Unedited video of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session at Bates College, Jan. 21, 2013, in the Gomes Chapel.

00:00 Associate Dean of Students James Reese’s introduction of Clayton Spencer

4:30 President Spencer’s welcome

13:40 Dean of the Faculty Pamela Baker’s overview

20:20: Professor of Rhetoric Charles Nero’s introduction of Anthea Butler

25:40: Anthea Butler’s keynote address

Keelin Godsey ’06 makes a point during the panel discussion “Economic Challenges, Social Justice and the Athletic Experience,” part of the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day program on Jan. 21, 2013. Panelists also included moderator Erica Rand, Whitehouse Professor of Art and Visual Culture and Women and Gender Studies; student athlete Jacqui Holmes ’13; and head squash coach Pat Cosquer ’97. Photograph by Mike Bradley/Bates College.

The most-decorated athlete in Bates history, a collegiate and national record-setter in the hammer throw, Godsey for years dreamed of competing on the U.S. Olympic team. He placed fifth at the U.S. track and field championships in 2010.

But when it came time to raise money to train for the 2012 Olympic trials, the sponsors weren’t as impressed.

Keelin Godsey ’06 was a prominent figure in Sports Illustrated’s feature on transgender athletes in its May 28, 2012 issue.

Godsey believes that snub and his ongoing struggle to secure sponsorship resulted directly from his decision to compete as an out transgender man.

He described “the unspoken rule” where “no one would ever tell me why I wasn’t” receiving bids from sponsors. “But I was also the only trans athlete willing to talk about it.”

Godsey shared his story during a panel discussion about economic and social barriers to athletic participation, part of Bates’ annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance.

Joining Godsey were Pat Cosquer ’97, head coach for men’s and women’s squash and former student-athlete, and Jacqui Holmes ’13, a tennis player. Erica Rand, Whitehouse Professor in Art and Visual Culture and Women and Gender Studies, moderated.

The panel, titled “Economic Challenges, Social Justice and the Athletic Experience,” addressed the challenges faced by athletes from underrepresented backgrounds, many of whom find themselves competing against socioeconomic barriers throughout their careers.

This 2010 portrait shows squash coach Pat Cosquer ’97 and Cheri-Ann Parris ’13 of St. Philip, Barbados, the team’s co-captain in 2013. Cultural differences that create tension within a highly international and multicultural program like squash need to be addressed head-on, says Cosquer. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

Cosquer spoke candidly about the diversity of athletes on the Bates squash teams, about half composed of multicultural or international students. “I like to talk about ‘one program’ and how we’re all together moving towards common goals of winning and educating and learning from each other.”

But those cultural differences “create some tension sometimes,” he acknowledged.

That is why Cosquer favors addressing those conversations head on, fostering understanding and unity.

Holmes, who wrote her senior thesis on access and achievement in youth athletic programs, recalled coming face to face with her own racial and socioeconomic privilege while working at a youth tennis program last summer.

The Boston-based program catered to urban youth and aimed to empower children through sport combined with academics. Holmes admitted to having a “huge vision” for changing these students’ lives in just a few months.

“But,” she said, “that wasn’t what they wanted.”

She came to realize that, as an outsider in their community, “I was there not only to teach them something that’s really important for me, but also for them to teach me about what’s important to them, and what they felt they wanted to accomplish and what success was to them.”

For Bates tennis player Jacqui Holmes ’13, a reality check came when her “huge vision” for her summer tennis clinic failed to align with what her students really wanted.

The panel followed the premiere of Bates’ You Can Play video, part of a national program to increase safety and inclusion for LGBT athletes.

In the video, Bates student athletes affirm in a variety of forms and languages the same core message: “If you can play, you can play.”

That is, teams want talent regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

• Watch the Bates You Can Play video.

But as Cosquer and others pointed out, sometimes an athlete’s ability to play matters less than his or her ability to pay for the requisite gear and training. He described students who struggle to afford the necessary equipment and NCAA rules that limit how donations to teams can be allocated.

According to these rules, teams cannot seek support for individual players. Rather, they must raise funds for the entire team, regardless of need, which is often a much tougher proposition.

