but. That

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was kind of the planting of the seed to get into this type of work. And

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slowly but surely throughout grad school, my first job, my second job, et cetera,

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really just started to align people who either were doing that work or had connections to that

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work. And my background kind of

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just fit it, right? being

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a former student athlete, but also doing research in undergrad around, you

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know, uh, diversity, equity, and inclusion in sport, race and sport. Then

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going to a grad school where my program director, um, created

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a report card on racial or gender hiring for athletics. And

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so I participated in, uh, was a coauthor for one of those research

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reports. Um, I participated in trainings myself. I facilitated

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trainings when I was a grad student, right? And so all these experiences, it's like, okay,

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These jobs don't exist a whole lot, but if anybody is equipped

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for it. It's me, right? And

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just really kind of collected those experiences and thankfully

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found myself that when opportunities were arising, and

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again, the pool isn't deep, but there's

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somebody that's in it. And I was one of the people that was in it and was able to

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really kind of try to career in what this looks like from a

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intersection of sport, diversity, culture, engagement,

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Damn. I mean,

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that's that's phenomenal. I mean really thank you for that for

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that work because What kept coming up for me as you were speaking was

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shut up and dribble. Yeah, right Yeah, and it's

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like we're good enough to entertain, but we're not good

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enough to stand for shit Yep, right. Yep, and I have a

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huge problem with that because I think sports is a

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unifier absolutely, you know sports is something that kind

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of channels certain frustrations kind of gives you a focus and

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that you may not have. And I love the fact that sports

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can be a way to uplift your community. And

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I just don't like the way that it is one of

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the only ways that people think that people of color can become

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successful. And I don't like that. And

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so when you are in things other than sports,

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you are in law, or you're in medicine, or you're in engineering, It's

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like, why are you here? Go play basketball and entertain us. We

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can give you a hundred million dollars. But I was

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always on the frame of mind, like, if that, if a person's getting

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a hundred million dollars to play that, how much is the owner getting paid? You know?

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And how much is the person who runs this team getting paid? And how much

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is all of the other individuals that we don't even know

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about getting paid so that we can be entertained? We

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No, I saw you. What

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I try to use my positionality, and

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when I say positionality, I don't mean like role. I mean like

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my proximity to the student athletes and people that I serve. I

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try to use my position in that perspective of

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kind of reframe the thinking of like, if

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you love and care about sport, cool, I'm with you, right? Play

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as long as you can, make a living as long as you can. At some

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point it's gonna stop, but there are also ways that we can utilize sport

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One, either to transition or two, to bring attention to things that we

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really need to be paying attention to, right? And so one

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thing that I think of specific to that story is I

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still think of undergrad, one of the things that kind

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of triggered in my mind of like, oh, athletes

242
00:15:12,631 --> 00:15:16,173
can even be connected to things even if they aren't studying law, medicine,

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and all those types of things, right? Is I think of,

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Back in 2015, at this point I had graduated, I went on to grad

245
00:15:24,132 --> 00:15:28,225
school, but Mizzou football went on strike and

246
00:15:29,278 --> 00:15:32,459
what the specifically the black players did is they came together and they said,

247
00:15:33,119 --> 00:15:36,599
hey, our campus is facing a lot of issues specifically to

248
00:15:36,960 --> 00:15:40,120
how black students are being treated on campus. And we're not going

249
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to play until the president of the university addresses it.

250
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That turned into him stepping down. I think it was nine days later. I

251
00:15:47,402 --> 00:15:50,642
have to recheck that. But the underlying piece of

252
00:15:50,682 --> 00:15:55,352
that was there was a safety on the team. who

253
00:15:55,552 --> 00:15:59,054
just so happened to be in the best fraternity in the world, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated.

254
00:16:00,675 --> 00:16:03,956
And not biased. His live

255
00:16:03,996 --> 00:16:07,078
brother was the student body president, who as

256
00:16:07,098 --> 00:16:10,799
student body president was getting all his flack on campus, being

257
00:16:10,819 --> 00:16:15,537
called the N-word. Yeah. All these types of things. Right. And

258
00:16:15,898 --> 00:16:20,120
he used his positionality to his line brother, who was a safety on the team and

259
00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:23,582
started to talk to some of the other athletes like, hey, this is what's going on on our campus

260
00:16:24,362 --> 00:16:28,725
because they were removed. And they said, well, we can do something about that. Let

261
00:16:28,765 --> 00:16:32,147
us get involved. That turns into a couple of conversations that

262
00:16:32,187 --> 00:16:35,489
turns into them going on strike. That turns into a

263
00:16:35,909 --> 00:16:39,171
university president stepping down. Right. And specific to

264
00:16:39,211 --> 00:16:42,653
that point, it should have been dribbled. Like that was the first time I seen in

265
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real time, like, oh, This is what can happen if

266
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you are one, committed to a cause, but

267
00:16:49,458 --> 00:16:52,920
two, like really organizing yourself and driving towards

268
00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:56,143
something, right? And so I try to, I don't use

269
00:16:56,163 --> 00:16:59,265
that story with the athletes often, but I do try to use my positionality again of

270
00:16:59,285 --> 00:17:02,627
like, look, I work in sports, so I can't say I'm perfect. but

271
00:17:03,067 --> 00:17:06,369
I do know what sport can do for you if you use it and see

272
00:17:06,389 --> 00:17:09,730
it in a lens that everybody else doesn't. And so how

273
00:17:09,750 --> 00:17:12,851
can we use the space that we're in now? How can we use all

274
00:17:12,871 --> 00:17:16,113
this money, this influence, these eyeballs to really drive this stuff

275
00:17:16,133 --> 00:17:19,214
that we think really needs to be changed, right? And so if we can do

276
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that on a consistent level, I think it really

277
00:17:22,555 --> 00:17:26,197
can drive the change that we wanna see in the world because

278
00:17:26,497 --> 00:17:30,470
people pay attention to sport. I love sports, but I know At

279
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the end of the day, there are bigger things at play. That doesn't mean we can't

280
00:17:33,832 --> 00:17:37,015
use sports to bring the attention and the eyeballs and the awareness to the stuff that

281
00:17:38,816 --> 00:17:42,118
So yeah, but... Nah, nah, that

282
00:17:42,158 --> 00:17:45,601
was dope, because we see, I mean, Kaepernick, you know, when

283
00:17:45,641 --> 00:17:49,384
he did what he did, which was amazing, I mean, his

284
00:17:49,424 --> 00:17:52,686
whole career was derailed, man. And he was

285
00:17:52,706 --> 00:17:58,770
a rising star in his own right, you know, and so to... See,

286
00:17:58,790 --> 00:18:01,853
the thing about white supremacy, it has a great job of distracting. It

287
00:18:01,873 --> 00:18:05,336
does. Right? And so when you, if I pay you enough money,

288
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you should be happy enough and content to

289
00:18:09,460 --> 00:18:13,403
play your role in the perpetuation of white supremacy. You

290
00:18:13,443 --> 00:18:16,566
have a role in that. You do. And then when you step out of line, after I've

291
00:18:16,586 --> 00:18:20,049
given you the money, if I'm the person that is oppressing you,

292
00:18:20,430 --> 00:18:23,873
how dare you? And now it's looking like

293
00:18:23,913 --> 00:18:27,557
you're not appreciative. You're one of the good black

294
00:18:27,597 --> 00:18:31,321
people that have been blessed to make LeBron type money. And

295
00:18:31,381 --> 00:18:34,804
so when you stand for something on the platform that is sports,

296
00:18:34,824 --> 00:18:38,588
it's just like on the platform that is medicine. You don't have to practice

297
00:18:38,628 --> 00:18:42,431
another day in your life, but if you are addressing issues

298
00:18:42,471 --> 00:18:45,652
you're healing. If you're playing sports and you're blessed to

299
00:18:45,672 --> 00:18:48,893
make that kind of money and you're standing for something because of the platform that

300
00:18:48,913 --> 00:18:53,995
you have, you're doing so much more. You've now transcended sports

301
00:18:54,315 --> 00:18:57,576
in such a way that that's a problem. And you can't be

302
00:18:57,616 --> 00:19:02,497
that high up. And that's the issue I have with Not

303
00:19:02,537 --> 00:19:05,819
sports per se, but the system that is in place where I'm going

304
00:19:05,859 --> 00:19:09,380
to pay someone millions of dollars while individuals can't

305
00:19:09,420 --> 00:19:12,742
even eat. Just because, and again,

306
00:19:12,762 --> 00:19:16,683
I'm not trying to knock someone's God-given ability

307
00:19:16,703 --> 00:19:19,925
to play football, to play basketball, to play baseball. I love that.

308
00:19:20,545 --> 00:19:23,887
However, if an issue is there as a health care,

309
00:19:24,207 --> 00:19:27,509
that's bigger than us. That's your mom. That's your child. That's your

310
00:19:27,549 --> 00:19:31,612
wife, you know? And so I think that you now have an obligation to

311
00:19:31,652 --> 00:19:34,974
serve in that way because of a blessing or

312
00:19:37,275 --> 00:19:40,597
So I think where we are right now

313
00:19:42,519 --> 00:19:45,760
in the year, I won't say year 2025, but

314
00:19:46,921 --> 00:19:51,121
this is the first time in history that at

315
00:19:51,161 --> 00:19:54,503
least from what I've seen and studied, that athletes can actually say

316
00:19:54,583 --> 00:19:57,986
something and it not be met consistently with

317
00:19:58,066 --> 00:20:02,368
very negative connotation,

318
00:20:02,388 --> 00:20:06,171
what's the word, vitriol. Vitriol, yeah. And

319
00:20:06,191 --> 00:20:09,953
where it's like a real nasty response, right? Because if

320
00:20:09,973 --> 00:20:14,256
you look historically of athletes speaking out, specifically black athletes speaking out, right? When

321
00:20:14,296 --> 00:20:17,959
you get into the Ali's, the

322
00:20:18,079 --> 00:20:22,268
Tommy Smith, the Giancarlos, Harry

323
00:20:22,288 --> 00:20:25,730
Owers is a sociologist, he's

324
00:20:25,870 --> 00:20:29,232
not an athlete, but when you look at the height of

325
00:20:29,512 --> 00:20:32,734
specifically athletes saying things around civil rights movement, post civil rights

326
00:20:32,774 --> 00:20:36,536
movement, the immediate response is bad backlash,

327
00:20:36,677 --> 00:20:40,159
right? And so that kind of planet for all the current

328
00:20:40,239 --> 00:20:43,721
athletes and I would say recently finished athletes that

329
00:20:45,186 --> 00:20:48,930
80s, 90s, 2000s, right, where they were seen as, we

330
00:20:48,950 --> 00:20:52,553
can't do this because we just started getting paid and we can't participate in this. That's

331
00:20:52,593 --> 00:20:57,338
what leads to the banning of Ali

332
00:20:57,358 --> 00:21:00,721
going to jail for standing up versus Vietnam and the banning of

333
00:21:04,573 --> 00:21:08,036
Tommy Smith and John Carlos for doing a Black Power salute, that is directly tied

334
00:21:08,056 --> 00:21:11,499
to Michael Jordan when they say, hey, MJ, do you want to endorse

335
00:21:11,519 --> 00:21:14,762
so-and-so? And he says, Republicans buy sneakers too, right? All of that is

336
00:21:18,545 --> 00:21:23,730
I'm not Black, I'm OJ, right? All those things are tied together. And I don't think most

337
00:21:23,870 --> 00:21:27,213
of our society really sees and understands that.

