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dailyorange.com
N • Education research
C • Dilf in drag
S • From Syracuse to Denver
The School of Education will launch a new center on Thursday to use research initiatives to advance experiential teaching, learning and development. Page 3
When Dilf Dangerbottom is performing on stage, they aren’t afraid to be sexual, funny or goofy — they are able to be who they really want to be. Page 5
Nathaniel Hackett’s three years as an assistant at Syracuse helped him earn an NFL offensive coordinator position and his first head coaching job. Page 12
on campus
Felisha Legette-Jack’s return to SU is a step in the right direction
Author speaks on sports, politics By Richard Perrins news editor
FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK, who had her jersey retired by SU in November, will take over as the seventh ever women’s basketball head coach. charlotte little staff photographer
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ix months after Felisha Legette-Jack watched her No. 33 rise into the Carrier Dome rafters, SU announced she would become its next women’s basketball head coach. It was a full-circle moment for LegetteJack, who attended Nottingham High School and completed her decorated Syracuse playing career in 1989 before returnANTHONY ing for seven seasons as ALANDT an assistant coach after CLEV ELA N D, stints at Westhill Senior THIS IS High School and Boston FOR YOU College. Then she went off to Hofstra, Indiana and Buffalo as a head coach at each stop before accepting the job on Saturday. This was always the most logical start to a new chapter in Syracuse women’s basketball history, one without head coach Quentin Hillsman or anyone else from his staff. Legette-Jack is coming back to central New York at the perfect time. But
she returns to a broken home, one she’s tasked with rebuilding under heightened attention. Legette-Jack expressed interest in returning to Syracuse just days after Hillsman’s resignation. “I am very interested in that job. It’s not just the university, where I went to school. It’s my home,” Legette-Jack told syracuse.com in August. That immediately piqued the interest of fans and alumni, who promptly began calling for her hiring. Syracuse opted against it and promoted Vonn Read, who was an associate head coach for nine seasons. SU Athletics said the goal was to maintain roster continuity. They were in brace-for-impact mode anyways with a largely new roster full of transfers save for two freshmen. Prior to The Athletic’s investigation into Hillsman’s inappropriate behavior, the Orange were a perennial NCA A Tournament team, smoothly transitioning their dominant Big East era into the Atlantic Coast Conference. This season, they were a lost program, see return page 4
On the projected screen of Maxwell Auditorium was a photograph of John Carlos, Tommie Smith and Peter Norman on the podium at the 1968 Olympic Games. Carlos and Smith had their gloved fists raised high after placing third and first in the 200-meter race. All three medal winners also wore human rights badges on their jackets. Two years after the last meeting of the State of Democracy lecture series gathered in Syracuse University’s Maxwell Auditorium, Dave Zirin, a sports and politics writer and author, spoke to a crowd of over 50 people Friday to discuss the intersection of sports and society that the athletes’ protest represented. The three athletes on the 200meter podium were part of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, an organization initially founded by Black athletes to boycott the games in protest of discriminatory sports policies across the world, though track and field athletes eventually decided to compete. Zirin, who co-wrote an autobiography with John Carlos titled The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World, said that Carlos and Smith decided on the gesture after the boycott fell through, and felt they had to do something to represent the struggle. “I always thought this was so audacious,” Zirin said. “They gathered all these materials, but they were so confident in what they were doing that they saw the medal stand as something that was just going to happen.” Rule 50 of the International Olympic Committee now dictates that Olympic athletes cannot make political, religious or racial demonstrations, like that of Carlos and Smith, while in Olympic areas. “People say that sports and politics shouldn’t mix. But when they say that, a lot of times what they mean is that sports and a certain kind of politics shouldn’t mix,” Zirin said. Zirin’s discussion Friday brought up the fact that ugliness within the sports world means people are constantly complaining. see olympics page 4