Social Justice - A Conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:00
The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Unknown Speaker 0:13
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of

Unknown Speaker 0:19
Law. Hi, I'm Gabriella Tam. I'm a fourth year accounting student.

Unknown Speaker 0:23
And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:27
a conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:31
Well, good evening, everybody. And welcome back to social justice, a conversation. I'm here with my partner, Gabriella Tam, hello. And, again, post post Thanksgiving, we still have a full plate of goodies to deliver to, I don't know if they're all going to be called goodies, but we have a full plate. Nevertheless, we wanted to start our show today, talking a little bit about women in athletics. And Gabrielle, of course, will will talk about this shortly. But having to do with the University of Utah, the gymnastics team, and, you know, complaints about the coach for abusive behavior, body shaming, and et cetera, et cetera. But this is a this is a pattern of repetition, basically. Yeah. That we have seen this so many times. And, you know, you could you could take over on this.

Unknown Speaker 1:34
I mean, yeah, like, not even just in gymnastics, there's many instances and many different things like, where you can find people body shaming, like, I mean, not only girls, but like, even like guys, and it's like, Why does, why does it matter so much? I mean, like, even in like modeling, like, if a woman is beautiful than she's beautiful, why does it matter what her body looks like? And then in gymnastics, like, if they're great gymnasts, like why does it matter what their body looks like? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 2:03
yeah, sure. Well, I think it's, I think it's a power trip. But a lot of these people Oh, yeah. You know, as a, as somebody who used to do coaching, and you know, I read these articles. And really, I just, I just sit there. And I said to myself, What does this have to do with actually helping students and young people? Become better athletes and better people? No, yeah, you're just putting them down. You're just putting them down. Basically, it's a power kick with a lot of these people. I mean, I when I when I said, when I did coaching, you will see a lot of people who knew I mean, who knew the sport and that this man who was the coach, obviously, he's, he coached the Olympic team. He knows he knows what he's doing. Yeah. But I call them soul crushers though. Yeah, they're people who, you know, they have these girls. So guys, as the case may be, because a lot of times it's men as well, as you say. And they are so you know, enthused about doing these sports and being in athletics and everything. And then they run into these coaches and everything. And it's, it's just like, their whole spirit is crushed. Yeah, because they go out there and you're not actually being judged as a as a person, your person is gone. And they have this ideal of what a person should look like. I think that I think that's very much tied into the way our society has treated women in many ways. Oh, yeah. Like how we're viewed and stuff. Exactly, exactly. That you're, you're just,

Unknown Speaker 3:49
like just an object, basically, just

Unknown Speaker 3:50
an object you just have accounts is your looks, etc. And the actual the actual person is ignored, or not acknowledged, even Yes, put it that way. But this is as we were talking before the broadcast started. This has become very common, though, and where it's where it's even more dangerous, is when you get when you get young, young, young people who are not even college age. Oh, yeah. Their high school age or middle school, or whatever it is. No, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 4:25
Like, there's so many, like high school girls who have they already have eating disorders, or like you can even go You couldn't even say middle school, they have eating disorders. Yeah. And like we've talked about before, social media, pelvic does have a huge part in that because all these little girls like, see these other girls like who they consider pretty and they're like, Oh, I wish my body looked like her is like, how do I like how do I get skinnier? How do I do this? How do I do that? And then they end up not feeding themselves. And they end up not listening to their body? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 4:57
yeah, yeah. No apps, no apps. salutely Though Absolutely, that's, that's very, very true. And I think that that's one of the things that's harmed women over over over the many decades in my observation, just as one person, but it's it's the society itself and how, in many ways women in the arts are promoted. Oh, yeah. So, you know, like, you have different people who they, they're in the movies, they're in theater. And, you know, they're posed in a way that's very suggestive, but has nothing to do with the actual talents that they have. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 5:47
Oh, like, like Scarlett Johansson. When she was posing for, like, the like the one I was like, the first of Avengers like posters. Yeah, they like poster in a very, like, suggestive way.

Unknown Speaker 5:59
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think I think that one of the things that women have suffered for suffered from is, when you get in these positions in Hollywood or any arts, you need to have people who back you up. Yeah. And that's whether it's the agent or whoever represents you. And you tell them listen, I'm in this picture of such and such. This is not this is not I'm not this is not like, a risque magazine. Like, you know, Vanity Fair when those things, you know, shoot me shoot me, as an artist, the way you would shoot a man as an artist. Yeah. You know, so if you saw like, say, I don't know, the rock, or Brad Pitt or whoever, whoever. You wouldn't see them with their shirt off? Yeah. I mean, you could say, well, that's weird. For sure, but but with women, there's a there's a sort of acceptance of it. And I think, I think because nothing has been done in that and hasn't been challenged. It it gets into the younger girls and younger women who think Well, yeah, I guess that's normal, because I saw this person, do what other persons do it. And the things that and and I think really need to do really is women need to really, in those situations, really be aggressive about it? As far as you know, what their what what they will and will not do. You know, and of course, it's hard because in Hollywood, you know, if you get a reputation as being difficult, you won't you're not getting a job. Yeah, I was thinking about Sean Young actually, the other day showing young was like a really good actress. She was in some really big pictures. She was in Wall Street. She was in a kiss before dying. She wasn't she wasn't some big stuff. But you know, she didn't take any nonsense from anybody, you know, you're there. And, you know, I think I've said this in the class, whether you're on a movie set, or you're in the theater, or wherever you are. Everybody has to work together and everything. But it's not a dating service. It's not it's business. It's business. And you know, you have to respect that that code. Yeah. You know, and I think I think especially in Hollywood, where there's been a lot of stuff that has gone on that was clearly covered up that they didn't even got, I don't know, they didn't even want to stop it, even though they knew it was wrong. Like Harvey Weinstein being a perfect example. All these people knew what he was doing. Maybe they didn't know all the particulars of what he was doing. But they know, they knew that he was doing something wrong, and he was doing something wrong. And people just let it slide. And edit empowered him. Yeah. I mean, the people who should have been empowered with victims, yeah, but he was the one that was empowered. And then when finally, you know, the thing was unveiled, and they found that all the stuff that he was doing, oh, wow, he was I didn't know who all these people can't always people came forward, you know. Yeah. And and, you know, it's highs I think the I think the gymnastics thing, the the Hollywood Hollywood thing was a case today, a few days ago about this man who was a pediatrician in them in Massachusetts, and while the children and young women he had abused people can say that they don't know. But