338
00:21:28,694 --> 00:21:31,775
I would say not until the most recent I

339
00:21:31,795 --> 00:21:36,037
can think of to really be at that level say something not get Destroyed

340
00:21:36,057 --> 00:21:39,318
for his LeBron, right? He's the first

341
00:21:39,418 --> 00:21:42,660
athlete that again I've seen recently to where you reach

342
00:21:42,700 --> 00:21:45,961
those levels and he says the thing and of course you get people saying stuff on Twitter

343
00:21:46,021 --> 00:21:51,151
Instagram Facebook Etc, right who don't agree but Even

344
00:21:51,171 --> 00:21:57,173
if you go to Cap, Cap was 2016. Even

345
00:21:57,213 --> 00:22:00,533
when Cap did it, it cost him his career, right? It's not until

346
00:22:00,573 --> 00:22:05,095
we get into 2019, 20, 21, where

347
00:22:05,135 --> 00:22:08,355
people are starting to really use their voice and they're not being yanked or they're not

348
00:22:08,415 --> 00:22:11,636
being, their livelihood being taken away. And it still happens, but just not at

349
00:22:11,676 --> 00:22:15,677
that mega level. I can still think of, conversation

350
00:22:15,697 --> 00:22:19,079
that I had back when I was at Nebraska of talking to our athletes

351
00:22:19,099 --> 00:22:22,501
in the thick of 2020 that have these specific ideas, perspectives, opinions of,

352
00:22:22,521 --> 00:22:26,203
you know, I hate police brutality,

353
00:22:26,624 --> 00:22:30,226
hate white supremacy. I want to do X, Y, Z. And I'm like, all right, cool. We

354
00:22:30,246 --> 00:22:33,968
got this rally next week. You want to speak? No, I'm good. Why?

355
00:22:35,609 --> 00:22:38,851
Well, I'm trying to get drafted this year. And if I come

356
00:22:38,931 --> 00:22:42,112
out and say this, who's to say that I'm gonna get it right

357
00:22:42,132 --> 00:22:45,374
and this might knock my draft grade right? Like these are real life conversations I've had with

358
00:22:45,674 --> 00:22:49,475
athletes that I work with and serve. And so we

359
00:22:49,515 --> 00:22:52,716
as a collective community, society, et

360
00:22:52,736 --> 00:22:56,058
cetera, we still have a lot of work to do to just empower our athletes to

361
00:22:56,138 --> 00:22:59,379
even say something. And so that's what I try to do in a lot of my day

362
00:22:59,399 --> 00:23:02,740
job, in a lot of my day-to-day work with the athletes is

363
00:23:02,760 --> 00:23:05,921
just try to, one, give resources, but two, give them

364
00:23:05,961 --> 00:23:09,942
the experience and opportunity to be like, yo, if you want to do this, we

365
00:23:09,962 --> 00:23:13,163
can help. I can help you. And I can give you what

366
00:23:13,183 --> 00:23:16,344
I've seen. I'm not going to

367
00:23:16,364 --> 00:23:19,604
say the right way because I don't know if that's necessarily true, but I can tell

368
00:23:19,644 --> 00:23:22,765
you the ins and outs and what's going to be met with certain responses and what's going

369
00:23:22,785 --> 00:23:26,246
to get your point across or what's not going to get your point across or how to talk to these people

370
00:23:26,886 --> 00:23:30,047
or how not to talk to these people, who's going to move the needle for you. Those are things

371
00:23:30,087 --> 00:23:33,248
I try to share. because I want them to be

372
00:23:33,288 --> 00:23:36,650
empowered with enough information that if you really believe you wanna say something, stand

373
00:23:36,670 --> 00:23:39,812
for something, bet, let's do it. But I can't just have you

374
00:23:39,832 --> 00:23:43,114
jump out there because I've seen too many times where athletes have crashed and burned because

375
00:23:43,174 --> 00:23:46,456
somebody is upholding white supremacy too much to actually listen to what you're

376
00:23:46,476 --> 00:23:49,578
trying to say, right? And so I try to take that part of

377
00:23:49,598 --> 00:23:53,021
the role really, really serious and try to have those conversations with our athletes all the time, should

378
00:23:53,041 --> 00:23:56,243
they bring them to me, and even inspire them to just even think

379
00:23:59,382 --> 00:24:03,785
What does a protection look like? What does that mean? When you say protections for

380
00:24:07,048 --> 00:24:10,350
It depends. The immediate thing I jump

381
00:24:10,370 --> 00:24:14,193
to is when I say protection, I mean, how

382
00:24:14,233 --> 00:24:20,238
can you say these things again without seeing a scrolling

383
00:24:20,278 --> 00:24:23,961
on your Twitter and seeing a death threat, right? Or if

384
00:24:24,002 --> 00:24:27,164
you say this and now, mysteriously, somebody wants to pull

385
00:24:27,184 --> 00:24:30,547
your scholarship, right? What

386
00:24:30,587 --> 00:24:33,750
are ways that we can make sure that, again, if you're willing to say this and

387
00:24:33,770 --> 00:24:36,972
you feel strongly about it, that you take the steps that once

388
00:24:37,012 --> 00:24:40,226
you say it, you know I'm good, my scholarship's gonna

389
00:24:40,246 --> 00:24:43,527
be kept, or somebody's actually gonna read it and know exactly what I'm talking

390
00:24:43,567 --> 00:24:46,889
about and not just call me out and say I'm being racist even though I'm black, those types

391
00:24:46,929 --> 00:24:50,130
of things. And also just even how

392
00:24:50,150 --> 00:24:53,432
to navigate the system. So I can point to specific times

393
00:24:53,452 --> 00:24:56,773
where in my career where an athlete has said, I wanna do this, and

394
00:24:56,793 --> 00:25:00,055
I wanna say this, and I'm like, I hear you and I agree, but

395
00:25:00,095 --> 00:25:03,516
if you do it this way, it might derail what you're trying

396
00:25:03,536 --> 00:25:06,858
to do. People are gonna lose the message. So you have to be aware of

397
00:25:07,975 --> 00:25:11,201
If you do it this way, let's try to make sure that you've

398
00:25:11,261 --> 00:25:15,188
taken these precautions first so that even if you do get some blowback, you're

399
00:25:15,228 --> 00:25:20,639
not met with the severest punishment that might happen if you don't, right? And

400
00:25:20,659 --> 00:25:24,102
I would, to me, that's protection because at the end of the day, it's about whatever

401
00:25:24,142 --> 00:25:27,424
that student is experiencing and making sure that they can actually walk away

402
00:25:27,444 --> 00:25:30,886
from it at the end of the day. Because sometimes they don't get the opportunity to

403
00:25:30,926 --> 00:25:34,189
do that if they don't take the precautions that are necessary to protect

404
00:25:34,229 --> 00:25:37,471
themselves, protect their brand, protect the institution, all those types of things.

405
00:25:38,191 --> 00:25:41,774
Even if something as little as like, hey, I wanna post this. I'm like, okay, cool. Have

406
00:25:41,794 --> 00:25:45,096
you talked to the coach or the AD yet about this? Nah,

407
00:25:45,116 --> 00:25:48,300
I just gonna post it. Maybe you should go talk to them first because you might get

408
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:51,744
some information that really shares why they're

409
00:25:51,784 --> 00:25:55,109
doing this or why they feel this way. So even just protect them

410
00:25:55,149 --> 00:25:58,813
in essence of like, hey man, just be a critical thinker

411
00:25:58,833 --> 00:26:02,038
of like what the steps are coming after that. And for me, that's part of

412
00:26:06,047 --> 00:26:09,731
I'm curious if you could speak to kind of

413
00:26:10,292 --> 00:26:13,395
like the current moment in time. And, you know, I

414
00:26:13,435 --> 00:26:17,099
see people online saying like, hey, if

415
00:26:17,159 --> 00:26:20,382
all the athletes stood up and said you have to keep DEI within

416
00:26:20,402 --> 00:26:23,686
the universities, they would probably do it. You know, kind of like the

417
00:26:23,766 --> 00:26:28,771
situation that you were describing with the president. How

418
00:26:28,851 --> 00:26:32,133
are you helping your athletes navigate this and

419
00:26:35,935 --> 00:26:40,458
I think to your point, I

420
00:26:40,498 --> 00:26:44,461
think that should work. I

421
00:26:44,501 --> 00:26:47,723
don't know with the current presidential administration, I

422
00:26:47,743 --> 00:26:51,364
think it will be met with Not

423
00:26:51,424 --> 00:26:55,388
so great response, but another conversation

424
00:26:55,408 --> 00:26:58,851
for another day. I

425
00:26:58,891 --> 00:27:02,073
think, similar to what Courtney

426
00:27:02,093 --> 00:27:05,236
was saying, I do think athletes have an obligation to participate and engage in this

427
00:27:05,256 --> 00:27:08,499
type of work. The level varies, right?

428
00:27:10,225 --> 00:27:13,347
I do also believe that, well, not

429
00:27:13,407 --> 00:27:17,430
actually, let me not say that. How do I help? One, give

430
00:27:17,490 --> 00:27:20,732
resources, give strategy, right? If there's a difference between I

431
00:27:20,772 --> 00:27:24,194
want to say something and I want to do something, there's also a difference between I just want to feel community

432
00:27:24,234 --> 00:27:27,596
and heard, and I want to take action. So first giving

433
00:27:27,716 --> 00:27:31,299
them those platforms, right? And giving them those opportunities, because

434
00:27:31,319 --> 00:27:34,981
I have a lot of athletes who will come to me or come to staff and are like, I

435
00:27:35,021 --> 00:27:38,363
have this problem. And the first thing I want to do is just let people know

436
00:27:38,403 --> 00:27:42,045
I have this problem. Okay, cool. Let's give you a space to do that. Right. And

437
00:27:42,185 --> 00:27:45,486
after you do that, I might say, do you want to take it further? You

438
00:27:45,526 --> 00:27:48,782
want to do a little bit more? Some people will say yes, some people like,

439
00:27:48,842 --> 00:27:52,564
nah, I just wanted to kind of air that grievance out and I'm good. And so what

440
00:27:52,604 --> 00:27:55,806
I struggle with is I tend to want our athletes to kind of take it

441
00:27:55,826 --> 00:27:59,688
to the next level, but sometimes they don't always want that, right? And so trying

442
00:27:59,708 --> 00:28:03,050
to kind of balance that line of, I don't want to push you into something that you don't want to do. And

443
00:28:03,090 --> 00:28:06,532
if you're not really invested in it, now I have you, us look in a certain way

444
00:28:06,572 --> 00:28:10,034
because you just kind of wanted to air this grievance, right? And so that's

445
00:28:10,074 --> 00:28:13,336
another way, well, main way I support them is one, give them a space to

446
00:28:13,376 --> 00:28:16,458
share, but two, Ask those follow-up questions like okay. What do you

447
00:28:16,479 --> 00:28:20,321
want to do with this? Do you want to take it to these levels you want to? Escalate

448
00:28:20,442 --> 00:28:24,224
it you would bring awareness to it. What are we doing? Right? I

449
00:28:24,244 --> 00:28:28,207
mean and giving them the space to one figure that out Where

450
00:28:28,248 --> 00:28:32,030
we are right now again, I do think that these should participate engage

451
00:28:34,332 --> 00:28:37,935
I have said a couple times to athletes staff

452
00:28:37,955 --> 00:28:41,555
that I work with I got some staff in this room who can attest to this that Missouri

453
00:28:42,196 --> 00:28:46,118
2015 is bound to happen again. And it's bound to happen very quickly to where an

454
00:28:46,158 --> 00:28:49,380
athletic department, a student athlete, somebody is

455
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,862
going to stand up and be like, nah, I ain't with this. And

456
00:28:53,322 --> 00:28:56,564
it's going to catch the ear of somebody that's really important. That's going to put a pause to

457
00:28:56,584 --> 00:28:59,846
something. Right. I hope we

458
00:28:59,886 --> 00:29:03,047
don't have to get to the point that that issue is forced, but I do think

459
00:29:03,087 --> 00:29:06,507
we will get there. And not necessarily see you, I just mean in general. It

460
00:29:06,527 --> 00:29:09,868
would not surprise me that between now and the next presidential election that

461
00:29:10,268 --> 00:29:13,769
some team, some player that is really big is like, I'm

462
00:29:13,809 --> 00:29:16,969
not doing X, Y, Z until these things happen. And it's

463
00:29:16,989 --> 00:29:21,030
gonna cause more conversation, more of a deep dive, and

464
00:29:21,170 --> 00:29:24,330
it's gonna piss a lot of people off, very candidly. But the things that

465
00:29:27,895 --> 00:29:31,860
And listen to you, I'm wondering, like

466
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:35,584
Title IX protects, like it says, what exactly

467
00:29:38,266 --> 00:29:42,367
Title IX protects the, I had

468
00:29:42,407 --> 00:29:45,828
the specific verbiage somewhere in my head, but it

469
00:29:45,868 --> 00:29:49,069
essentially protects opportunity and education that

470
00:29:49,089 --> 00:29:52,590
cannot be infringed upon based on the status of race, sex,

471
00:29:52,770 --> 00:29:56,270
gender, et cetera. Most people see it as the

472
00:29:56,570 --> 00:30:00,271
law that really kind of opened the opportunity specifically for women's sports. But

473
00:30:00,291 --> 00:30:03,812
the basis of it is you cannot discriminate on opportunities that you are giving based

474
00:30:03,872 --> 00:30:08,783
on sex. So if you have a, from

475
00:30:08,803 --> 00:30:12,027
an athletic perspective, a women's tennis team, you

476
00:30:12,047 --> 00:30:15,351
need to have a men's something team that balances out from a numbers perspective. If

477
00:30:15,371 --> 00:30:18,995
you have a men's golf team, you need to have a women's something perspective from a numbers perspective.

