The cheerleading squad did not perform Saturday at Brown Stadium for the first football game of the season. Instead, the squad's three captains - including one who had recently quit - distributed flyers in protest of a new policy that deprives the cheerleaders of a professional coach.
After Kristin Capasso, who coached the cheerleading squad for the last two years, vacated her position in May, the Department of Athletics decided the squad would be coached by a student, rather than recruiting a professional replacement.
That policy change has generated discord among the cheerleaders: several quit the squad, and the new student-coach asked two captains to step down after the flyer incident.
Rick Merriam, assistant athletic director for marketing, said the main obstacle in hiring another professional coach was financial.
"We want to have cheerleaders at games," he said. "If we had a lot more money ... we might be able to open the position up to other candidates, but right now we don't have the money."
While the budget allotted for cheerleading has not changed, a revision in how the University defines employees on "limited duration payroll" - which included the cheerleading coach - led the athletics department to re-evaluate available funds and positions, Merriam said.
The coaching position for the cheerleading squad "did not fit into any of the existing categories," he said, and even "last year's coach wouldn't have fit the same way."
Merriam did not have information on how the cheerleading squad's budget compared to other club sports or if any other club sports rely on student-coaches.
At the start of this semester, squad members expressed mixed feelings about having a student-coach. After tryouts, several first-years and a sophomore joined the roster this semester, but all the first-years quit last week, along with several veterans, leaving the squad with just nine members as of Sunday - seven of whom are veterans.
"I think they could sense that our team wasn't really a cohesive unit," said former captain Jasmine Plummer '08, who was asked to leave the squad after the flyer incident.
"The cheerleaders have said they want a professional coach," said coach Cindy Vuittonet '07, but "student-coaching is fairly common" on college campuses.
At Saturday's football game against Georgetown, captains Plummer, Liz Muscarella '07 and Jenna Newmark '07 - who had already quit - protested publicly by distributing flyers. "Brown University did not hire a professional Cheerleading coach this year," the flyer stated. "Half of the team has quit in response. The unity and enthusiasm of the only team devoted to school spirit has been ruined ... we can not cheer under the current circumstances."
"The flyers came as a bit of a surprise to me and others in our department," Merriam said.
Two days later, Vuittonet told Plummer and Muscarella they could no longer be on the squad "because they displayed behaviors and actions detrimental to the success of the team," Vuittonet wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, adding that some other squad members did not agree with the flyers.
"In my opinion it wasn't a protest," Plummer wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "It was an explanation to our fans as to why we weren't down on the field where we should have been."
With the departure of the two captains Monday, the size of the squad is much smaller than the typical 16 to 20 members in past years. The reduced team size will affect "our stunting level," Plummer said last week, before learning that she was no longer on the team. "I don't know how we're going to accomplish any of the stunts we did last year. ... It is strange having so few people down there on the field trying to animate an entire stadium."
But Vuittonet said the squad is optimistic. "We'll work with what we have and make it happen."
The discontent among cheerleaders is "not about Vuittonet as a person," Plummer wrote. "It's about a college level team needing someone who is experienced as a coach."
Paolo Ikezoe '07, who joined the squad when he was a first-year, quit after learning about the change in coaching policy.
"Cheerleading can be very dangerous and to make an undergrad student responsible for the safety of each and every cheerleader on the squad is absolutely unfair to both the squad and to the student coach," Ikezoe wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Newmark also quit at the beginning of the season, citing safety as her main concern.
"My freshman year, during the parent's weekend homecoming football game, one of our cheerleaders fell off of a stunt in which she was at least six feet off the ground," she wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "She was injured very badly. Today, many people who were there, and even those who were not, still remember that incident. Since then, we always consider safety our number one priority during practice and during games."
Merriam said that the coach's ability to safely supervise the team was discussed at the meetings last spring.
"Safety's obviously a concern, whether it's cheerleading or field hockey or swimming and diving," he said. He added that Vuittonet took a required safety course and received CPR certification.
"I think she's realistic and responsible in what she's asking the squad to do," he said.
The cheerleading squad will have a student-coach for the foreseeable future, according to Merriam. He added that the athletics department "can certainly help support more on-campus recruitment."
"They can still have a good presence with fewer numbers," Merriam said. "There may be some stunts or formations that fewer numbers prohibit them from doing."
Vuittonet wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that new tryouts for the squad held this week were "successful," but would not comment on how many new cheerleaders were recruited.
Several of the cheerleaders who have left the squad said they plan to keep attending football games.
"Although changes may not be made before I graduate, I do hope that the University notices that we deserve a professional coach," Newmark said.
