Responding to Diversity
Building Intercultural Competency Skills within the Collegiate Student-Athlete through Short-term Study Abroad Programming
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Arayael Brandner
Higher education institutions are internationalizing their campuses to help create global citizens, but what about the college athletes? Will they get an opportunity to become global citizens if they are tied to their sport on campus. Find out why it is important to provide opportunities to this group of students and how to help them become culturally competent citizens. I focused on bridging the world of college athletics with the wonderful world of international education. Using international education scholars such as Dr. Darla Deardorff and Dr. Tony Ogden to help frame my research.
LGBT+ Inclusion in University-based Sport in the United Kingdom
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Catherine Phipps
Sport is argued to be one of the last spaces in Western societies where heterosexism and homophobia still exist prominently (Lenskyj, 2012). Yet, the sporting experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students at higher educational institutions in the UK are relatively underexplored. Sport is argued to be a significant part of university life; it is often where students try new sports for the first time, and is a major way in which students engage with their student unions. Furthermore, students who participate in university-based sport are likely to earn more and have fewer periods of unemployment (BUCS, 2013). Therefore, it is important that university-based sports are inclusive and accessible to all. Drawing on questionnaire, interview and focus group data with LGBT+ students and student union officers, as well as document analysis of student union policies, this research uses hegemony theory to argue there are still issues to be resolved to make university-based sport more inclusive for LGBT+ students. The findings also suggest many student unions’ policies can also be improved, especially in regards to transgender-inclusion in university-based sport.
The Right to Fight: The Status of Women in Boxing
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Deirdre Nelson
In 1987, Joyce Carol Oates, an author and boxing enthusiast declared that “raw aggression is thought to be the peculiar province of men, as nurturing is the peculiar province of women. The [woman] boxer violates this stereotype and cannot be taken seriously-she is parody, she is cartoon, she is monstrous.” Indeed, the presence of women in boxing has always invoked controversy. For most of the 20th century, women’s boxing was a prohibited activity until women took their battle to the courts, and argued for their right to fight. I was one of those women. In 1999, the Boxing Union of Ireland refused me the right to box professionally. Their decision had nothing to do with my ability or was due to any medical reason. It was based on paternalistic and gender based assumptions and I challenged their decision in an industrial tribunal. In 2001, I won my case and I felt vindicated but unfortunately change can be a slow and conflictual process. I mistakenly thought the opportunities would come rolling in, but nothing changed. The law had upheld my right to fight, but it was unable to deliver real substantive material change. Therefore my paper will examine the legal measures women boxers in the USA, UK and Ireland have used to advance their calls for equality and using my own personal experience, I will interrogate whether the law is capable of delivering meaningful change for women in boxing.
