Reply to NARP experience at SLACs?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "NARP experience at SLACs?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]kinda hate this term, and that it's used derogatorily to describe non-athletes. Schools which foster such strong athlete/non-athlete divides should reconsider what they're doing [/quote]

Whether or not you like the term NARP, the divide is very rael at many--probably most--LACs/SLACs. Certainly the case at Middlebury & Amherst & Williams--although some experiences may be different.[/quote]

The athlete divide at these schools was historically because of racism and classism. In the past, Black students were much more likely to be athletes; athletics was one of the first mechanisms that these schools used when they set about trying to increase their non-white student population. Black athlete students — many of whom were exceptional and driven, and turned down other schools with higher Black populations for these — arrived to campuses where many of the white students were openly hostile and racist. So they stuck together for their own safety. If they made friends with the white students at all, they were only the other athletes because those were the white students they could trust. Meanwhile, some of the other athletes were happy to build on that racist division for their own classist reasons: wealthy sports like fencing, for instance, provided a way for the children of wealthy families to identify and befriend each other. This isn’t just SLACs; this same thing happened at all of the elite schools, particularly in the Northeast.

As schools have made progress in recruiting Black and other non-white students who weren’t coming in for athletics, the athlete/non-athlete division has lessened. It isn’t as rigid as it used to be, at a lot of schools. So while it still exists, it’s less than it was ten or twenty years ago. [/quote]

The above is not true. The divide existed/exists regardless of race or wealth.[/quote]

Seems utterly factually incorrect to assert that athletes at elite schools are historically black. These schools had hardly any black students until a few decades ago and to this day their overall black populations are a fraction of the athlete population. So it’s mathematically impossible these schools’ athletic teams were ever predominantly black. A simple glance at the sports rosters of these schools disproves the assertion. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics