Volume 27 · Number 4 · Summer 2010
(Photo: Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
Rebels with a Cause: Another Kind of Protest
In early April, when UC Davis was reviewing which athletic teams to discontinue (see sports), student-athletes staged the year’s most creative protest.
Outside Mrak Hall, members of the women’s rowing team set up several rowing ergonomic machines to exercise on all day. The goal — to educate people about the sport of rowing.
“We understand that not many people understand our sport or the amount of work we put in,” said team member Darcy Ward. “I would say it was a success.
We got people to stop, watch and ask questions, which is really all you can hope for from demonstrations.”
A protest like this, Ward said, helps student-athletes share their “faces and stories” with the rest of campus. Like other student protestors, the rowing team used tools like Facebook, especially, as well as Twitter, text messaging and blogs to organize and communicate about their activities.
But in the end, rowing was among the four sports cut for budget reasons.