478
00:30:19,375 --> 00:30:23,020
Now it's not always a one-to-one, but that's because there's also a funding mechanism

479
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:26,182
to it of like, There's a reason why there's no women's team that's

480
00:30:26,222 --> 00:30:29,564
as big as football, right? But what will end up happening is if there are

481
00:30:29,804 --> 00:30:33,086
120 football players, there might be a rowing

482
00:30:33,106 --> 00:30:36,428
team that has 47. There might be a women's track team

483
00:30:36,448 --> 00:30:40,231
that has 56. There might be a volleyball team that has 30, right? And

484
00:30:40,251 --> 00:30:43,633
so they try to balance it out from a numbers perspective in that regard. But Title IX,

485
00:30:43,953 --> 00:30:47,115
the basis of it is trying to make sure that we protect the

486
00:30:47,275 --> 00:30:50,886
opportunity for really all

487
00:30:51,026 --> 00:30:54,569
people, but more aimed at gender, to have the opportunity to

488
00:30:54,589 --> 00:30:58,091
compete and get the same, not amount of resources, but

489
00:31:00,673 --> 00:31:03,936
Mm-hmm. Do you, has that come

490
00:31:11,062 --> 00:31:14,845
To my knowledge, it hasn't been explicitly. I think

491
00:31:15,025 --> 00:31:18,800
the first, at least to me, The

492
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:22,123
first domino that we see is the attack specifically on trans people

493
00:31:23,084 --> 00:31:26,807
participating in sport, right? When

494
00:31:26,847 --> 00:31:30,290
you start to hard and fast

495
00:31:30,310 --> 00:31:33,413
define what sex and

496
00:31:33,453 --> 00:31:36,796
gender is in sport from youth

497
00:31:37,297 --> 00:31:41,380
all the way to professional, it gets real difficult

498
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:44,663
to see, for me, how we don't jump to something else

499
00:31:44,723 --> 00:31:48,025
after that. Of, hey, we could police who's doing

500
00:31:48,045 --> 00:31:51,287
this at these levels around these things. Who's to stop us to now

501
00:31:51,347 --> 00:31:54,849
going to you have to be a certain race or a certain age

502
00:31:55,089 --> 00:31:58,772
or a certain status, stature, makeup, right?

503
00:32:00,152 --> 00:32:03,274
So again, I don't think it's been explicitly stated, but to me, that's the

504
00:32:03,514 --> 00:32:07,217
that's the first domino is really trying to eliminate

505
00:32:07,237 --> 00:32:10,699
trans people out of sport and eliminate trans people really out of our society.

506
00:32:15,254 --> 00:32:18,937
I 100% agree. I think it's a distraction from

507
00:32:19,277 --> 00:32:22,720
what's next when you're dealing with the

508
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:26,143
immigration situation and then you're dealing with how they're

509
00:32:26,183 --> 00:32:30,006
trying to redefine or rewrite history in

510
00:32:30,066 --> 00:32:33,548
such a way or take history away altogether.

511
00:32:35,110 --> 00:32:38,292
I think they're just testing the water a little bit to see how far can

512
00:32:38,352 --> 00:32:42,395
I go with this ignorant shit before Without

513
00:32:42,556 --> 00:32:46,398
getting too much pushback. Yeah, because if you're a lawyer law

514
00:32:46,458 --> 00:32:49,741
is law Yeah, like you know, I mean, it's like medicine is medicine. Yeah,

515
00:32:49,981 --> 00:32:53,163
you can't but if you're trying to change it You have to see the

516
00:32:53,183 --> 00:32:57,466
lines right here. Let me go. Yeah, and if that happens, okay, let me go He's

517
00:32:57,506 --> 00:33:01,048
talking about again. I want to be president past

518
00:33:02,209 --> 00:33:05,652
The term year the term right and so just imagine I'm sure

519
00:33:05,912 --> 00:33:09,434
everyone around him knows that's a constitutional crisis But what

520
00:33:09,494 --> 00:33:13,516
else? has he done up until now that

521
00:33:13,656 --> 00:33:17,037
we thought a couple years back could never have happened. And so

522
00:33:17,497 --> 00:33:20,697
I think sports is

523
00:33:20,737 --> 00:33:24,278
a gateway a lot of times because so many people

524
00:33:24,858 --> 00:33:28,079
appreciate it and love it. And if it can happen there, like you just

525
00:33:28,119 --> 00:33:31,380
said, where else can it not happen? And then you start to

526
00:33:31,460 --> 00:33:34,681
attack education. You say, you can't speak

527
00:33:34,741 --> 00:33:38,202
about this at a school. You can't protest at a school when higher

528
00:33:38,242 --> 00:33:41,842
education has been like, Historically, that's

529
00:33:41,862 --> 00:33:45,123
what you do. You learn how to think when you're in

530
00:33:45,163 --> 00:33:49,204
school and in higher education especially. And it

531
00:33:49,244 --> 00:33:52,865
was cool until it wasn't. And so I

532
00:33:52,885 --> 00:33:56,806
think individuals like yourself are so needed because

533
00:33:57,226 --> 00:34:00,687
you are almost on a front line because everyone

534
00:34:00,727 --> 00:34:04,128
can have a commonality in sports. You're white,

535
00:34:04,388 --> 00:34:07,630
black, rich, poor. If you can play, you can play. No

536
00:34:07,650 --> 00:34:11,012
matter if your pops got money or you don't. If

537
00:34:11,072 --> 00:34:14,775
you can dribble, if you can catch, if you can run, if you're quick, like, I

538
00:34:14,815 --> 00:34:18,037
forgot that you were like that while we on the field. We're

539
00:34:18,057 --> 00:34:21,399
trying to win this ring, this cup, whatever. But if they address that,

540
00:34:21,419 --> 00:34:24,941
it's another way to bring division to the individuals that

541
00:34:25,181 --> 00:34:28,384
may have had a conversation around race. So if I'm

542
00:34:29,244 --> 00:34:32,285
on the field with a white guy who grew up looking at

543
00:34:32,325 --> 00:34:35,887
my skin like, hell, now as we're

544
00:34:35,927 --> 00:34:39,129
winning this ring together, you may start to think, oh shit, he may not be as

545
00:34:39,149 --> 00:34:43,551
bad, you know? But if socially,

546
00:34:44,011 --> 00:34:47,272
if things are happening and now the distraction is the

547
00:34:47,312 --> 00:34:51,234
person next to you is like either a victim or

548
00:34:51,274 --> 00:34:54,856
an oppressor, now again, Now we got a fight. Yep. Now

549
00:34:54,896 --> 00:34:58,337
we got beef, you know, so I think what you do is phenomenal. I

550
00:34:58,977 --> 00:35:02,518
Thank you I'm curious if you've had to do any

551
00:35:02,538 --> 00:35:06,159
more interventions with team in terms of like creating inclusive team

552
00:35:06,199 --> 00:35:09,820
cultures with people Speaking out more and

553
00:35:12,501 --> 00:35:15,902
Yes within the team. Yes, we specifically at

554
00:35:16,602 --> 00:35:19,883
where I am now I see you we actually haven't had a lot of instances with

555
00:35:20,863 --> 00:35:24,317
athletes wanting to at least publicly come

556
00:35:24,377 --> 00:35:27,460
out and talk about stuff. A lot of the

557
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:30,743
work that I do, well I won't say a lot, a decent amount

558
00:35:30,763 --> 00:35:34,126
of the work that I do though is working directly with our teams to

559
00:35:34,767 --> 00:35:37,990
either facilitate conversations or do workshops. And I

560
00:35:38,010 --> 00:35:41,152
can think of one team in particular that I worked with where I had

561
00:35:41,172 --> 00:35:44,576
a staff member come to me and say, hey, specifically

562
00:35:44,596 --> 00:35:47,658
getting back to this idea of trans people in

563
00:35:47,678 --> 00:35:51,823
sport, they're like, hey, it's impacting our sport. And

564
00:35:51,903 --> 00:35:55,184
I think our team has opinions, but we don't really know how to talk about it. Can you, can

565
00:35:55,204 --> 00:35:58,684
you help us? Right. And after

566
00:35:58,724 --> 00:36:02,085
talking to the staff, I'm like, okay, give me a little bit more. Cause I need some context in

567
00:36:02,105 --> 00:36:05,666
regards to what this might look like. And I'm like, yeah, we, we had somebody

568
00:36:05,686 --> 00:36:08,807
within our sport that some people on our team know who had

569
00:36:08,827 --> 00:36:12,313
a very public kind of bout with, um, you

570
00:36:12,353 --> 00:36:16,318
know, trans people participating at another institution, another state, but

571
00:36:16,378 --> 00:36:19,461
because we know this team, you

572
00:36:19,501 --> 00:36:22,785
know, this sport really well, some people know who it was. Some people

573
00:36:22,805 --> 00:36:25,928
know people attached to it. And we've heard kind of like some, some talking in

574
00:36:25,948 --> 00:36:29,071
the locker room. And again, I think people are

575
00:36:29,092 --> 00:36:32,306
interested, but we don't really know how to talk about it. How do we do that? And I'm

576
00:36:32,326 --> 00:36:35,549
like, okay, so start strategize. I'll talk to the coach, talk

577
00:36:35,569 --> 00:36:38,932
to the athletes. And what we ended up coming to was, and

578
00:36:38,952 --> 00:36:42,115
what I told the athletes and kind of enacting and creating this

579
00:36:42,155 --> 00:36:45,498
workshop was, you're going to have a piece. My job

580
00:36:45,538 --> 00:36:48,641
is not to change your opinion. What my job is to do is

581
00:36:48,681 --> 00:36:51,923
make sure that you have informed opinions though. And so what

582
00:36:51,944 --> 00:36:55,547
we did with that specific team was like, we took the stuff

583
00:36:55,567 --> 00:36:59,200
that you were seeing on the news. specific about that sport

584
00:36:59,380 --> 00:37:02,981
and specifically trans people in that sport, and we broke out the

585
00:37:03,862 --> 00:37:07,243
sources themselves. And we took the sources to see

586
00:37:07,443 --> 00:37:11,566
what's credible and what's not. And as we did that, and

587
00:37:11,586 --> 00:37:14,928
I told the team as we were kind of dialoguing with one another, I'm like, again, I'm

588
00:37:14,968 --> 00:37:18,249
not here to change your opinion. Your opinion is yours. You are entitled to

589
00:37:18,309 --> 00:37:21,571
it. I might disagree with it, but I want you to think critically about

590
00:37:21,631 --> 00:37:25,032
forming an opinion, not specifically about this, but anything

591
00:37:25,092 --> 00:37:28,274
as being a college student, right? But what I do, again, want to make sure that you

592
00:37:28,314 --> 00:37:31,575
know about is where to verify sources, what's

593
00:37:31,635 --> 00:37:34,977
real and what's not. to actually take this into consideration because if

594
00:37:35,017 --> 00:37:39,098
you're getting bad information, it's going to help form bad opinions, right?

