The Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change at San Jose State hosted a two-day conference Thursday and Friday centered around reimagining sport in the age of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter.
The conference was the first large-scale event that the institute has hosted this school year. The conference ran from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. both days and featured over 20 panelists of sport experts, athletes and activists.
Kinesiology senior and student intern for the institute, Leilani Saelaw said that the conference had a mixture of webinar style discussion panels and Zoom breakout rooms to facilitate conversations between scholars, students and activists.
Over the course of the two days the conference hosted about 75 participants including attendees from the United Kingdom, Canada and various parts of the U.S.
Graduate kinesiology student and student intern with the institute, Annalisa Ronning said that the event and the institute helped her understand how to use her platform as a student to incite change.
“It's helped me learn how to become an ally and an intersectional ally by creating a space for those who aren't frequently heard especially in sport,” Ronning said in a phone interview. “And It's really about finding a specific passion and integrating that into your area of sport with a purpose.”
The keynote panel that started the conference consisted of sports activists, political scientists and college professors that were able to examine current issues of sport with COVID-19.
One specific point of contention for the panel was college football teams returning to play this Fall semester. Dr. Amira Rose Davis, an Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University dissected the nature of a student athlete's role during the pandemic.
“We are rushing 19-year-olds back to the football field,” Davis said in the keynote. “Clearly they are athletes before they are students. Stop pretending everything is equal when there's a very clear disparity in terms of funds.”
Dr. Jamil Northcutt, Vice President of Player Engagement with Major League Soccer, also explained how athletes as a whole have become essential to fans and society during the pandemic.
“Athletes have become somewhat of an essential worker during this time . . . they have become really essential from an economic standpoint and from a mental health standpoint,” Northcutt said in the keynote. “People being able to talk about their favorite teams has brought some sense of joy and unity back into the world.”
The panel also discussed how sports have evolved in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It’s exhausting for people on the front lines to try and enact change when they're the ones doing the most labor,” Shireen Ahmed, public speaker and writer, said in the first keynote conversation of the conference. “This is an 80 to 100 year commitment of literally undoing the systems of racism that were created.”
Ahmed continued to explain that professional sports teams need to be held accountable to fulfill their promises of change within their organizations.
“These things can sometimes water down the substance and it becomes just another shield for actual critical systemic change,” Ahmed said.
Saelaw said that the institute achieved its goal to spark conversation and make connections between people with a passion for sports and social change amid the pandemic.
