Lightweight Rowing DEI Initiative
To Administrators, Boards, and Senior Leadership,
As university athletes in a predominantly white and wealthy sport, we recognize that we have a role to play in addressing the diversity, equity, and inclusion crisis facing our country. In 1976, courageous female rowers demanded change under Title IX and fundamentally changed the face of our sport forever. Today, it is time for all rowers to repeat the exemplary leadership of those women and demand change against racial injustices.
We want our teams to become more reflective of our country’s population — that is, we want to see more athletes of color and varied socioeconomic backgrounds learning to row, racing for scholastic and youth championships, advancing to collegiate teams, and competing for seats on the national team. Although this alone will not eliminate racism, our community has the power to diversify rowing teams and clubs across the nation as part of the larger battle against systemic injustice.
We are working to improve access and create more inclusive teams on our own campuses. After discussing with our own coaches and administrators, each of our teams has committed to a list of diversity initiatives. Additionally, the EARC Lightweight Teams have pledged to take action on three league-wide initiatives in an effort to impact diversity in the league and demonstrate the power of collaboration:
1. TEAM EDUCATION: We pledge to organize workshops devoted to educating our rowers, coaches, and staff on racism in our communities today and what we can do to create a more inclusive and diverse environment wherever we go.
2. CAMPUS ENGAGEMENT: We pledge to engage and collaborate with our respective campuses to make an impact on the diversity and inclusivity of the environments we are a part of daily.
3. COMMUNITY OUTREACH: We pledge to partner with local youth development organizations to give back to and learn from the communities around us.
While we are confident that our actions will be influential, we must acknowledge that one of the challenges we face is insufficient diversity in the teams from which we recruit. For example, we found 30 out of 468 participants in the Men’s Youth Eight and Lightweight Eight at the 2019 USRowing Youth National Championship presented as black or brown. Of those, 15 were from homogenous minority programs.
We want to apply the lessons of teamwork learned from our own youth rowing programs to tackling the necessary, yet difficult, task of developing, promoting, and sustaining inclusive environments in the sport of rowing. We are hopeful that our included commitments will serve as inspiration for your team and we want to emphasize that we can make a greater impact by working together. We hope that this letter can act as the starting point of an ongoing collaboration between our teams.
To kick off this collaboration, below are a few questions we think would be helpful for your program to consider:
1. What actions are your program already taking to ensure an atmosphere of safety, belonging, and purpose for minority members?
2. What diversity initiative ideas do you have that you have not yet been able to implement?
3. How can our teams best support your program in achieving your DEI goals?
If you have any ideas, questions, or concerns, please reach out to us at earclightweights@gmail.com. We are excited to partner with you in creating a more inclusive rowing community.
Sincerely,
Tate Huffman - Harvard University
Jakob Mathieu - Mercyhurst University
David Slear - Princeton University
Marcus Jonas - Princeton University
Cameron Norton - Temple University
Andrew Kelly - University of Pennsylvania
James Gaffney - University of Pennsylvania
Geoff Skelly - Yale University
Trutz von Warburg - Yale University
Maxwell Amsterdam - Columbia University
Ricardo Pantaleon - Columbia University
Joseph While - Cornell University
Andrew Hickey - Cornell University
JP Passot - Dartmouth College
Sean Ward - Dartmouth College
Ryan Teetsel - Georgetown University
John Dailey - Georgetown University
Victor Olsen - Harvard University