595
00:37:39,178 --> 00:37:42,440
And so just even equipping that team and

596
00:37:42,460 --> 00:37:45,801
those athletes with that, that then turns into how they're researching for

597
00:37:45,861 --> 00:37:48,982
other stuff. And if they're seeing that it's a viable source, right? Or

598
00:37:49,002 --> 00:37:52,143
if it's an unbiased source. And so there's things that I share with them that

599
00:37:54,344 --> 00:37:58,085
they continue to use not just in, you know, the relationships with

600
00:37:58,265 --> 00:38:01,326
their teammates, but even in class of like, oh, if I'm doing a research paper, now I

601
00:38:01,346 --> 00:38:04,668
can drop this link in here to see if this is an unbiased source that I can now produce this paper

602
00:38:04,688 --> 00:38:08,869
about. Right. And so it's about culture

603
00:38:08,929 --> 00:38:12,150
and engagement in DEI. But then again, it's critical thinking.

604
00:38:12,250 --> 00:38:15,651
Exactly. Right. And so a lot of the work that I try to do with our teams

605
00:38:15,711 --> 00:38:18,893
in those workshops and even just talking to our coaches is like, hey,

606
00:38:18,913 --> 00:38:22,212
at the end of the day, Yes, my work is diversity, equity

607
00:38:22,232 --> 00:38:27,155
and inclusion, it's culture building, it's team engagement, et cetera. But like, at

608
00:38:27,175 --> 00:38:30,418
the core, I'm a strategist and

609
00:38:30,458 --> 00:38:33,620
a critical thinker. I just see it in a very different lens than

610
00:38:33,660 --> 00:38:36,982
most people because of life experiences, training, education, all

611
00:38:37,002 --> 00:38:40,244
those types of things. But that's the framework I take into

612
00:38:40,284 --> 00:38:43,506
this work. And that's the framework I take to our teams and really

613
00:38:43,526 --> 00:38:46,753
try to approach our coaches specifically of like, hey, There

614
00:38:46,773 --> 00:38:50,658
are some things that we're going to do and talk about that are very specific

615
00:38:50,678 --> 00:38:54,063
and that you've seen on the news around race, gender, sexuality, all

616
00:38:54,083 --> 00:38:57,547
those things. But my job is to help you think outside the box altogether.

617
00:38:58,208 --> 00:39:01,332
How can we do that and still achieve the goals that you say you have, but just do

618
00:39:01,372 --> 00:39:04,676
it in very different ways? And so I try to approach it in a lot of those ways,

619
00:39:05,253 --> 00:39:09,696
That's such a relief that someone's out there doing what you're doing. There's

620
00:39:09,736 --> 00:39:13,659
so much misinformation and I'm not in touch with the

621
00:39:13,699 --> 00:39:17,182
youth. So I just really appreciate

622
00:39:17,362 --> 00:39:20,604
that that's happening. And I imagine you're doing all that work

623
00:39:20,685 --> 00:39:23,967
and then you have the capacity to stay

624
00:39:24,007 --> 00:39:27,169
with it if it goes there, right? If it gets heated, you know, and that's the

625
00:39:27,209 --> 00:39:30,332
skillset that a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to get near it,

626
00:39:33,413 --> 00:39:36,894
Have you had a situation where you had to get real? Like, I

627
00:39:36,934 --> 00:39:40,535
want to know if you in a locker room and it starts to go crazy and

628
00:39:40,595 --> 00:39:44,156
someone says something or does something. Have you had one of those experiences

629
00:39:44,196 --> 00:39:47,777
that you can share? Like you had to or you were called to

630
00:39:47,817 --> 00:39:51,917
have a cultural building time. Absolutely. With individuals. Absolutely.

631
00:39:52,378 --> 00:39:56,558
Yes. Let me hear that bro. So

632
00:39:56,598 --> 00:40:01,811
the two that I able

633
00:40:01,831 --> 00:40:05,034
to share is the best way I can explain it.

634
00:40:05,474 --> 00:40:09,118
Because there's some stuff that I've been called about and I'm just like, don't

635
00:40:09,138 --> 00:40:12,440
call me and don't say this on the phone. We need to talk in person.

636
00:40:14,382 --> 00:40:18,145
But so there's two I can think of in particular where I was

637
00:40:18,165 --> 00:40:21,988
working with a team and the

638
00:40:22,028 --> 00:40:27,008
coach calls me. It was like, hey, this is in the midst of COVID. And

639
00:40:27,429 --> 00:40:30,491
the coach calls me, he's like, hey, I have a player on

640
00:40:30,531 --> 00:40:35,615
my team who is calling COVID the Chinese

641
00:40:35,655 --> 00:40:39,357
virus and is saying, fuck China. And

642
00:40:39,377 --> 00:40:42,600
they have a teammate who you can guess is

643
00:40:42,620 --> 00:40:46,623
Chinese and from China, right? So I'm like, this

644
00:40:46,663 --> 00:40:51,986
is not great. And so the

645
00:40:52,006 --> 00:40:55,217
coach is like, To their, I won't say to their credit, but their, their

646
00:40:55,237 --> 00:40:58,441
like outrage, like can't stand for this. This is

647
00:40:58,481 --> 00:41:01,705
not okay. Kick them off the team. I'm like, no, you

648
00:41:01,765 --> 00:41:05,169
got to slow down. We can't just kick them off the team because similar to

649
00:41:05,189 --> 00:41:08,387
the point that I was sharing with Emily, like. These are still students that

650
00:41:08,427 --> 00:41:11,829
at the end of the day are getting information from somewhere, and kicking them

651
00:41:11,849 --> 00:41:15,092
off the team is not really gonna solve the problem. It's gonna solve the problem

652
00:41:15,132 --> 00:41:18,494
in getting the person out of the locker room, but this is still somebody that we need to make

653
00:41:18,534 --> 00:41:22,037
sure that they have information, right? So

654
00:41:22,057 --> 00:41:26,440
that turned into, hey, so-and-so, you

655
00:41:26,460 --> 00:41:30,151
shouldn't say that. Here's why. Here's

656
00:41:30,191 --> 00:41:33,593
the data and the resources to back up why. And we

657
00:41:33,633 --> 00:41:36,775
also want to check to make sure that you're doing the necessary work to make sure that

658
00:41:36,795 --> 00:41:40,077
you don't do it again. So it essentially turned into kind of like a mini

659
00:41:40,097 --> 00:41:43,739
class, right, of read this stuff, go through these documents.

660
00:41:44,259 --> 00:41:47,882
Here's all information. even rooted to even the World Health

661
00:41:47,962 --> 00:41:51,625
Organization as to why we don't call diseases

662
00:41:52,266 --> 00:41:55,929
by geographical names. There's documented years

663
00:41:55,969 --> 00:41:59,232
of research that says, here's why we should not do this, right? So even getting to

664
00:41:59,252 --> 00:42:03,883
that level of like, yes, this is about the fact that you to

665
00:42:03,923 --> 00:42:07,146
basically insult this person, but I still want you to have the information as to why

666
00:42:07,186 --> 00:42:10,629
you shouldn't be doing X, Y, Z. So that's one immediate thing

667
00:42:11,730 --> 00:42:14,892
Can I ask a question about that? How did

668
00:42:18,335 --> 00:42:21,518
The perpetrator, I guess you would

669
00:42:21,538 --> 00:42:24,841
say, essentially had

670
00:42:24,861 --> 00:42:27,966
to go through the team and model and

671
00:42:28,047 --> 00:42:31,609
show what they did wrong. And I don't want to say public apology.

672
00:42:31,689 --> 00:42:35,592
It was that, but that wasn't the point. But more so the

673
00:42:35,692 --> 00:42:39,275
follow up and really the seeing of the change behavior of,

674
00:42:40,315 --> 00:42:43,998
hey, we're actually going to be watching to see. It's pretty easy and not

675
00:42:44,318 --> 00:42:47,480
easy. We can tell in a public setting if

676
00:42:47,521 --> 00:42:51,004
you don't say it again. Right. That's easy. But

677
00:42:51,185 --> 00:42:54,886
observing how you interact with your teammate now, the

678
00:42:54,906 --> 00:42:58,127
things that you're saying in group conversations, what you're saying

679
00:42:58,147 --> 00:43:01,608
on the bus, what you're saying at practice, those are all things that

680
00:43:01,748 --> 00:43:04,990
the coach monitored throughout the rest of the time to

681
00:43:05,010 --> 00:43:08,351
see like, are you really actually seeping this into

682
00:43:08,391 --> 00:43:11,632
you? And if not, we also got discretion that

683
00:43:11,652 --> 00:43:14,693
we can just send you home and, hey, thanks, but no thanks. We don't want you to be a part of

684
00:43:14,713 --> 00:43:18,055
the team anymore. Right. So that's that's an immediate one

685
00:43:18,075 --> 00:43:21,572
I could think of. Another one I can think of, this was with,

686
00:43:21,852 --> 00:43:25,573
actually it was with campus students. It wasn't with college athletes,

687
00:43:25,653 --> 00:43:30,314
but I used to do a workshop

688
00:43:30,354 --> 00:43:34,135
that is essentially kind of like a DEI one-on-one, right? And

689
00:43:34,155 --> 00:43:38,676
I still do it on request, but I don't do it nearly as much as I used to, where

690
00:43:40,996 --> 00:43:44,101
what I would do is I would get people in

691
00:43:44,141 --> 00:43:48,386
a room, we would give them a statement, and

692
00:43:48,406 --> 00:43:51,469
the activity's called take a stand. You give them a statement, and if

693
00:43:51,489 --> 00:43:54,793
you agree with the statement, you go to the right of the room. If you disagree,

694
00:43:54,813 --> 00:43:58,277
you go to the left. If you're unsure, you go to the middle. And it would be something like,

695
00:44:02,483 --> 00:44:05,766
I'm trying to think of one of the statements we used. Well, of this specific example, I can't remember exactly

696
00:44:05,786 --> 00:44:09,070
what it was, but it was something around the effect of like, I should treat people

697
00:44:09,130 --> 00:44:12,393
based on their race, right? And so some people go to the right,

698
00:44:12,413 --> 00:44:16,638
some people go to the left, some people are in the middle. And I had this really

699
00:44:16,678 --> 00:44:20,201
well-meaning white kid from rural

700
00:44:21,022 --> 00:44:24,544
anywhere USA. And essentially

701
00:44:24,824 --> 00:44:28,145
says the, what a lot of people now know is like, hey,

702
00:44:28,185 --> 00:44:31,426
that's a no-no, you shouldn't say that. It's like, oh yeah, I don't see color. I don't treat people based

703
00:44:31,446 --> 00:44:34,766
on that, right? Which I think is actually pretty tame compared to some of the stuff I

704
00:44:34,786 --> 00:44:38,087
have seen and read. But of course, you get people like, wait,

705
00:44:38,127 --> 00:44:41,307
what? No, don't say that, bro. I said, hey, let me ask

706
00:44:41,327 --> 00:44:44,828
you a follow-up question. Tell me about some

707
00:44:44,868 --> 00:44:48,049
of the things that were instilled in you. Like, tell me about

708
00:44:48,069 --> 00:44:51,378
some values that you have from your family. It's like, oh, my dad

709
00:44:51,398 --> 00:44:55,742
taught me to treat people with respect, treat people with kindness, treat

710
00:44:55,762 --> 00:44:58,925
people with integrity, honesty, and

711
00:44:59,085 --> 00:45:02,247
you know, that's what I try to ascribe to. I said, okay, so let

712
00:45:02,267 --> 00:45:05,570
me give you a little bit of game. It's not that you don't see or treat

713
00:45:05,590 --> 00:45:09,253
people based on color, you treat people based on a value set, right?

