5 Social Justice & Racial Reckoning on Campus

Shuo Qin, Hao Wen Cheng

Washington students, sports teams, and alumni are called Huskies, and we literally can see the sign everywhere on campus, the name appeared the most especially around the sport recreation facilities. The name was originated from an attempt to adopt the nickname Vikings in 1921 was met with protest by the students, and a joint committee of students, coaches, faculty, alumni and businessmen proposed new names, then the name huskies is officially adopted in 1922, but the name Huskies means more than that with UW students nowadays , it represent a strong community that is supportive and powerful in changing the society to be better for the minority. For instance, back in 2020 after the tragedy of George Floyd, the athletic director Jen Cohen sent a video message of showing support the people of color in UW athletics to her student-athletes, coaches and staff, and she greeting everyone with “hello Huskies” at the beginning of the video.

As the takeaway from the interview we done with one of the foster professors that we learned Social Justice is really a tricky question when we talk about it. The key to practicing social justice is tolerance to other opinions. However, it is challenging to make people work together to overcome the barriers that make it hard to implement social justice in society because of tradition, different in economic status, religious beliefs, and lack of social norms. School is no exception and where social injustice take place, the research from Reproducing Sports Stars: How Students Become Elite Athletes, the author states the finding that:

“a sports-track-to-college pipeline and a correspondence between White middle-class communities and greater access to elite universities via athletics.” – Quote from the article Reproducing Sports Stars: How Students Become Elite Athletes

The issue of social injustice can be addressed by education and social justice can be practice either at school or outside of school by social connection and interaction with each other, school has become a place for building a community that welcomes everyone regardless of of race, sexual orientation, age, gender, etc, and ultimately it will bring the awareness to the public and help shape society to be better treated the minority.

References

Hextrum, K. (2019, April 1). Reproducing sports stars: How students become elite athletes. Teachers College Record. Retrieved May 26, 2022, from https://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=22612

Vorel, M. (2020, June 2). Ad Jen Cohen’s message to people of color in UW athletics: ‘we’re here to not only support you but to stand by you. it’s not OK. it’s not OK.’. The Seattle Times. Retrieved May 26, 2022, from https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/uw-husky-football/ad-jen-cohens-message-to-people-of-color-in-uw-athletics-were-here-to-not-only-support-you-but-to-stand-by-you-its-not-ok-its-not-ok/