Economics aside, the panelists were asked what strategies teams could use right now to bolster inclusiveness among players. All three stressed communication and listening.

“Everybody comes from a different place and has different experiences,” said Cosquer. While the team may have a common goal, what “each student-athlete needs to get to that team’s goal is completely different.”

Reflecting on his personal experience, Godsey believes that progress will depend on changing the broader cultural perceptions of LGBT individuals both on and off the field.

From the MLK Day Memorial Day Service sponsored by the Office of the Multifaith Chaplain to a keynote address on poverty by University of Pennsylvania scholar Anthea Butler, from workshops and the Rev. Benjamin Elijah Mays ’20 Debate, to a performance by Sankofa based on the African diasporic experience, hear the voices of an annual observance that is central to the Bates experience. Produced by Doug Hubley and Mike Bradley.

The story, from Reese’s high school days in the early 1970s in North Carolina, began with him being elected to a student leadership position along with four other students, and a subsequent meeting of the five student leaders.

Bates President Clayton Spencer and James Reese, associate dean of students, shared a moment of deja vu Monday morning, July 2, as the eighth president of the college began her first week in office. The two were high school classmates.

In gathering the five students, their adviser, a white woman, asked them to elect a chair, by secret ballot and by not voting for themselves.

After Reese won the vote, 4–1, the adviser asked the students to vote again, telling them she wanted “someone I could depend on” and with whom she could work with closely.

So the students voted again. Again Reese won, 4–1. This time, the adviser said, “Oh, I see,” and walked out of the room. Reese and his schoolmates talked briefly. “This is the kind of thing we want to change,” Reese recalls them saying. “We’re not going to let that kind of thing happen to us, especially in this place.”

With that, Reese returned to the present day and said, “I would now like to welcome to the front one of the other four students in that room that day. And that is, the president of Bates College, Clayton Spencer” — Reese’s high school classmate n Mecklenburg County, N.C., when Spencer’s father was president of Davidson College.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video includes 19 current Bates student-athletes and President Clayton Spencer, and can be seen at both YouCanPlayProject.org and on Bates’ athletics website. (Of the ever-expanding number of colleges creating You Can Play videos, Bates is the first to feature its president.)

“The You Can Play program represents the extension to Athletics of our core commitment to inclusion,” said President Spencer, “helping to ensure that fans and teammates alike judge our student-athletes and coaches on the effort and commitment they bring to their sport — rather than on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.”

Patrick Burke, the founder of You Can Play, expressed a particular enthusiasm about the campaign, having a personal connection to Bates: his sister Katie is a Bates graduate and former Bobcat volleyball player.

“Bates College is a tremendous school with a proud athletic tradition, and we are thrilled to have Bates join the You Can Play Project’s campaign to end homophobia in sports,” said Burke, a scout for the Philadelphia Flyers. “From the president to the athletic department, to the coaches, to the players — the entire institution is taking a stance in favor of inclusion, equality, and opportunity. I hope and believe that this will be an inspiration to the LGBT athletes and their allies currently on campus, and those who will attend in the future. We are proud that LGBT athletes have another safe place to participate in athletics.”

The video demonstrates another example of Bates’ long institutional history of inclusion and social justice. In May 2012, Bates was one of 10 colleges to be included on Campus Pride’s first ever “Out to Play List,” for its qualities of inclusion and friendliness in relation to LGBT students. Athletics has sponsored numerous “Athlete Ally” events in conjunction with the Bates Pride Festival. Bates’ most decorated student-athlete ever, Keelin Godsey ’06, came out as transgender prior to his senior year at Bates — Godsey was subsequently featured in Sports Illustrated’s May 28, 2012, issue in a special report, “The Transgender Athlete.”