714
00:45:09,574 --> 00:45:12,736
It's like, yeah. I'm like, so does it matter what the color is

715
00:45:12,796 --> 00:45:16,643
to treat people based on a value set? No. Cool.

716
00:45:17,424 --> 00:45:20,827
So next time, don't say, I don't see it because

717
00:45:20,887 --> 00:45:24,230
in reality, yes, you might not see it, but the difference is

718
00:45:24,410 --> 00:45:27,453
if you tell that to me, I'm gonna get pissed off because I'm black and I want you to know I'm black and I

719
00:45:27,493 --> 00:45:30,915
care about being black. But you can have that conversation to treat people

720
00:45:31,096 --> 00:45:34,519
absent of their color and not because or not

721
00:45:34,559 --> 00:45:37,881
because of their color and not see it because people see that as you

722
00:45:37,901 --> 00:45:41,084
don't see my color, right? Not you don't treat me based on my color because

723
00:45:41,104 --> 00:45:44,294
I don't want people to treat me a certain way

724
00:45:44,314 --> 00:45:47,517
because I'm black either, but I do want you to appreciate and see the fact that

725
00:45:47,577 --> 00:45:51,300
I am, right? And so even doing it in real time with

726
00:45:51,340 --> 00:45:54,743
that individual student, but also with the students around, it gives them language

727
00:45:54,783 --> 00:45:58,006
and ways to actually be able to address it and be like, oh, okay, next

728
00:45:58,066 --> 00:46:02,109
time, because I also tell people to like, hey, if you jump down people's throat, sometimes it's

729
00:46:02,289 --> 00:46:05,512
not really gonna work, or it might get them to shut up, but

730
00:46:05,552 --> 00:46:08,854
that don't mean that they really are learning, right? And so

731
00:46:08,874 --> 00:46:13,407
I also think for myself, I'm a, I

732
00:46:13,427 --> 00:46:16,709
like to consider myself to be an educator, and so I always try to take that lens of like, if

733
00:46:16,749 --> 00:46:20,052
people are saying X, Y, Z or doing X, Y, Z, how can we make sure they learn

734
00:46:20,072 --> 00:46:23,254
about what they're saying or learn about what they're doing so that

735
00:46:23,274 --> 00:46:26,436
they actually do get a chance to reflect on why it was wrong and

736
00:46:26,476 --> 00:46:29,619
bad compared to, I shouldn't do this no more, I shouldn't say this no more,

737
00:46:32,005 --> 00:46:35,106
We're going to get back to the episode in just a moment, but we

738
00:46:35,146 --> 00:46:38,928
wanted to give a quick shout out to our supporters on Patreon,

739
00:46:39,068 --> 00:46:42,750
as well as our supporters who have bought our merch from our website.

740
00:46:43,310 --> 00:46:47,452
Our podcast is principally sustained and propelled by

741
00:46:47,632 --> 00:46:51,214
listeners like you, and we wanted to make sure you knew how

742
00:46:51,254 --> 00:46:54,556
to get on that train. So to support us on Patreon, please

743
00:46:54,596 --> 00:46:57,837
go to the Patreon page and look up the

744
00:46:57,917 --> 00:47:01,540
Humanize podcast. There we have some exclusive

745
00:47:01,580 --> 00:47:04,924
content that we haven't released to the wider public, as

746
00:47:04,964 --> 00:47:08,368
well as ways to engage with the community. And if

747
00:47:08,388 --> 00:47:12,313
you want to check out some of the Humanize merch, the t-shirts, sweatshirts,

748
00:47:12,633 --> 00:47:17,659
mugs and different things, go to our website, thehumanizepodcast.com and

749
00:47:17,839 --> 00:47:20,922
select shop at the top. And all of

750
00:47:20,982 --> 00:47:24,244
that support that we received financially goes directly to

751
00:47:24,404 --> 00:47:27,706
our amazing editing team and making sure we're bringing

752
00:47:27,726 --> 00:47:31,468
you the highest quality content you can get. Thank you. And

753
00:47:31,748 --> 00:47:34,970
let's go back to the episode. I have other questions, but

754
00:47:34,990 --> 00:47:38,372
I want to know if anyone in the audience wants to come up

755
00:47:38,512 --> 00:47:43,415
and ask a question, share a comment or a thought

756
00:47:44,195 --> 00:47:48,958
or how this is landing with you. Come

757
00:47:50,418 --> 00:47:54,262
How you doing, sir? Asta Spanx. I played at CU in

758
00:47:54,282 --> 00:47:57,366
the 60s. The thing that I'd like to

759
00:47:57,406 --> 00:48:02,251
talk about is Tommy Smith. I played with him in Cincinnati. So

760
00:48:02,271 --> 00:48:06,957
when Tommy came back from the 68 Olympics, he told

761
00:48:07,017 --> 00:48:10,533
us a wonderful story, and the story really was There's

762
00:48:14,774 --> 00:48:18,095
Okay, who had come to him, and Tommy was at San Jose State,

763
00:48:18,115 --> 00:48:22,175
and he went with John Carlos and a whole bunch of other guys, and he got them together, and

764
00:48:22,195 --> 00:48:25,396
they boycotted. Yep. Harry came to us when I was playing for the Oakland

765
00:48:25,436 --> 00:48:28,937
Raiders, and he asked us to boycott. Okay. We

766
00:48:28,997 --> 00:48:32,157
couldn't, and there was a reason for that. The

767
00:48:32,197 --> 00:48:35,458
National Football League at that point was on quotas for

768
00:48:35,478 --> 00:48:38,739
black players. People don't understand that. Our quota

769
00:48:38,779 --> 00:48:42,308
at the Oakland Raiders was 12. Now, our

770
00:48:42,748 --> 00:48:45,911
roster was 40. Every team had a

771
00:48:45,991 --> 00:48:49,414
different number. There is a player

772
00:48:49,494 --> 00:48:52,897
in Denver's ring of fame, Lionel Taylor, who's one of my very,

773
00:48:52,937 --> 00:48:56,901
very good friends, who played with Chicago Bears in

774
00:48:57,241 --> 00:49:01,385
the 50s. Chicago Bears' quarter was four. Lionel

775
00:49:01,405 --> 00:49:04,785
made the team. First year. Second

776
00:49:04,805 --> 00:49:07,968
year, he was number five. He got cut. So, he came to

777
00:49:08,028 --> 00:49:12,691
the Denver Broncos, and he made the ring of fame. So,

778
00:49:13,132 --> 00:49:16,614
this stuff has gone on forever. It is not just

779
00:49:16,915 --> 00:49:20,397
Ali who was the man. My heroes were

780
00:49:20,437 --> 00:49:24,140
Jim Brown, Will Chamberlain, Bill Russell. Those

781
00:49:24,180 --> 00:49:27,743
guys stood up, and the reason they could stand up was because they were superstars. The

782
00:49:27,783 --> 00:49:31,445
rest of us absolutely could not. But to go back to Tommy,

783
00:49:32,005 --> 00:49:35,167
when Tommy was at the stand, and if you

784
00:49:35,207 --> 00:49:38,449
see there, Tommy put his right hand up and John

785
00:49:38,469 --> 00:49:42,010
put his left. That's right, because John

786
00:49:42,050 --> 00:49:45,472
forgot his gloves. Now, to go back even

787
00:49:45,572 --> 00:49:49,754
farther, what happened was in 1936, Jesse

788
00:49:49,934 --> 00:49:53,296
Owens had won three gold medals, and the

789
00:49:53,336 --> 00:49:56,659
medals were the 100, the 220 and

790
00:49:56,679 --> 00:49:59,962
the long jump. Hitler went to Avery

791
00:50:00,002 --> 00:50:03,425
Brundage, who was the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and

792
00:50:03,445 --> 00:50:07,609
he said to Brundage, you have two Jewish runners

793
00:50:07,649 --> 00:50:10,952
who are on the 440 team. We

794
00:50:10,972 --> 00:50:14,215
want them off. We would prefer that blacks beat

795
00:50:14,275 --> 00:50:18,078
us versus Jews. So, again, this

796
00:50:18,118 --> 00:50:21,340
stuff is forever. You come from St.

797
00:50:21,380 --> 00:50:24,741
Louis, okay? In St. Louis, there was a wonderful book

798
00:50:24,821 --> 00:50:28,623
written by Kurt Flood. And the book is A Well-Paid

799
00:50:28,663 --> 00:50:32,045
Slave. And if it weren't for Kurt Flood, these guys

800
00:50:32,105 --> 00:50:35,607
wouldn't be being paid. He got rid of the reserve class. So

801
00:50:38,008 --> 00:50:41,224
Thank you. I'll

802
00:50:41,324 --> 00:50:44,545
add to Mr. Banks, is

803
00:50:44,565 --> 00:50:48,166
that correct? I'll add to that too. So he

804
00:50:48,206 --> 00:50:51,367
mentioned the name Dr. Harry Edwards. Dr. Harry Edwards was

805
00:50:51,467 --> 00:50:56,009
a, I would call an early adaptation

806
00:50:56,029 --> 00:51:01,991
of like a sports sociologist who, for

807
00:51:02,031 --> 00:51:05,704
his career, really kind of caught

808
00:51:05,825 --> 00:51:09,255
on specifically for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and

809
00:51:09,295 --> 00:51:13,480
the Olympic

810
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:16,963
Olympic Movement for Human Rights, I think, is the official name.

811
00:51:17,844 --> 00:51:21,107
He's the same person that advised Colin Kaepernick at

812
00:51:21,147 --> 00:51:24,210
the San Francisco 49ers in 2016. So even if you think of

813
00:51:24,230 --> 00:51:27,713
that span of what, 50 years or whatever it is, right, of trying

814
00:51:27,793 --> 00:51:30,956
to make sure our athletes have a voice who

815
00:51:31,016 --> 00:51:34,559
is looking at their experience as black athletes and being able to use their platform.

816
00:51:34,599 --> 00:51:38,223
And so thank you for calling out Dr. Ari Edwards. because

817
00:51:38,263 --> 00:51:41,385
he's a, he's a monumental person. And as far as that

818
00:51:41,405 --> 00:51:45,068
influences the work that I do, he was my mentor's mentor. And

819
00:51:45,108 --> 00:51:48,391
so obviously he influences my work because he influenced my mentor's

820
00:51:52,454 --> 00:51:55,977
Yeah. And thank you just for bringing in the history. I feel like it's so important

821
00:52:02,482 --> 00:52:07,872
So yeah. Athletics is, it's just amazing. And

822
00:52:08,292 --> 00:52:11,553
I got to know Will Chamberlain. He was my hero. I loved him. I

823
00:52:11,633 --> 00:52:15,155
actually clothed him. I was a senior VP at a clothing company

824
00:52:15,195 --> 00:52:18,256
in New York. And Will was one of

825
00:52:18,456 --> 00:52:21,617
our ambassadors at a 42-inch inseam, just as

826
00:52:22,997 --> 00:52:26,798
an understanding. But I believe that, you

827
00:52:27,419 --> 00:52:30,600
know, in this day and age, when you guys talk about Michael Jordan, he's this

828
00:52:30,640 --> 00:52:34,378
wonderful player. Well, I've never seen a guy average 50 points and

829
00:52:34,438 --> 00:52:37,560
25 rebounds in the season as Wilk did. He was absolutely the

830
00:52:37,600 --> 00:52:41,863
most amazing guy. But you have to understand that the press, the

831
00:52:41,923 --> 00:52:45,525
media was controlled by the teams. And if

832
00:52:45,565 --> 00:52:49,948
you understand that, then you can understand why different

833
00:52:49,968 --> 00:52:53,150
guys got different amounts of publicity. So if they

834
00:52:53,630 --> 00:52:57,093
would play one black guy off the other guy. Bill

835
00:52:59,700 --> 00:53:03,911
Yeah. Makes sense. Thank

836
00:53:06,775 --> 00:53:10,958
Amazing. I mean, damn.

