Also, according to the OP’s article, the male student football players were not required to attend these events, in uniform or otherwise. So it wasn’t about mingling with student athletes, it was about making hot young women in skimpy uniforms parade around and socialize with men that the university was trying to coax favors from.
Even if all of the men at the events had behaved 100% respectfully to all of the female student cheerleaders, it would still be inappropriate for the university to be using them as skimpily dressed eye candy outside their actual team activities.
And even if you think that the official role of cheerleading squads basically boils down to being skimpily dressed eye candy for the fans, that doesn’t justify the university in expecting the cheerleaders to play the same role at off-field events.
By the way, OP, the viewpoint you’re struggling with there is part of the Catch-22 that women are frequently confronted with when it comes to performing arts and athletics. (And to a lesser extent all other fields where women are doing anything in public, of course.)
Women are encouraged and expected to sexualize their athletic or artistic performances in ways that are not expected from men (including skimpy/sexy uniforms for singers, cheerleaders, volleyball players, runners, etc.), because it will attract more (male) attention and increase the popularity of the sport or art. And then (male) people argue “Well, if she’s okay with sexualizing her appearance/performance like that, then she shouldn’t complain when other people sexualize their interactions with her”. Convenient.
Expecting a performer to socialize with the audience or donors or backers while in costume is outrageously unacceptable, in my book.
Although I’m not familiar with cheerleading, my understanding is that it’s a skill that combines aspects of both dance and gymnastics. It’s difficult, it takes work to master. Cheerleaders work hard practicing and honing these skills. If you made the cheerleading squad for a major college sports team, you achieved that success through a lot of hard work, dedication and talent.
The fact that they make it look effortless is a testament to their skill. If they come off as bubbly airheads that just happened to wander on the field for some high level gymnastics, that’s because it’s the role they are playing.
Do you think it would be cool for the producers of a revival of “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” to require the female cast to wear their costumes to the cast party and service the backers? No, because the women aren’t whores - they are actors.
Cheerleaders are performers. If you’ve ever performed, there’s this thing called the fourth wall, the illusion that you aren’t performing for an audience. It provides a level of psychological separation, one that’s especially important for certain types of roles.
I’m not crazy about asking performers to socialize with donors at all, but realistically, that’s sort of the way of the world. The people that underwrite this stuff want to meet the performers, and for some reason they really want to meet the young female ones. But if you are going to have your cheerleaders in the sky box mingling with donors, let them wear jeans and sweaters that say NW CHEER SQUAD, and keep an eye out and don’t let the donors harass the girls.
And as I noted, apparently there’s no requirement for the male football players (who are supposedly what the whole sport is about, right?) to attend these events so the donors can “meet the performers”. That right there is reason enough to rule out requiring the cheerleaders to attend, IMHO.
Maybe I am missing it, but I am seeing no mention of the football players being required to or not being required to socialize with potential donors. It would not shock me to find that donors were brought into the locker room while the athletes were changing to be introduced, just as reporters are. And it is immaterial.
A football player signs up knowing that the locker room is not a private place and that reporters, administrative staff, and highly likely big donors, will be brought there. Such is not using them as a sexual object for fundraising and not subjecting them to harassment physical verbal or both. A donor slapping a lineman on the butt and propositioning them would not be tolerated, I don’t think.
“At every home game, the cheerleaders were instructed to walk around the tailgating lots, unsupervised, in their skimpy cheerleading uniforms,” the lawsuit says. “They were expressly told to split up and mingle with extremely intoxicated fans alone and were not provided any security.”
That probably falls into what we in the military used to call “self-critiquing behavior”. Like grabbing a hot gun barrel barehanded, the hard-earned lesson comes right along with the doing of the deed.
Who knew donors could fly?
And not to make light of the situation we see this:
She might own Northwestern by the time this is over. Or at least the leaderships’ hides. And deservedly so.
You’re right that donors might expect to meet with male student football players in locker rooms where the female cheerleaders wouldn’t be present, though.
I think it may be worse. “Male students on the team” seems to refer to makes on the cheer team. I could be wrong, but looks like it is something only expected of the female cheerleaders.
I looked around the internet for NU cheerleading and saw no evidence of any non-female cheerleaders, but you’re right that some college cheer squads are co-ed, so it could be so.
I can understand how this might have been thought a good idea, in a misguided way.
At my oldest’s son college (known for football) the football players were considered the ‘ambassadors’ of the school. They were required to attend community events, do works of community service, and generally make nice with the town-folk. A humorous side note is that none of the “stars” of the team actually attended these events. Instead they handed out the starter jerseys to the red-shirts and sent them. So at these events my son would have slightly star-struck people walk up to him and talk at length about some amazing play he made in the last game while he would just smile and nod. They only knew them by their names & numbers, not by their faces.
I could see a similar situation occur if a school had a well known cheer squad and they were made the ‘ambassadors’ for the school. I’m not sure WTF they were thinking having them mingle in their skimpy outfits though. College cheer teams in the NW also have team cheer outfits suited for cold weather. They should have let them wear those.
It should be pointed out that there are two types of ‘cheerleader’. The ones in pro sports or college sports tend to be attractive women who basically dress in skimpy clothes and shake their booty around. You don’t find a lot of males on those squads.
High school cheerleading, on the other hand, is often a competitive sport that requires males on the team for strength. It’s also quite dangerous, involving large pyramids, basket tosses of people with no mats or harnesses, etc. Injuries, sometimes severe, are common. Most of the girls seemed to be also on the gymnastic team, or were gymnasts who were too tall, too old, or otherwise not capble of competing in gymnastics at a high level.
Really? In which way? I suppose there are high school teams that just shake it around, and demonstration cheer teams in pro sports that do hardcore gymnastics. I don’t watch a lot of sports, amd none with cheerleaders, so maybe I’m not seeing everything. I’ll be happy to be corrected if you explain what was wrong with what I said.
I do know about competitive cheerleading. I dated a competitive cheerleader, and she was constantly talking about the next tournament and which girls were too injured to participate. At the time there was a movement to have the sport banned due to the high number of injuries. if someone does a backflip from a 15 ft pyramid without even a mat on the floor and a catch is missed, really bad things happen.
It does seems the cheerleading make-up has changed. There do not appear to be any men on this year’s squad. I could find an article from 2007 that was commenting on the relative lack of male cheerleaders (4 at the time) compared to other Big Ten schools, so it seems to me that interest among men dwindled to nothing.
Or the interest in having men on the team dwindled to nothing among management. After all, they don’t help with the lucrative after-hours schmoozing of the bigwigs aspect of the cheer squad.