Just after winning their first Olympic gold in 46 years, the U.S. men’s hockey team was partying with FBI Director Kash Patel in their locker room. Downing beer, Patel called President Trump, who invited the team to the Feb. 24 State of the Union address. “I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team,” he remarked with a laugh. If not, “I do believe I probably would be impeached,” Trump said. The women’s team denied Trump’s half-hearted invitation to the White House, and the men went and received a standing ovation.
Some of the athletes have attempted to retroactively apologize for their behavior. While a few players quietly refused Trump’s invitation, the athletes’ responses were lazy and inadequate, offering no official statement relating to Trump’s comments and instead opting for personal excuses. When asked specifically about another player’s comment that the men’s team “should have reacted differently,” Jack Hughes, a star forward for the United States, responded with “it is what it is.”
Aside from how unacceptable the situation is in its own right, the recent press coverage of the incident has brought the questions surrounding women’s sports back into the American public’s collective consciousness. It’s not a secret that both professional and collegiate sports markets are smaller for women, both in their viewership and compensation of top stars. This is a problem Brown is not immune to. Here on College Hill, we may like to imagine ourselves as more politically enlightened and righteous than the rest of the country, but when it comes to sports, our habits look awfully similar to the United States at large. That needs to change.
Turning to specific numbers, it’s clear that our women’s teams are not as supported as they ought to be. Two weeks ago, Brown’s women’s hockey team advertised their afternoon game against Dartmouth by passing out flyers in the Sharpe Refectory. This should’ve been a huge game: Dartmouth and Brown are historic rivals, it was the opening round of the conference championships and the team was offering free merchandise. Brown delivered a crushing 7-2 victory against the Big Green. However, the game had only 473 total attendees, including both Brown and Dartmouth fans. The following Saturday night, the men’s hockey team took on Union College in a regular-season, non-Ivy League contest with no special advertising or theme. Bruno took a 3-0 beating. Despite the men’s team’s poor performance and lack of effort to drum up attendance, 522 fans showed up for the game.
I have previously written about the need for more spirit and athletic attendance at our school, but some may claim that they aren’t interested in supporting the Bears because we have losing teams — an excuse I disputed in my column. But it’s necessary to further dissect the gendered bias evident in this line of thinking. Our teams do not struggle to win across the board, and, especially as of late, our women’s teams are exceptional. On Feb. 27, our women’s basketball team clinched a spot in the Ivy League Women’s Basketball Tournament, or Ivy Madness. If you look at the men’s standings, however, you’ll find Bruno dead last, solidly eliminated from playoff contention.
As any reader of my columns would know, I believe all of Bruno’s teams deserve our support and attention. However, our women’s teams have already specifically proved that they deserve it by winning, not just because they wear our colors. If the reason you haven’t been to Brown athletics events is that you think our teams are not good, then perhaps you are ignoring our women’s teams’ successes.
Our failure to adequately celebrate the success of our female athletes is a blind spot in Brown’s progressive politics. And while we can start rectifying this blind spot on campus, our own support for women’s rights and causes should not stop at the doors of the Pizzitola Sports Center or Meehan Auditorium. Giving more attention to women’s sports on the college front will pave the way for increased professional attention. By supporting female athletes here on College Hill, we can use Brown’s platform to sustain and increase attention and opportunities for women in sports and beyond.
So this spring, consider attending a women’s game before a men’s game — they are often on the same evenings, anyway. We can treat home games as a primary social space to show off our school spirit, especially when our women’s teams dominate the competition. We have an obligation to stop using the “market demand” to justify the lag in national support for women’s sports when, in a way, we can create our own market.
And while I believe any support for Brown Athletics is better than none, if you’re looking for a chance to sing the fight song at the end of a win, you’ve got your best bet to find it at a women’s game.
Clay Edelson ’29 can be reached at clayton_edelson@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Clay Edelson is an Opinions Columnist. He is from St. Louis, Missouri and plans on concentrating in Political Science. In his free time, Clay loves playing with his band, attending Brown Athletics events, and hiking.