837
00:53:11,078 --> 00:53:14,800
Yeah, you fucked me up. Thank you, sir.

838
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:18,643
Seriously. Because like, I'm a Jordan fan,

839
00:53:19,323 --> 00:53:22,685
like everything, the mentality to

840
00:53:22,725 --> 00:53:25,887
be the greatest. However, now that I'm in social justice the way I am,

841
00:53:26,288 --> 00:53:30,771
I don't appreciate the influence that you have doesn't

842
00:53:30,831 --> 00:53:34,015
match up with the greatness. Because can you imagine if

843
00:53:34,395 --> 00:53:37,879
he worked as hard towards social justice as he did towards being

844
00:53:37,899 --> 00:53:41,743
the greatest basketball player? That would have

845
00:53:41,763 --> 00:53:45,787
been crazy. You're

846
00:53:45,827 --> 00:53:50,589
right. They do play, especially black superstars

847
00:53:50,629 --> 00:53:54,830
against each other for ratings. It

848
00:53:54,850 --> 00:53:58,331
always has to be an adversary because that'd be too much for

849
00:53:58,491 --> 00:54:02,493
all the black superstars to get together to be on the same page. It

850
00:54:05,314 --> 00:54:08,355
One of my, I won't say greatest because I

851
00:54:08,375 --> 00:54:12,540
don't think it's great, but One of my biggest what-ifs, specifically

852
00:54:12,600 --> 00:54:16,061
in sports, activism, social justice, is the NBA bubble.

853
00:54:17,782 --> 00:54:21,023
For those that aren't aware, after George Floyd was

854
00:54:21,123 --> 00:54:24,244
murdered, there were a number of NBA games in a bubble that were

855
00:54:24,284 --> 00:54:27,465
canceled. And I

856
00:54:27,485 --> 00:54:30,826
think guys were very close to

857
00:54:31,246 --> 00:54:34,447
sitting the rest of the season. And I think about

858
00:54:34,467 --> 00:54:38,345
the impact that would have had. if collectively NBA

859
00:54:38,365 --> 00:54:44,549
players would have said, we're not playing no more the rest of this year until this stuff gets. Yeah.

860
00:54:44,689 --> 00:54:47,911
Yeah. That's just. All

861
00:54:52,934 --> 00:54:56,168
Come on. Thank you.

862
00:54:56,368 --> 00:55:00,089
This is quite interesting. So my question is,

863
00:55:00,550 --> 00:55:05,411
what is your take on professional athletes becoming

864
00:55:05,491 --> 00:55:08,832
coaches at HBCUs? And how do you think

865
00:55:08,892 --> 00:55:13,714
that that's going to impact the PWI

866
00:55:17,915 --> 00:55:22,469
My take, first of all, is It's

867
00:55:22,489 --> 00:55:25,871
going to sound funny, but man, if people offer you jobs, like

868
00:55:25,891 --> 00:55:29,013
you should, you should take them. Um, I mean,

869
00:55:29,053 --> 00:55:32,616
not any job, right. But like head coaching jobs are very hard to come by. So

870
00:55:32,836 --> 00:55:36,038
I'm of the mindset that if you, if that's a goal of yours and

871
00:55:36,058 --> 00:55:39,800
somebody offers it to you and it makes sense, you should take it. Um,

872
00:55:40,681 --> 00:55:44,143
so I'll start there. But secondly, I think

873
00:55:44,583 --> 00:55:48,918
the benefit of it is, HBCUs

874
00:55:48,938 --> 00:55:53,440
have been seen as lesser than for way too long, athletically,

875
00:55:53,580 --> 00:55:57,402
academically, all these things, right? And I

876
00:55:57,442 --> 00:56:00,623
hate that this is, because it's not a fact, I hate that this is my

877
00:56:00,643 --> 00:56:03,805
opinion, but my opinion is, if you're bringing in a

878
00:56:04,345 --> 00:56:07,966
Deion Sanders, Eddie George, Michael Vick, et cetera, that

879
00:56:07,986 --> 00:56:11,788
it elevates the level of what those HBCUs can do and it elevates the necessary

880
00:56:11,848 --> 00:56:15,309
attention for them to get the dollars that they deserve. That's my initial

881
00:56:15,349 --> 00:56:19,411
thought. And so, I do think that coaches

882
00:56:19,611 --> 00:56:23,812
should target HBCUs as opportunities. What

883
00:56:23,852 --> 00:56:27,913
I don't like and don't agree with is using them as stepping stones. Because

884
00:56:28,053 --> 00:56:31,134
I think that's what happens pretty consistently. It's like, I'm gonna start here and

885
00:56:31,154 --> 00:56:35,135
jump somewhere else. I would hope

886
00:56:35,175 --> 00:56:38,476
that we one day don't get to that, to where it becomes a consistent thing,

887
00:56:38,496 --> 00:56:41,877
to where people don't stay at HBCUs. And

888
00:56:42,357 --> 00:56:45,645
hopefully we get the opportunity that It's just,

889
00:56:46,065 --> 00:56:49,546
you pick your flavor. If that's where you want to be, cool. Build it up and

890
00:56:49,566 --> 00:56:52,887
sustain it, compared to let me build it up and dip

891
00:56:52,967 --> 00:56:56,428
out. But I also know some people have different goals. Some people don't want to be at HBCUs. They

892
00:56:56,448 --> 00:57:00,009
just do it because that's the circumstance, right? And I will wish in

893
00:57:00,069 --> 00:57:03,290
those situations that HBCUs wouldn't be their only

894
00:57:03,410 --> 00:57:06,851
option, that they actually could get to a PWI, a

895
00:57:06,891 --> 00:57:10,132
Power Four, whatever it is. What's a PWI? Public-wide. Yeah,

896
00:57:10,152 --> 00:57:13,953
public-wide institution. or predominantly

897
00:57:13,993 --> 00:57:17,273
white institutions. I

898
00:57:17,293 --> 00:57:20,634
would hope that they can actually take that pathway if that's what they want to go to start as

899
00:57:20,674 --> 00:57:23,895
an assistant coach or a GA and kind of work up that way. But we know

900
00:57:23,955 --> 00:57:27,696
that that doesn't always work either. So sometimes

901
00:57:27,716 --> 00:57:30,977
people just got to work with what they got and it just so happens that HBCUs open

902
00:57:36,118 --> 00:57:39,380
Nice. Just to follow up on that, do you

903
00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:43,222
think then that the

904
00:57:43,342 --> 00:57:47,444
athletes, the young people coming out of high school, who

905
00:57:47,545 --> 00:57:51,086
are great, are going to now have

906
00:57:52,067 --> 00:57:56,609
more options, too, in how that might impact

907
00:57:58,971 --> 00:58:02,554
Yeah, I think they, yes, I think specifically when

908
00:58:02,574 --> 00:58:06,057
you look at things like NIO, where athletes

909
00:58:06,077 --> 00:58:09,380
can actually earn money off their name, image, likeness, I think the pathway to

910
00:58:09,500 --> 00:58:13,143
HBCUs should be more open now because originally

911
00:58:13,363 --> 00:58:16,746
the conversation was, well, HBCUs aren't resourced the

912
00:58:16,786 --> 00:58:19,949
same. So I need to go to the bigger schools because they

913
00:58:19,969 --> 00:58:23,852
have better coaching, they have more money, et cetera, right? If

914
00:58:24,273 --> 00:58:27,476
I'm, who's a

915
00:58:27,557 --> 00:58:31,082
really good, if

916
00:58:31,142 --> 00:58:34,446
I'm AJ, what is it? DeBonsa? I don't know

917
00:58:34,466 --> 00:58:37,951
his last name, but he's the number one recruit for the class of 2025. He's going

918
00:58:37,971 --> 00:58:41,216
to BYU. If I'm Hill, I can

919
00:58:41,256 --> 00:58:44,573
go anywhere for a year. And I will still make money

920
00:58:44,633 --> 00:58:48,055
off my name, image, and likeness because I can go and earn those dollars

921
00:58:48,115 --> 00:58:51,997
by signing a deal with Gatorade, Nike, whoever it is. So

922
00:58:52,017 --> 00:58:55,559
I do think because we're in an era where athletes actually can monetize their

923
00:58:55,580 --> 00:58:58,734
name, image, and likeness, that We, in

924
00:58:58,814 --> 00:59:01,877
theory, hopefully should see more athletes who are willing to

925
00:59:01,917 --> 00:59:05,059
go to HBCUs because now they can earn the money on their own name compared to

926
00:59:05,079 --> 00:59:08,282
being reliant on the school to give them a bigger scholarship check, right?

927
00:59:09,783 --> 00:59:13,465
Now, are we actually going to see that? I don't know. I would hope that companies

928
00:59:13,505 --> 00:59:16,768
would be willing to kind of put their money where their mouth is and really support

929
00:59:16,828 --> 00:59:22,692
athletes now that NIO actually exists above ground. But we

930
00:59:34,461 --> 00:59:38,602
Or reflections, things that are coming up as you're sitting here? My

931
00:59:38,662 --> 00:59:41,862
name is Glenda Strong Robinson. We have an

932
00:59:41,922 --> 00:59:45,843
exhibit going on here, Proclaiming Colorado's

933
00:59:45,923 --> 00:59:49,264
Black History. Mr.

934
00:59:49,304 --> 00:59:53,725
Banks have done his oral history. There's history

935
00:59:53,805 --> 00:59:57,165
living here, I guess, is what I want

936
00:59:57,426 --> 01:00:01,068
to say. And

937
01:00:01,308 --> 01:00:05,669
what is CU doing to connect with

938
01:00:05,729 --> 01:00:09,370
this history? Especially, we have

939
01:00:09,390 --> 01:00:12,591
a lot of athletes from the 60s. I'm from

940
01:00:12,631 --> 01:00:15,932
the 60s too. And I

941
01:00:15,992 --> 01:00:20,193
was in the last march with Dr. Martin Luther King, March

942
01:00:20,333 --> 01:00:24,054
28th, 1968, the I am a man march.

943
01:00:24,754 --> 01:00:28,076
How and what are we gonna do to let people

944
01:00:28,136 --> 01:00:31,458
know, because we're all standing on shoulders of

945
01:00:31,518 --> 01:00:36,162
people who've paid these prices before you

946
01:00:36,202 --> 01:00:39,664
got here and before I got here, actually.

