[As another
semester winds to a close, a week’s series on some of the moments that have
stood out to me and what conclusions I’d take away from them. Leading up to a
weekend post on some of my summer and fall plans. Share your spring follow ups
or summer/fall plans in comments, please!]
Two distinct but complementary sites for a campus-wide conversation.
Throughout the
Spring 2015 semester, Fitchburg
State’s Center for Conflict Studies hosted a series of presentations,
panels, and conversations focused on football, and more exactly on issues of
violence and other controversies linked to that hugely popular sport. I’ve
blogged about football in Super
Bowl series each of the last couple years, and have engaged briefly in
those series with many of the issues that became part of these campus-wide
conversations: concussions
and brain trauma; rape
and sexual violence; racism;
the exploitation of college athletes. As much as I hope for this space to be
conversational and communal, though, the truth is that it’s always framed and
driven at least initially by my own interests, ideas, and perspectives, and so
these semester-long Fitchburg State conversations about football and its
debates added a great deal to my own perspective in multiple ways.
One way was
through those conversations that were planned, such as a late April
roundtable discussion of the highly controversial question, “Should
football be banned?” The roundtable featured the kinds of interdisciplinary
voices and connections that represent the best of Fitchburg State as a
scholarly community, with presentations by philosopher David
Svolba, Director of Athletics Sue
Lauder, sociologist G.L.
Mazard Wallace, exercise physiologist Monica
Maldari, and my English Studies colleague Kisha
Tracy. But besides the value of putting these voices and frames in
conversation, the roundtable also allowed each presenter to develop a
particular part of his or her identity at compelling length: Monica, for
example, talked about how her discipline and her knowledge impacted her
family’s decision not to let their young son play football; while G.L.
highlighted how we can’t discuss football without addressing the issues of
ethics, race, work and labor, and social obligations that form key parts of his
teaching and scholarship.
Alongside those
planned conversations, however, and offering an importantly complementary
window into attitudes about and perceptions of these issues, were more
impromptu debates that sprung up online. The most interesting such debate came
in the wake of the aforementioned roundtable, in emails to the entire
university community, and featured three voices: a Fitchburg State assistant football
coach, who had not been able to attend the roundtable but offered his impassioned defense of
the sport and its value; a Fitchburg State hockey coach, who had likewise
attended and argued for the value of the roundtable itself as a layered
scholarly conversation; and one of the event’s organizers, who followed up both
emails in hopes of keeping the conversation going beyond that event and this
spring’s series. These messages reminded us all that there are individuals, in
our community and in every one, directly impacted by such debates and their potential
outcomes and effects—the players most especially, in every sense, but lots of
others as well. But they also made clear that in our 21st century
moment, important public conversations don’t have to and can’t happen simply in
individual places and times; they have to continue online, and I’d love for you
to share any responses to help this one continue here!
Last conclusion
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts on
this semester conclusion? Ones of yours you’d share?
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