By Alicia Maldonado
Contributing writer
How would you feel if you learned a huge amount of sexism thrived among the sports culture here at St. Bonaventure?
St. Bonaventure University students and alumni take pride in the NCAA Division 1 sports teams on campus. These teams include women’s softball, men’s baseball, women and men’s soccer, women’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s basketball, to name a few.
But what if our school spirit is showing a great deal of sexism?
As a proud Bonnie, I am the last one to want to admit to my school’s sexism, but in the last year I have noticed there are more students and fans attending men’s games than women’s. This begins to appear when basketball season arrives.
If you have not been to a men’s basketball game, simply picture about 400 Bona students squished together in the student section cheering the team on. The rest of the sections in the Reilly Center are filled with alumni and residents of Olean and Allegany.
Alternately, at a typical women’s basketball game, there are about 40 Bonaventure students present and about 300 alumni and occupants from our neighboring towns. According to the NCAA attendance statistics, an average Bonnies men’s basketball game sees 3,987 attendees, but at a women’s game there is an average of 553 attendees.
The drop in fan attendance isn’t the only example of team favoritism — it is also displayed on our apparel. Last year the bookstore sold a T-shirt for both men’s and women’s basketball teams. The men’s shirt said “Respect our Name, Fear Our Game,” and the women’s said “Shoot Like a Girl.” The men’s shirt asks for respect and the women’s simply recites we shoot like a girl. It’s disrespectful. It is almost saying that the women’s basketball team should not receive respect.
The sexism toward St. Bonaventure’s teams also runs heavy when it comes to women’s softball and men’s baseball. The baseball team has a turf field which they received six years ago. The softball field is grass, which forces the women to cover the field every time it rains with the tarp themselves. If it does not get covered it gets very muddy and the women are not able to play. This is finally going to change when the softball team receives a turf field in the next couple of years, but why did it take so long for the women to receive theirs?
When softball and baseball season started last year, both teams traveled to North Carolina for their first games. Last year, some of the girls on the team told me that they took the bus while the men were able to fly down and back. Considering the fact that they are all Division 1 athletes and train just as hard, this is really unfair.
St. Bonaventure sports are great ways to unite our Bona family, but the huge amount of sexism that occurs among our athletic teams should make you think twice. There should be no difference between the men’s and women’s sports teams, but somehow there tends to be. My hope is that in the upcoming seasons others will realize these biases and decide that Bonaventure sports cannot continue this way. As students, let’s take this as a challenge and attend as many women’s games as men’s games.
maldonae12@bonaventure.edu
