More from the UO Club Sports executive committee meeting tonight

 

Because tomorrow’s edition of the Daily Emerald is very crunched on space, I wanted to use this space to expand on the story I filed for the print edition. Here is the original story in today’s issue for background. 

Here is the quick version: The men’s club ultimate frisbee team’s season is still canceled. They will appeal, but aren’t sure who they can appeal to yet. They only have until Friday to do so, however, because the regional tournament begins Saturday. If they fail to play in a game at that tournament, they are disqualified and can’t go to nationals.

Here is the rest of the story….

The Club Sports executive committee met Monday night in the Ben Linder Room in the EMU in front of a group of about 110 people. I’d say it was 80-20 in favor of the men’s ultimate frisbee team, ranked third in the nation, judging by the speakers and the amount of clapping in support of Tina Snodgrass’s motion to overturn the ruling.

Executive committee member Jeff Gibb gave the floor at the beginning of the meeting to club co-coordinator Aki Ohdera, who deferred to Dusty Becker, a co-captain of the ‘A’ team with Steve Kenton. 

Becker started by saying how he agreed the group had done something wrong, but spent the rest of the his time arguing that the punishment did not fit the action and that the action (playing a nude point at a tournament at Oregon State on April 11), in context with the culture and “spirit of the game” of ultimate frisbee, was not uncommon in the sport.

“We understand why what we did was wrong,” Becker said. “We understand the position we’ve put you guys in.”

“Honestly and truthfully, we didn’t think we did anything wrong,” Becker continued, saying that all the team’s infractions in the past two years — four speeding tickets, the naked point at OSU and two alcohol-related offenses — were “not malicious.”

“We need to recognize the difference between the ultimate culture and the club sports culture,” Becker said.

The rest of the alotted 20 minutes given to the team’s officials for its defense went to co-captain Kenton and team chaperone Kathleen Dugan, who traveled with the team to Oregon State. A chaperone was added to team travels after the team’s role in the Campebell Club party in November that put the team on probation. 

Dugan said the nudity “never crossed” her mind as being inappropriate. She also made the point that three members of the Oregon men’s basketball team who were convicted on misdemeanor charges of shooting at waterfowl in early April at Alton Baker Park received community services for their punishment.

Kenton read excerpts from letters of support from around the nation. 

Personally, he said, “We agree that something wrong happened. We’d like to work with you guys from now until the end of the season or whatever to reflect the degree of the mistake we made.”

A coach of the EGO ‘A’ team spoke — I didn’t catch his name. He vouched that since he took over after the Campbell Club, the club has been only hardworking at practices and worked with a sense of purpose for the national championship. 

Then the floor was opened up to speakers, who got two minutes to speak. Ten spoke in favor of the club, and five were in favor of the committee’s decision. 

ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz spoke in support of the team. He played his first term of his freshman year on the team, and said they were all good people who should have their season reinstated, calling the ruling ‘a bit much.’

“I urge you to reconsider,” he said. 

From there it ran the gamut from team members and a another chaperone reading letters of support or voicing their own opinions to other club coordinators siding with the committee. 

In closing arguments, Kenton brought up alternative punishments for the team that would keep them playing.

• They were: Whoever was directly involved would sit out the first game of the regional tournament and do 10 hours of community service;
• Invited Sandy Vaughn, director of Club Sports, and the committee to watch the team play at OSU to see their work ethic;
• and all players on the A and B team hold and teach community clinics for ultimate frisbee.

When they finished and some questions were raised by the committee. Then Gibb asked if there were any motions to overturn. No one said anything after 10 seconds, so he said the decision was upheld. Then Tina Snodgrass, a member of the women’s ultimate team, spoke up about her concerns and rejected claims the committee wouldn’t be taken seriously if it allowed the team’s season to continue. She was interested in making the team do all the punishments they proposed while allowing them to play. 

After some people spoke up in the room for and against, which wasn’t allowed according to the rules the committee put down at the beginning, they asked again for a motion, and Snodgrass officially made a motion, sending applause throughout the room. 

The motion was not seconded however, and died on the table. There was silence after Gibb announced the decision stood, until some team members showed their disgust by booing, but really, there wasn’t much reaction. People filed out of the room and let the emotion show outside, where some were crying, and everyone on the team began to gather in groups to talk about what was next. 

Kenton said, “We have to respect the decision,” but when asked if they were going to appeal through the week, he said, “We’re going to sure as hell try.”

Co-coordinator Cody Bjorklund said,” We think we can appeal and we’re going to do everything we can from there. Ultimately, we just want to play.”

A majority of the points made by the team officials and members of the audience in favor of the team to keep playing seemed to be working on the point that nudity was not a problem in the game, while the exec committee seemed to be taking the stance of looking at the large scale of all their past transgressions. This was what ultimately led to their decision, saying they had given them enough chances to right themselves in the past, only to have something else go wrong. 

This was clearly a decision based on an accumulation of past troubles from the executive’s point of view. The team wanted one more chance after believing the nudity wasn’t a big deal in the culture of ultimate. We’ll see where it goes from here.

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