The Catamount Tribune presented by Redstone Apartments and Lofts is an avenue for UVM student-athletes, coaches, staff, alumni, and fans to tell unique stories in their own words. This edition of the Catamount Tribune is written by Skyler Nash, a redshirt sophomore with the men's basketball team. Interested in sharing your story for the Catamount Tribune? Please click here.

November 4, 2017 is a date that changed everything for our athletic department. It was the night that six players and three coaches from the St. Mike's men's basketball team took a knee in silent protest during the anthem during our exhibition game. The adverse reaction from a number of members of our home crowd sparked deep conversations amongst our team, as well as our department, that were uncomfortable yet incredibly impactful.

Fast forward to the spring, I was invited by Director of Athletics Jeff Schulman to join the newly formed Athletics Inclusive Excellence Committee. With the help of Dr. Alex Yin, the Director of Institutional Research, we administered a department-wide climate survey to better gauge how included student-athletes felt within the department. Unsurprisingly, student-athletes of color felt disproportionately un-included, we could have guessed this, but the more important question was why? To answer this, I partnered with Beverly Colston, the Director of the Mosaic Center for Students of Color, and Dr. Alex Yin, to host a focus group for student-athletes of color, the first of its kind in the department to add context to the numbers we were faced with. Many of the themes that emerged were eye-opening. Students of color perceived immense pressure to be "the one" in a predominantly white space, or having to be a teacher for their white peers. They felt that administrators cared for them but did not possess the skills for how to actually do so. Students felt their racial and ethnic identities were not recognized nor appreciated in the department.

After hearing from my peers, it became clear to me there was a need for a space in the department for student-athletes of color to connect and bond over the shared unique lived experience of being a person of color in a predominantly white environment. Even though I felt strongly that this was a necessary next step I was nervous. Would this be asking too much of the department? Would my peers "buy into" the space and see it as a necessity as I did? After pitching the idea to my committee co-chairs and associate athletic directors Cathy Rahill and Joe Gervais, the basis of my fears were instantly allayed. Both of them were eager to learn and incredibly receptive to the results from the focus group. Additionally, they empowered me to go ahead and begin working on creating a space for student-athletes of color, pledging the department's support in making it successful. Thus, the Affinity Group was born.

Group established, my next question was whether my peers would buy in. This is where advocacy can feel very lonely. In advance of our inaugural Affinity Group meeting, I bombarded my peers with emails, texts, and social media posts inviting them to join us. I leveraged teammates and friends, I even made sure to offer a meal, all in the effort to cover every base I could think of to get them to attend. I was terrified that I would be left eating all the food by my lonesome. But to my great relief, that was not the case by any means. We had a huge turnout for our first meeting and the attendance grew with each subsequent meeting through the end of the school year. In our short time together, I've seen a group of people who certainly appreciated one another to begin with but when we let our respective guards down, some probably for the first time since they got on campus, we managed to reach a higher level of understanding and compassion beyond my expectations. As a result, I see an administration and a department that is having sometimes difficult conversations and discussions about race and inclusion that haven't been engaged in before, creating pathways for growth in ways beneficial not just to student-athletes of color but to all students and faculty as a whole.

Our inclusivity work did not just get noticed on campus but it spread across Vermont and caught the attention of our state representatives. As a result, I was invited by Senator Richard Sears, Chair of the Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Tim Ashe, President Pro Temp. of the Senate, to testify in Montpelier on race relations statewide. My message to the legislature was the same as my original one to the athletic department - purposeful past actions have resulted in a lack of equity and inclusion amongst people of color in this nation and more specifically in the state. It will take equally purposeful action if we are serious about wanting to achieve equity and inclusion amongst all communities of people in Vermont. Purposeful action means creating spaces like our Affinity Group in the athletic department to connect people of color and give them the opportunity to be around others acquainted with the pressures and burdens of being 'the only' in a white space. Purposeful action means going beyond talking about race and diving into uncomfortable conversations to destigmatize this subject. We can't be afraid to change, and we can't be scared not to have immediate answers. What we must do is continue to do what the leaders at our University and in our State have begun to do, which is empower people of color who have answers to be available at forums for us to come together and ask our tough questions, and even perceivably dumb questions, in order to facilitate collective growth.

We have a unique opportunity in this State, and at our University, for young leaders to rise up and continue to push conversations on race, equity, and inclusion forward. I have personally seized this opportunity and will continue to do my part to contribute to these discussions, advocating for purposeful change here and statewide. I know I am not the only one capable of doing this. I hope through our group we can empower other young leaders to find their space and use their voices. Then together we will become a chorus of advocacy drowning out the systemic exclusion of the past, and raising the decibel on global inclusion for the future. Our department and our University as a whole will be better for it.

Our doors are always open at the Affinity Group. Our next round of meetings will be next month, as the fall 2019 semester commences. I'm so incredibly excited to see where this grows. It is our greatest hope to see this approach catch on at other institutions across the state, inspiring conversations about inclusion and fostering equanimity. We dually hope that people in positions of power will bring more people of color to the table to help further this work, and act to create policies that will more effectively reflect the lived experience of people of color.
 
Any student athletes of color that would like to get involved with the group this year or ask any question can email me at nash.skyler@outlook.com.