Anti-racism commission ‘a necessity’
Lafayette AD Freeman voices her support for Patriot League initiative to examine racial issues
Creating the Patriot League’s Anti-Racism Commission was a “necessity,” according to Lafayette College director of athletics Sherryta Freeman, who hopes other NCAA conferences follow suit.
A day after the league announced the formation of the commission, Freeman said on Tuesday that she’s looking forward to the work ahead.
“I think race has a role to play in these conversations,” she said, “and when it comes to competitive athletics, we’re going at each other, but ultimately when talking about global issues, I think we can put our collective thoughts together and get very positive outcomes from those conversations.”
The commission, according to a statement released by the league, “will examine areas in which systemic racism is perpetuated and seek actionable solutions for long-term sustainable change within the Patriot League.”
Freeman, who is joined on the commission by Lafayette women’s basketball coach, Kia DamonOlson, doesn’t believe there was any specific incident within the league that led to this. Rather, it simply was time, given everything that’s been happening in the country.
She pointed to the recent deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the resulting racial inequality protests as factors.
“They made for a need to be able to address these things, not only for the immediate future, but the long term,” she said.
While the commission has been created by the Patriot League, the hope is that it will have an impact on more than just athletics.
“I think it’s appropriate that we think beyond sports when we confront social injustice,” Lehigh director of athletics Joe Sterrett said. “We need to be thinking about the entire college experience and the pre-college experience and post-college experience.”
That could entail fundamental changes to certain school or league policies, according to Freeman.
“We can’t identify what those are right now,” she said. “Once we identify all representatives from each institution, there are potentially some league policies that might need to be addressed.”
The commission will bring together current and former Patriot League athletes, coaches and administrators to try to make the college experience better for all.
“The voices and experiences of our current and former student-athletes, coaches and administrators, as brought together by the League, are powerful,” Patriot League Commissioner Jennifer Heppel said in a news release. “The work of the commission will intersect with existing and planned institutional initiatives and resources in order to maximize the value of the collective whole toward ensuring policies, operations and structure are absent of systemic racism.”
Like Freeman, Sterrett hopes other leagues will follow the lead being set here.
“I hope it does,” he said “I think the sports world has provided a lot of leardership over the years in regard to social justice and racial tension and equality. And yet as a society we’re still struggling mightily with these issues that have been around for centuries.
“I do think there’s a responsibility in the sports world to provide that kind of leadership and I hope others will do the same thing.”
This could be especially important in a league that has such little minority representation. According to the NCAA’s latest demographic breakdown, 205 of the conferences’s 235 head coaches and 5,560 of the 7,526 student-athletes across all sports are white.
“I’m really excited about it,” Freeman said of the commission. “I think it’s important work that we’re going to be engaged in. I imagine that these outcomes will be positive for everyone.”