947
01:00:39,884 --> 01:00:43,947
And a thing that really was on

948
01:00:43,987 --> 01:00:47,090
my mind since I've been doing the oral histories here is

949
01:00:49,577 --> 01:00:53,622
There are very few young black kids in

950
01:00:53,662 --> 01:00:56,866
the St. Vrain Valley School District, as well as

951
01:00:56,946 --> 01:01:01,298
the Boulder Valley School District. Surely

952
01:01:02,299 --> 01:01:06,040
someone could have had the

953
01:01:06,100 --> 01:01:10,941
few people here meet Shador

954
01:01:10,981 --> 01:01:14,682
Sanders and Travis Hunter. That was always

955
01:01:17,403 --> 01:01:20,564
That's all I want to say. I'll

956
01:01:20,664 --> 01:01:27,786
answer your second part first and then go to the first part. How

957
01:01:27,806 --> 01:01:32,187
to make that happen first is I

958
01:01:32,207 --> 01:01:40,590
think there needs to be more direct

959
01:01:40,650 --> 01:01:44,711
contact of somebody who is looking explicitly

960
01:01:44,771 --> 01:01:48,392
at those things, right? Because I'll even say for myself, I

961
01:01:48,432 --> 01:01:51,573
work with every team. I would

962
01:01:51,593 --> 01:01:54,714
say every athlete, but that's not true. On paper, I work with every athlete, but I

963
01:01:54,754 --> 01:01:59,151
don't interact and interface with every athlete, right? What

964
01:01:59,191 --> 01:02:02,633
makes it really hard is if I

965
01:02:02,693 --> 01:02:06,675
or somebody else doesn't have the contact with

966
01:02:06,715 --> 01:02:09,797
the Travis or Shadour or Coach Prime, et cetera, to be able to say, hey,

967
01:02:10,197 --> 01:02:13,699
it'll be really powerful if you do this. And the

968
01:02:13,759 --> 01:02:17,320
way that our athletes are now is

969
01:02:18,381 --> 01:02:22,763
I don't think that there's a lack of interest. I think there's a lack of awareness

970
01:02:24,064 --> 01:02:27,277
and really a lack of proximity. That to

971
01:02:27,297 --> 01:02:30,939
me, that's the biggest thing is the fact that they don't know or not connected

972
01:02:30,999 --> 01:02:34,281
to the campus or the city to know those types of things. So

973
01:02:34,321 --> 01:02:37,543
that's the thing that we got to do a better job of, especially for me as, as

974
01:02:37,563 --> 01:02:40,844
being a leader of my unit is to make sure

975
01:02:40,884 --> 01:02:44,186
that again, a Travis should do or knows like, Hey, we

976
01:02:44,206 --> 01:02:47,328
have St. Brandon, Boulder Valley school district that has this minimum amount. It

977
01:02:47,348 --> 01:02:51,450
would mean a lot if you go and actually connect with them. Right. Um,

978
01:02:53,032 --> 01:02:56,376
But the way that our student-athletes are, specifically at CU now, the

979
01:02:56,416 --> 01:02:59,819
challenges that I see, I think, are bigger than just kind of knowing that lack of awareness

980
01:03:00,340 --> 01:03:04,004
or being aware that there's a lack of awareness. Like, the

981
01:03:04,124 --> 01:03:07,627
experience for our athletes right now is very isolating,

982
01:03:09,009 --> 01:03:12,072
and that kind of perpetuates the problem. We have a good chunk of

983
01:03:12,092 --> 01:03:15,475
our athletes who don't even have on-campus classes. Everything they

984
01:03:15,495 --> 01:03:18,657
do is online and they're in a facility to eat,

985
01:03:19,038 --> 01:03:22,560
to study, to practice, to work out, to get treatment,

986
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:28,003
and then they go home. And it's like, well, if you're never in the community, it's

987
01:03:28,183 --> 01:03:31,265
really hard to kind of get you to

988
01:03:31,305 --> 01:03:34,687
do stuff like that, right? Now, I would say specifically for

989
01:03:34,707 --> 01:03:38,109
Travis and Shador, part of that was a little bit about design because they kind of get mobbed like

990
01:03:38,209 --> 01:03:41,291
everywhere they go. So those two, I

991
01:03:41,311 --> 01:03:44,533
think I have a little bit of a different perspective, a different awareness, but

992
01:03:46,912 --> 01:03:50,095
we got to do a better job of that. To your first question of like, what are, what are we

993
01:03:50,135 --> 01:03:53,358
doing? Um, I can't say for the universe, I know some stuff the university is

994
01:03:53,378 --> 01:03:57,141
doing. I can say what, at least what I try to do and what athletics tries to do is

995
01:03:57,422 --> 01:04:00,945
one, uncover those stories and actually deploy resources

996
01:04:00,985 --> 01:04:04,929
to tell them what I've learned and seen is that we

997
01:04:04,969 --> 01:04:08,812
have archived those stories. We can find them in, you

998
01:04:08,852 --> 01:04:12,272
know, Oh, newsletters or

999
01:04:12,452 --> 01:04:15,814
articles, but I'm a very big component. What

1000
01:04:15,854 --> 01:04:19,675
I've tried to do since I've been there is to put specifically video

1001
01:04:19,715 --> 01:04:23,776
resources to these stories so that there is, similar

1002
01:04:23,796 --> 01:04:27,017
to the museum downstairs, there's an actual footage and oral

1003
01:04:27,077 --> 01:04:30,158
history of somebody acknowledging this. Because what ends up

1004
01:04:30,178 --> 01:04:33,319
happening is that articles get lost. And so I try

1005
01:04:33,359 --> 01:04:36,725
to deploy my resources to say, video

1006
01:04:36,765 --> 01:04:41,027
department, I've uncovered this story. Can we go record somebody

1007
01:04:41,067 --> 01:04:45,669
talking about this so that we can actually share it out? Now,

1008
01:04:45,909 --> 01:04:49,330
a lot of what we've done so far since I've been there has been more of the stories of our student athletes.

1009
01:04:49,550 --> 01:04:52,771
So if you go on our CBUS, dot com or

1010
01:04:52,851 --> 01:04:56,293
Facebook or X, whatever, right? You'll see a number of our

1011
01:04:56,373 --> 01:04:59,794
current athletes and their recently graduated, recently finished athletes

1012
01:05:00,294 --> 01:05:03,575
telling their stories so that we can get that from them now. Because what I've

1013
01:05:03,635 --> 01:05:06,836
also seen is that once they leave, if their experience wasn't good,

1014
01:05:06,897 --> 01:05:10,099
we're not getting that. Right. And so a lot of

1015
01:05:10,119 --> 01:05:13,341
what I've tried to focus on is if I know Courtney really well, and I know Courtney is

1016
01:05:13,361 --> 01:05:16,644
getting ready to finish, I'll say, Hey, Courtney, remember that thing you was telling me about? You

1017
01:05:16,664 --> 01:05:20,187
should, you should say it on camera so that we can actually get this and know this

1018
01:05:20,227 --> 01:05:23,370
is the experience that you had. So one, we can learn about it too. We can appreciate it, but

1019
01:05:23,390 --> 01:05:26,712
three, we can use it to say, Courtney

1020
01:05:26,752 --> 01:05:30,845
had this experience and Courtney was the, one of our best athletes. How

1021
01:05:30,885 --> 01:05:34,109
do we make Courtney's experience better? But for the athletes who aren't Courtney, how

1022
01:05:34,149 --> 01:05:37,512
do we make it even better and make sure they don't deal with X, Y, Z? So

1023
01:05:40,956 --> 01:05:45,100
So one of the things that I found with CU was

1024
01:05:45,160 --> 01:05:48,524
that when you graduated, they forgot about you.

1025
01:05:48,544 --> 01:05:52,248
And there was no way that you could be cohesive with

1026
01:05:52,288 --> 01:05:55,971
them. And like, I'm a member of the NFL players association, retired

1027
01:05:55,991 --> 01:06:00,094
players association. Those guys are constantly communicating.

1028
01:06:01,236 --> 01:06:04,479
We do not communicate. Now we're starting to, we just started this,

1029
01:06:04,719 --> 01:06:07,922
this new thing where we're, where we

1030
01:06:07,982 --> 01:06:11,405
can connect, but it's really hard. The only time

1031
01:06:11,425 --> 01:06:15,069
we ever connect is when we go to any of the reunions and

1032
01:06:22,261 --> 01:06:25,702
My sense, my sense of them is

1033
01:06:26,203 --> 01:06:31,841
most. And

1034
01:06:31,921 --> 01:06:35,244
so until CU gets to the point, if they tell

1035
01:06:35,304 --> 01:06:38,447
me and tell my former teammates, I ran track and I

1036
01:06:38,467 --> 01:06:41,589
played football in CU, until they tell us that we gotta go and

1037
01:06:41,929 --> 01:06:46,633
there's a reason for us to go, I guarantee you that the majority won't go.

1038
01:06:46,713 --> 01:06:50,757
And the other issue, and I have one other issue, and that is there's

1039
01:06:50,797 --> 01:06:53,939
gotta be some way to get Prime involved with this. And if

1040
01:06:53,999 --> 01:06:57,232
he doesn't get involved with us, we're not gonna open up

1041
01:06:58,773 --> 01:07:01,996
And I can tell you that for sure. I'll

1042
01:07:02,016 --> 01:07:05,378
say specifically to Prompt, my experience of

1043
01:07:05,418 --> 01:07:09,682
working with him has been, it's

1044
01:07:09,742 --> 01:07:12,965
not the lack of willingness. I think it's the lack of,

1045
01:07:15,066 --> 01:07:18,189
part of his lack of time. You know, when you got a TV show and do keynotes and

1046
01:07:18,229 --> 01:07:21,471
all that's part of it. But what I

1047
01:07:21,512 --> 01:07:26,285
think would benefit him

1048
01:07:26,365 --> 01:07:30,109
and us collectively is really being a

1049
01:07:30,169 --> 01:07:34,632
lot more intentional with what and who we spend time with here. And

1050
01:07:34,672 --> 01:07:38,115
I think that will very candidly bust the door open because-

1051
01:07:38,155 --> 01:07:41,378
He doesn't know who we are. And that's what I mean. That's the problem. That's what I mean,

1052
01:07:41,478 --> 01:07:44,761
right? So, and there's those things that we've talked

1053
01:07:44,781 --> 01:07:50,285
about with our staff, with him, et cetera. We

1054
01:07:50,325 --> 01:07:54,075
just have to make that step to be like, hey,

1055
01:07:54,555 --> 01:07:57,816
the TV show you're doing next week, we

1056
01:07:57,836 --> 01:08:01,177
gotta shelve it because there's this thing that's happening in

1057
01:08:01,237 --> 01:08:04,997
Boulder, in Denver with the Alumni Association that for

1058
01:08:05,017 --> 01:08:08,898
the betterment of not just football, but for this university, you

1059
01:08:08,938 --> 01:08:12,719
need to be president. And that's not something that has happened. At

1060
01:08:14,479 --> 01:08:17,820
Not at all. And I mean, look, one of the

1061
01:08:18,120 --> 01:08:21,661
first times that we met him, we're sitting in with 500 guys waiting.

1062
01:08:21,721 --> 01:08:24,963
We can't wait to meet this dude. And frankly, I don't care,

1063
01:08:25,503 --> 01:08:28,645
to be quite frank. I've met thousands of people, so

1064
01:08:28,705 --> 01:08:32,088
it doesn't matter. So the bottom line is, comes

1065
01:08:32,128 --> 01:08:35,450
into a room, and he goes around and he shakes hands and he leaves. There's

1066
01:08:35,490 --> 01:08:38,752
a half a billion dollars sitting in the room. And all he has to

1067
01:08:38,792 --> 01:08:42,555
do is shake some hands and ask us

1068
01:08:42,935 --> 01:08:46,358
to get him off. He didn't do it. It's a

1069
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:09,804
I'm sitting with your comment on history and like whose shoulders

1070
01:09:09,844 --> 01:09:13,118
we're standing on. And I just handed off a book to

1071
01:09:13,158 --> 01:09:17,240
Courtney, it's called Master Slave, Husband, Wife, and it's recounting

1072
01:09:17,560 --> 01:09:21,342
kind of in the 1850s. And there's a

1073
01:09:21,422 --> 01:09:24,724
lot about the abolitionists, both black and

1074
01:09:24,784 --> 01:09:29,266
white. And there is something so

1075
01:09:29,346 --> 01:09:32,768
energizing about remembering who did

1076
01:09:32,808 --> 01:09:36,369
this work before you and so supportive and so,

1077
01:09:37,450 --> 01:09:40,706
um, Yeah,

1078
01:09:40,806 --> 01:09:44,009
I guess just feeling like someone has

1079
01:09:44,029 --> 01:09:47,251
your back and they've been fighting this fight and to

1080
01:09:47,371 --> 01:09:50,554
make it more visible. I'm just now realizing why

1081
01:09:50,594 --> 01:09:53,937
that book was so impactful. It was like, oh wow, yeah,

1082
01:09:54,077 --> 01:09:57,600
this is a lineage. And so I appreciate your reminder about

1083
01:09:57,640 --> 01:10:04,311
the history. Thank you. Coming

1084
01:10:04,331 --> 01:10:07,573
to the end of our time, you have a long drive ahead

1085
01:10:16,101 --> 01:10:19,445
Gotta make it home for, this will be the first time my daughter's home for Easter,

1086
01:10:19,545 --> 01:10:22,808
like sending us home. So yeah, we're prioritizing it.

