THE AMHERST
THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
STUDENT VOLUME CXLVI, ISSUE 18 l WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2017
Women’s Basketball Progresses to NESCAC Semifinals See Sports, Page 9 AMHERSTSTUDENT.AMHERST.EDU
Residential Life Announces Housing Changes Ariana Lee ’20 and Caleigh Plaut ’19 Staff Writers
Photo courtesy of Faith Wen ’20
Housing selection for the 2017-2018 academic year will feature changes that include time group formations, genderspecific rooms and earlier theme house admissions.
For Women’s Sports, Challenges Remain Kiana Herold ’17, Senior Adviser Sophie Murguia ’17 , Executive Adviser Isabel Tessier ’19, Managing News Editor In fall 1975, as the first women arrived on Amherst’s campus for orientation, the student coach for men’s crew was recruiting novices to join the team. In an effort to fill more boats, he decided to hang flyers in women’s dorms as well as men’s. “That kind of kicked off the athletic program for women,” said Professor of Physical Education Michelle Morgan, who arrived at Amherst a few years later in 1978. The next spring, a four-woman boat beat Syracuse in Amherst’s first women’s intercollegiate competition. In the fall of 1976, the first women’s teams in field hockey, basketball, squash and swimming were formed. As the women’s program grew, teams sometimes encountered obstacles in getting new equipment or practice times. “For example, in the golf program, the women used to wear the men’s hand-me-down shirts,” Morgan said. Much has changed over the past four decades, but some challenges remain for women athletes. Fundraising for women’s teams is still more difficult than fundraising for men’s teams, and ensuring a fair distribution of resources is always a delicate balancing act for an athletic department that spends more than $600,000 a year on football. Women’s teams also tend to have smaller roster sizes, fewer assistant coaches and less money to spend on recruiting. In interviews, Athletics Department staff said that the smaller size of women’s teams is often a result of complex national trends and differences in game play between similar sports — certain women’s teams tend to be smaller nationwide. Some men’s sports have become more specialized than equivalent women’s sports, which means that they tend to have more players and specialized coaches. The Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act requires federally-funded colleges to make public certain data about gender equity in sports, including roster sizes, coaching information and spending. The Amherst Student obtained most of the data in this article from those reports, which
are managed by the Department of Education. Title IX, the law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally-funded educational institutions, has various requirements regulating participation opportunities and benefits for men’s and women’s sports. The law does not require Amherst to spend the same amount on men’s and women’s sports, and it does not necessarily require that resources for each team be exactly the same. Laurie Frankl, the college’s full-time Title IX coordinator, said her job is mostly focused on sexual misconduct, but she addresses Title IX issues when they come up in sports. “Anyone can come speak to me with the knowledge that they will not and shall not be retaliated against for having their concern brought to me,” Frankl said. Director of Athletics Don Faulstick oversees gender equity issues on a day-to-day basis if they come up, whether or not they are related to Title IX. For instance, Faulstick recently spearheaded an effort to ensure that all the head coaches for women’s teams had their own offices. Jen Hughes ’97, the women’s soccer coach, said she also acts as a Title IX liaison for the Athletic Department, but has had to do virtually nothing in that role so far. President Biddy Martin announced in January that the college will be conducting a Title IX compliance review later this spring. FUNDRAISING One of the biggest challenges for women’s teams is fundraising. “There doesn’t seem to be the quantity or magnitude of donations on the women’s side that there seem to be on the men’s side,” Hughes said. “Many women’s programs have had a harder time being able to fundraise,” said Maria Rello, the Senior Woman Administrator and director of sports medicine. “That’s a frustration. That’s something the department absolutely recognizes, and so we’re trying to figure out ways to try to solve that problem.” Team budgets are made up of an operations budget sourced from the department and a fundraising budget. Coaches submit their budget re-
quests for team operational expenses such as uniforms, travel and equipment to associate athletic director Gregg Dinardo ’01. Teams can fundraise by hosting clinics, working at other teams’ games, selling gear or soliciting money from parents and alumni. Fundraising differs by team, but can be used to pay for additional expenses such as trips, contributions to assistant coaches’ salaries and banquets. Through the alumni organization Friends of Amherst Athletics, people can donate to a general fund for athletics or to individual teams. Money from the general fund can be used for women’s sports to even out fundraising discrepancies. Of the 15 alumni representatives on the executive board of Friends of Amherst Athletics, just three are women. Women’s teams also have a much smaller alumni base to draw on for funds and generally have less success soliciting money from the alumni they have. “Unfortunately, there are still many more wealthy men than there are wealthy women, and so they have a wider network to pull from,” Rello said. Women’s teams that were added to the athletic program more recently have an even smaller alumni base from which to solicit funds. For example, softball was added in 1996, while baseball began 30 years earlier. “Baseball has such a huge history of giving … and they get money like that,” Morgan said. “The softball team has only been a team since the mid ’90s. And so they have to make up that extra money by doing extra fundraising.” “There’s not the same type of philanthropic giving by women as there are by men,” Morgan said. “That is changing, I think, and we are getting many more female alumni involved in that. Yes, that definitely is an area where we are behind, but that’s historical.” The athletics department has expanded efforts to connect female athlete alumni with current players in the past few years, introducing mentorship opportunities and other alumnae events. “Our alumni came to our spring games last year and always come up for Homecoming,” said
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The Residential Life Department has recently announced several changes to the housing selection and room draw process for the 2017-2018 academic year. Application forms and sign-ups for on-campus housing began on Monday, Feb. 13, and room draw this year will start on April 5. The most significant change to the general room draw process is the redefinition of the groups that students form to enter the room draw process. In previous years, students were only able to form room groups, but the 2017 room draw will also offer the option to form “time groups.” “This [is] to prevent some mishaps last year, when one person would enter a suite or double by themselves and block out other people from being able to take the suite or double,” Student Housing Advisory Committee member Justin Lee ’19 said. Time groups, which can include up to six students, will all receive the same time slot to pick rooms, like room groups in previous years, but will be required to select rooms with occupancies matching the number of students in their group. “For example, let’s say in a [time] group of six, two people were trying to live in a double and the other four were trying to live in a four-[person] suite,” Lee said. “They would have to break into two room groups of size two and size four and then enter the room[s that] they would like.” Residential Life has also designated 75 percent of dorm rooms as single-gender in order to create a more balanced gender ratio in the dormitories. All of these rooms will be assigned as either for women or for men. When students choose their rooms during room draw, they will only be able to choose from the rooms that are designated for their gender. Because some students are gender-nonconforming or transgender, about 25 percent of the rooms will be coed and can be occupied by any student. As with housing selection processes in previous years, students with housing accommodations and students over 25 years old will be placed into their rooms for next year prior to room draw. “This way, we take everyone out who is not participating in the general room draw process so we can focus on the general group of students,” said Colonna. Residential Life is also adding an extra night for room selection, making the room draw process four nights long, instead of three. The first two nights of room draw will take place on April 5 and 6, and then the last two nights will take place a week later, on April 11 and 12. This will “[give Residential Life] the ability to spread people out more when choosing rooms and allows more time for assistance,” said Colonna. Colonna said that last year’s housing selection data demonstrated a widespread demand for substance-free and quiet housing. In response, Residential Life has designated Morrow, Valentine Hall, Chapman, Seligman, Tyler and Wieland as “quiet halls.” Morrow and Valentine will also be substance-free dormitories. “Quiet does not mean silent,” said Colonna. “We are creating spaces where there would not be the ability to register a party on a weekend and that overall the people who are there are agreeing to keeping noise and disruption to a minimum for the community.”