Club Sports Teams Deserve More SupportFrom Oberlin
by Nat BS
I joined the Rhinos Women and Trans Rugby Team my first semester at Oberlin. Now in my fifth semester, I have become the club president. I love the community I have found on the rugby team, and it is one of the most inclusive, fun, silly, and caring groups on campus. Throughout my time on the team the most difficult and thorny issue we have faced has been transphobia from other teams in our league, which has impacted every season I have played in. Every semester I have been on this team, we have faced a variety of transphobic comments, accusations, policies, and actions from other teams, and based on what I have heard from former members of the team, transphobia has been a huge issue for as far back as institutional memory stretches. Perhaps even more frustrating than the transphobia from other schools though is the feeling of being inadequately supported by Oberlin.
One of the worst instances of transphobia occurred last fall when another team in our league asked us to play without a member of our team they believed to be transgender and in violation of the league's transgender policy. They threatened to sue us if a player of theirs was injured while the teammate in question was on the pitch. Luckily, we had a friend of our coach present at the tournament who was a lawyer, and we told them if they wanted to talk to her they were welcome to, but we would be playing with everyone on our team. In response, they forfeited the game.
In our team conversations after this incident, there was a tension between wanting to avoid potentially dangerous situations such as this one, and wanting to continue to play our sport and not step back out of fear. There was also a strong feeling from all team members that our team should first and foremost be an inclusive place where everyone plays or no one plays. Every time an incident like this one has happened, there is discussion of leaving our league and playing only against other inclusive teams in friendly matches, as a way to protect ourselves from the seemingly inevitable transphobia. However, several factors gave us reason to stay in the league, despite these fears.
The first is that until this semester Oberlin had gone over a year with no functioning club sports medicine program, and as the only full-contact club sport at Oberlin, we were prohibited from hosting home games until a sports medicine program could be implemented. This meant leaving the league might mean playing no games because we would be completely reliant on other teams to host us for friendly matches, where they would have to find their own referee and medical staff paid out of their own pockets. This seemed unlikely to result in more than one or two games for the semester. This semester, we decided not to join the league for complicated reasons related to both past transphobia, a new policy that required all teams to be fully registered with National Collegiate Rugby and the league before participating in any tournaments, and SFC procedures that make the new registration policy problematic for our team. As predicted, this has resulted in us having played two tournaments so far, and currently we have no more tournaments planned.
While Oberlin has now revamped the club sports medicine program, we are still prevented from hosting by the carbon neutral project construction on North Fields. This construction led to the destruction of our field and the disappearance of two of our three uprights (uprights are the rugby equivalent of a football goalpost, but instead of being shaped like a Y, they are shaped like an H). Now we still have one upright, but its usefulness for kicking into is reduced by the fact that there is a construction zone immediately behind it which feels like a huge risk of losing lots of balls. Additionally, there are supposed to be rugby uprights on both sides of the field, so while it would be possible to play a friendly game with only one upright, it's a big ask to other teams for them to travel 2-3 hours to play a game on a field with only one upright.
The combination of these two issues with our medical and field facilities have prevented us from hosting since fall of 2022. While the transphobia we face outside of Oberlin’s boundaries playing teams from across Ohio and Indiana is not Oberlin’s fault, the school has failed to recognize the danger that it places us in by failing to provide a space for us to host our own games, where we can choose who to invite. What can be done to improve this situation?
Most obviously, we could be given back uprights and a proper field, and the club sports medicine program could be maintained and improved going forward. Both of these initiatives are on the right track to happen in the relatively near future, with restored access to North fields slated for Fall 2025 and no reason to believe that the club sports medicine program will disappear. Thinking about the time when these things will be fixed is certainly exciting, but I feel two other emotions as well. The first is frustration that by the time field construction is finished, the rugby team will not have had the ability to host a home game for the majority of my time at Oberlin– so far the only home game we have hosted was my first semester at Oberlin two years ago, and I could not attend because I was sick that weekend. The second is fear about instability in the future of the rugby team. What is there to prevent something else from impeding our ability to host? Who is there to advocate for our needs when decisions are made by the college if they won’t even tell us about changes that affect us until it's too late to modify them?
The Student Finance Committee (SFC) recently sent out a form to leaders and treasurers of cultural and religious student organizations as well as club sports teams, asking them to consider a proposed change under which the majority of funding for these types of organizations would come “from their associated administrative departments and not SFC.” This change is intended to address a feeling of being unsupported by the college by transferring the budget allocation power away from SFC and to the respective college departments. There are certainly SFC policies that are frustrating from a club sports perspective, such as the prohibition on purchasing clothing, including jerseys, or the inability to access funding during the summer, which would be the ideal time to pay registration fees so that we would be prepared to jump right into the season as soon as it begins. Initially, this makes the proposed change appealing.
However, as I have explained, Oberlin has failed to do its duty to support our team, even without being responsible for the actual funding of club sports teams. I have very little reason to believe club sports will receive much from athletics, as the focus and priority will always be on varsity sports. Without significant investment from the athletic department to hire staff members focused solely on club sports issues, separate from the varsity sports and recreation budget, I think this proposal would only harm club sports. Cynically, I don’t think there’s any chance that Oberlin would address these concerns, were the policy to be implemented.
It is not clear how SFC, or anyone, can easily increase support for club sports and fix the issues I have described. However it is clear that a change needs to be made to ensure club sports have continual and consistent access to proper facilities, money for required fees, coaching, jerseys and other essential equipment, and medical care. All club sports teams deserve this, and especially in the case of Women and Trans Rugby, access to these would increase safety and demonstrate a real commitment by Oberlin to protecting its transgender students from hostile forces, and are thus of the utmost urgency.
Finally, if you are a member of the Oberlin administration reading this article, I urge you not to take these critiques as an attack. I do not believe anyone at Oberlin wishes our team, or other club sports any harm. Rather, a lack of awareness about the impact of various policies, a lack of communication and dialogue with club sports teams, and only a few employees being responsible for many programs and student needs have led club sports to sometimes fall through the cracks, disproportionately harming trans athletes. I hope that by working together on these issues, we can create new procedures and policies that can give club sports teams more support and stability, allowing us all to enjoy sports and team building without spending all of our time trying to gain access to the things that we need.