1087
01:10:23,348 --> 01:10:27,112
I love that. I did, and I hope this is not too,

1088
01:10:27,312 --> 01:10:30,815
I did have a kind of wrap up question. This is kind of like a nice wrap

1089
01:10:30,855 --> 01:10:34,583
up for this series as well. In

1090
01:10:34,743 --> 01:10:37,945
your time at CU, have

1091
01:10:37,986 --> 01:10:42,489
you noticed a change with Black culture, Black experience? I

1092
01:10:42,569 --> 01:10:47,932
know the turnover rate is super high for professors. I

1093
01:10:48,093 --> 01:10:51,255
don't know anything that's happening on campus. I've lived here for 20 years. I

1094
01:10:51,275 --> 01:10:54,617
have no idea. What's your finger on the pulse of what's

1095
01:10:55,298 --> 01:10:59,440
Yes. Have things changed? Yes and no.

1096
01:11:01,802 --> 01:11:05,918
I didn't realize specifically

1097
01:11:05,978 --> 01:11:09,282
coach Brian, I didn't realize the energy it

1098
01:11:09,302 --> 01:11:12,546
would bring. That's, that's something that has changed completely in

1099
01:11:17,092 --> 01:11:22,516
Because it used to be, we would have former

1100
01:11:22,576 --> 01:11:26,761
players, alums who like, they appreciate Boulder,

1101
01:11:27,261 --> 01:11:31,125
but they ain't trying to come back to Boulder, right? Now

1102
01:11:31,165 --> 01:11:34,769
that has changed a little bit, right? And so a lot of the conversations

1103
01:11:34,809 --> 01:11:38,372
that I try to have with our staff that

1104
01:11:39,525 --> 01:11:42,788
we try to talk about internally is like, y'all, we have an

1105
01:11:42,928 --> 01:11:46,632
opportunity that we need to seize because we

1106
01:11:46,652 --> 01:11:50,856
can change the trajectory of how specifically black people are

1107
01:11:50,896 --> 01:11:54,119
not just experiencing voter, but how they think about voter and how they think

1108
01:11:54,159 --> 01:11:57,462
about CU. So we need to be a lot more intentional with

1109
01:12:01,046 --> 01:12:04,288
So. It's changing the fact that that conversation is now

1110
01:12:04,328 --> 01:12:07,450
happening because the conversation used to be, well, why ain't

1111
01:12:07,470 --> 01:12:10,992
nobody coming back? And it's like, well, it's pretty clear why people ain't coming back, because

1112
01:12:12,493 --> 01:12:15,795
it's kind of racist here. Like, that's that's why people not coming back. Right.

1113
01:12:16,215 --> 01:12:19,737
That's one of the main reasons. Now,

1114
01:12:19,817 --> 01:12:23,129
the difference is like. I'll

1115
01:12:23,149 --> 01:12:26,572
come back for a game. And it's like, okay, if they go be here, what are we doing?

1116
01:12:27,212 --> 01:12:30,455
Like, we need to be doing something like very explicit, right? There's

1117
01:12:30,475 --> 01:12:33,677
a crack, you gotta put your foot in the door. There's a crack, we gotta put our foot in the

1118
01:12:33,717 --> 01:12:37,500
door, right? And so that changed, I will say from a campus perspective,

1119
01:12:37,560 --> 01:12:41,423
what I've seen over my four years being here has

1120
01:12:41,543 --> 01:12:46,526
been a, I

1121
01:12:46,566 --> 01:12:50,445
don't wanna say investment, cause I don't think it's there yet, What

1122
01:12:50,485 --> 01:12:54,026
I have seen, though, is a very,

1123
01:12:54,166 --> 01:12:59,208
very specific interest

1124
01:12:59,608 --> 01:13:03,449
of new Black faculty and staff of

1125
01:13:03,589 --> 01:13:07,931
trying to fix it or trying to make it better, where

1126
01:13:09,171 --> 01:13:12,732
there are some staff that I've seen that have come to see you that they get here, and

1127
01:13:12,772 --> 01:13:16,054
in six months, they're like, oh, hell no. I'm not doing this. I'm leaving.

1128
01:13:17,793 --> 01:13:21,414
But what I have seen over my, I would say probably about the last two years is that people

1129
01:13:21,454 --> 01:13:24,816
coming in, specifically some of the newer black faculty and staff, they're like,

1130
01:13:27,577 --> 01:13:32,519
oh, I'm not finna deal with this. I

1131
01:13:32,559 --> 01:13:35,740
ain't necessarily trying to leave, but I'm telling you, I'm not dealing with this. So we need to

1132
01:13:35,800 --> 01:13:39,221
do something, and I'm willing to help do something, right? So

1133
01:13:39,261 --> 01:13:42,702
that's been, I think, very different, and it's been very refreshing

1134
01:13:42,742 --> 01:13:49,241
for me to see. Because now the, The

1135
01:13:49,281 --> 01:13:52,343
conversations I used to have with people in my office are like, I gotta get the

1136
01:13:52,383 --> 01:13:55,725
hell out of here. And now it's, hey, we gotta change

1137
01:13:55,745 --> 01:13:58,907
this thing. And that, to me, that's- That's a really

1138
01:14:01,489 --> 01:14:05,111
The numbers have shifted a little bit. A lot of that's about through football, just being totally honest.

1139
01:14:05,751 --> 01:14:08,833
Their staff is real black. So the

1140
01:14:08,873 --> 01:14:12,375
numbers have changed. So that helps a little bit. Just how black?

1141
01:14:15,140 --> 01:14:18,641
If you, like I said, talking to your numbers, like athletics, our numbers are

1142
01:14:18,681 --> 01:14:21,902
booming compared to what they used to be. And it

1143
01:14:21,922 --> 01:14:25,164
helps a little bit too, just from like a cultural perspective and seeing people in the hallway and that way.

1144
01:14:25,264 --> 01:14:29,385
So like, I can speak to that. That's been super helpful. But just

1145
01:14:29,405 --> 01:14:32,527
again, the mindset shift of the new people coming in

1146
01:14:32,567 --> 01:14:36,028
of like, and I don't know if it's the specific type

1147
01:14:36,068 --> 01:14:40,130
of people. I don't know if it's because of where they came from. I don't know if it's a change of times. I

1148
01:14:40,150 --> 01:14:44,466
don't know exactly what it is. I know for me, I

1149
01:14:44,486 --> 01:14:47,987
think for me it's a little different because this is the work I signed up to do. So

1150
01:14:48,528 --> 01:14:51,929
I tell a lot of our students and staff, like, I already know I'm fighting problems

1151
01:14:51,949 --> 01:14:55,470
that have existed for hundreds of years. It's probably not gonna fix tomorrow. Like

1152
01:14:55,690 --> 01:14:58,971
I'm well aware of that. It's a marathon. But that

1153
01:14:58,991 --> 01:15:02,192
doesn't mean I can't give my effort to it. And I kind of signed up for that.

1154
01:15:02,272 --> 01:15:05,494
So, you know, I'm cool with kind of the

1155
01:15:09,115 --> 01:15:12,436
And hopefully we get to the point that you

1156
01:15:12,476 --> 01:15:15,878
know, in the next two, four years, however long it is, because I say I've been

1157
01:15:15,898 --> 01:15:19,120
here for, but the last two has been a shift. Hopefully two years from now, the

1158
01:15:19,180 --> 01:15:23,122
conversation isn't how we changing it. It's how do we sustain it? Or,

1159
01:15:23,643 --> 01:15:27,004
hey, we've seen some strides. How do we, you

1160
01:15:27,024 --> 01:15:32,072
know, kick the door over type of thing? How do we actually scale it? Right. Yeah. And

1161
01:15:32,092 --> 01:15:35,874
there's been some things that I've seen just from, like I said, faculty, friends,

1162
01:15:36,955 --> 01:15:40,317
close colleagues of mine to where, for example, now,

1163
01:15:41,378 --> 01:15:46,200
I know for a fact we've had affinity groups at CU before, but

1164
01:15:46,261 --> 01:15:49,723
now they're actually sponsored at the university level, right? So now there's

1165
01:15:49,823 --> 01:15:53,105
money that's going into, for example, Black at CU, which

1166
01:15:53,225 --> 01:15:56,667
is the affinity group for Black faculty and staff on campus, where they

1167
01:15:56,707 --> 01:15:59,849
now have a budget to run programs and to do meet and

1168
01:15:59,869 --> 01:16:02,990
greets. And to do holiday parties, whereas in the past, we

1169
01:16:03,010 --> 01:16:06,132
didn't we didn't have a budget for that. Right. It wasn't a

1170
01:16:06,192 --> 01:16:09,954
part of the university. It was somebody saying we need to get everybody together and

1171
01:16:12,375 --> 01:16:15,557
Exactly. Exactly. Right. So that's been helpful, again,

1172
01:16:15,597 --> 01:16:18,958
just to kind of see some of those things from a from an investment level,

1173
01:16:23,521 --> 01:16:26,802
Well, we wrap up, bro. Thank you for signing up

1174
01:16:27,083 --> 01:16:31,884
for that heavy lift of bridging your,

1175
01:16:32,004 --> 01:16:36,185
oh, you got a question. Are you telling me to shut the

1176
01:16:37,645 --> 01:16:41,226
Cool. Cool. I just, I was really itching as,

1177
01:16:41,426 --> 01:16:44,807
as I know that you're wrapping up and I'm not trying to keep you from St.

1178
01:16:44,867 --> 01:16:48,128
Louis, but, um, I just want to thank you

1179
01:16:49,628 --> 01:16:53,853
You, DuJuan, for the work that you're doing and that you've done, and

1180
01:16:54,534 --> 01:16:58,658
Cordy and Emily for having these conversations, having

1181
01:16:58,698 --> 01:17:04,124
them here and trusting us at the museum with

1182
01:17:04,344 --> 01:17:07,708
just the privilege of being able to witness these

1183
01:17:07,748 --> 01:17:11,151
beautiful conversations. And I also just really

1184
01:17:11,231 --> 01:17:14,574
wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge Nyasha James

1185
01:17:14,634 --> 01:17:18,216
Davis, who's who put all of the steps

1186
01:17:18,376 --> 01:17:22,319
in place to make this happen while she's here. So thank

1187
01:17:26,722 --> 01:17:30,496
Well, I can't go after that, so. I

1188
01:17:30,516 --> 01:17:33,777
think we wrap it up. Thank you guys for coming out. Seriously. Thank

1189
01:17:33,797 --> 01:17:36,938
you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be here with us as

1190
01:17:36,978 --> 01:17:40,239
we try to dive into these not hard conversations, but

1191
01:17:40,259 --> 01:17:43,800
I think necessary and needed conversations. A great

1192
01:17:43,840 --> 01:17:47,161
way to wrap up this series, man. Thank you so much for the work you do. I really appreciate it.

1193
01:17:56,345 --> 01:17:59,669
Thanks for joining us on this episode of Humanize. Please remember to

1194
01:17:59,709 --> 01:18:02,992
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1195
01:18:03,212 --> 01:18:06,616
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1196
01:18:08,478 --> 01:18:11,781
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1197
01:18:11,821 --> 01:18:15,025
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