Colorado University Athletics
Buffs Launch 'Language Matters' Campaign
January 25, 2017 | Football, General, Track and Field, Soccer, Neill Woelk, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
BOULDER — Beginning Wednesday evening, Colorado athletes hope to send a simple yet powerful message:
Clean it up. Language matters.
It is a campaign with roots in the CU Athletic Department's Diversity and Inclusive Excellence committee, and one that is spreading throughout the department.
"When we started the Diversity and Inclusion Committee, we built a strategic plan," CU football player Michael Adkins II said. "One of the items that was brought up was language and how that can shape the environment. We thought one of the ways we can implement that plan was through a language campaign. It's a simple way people can change their language, change a few words, change the way they present things and have a positive impact on people."
Wednesday night, the women's basketball team will wear T-shirts during warmups with the message when they play host to Utah in a 7 p.m. game. Thursday, the men's basketball team will wear the shirts before their 6:30 p.m. home game with Oregon State.
It's a campaign CU athletes hope will catch on not only within the department, but across campus and throughout the Boulder community.
"More than anything, it's simply a matter of awareness," CU Senior Associate Athletic Director Ceal Barry said. "We all talk and sometimes we get lazy, sometimes we are undisciplined. This is an opportunity for us to get better and be a little more aware of how we communicate with one another."
One things CU athletes definitely recognize is that they can set the tone for a campus. They realize that they serve as role models, and their goal is to help athletes, coaches and staff be aware of what they're saying, how they're saying it and how certain words affect people.
Soccer player Kenzie Tillitt, a member of the Diversity and Inclusive Excellence committee, said the genesis of the campaign emerged from discussions concerning CU's standing as a member of the Pac-12 and how to maintain a standard of excellence.
"I think it was just taking a step back and realizing that we're in the Conference of Champions, and if really want to be excellent and be in this top-caliber league, everything about us needs to be excellent," Tillitt said. "One of the things we narrowed that down to was our language and how we treat each other first within our athletic community and then beyond, through the entire school.
"When we looked at it more closely, it really just came down to respect. The main way we respect one another is in our words and our actions — so we went directly to language."
There are, of course, a variety of ways language can have an effect, ranging from profanity to emotional outbursts to slurs that denigrate a group of people. The goal is to first make people aware of what they are saying and why it might be offensive.
"I think it can be an educational process," track athlete Jaron Thomas said. "We're at an institution of higher education and we need to start by educating our student athletes, coaches and staff on certain types of language we don't need to be using and why they're inappropriate. We can introduce terms and terminology that are appropriate and when to use them and how to use them, then familiarize people and help them become comfortable using those terms.
"What we'd like to do is begin eradicating racial slurs, homophobic slurs, slurs against people's gender, age and ethnicity and other identifying factors, then promote language that's inclusive."
The athletes know that the environment of sports and the atmosphere that accompanies such an environment can spawn moments of raw emotion that are difficult to contain.
"There's obviously a spectrum of language that includes a surface-level language that I don't know that you'll ever be able to completely remove," Tillitt said. "It's the nature of a competitive environment. What I think what we're really trying to direct this at is disrespectful language, aiming rude language at another person, saying it in a discriminatory way that's putting another group of people down to raise you up in a sense.
"I think that's what we're looking for and that's where you can clean it up in sports."
While the athletes admit they hear it on the sidelines, on the court, on the field and in the locker room — they also hear it from the stands. They believe if they can set an example and clean it up from their end, that attitude will carry over into the stands and across campus.
"As athletes, we are in the public spotlight a lot," Adkins said. "We believe we can be a catalyst for change. If we're making a change, it can flow through everybody, through the student body and then hopefully throughout Boulder County. … Once you get everyone on the same page and working toward the same goal, the whole of the environment will be better and the community can see us as role models in that endeavor."
CU Athletic Director Rick George has embraced the campaign.
"We can set the tone," George said. "It does matter in the way you talk to people and it's important what people hear. It's a great initiative that we have in our diversity and inclusive excellence plan and I'm excited to see where it goes."
The athletes know it won't be easy, and they know change won't occur overnight. But they also believe they can make a difference in the long run.
"Language is not going to go away," Tillitt said. "But you can change how it's said, how it's directed and the power behind it. That's really what we want. We want student athletes and students on campus to really think about how their words are affecting other people — and given the current climate in America, I think it's a great time to start this type of campaign. When you talk about powerful people, universities can have a great effect over a lot of minds at once. When we set the standard for our university to be excellent, we are going to stay true to our morals and our ideals regardless of external influences."
Players Mentioned