As Bates Athletic Director Kevin McHugh said, “The Department of Athletics has worked hard and intentionally to help lead the Bates community in respecting and welcoming everyone, regardless of their perceived or actual sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

Individuals appearing in the video include (in order): Ryan Weston (football, men’s basketball), Jacqui Holmes (women’s tennis), Cheri-Ann Parris (women’s squash), Chloe Mitchell (women’s squash), Tara Dugan (women’s swimming & diving), Travis Jones (women’s swimming & diving), Patrick George (football), Tess Walther (women’s volleyball), Nicole Russell (women’s volleyball), David Pless (men’s track & field), Gretchen Sellegren (women’s Nordic skiing), President Spencer, Evan Chen (men’s lacrosse), Nessrine Ariffin (women’s squash), Ahmed Abdel Khalek (men’s squash), Myriam Kelly (women’s squash), Caran Arora (men’s squash), Filip Michalsky (men’s squash), Ryan Sonberg (baseball) and Torben Noto (men’s lacrosse); Catherine Tuttle (women’s Nordic skiing) also participated. The video was shot and produced by Phyllis Graber Jensen and Michael Bradley of the Bates Communications Office. Organizational assistance was provided by head men’s lacrosse coach Peter Lasagna and sports information director Andy Walter.

You Can Play is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring equality, respect and safety for all athletes, without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity. You Can Play works to guarantee that athletes are given a fair opportunity to compete, judged by other athletes and fans alike, only by what they contribute to the sport or their team’s success. You Can Play seeks to challenge the culture of locker rooms and spectator areas by focusing only on an athlete’s skills, work ethic and competitive spirit.

Martin Luther King Jr. is shown at the White House after meeting with President Lyndon Johnson to discuss civil rights, 1963. Photograph by Warren K. Leffler/U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Spotlighting a less-known aspect of the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bates College will dedicate its Jan. 20-21 King Day programming to exploring issues of financial inequality and debt.

The theme of the observances is Debt and Inequality: The Relevance of King’s Forgotten Economic Message.

Never out of date, the question of financial inequality is especially pertinent now, given a national election season and “fiscal cliff” debate in which issues of economic fairness have been central.

Anthea Butler, associate professor of religious studies and African American studies at the University of Pennsylvania, offers a sermon and the keynote address at Bates’ Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances. Photograph by Byron Maldonado.

Taking place Sunday and Monday, Jan. 20-21, Bates’ programming features films; workshops; two addresses by Anthea Butler, a theologian whose forthcoming book explores the connection between Sarah Palin’s politics and her religion; and performances including one by the Bates student group Sankofa.

Sunday’s events include documentary films examining issues of corporate power and civil rights history, as well as the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Service, featuring a sermon by Butler titled God and the 99 Percent.

On Monday the college presents Martin Luther King Jr. and America’s Bad Check: America’s Poor in the 21st Century, Butler’s keynote address; a debate between Bates and Morehouse College students; a play; workshops; and the Sankofa event.

• See a complete schedule of King Day programming at Bates.
• See a video about the creation of Sankofa’s 2013 performance.
• Learn more about Anthea Butler.
• Learn more about Sankofa.
  

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All King Day events are open to the public at no cost, but a few do require tickets for admission; see the complete schedule for details. For more information, please call 207-786-6400.

In selecting this year’s theme, “we wanted to call attention to the fact that the Rev. Dr. King’s vision included economic justice,” explains Charles Nero, chair of the college’s King Day committee and a professor of rhetoric and American cultural studies.

“The people hit hard in the Great Recession have been middle- and working-class folks, the poor and people without substantial assets, such as students.”

The 2012 Sankofa performance at Bates. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/Bates College.

King, who at the time of his assassination was planning a “Poor People’s Campaign” that would march on Washington, D.C., had a clear view of the interrelatedness of poverty and injustice.

But, as Colleen O’Connor wrote in the Denver Post in January 2012, “Many never learned about King’s crusade for a guaranteed annual income or have forgotten he was assassinated while supporting the working poor — sanitation workers on strike [in Memphis] because of low wages and dangerous working conditions.”

For the public at large, King Day at Bates will provide “the opportunity to see a college community engage with a major social issue of our time,” says Nero.

“Our keynote speaker, Dr. Butler, will challenge us in new ways to recommit ourselves to King’s vision of economic justice. Our debate with Morehouse College addresses the issue of the role the government should play in reducing poverty.” And the films and workshops, as well as Aaron Calafato’s play about student loan debt, will address myriad dimensions of financial justice in the U.S. and abroad.

The college’s 2013 MLK Day observance, with the theme “Debt and Inequality: The Relevance of King’s Forgotten Economic Message,” is Sunday, Jan. 20, and Monday, Jan. 21.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rob Little ’12 takes a behind-the-scenes look at the recent Sankofa production of “A Journey of Our Own,” a cross-cultural exploration of blackness within African diasporic experiences through performative arts such as dance, music, theater and spoken word. The production was part of the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. observance at Bates.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph engages with his audience in the aisles of the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. (Photographs by Phyllis Graber Jensen)

For a performance Jan. 13, performer, educator, activist and slam poetry champion Marc Bamuthi Joseph took the Olin Concert Hall stage—only to leave it again.

“This place is really fancy,” said Joseph, jumping off the stage into the audience. “I believe in ‘not fancy.’ ”

Joseph offered a staged (or off-staged) reading of his acclaimed performance piece red, black & GREEN: a blues in the evening event, part of Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at Bates.

The piece is usually performed on a circular stage, with large “houses” on wheels representing different American cities. His Bates reading performance included two of the four acts, Chicago and Oakland. (The Bates Dance Festival presents the full-blown production April 27-28.)

Joseph called upon the Bates audience to fulfill the roles usually performed by the other artists working on the project. For one poem, the audience was split into four sections, each with a verse of “I’ve Got Peace like a River.” Without breaking cadence, Joseph would conduct the audience in singing while he moved around the room telling the story of a woman who emigrated to the U.S. from Sudan to escape the violence there, only to have her son murdered in Chicago.

Along with the excerpts from rbGb, Joseph offered original poems from previous projects. In tribute to King Day, he began with a piece dedicated to the civil rights leader. Using quotes from some of King’s greatest speeches, Joseph asked how far America has come in realizing King’s “dream.”

When an audience member asked Joseph how he came to be a performer, he answered with a rap from the album that, he says, changed his life, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. “Chuck D gave me a whole new vocabulary for liberation,” said Joseph.

But his last piece of the evening, a story from his time in Senegal, also shed some light on his emergence as a performer. After realizing his vulnerability to street hustlers and theft, Joseph encounters an American woman who is fighting the traditional practice of genital mutilation.

While visiting one village, that friend asks him to distract an impromptu village dance party while she negotiates an end to genital mutilation with the village elders. As a poet, Joseph is unsure how to “distract” a crowd of dancing locals. On a whim, he breaks into the hip hop dances he learned growing up in New York City–and the village is won over, as was the Bates audience by his re-enactment.

Joseph performs on the Olin stage.

Joseph worked his magic in a more intimate setting the evening prior to the Olin performance. While plows cleared the streets after the winter semester’s first snowstorm, Bates students congregated in the student-run coffee house, the Ronj, to enjoy an evening of hot chai, music and poetry from Joseph and student performers.

Sponsored by the Arts House, the evening was a successful turnout of student talent.

It was one of several opportunities for students to interact with Joseph, who also visited anthropology, dance, environmental studies and rhetoric classes during his four-day visit.

Standing in the middle of the room rather than onstage, Joseph performed two energetic spoken-word pieces that combined dance with storytelling and role-playing to captivate the room.

Humorous but introspective, Joseph’s pieces tackle questions about identity: What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be “hip hop” outside of America? Joseph danced, contorting his body to show pain, pleasure and confusion, his arms and legs swinging out over the heads of students sitting on the floor around him.

Eleven students representing all class years read original poems. Although some seemed nervous, the room was supportive and everyone got a hand. Many students admitted it was their first time reading in front of their peers.

“All of the student readers and performers were incredibly talented,” said Emma Timbers ’14, a creative writing major who co-organized the event with fellow Art House representative Doug Welsh ’14. “And it was exciting to see so many freshmen sharing their work.”

For some, reading has been an important aspect of their time at Bates. Seniors Charlotte Simpson and Alana Folsom, both members of the Bates Authors Guild, read from their creative writing theses. About half of the readers performed original slam poems and invited the audience to join their new slam group.

As for student musicians, Sawyer Lawson ’12 kicked off the evening with a bluesy acoustic guitar set. Also performing were Grace Glasson ’14, who performed folksy covers and originals on ukulele, and Hansen Johnson ’13, who performed covers and originals on acoustic guitar.

– by Erica Long ’12