Unknown Speaker 9:48
you're, um, you have a there's a there's a gut feeling. Yeah, yeah. Y'all have that gut feeling? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 9:53
What what was crazy, you know what was crazy in the case of? Well, Larry now After the guy who was in Michigan, with with, you know, with girls who were on the Olympic team and etc, etc. They actually had people who vouched for him now, they actually had people who said that what he was doing was not unethical medical procedure. I beg No, I'm serious. Insane, but that's exactly what that's exactly what they were doing. That's exactly what they were doing.

Unknown Speaker 10:26
That's what, uh, what if it was their kid? Well, that's that's the thing, though. That's the thing. Like, I don't understand how people can't picture. Yeah, like their daughter, or like someone that they like, deeply love, you know, like, being a victim to this. Like, if you picture that, then of course, you're gonna be like, Oh, my God, like, I don't want that to happen. Yeah. Like, yeah, well,

Unknown Speaker 10:49
it's it's a lot of it is. A lot of it is people who don't want to face the truth. Yeah. I think that people who run these organizations, the sports organizations, they know pretty much that there are certain things that are regular or not right? You have to be totally blind not to see it. But they, it's a business. women's sports now is big business. Yeah, they're making a lot of money out of gymnastics and making a lot of money and basketball. They're making a lot of money out of soccer. Yeah. And they, they look the other way, basically, I mean, as a person who used to coach some of the things I see. I mean, I just, that is not coaching. That is not what you're supposed to do. Yeah. But but in a lot of these universities, athletic coaches have more power than the chancellor, or the president of the university. You got you got people making in some of these universities, seven, eight, $9 million a year, and then president of the universities make like $200,000 a year, so he's going to tell a no coach, you did a bad thing. And the guy's looking at where I'm making 50 times your salary. Who are you? Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is. You know. And I think one of the things though, that, that social media has been beneficial for Yeah, is letting people know about these things. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:21
it does help hold people accountable. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 12:24
mean, but But you look at, you look at say, like the big 10 conference. They had they had the scandal with Joe Paterno at Penn State. They had this they had a thing with the accusations of Bo Schembechler son of Michigan. The wrestling team at Ohio State, the hazing at Northwestern, this was all this was all male victimization. Yeah. So I think one of the things that's happened now is that people are looking a lot more closely at things, particularly in particularly in the sport of football with the hazing. Yeah. And saying, you know, maybe these were a lot of customs of things that they did for a long time. But as clearly it's not good. It's not good. It's not right. You know? Yeah. You know, I remember when I was going to school. I never saw any of us may have had coaches and everything, but these, they were very responsible, you know, that everything was what it was supposed to be. I think that the money has gotten so out of hand, and the money that universities can make has gotten so out of hand. Yeah, that they really don't want to know. Yeah, you know, if they're bringing in if you have an athletic team, like a football team, and

Unknown Speaker 13:39
they're like, amazing, great, like, the best football team in the country. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 13:43
And every and they're getting, not even counting the television money. Yeah, you have stadiums with 9095 100,000 people who's going to rock the boat who's gonna say, Well, you know, the coach is doing a lot of stuff that is really improper. We're gonna get rid of the coach, but there's Yeah, it's like killing the golden goose. Yeah, they're bringing all these they're bringing in all these, you know, advertisements and, and now of course, the students are involved in that because the students now basically can you know, endorse things and do different stuff. So they're, they're making money off of it till

Unknown Speaker 14:27
you know it. No one wants to rock the boat. No one wants to lose the money.

Unknown Speaker 14:31
Nobody wants to lose the mind. Oh, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. But a lot as we always talk on the show, though, you know, about these things. A lot of its indifference though. Yeah, it's a lot of it's just people like who are in positions of authority. And they just, they just don't care, you know, was a very good article a few weeks ago about the young woman who was the goalie for the Stanford soccer team. He committed suicide. And you when you read that article, it's like a replay of all the other instances where the administration of these places was not responsive to the students. And, you know, it's, it's, you know, I'm all for, I'm all for, you know, people fulfilling their dream, and if you wanted to go to a certain school and everything like that, but I think in today's environment, if you're, if you're a young person, and you and your parents, you really have to scope out where you go to school, we have to, we have to be careful, you have to be careful, because you can go to some of these places, and, you know, you have this image of what, but the image is is not is not really,

Unknown Speaker 15:51
it's not, it's not everything, you only see the best.

Unknown Speaker 15:55
No, we see the best, you know, like when you take them to take you on a tour of a play. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:59
they don't show the real the real thing, the real thing. Yeah, but I remember

Unknown Speaker 16:03
when I used to, you know, and you know, you have the CO Ed dorms and everything on wireless and stuff. And I'm not gonna sound moralistic on this, because obviously, I'd be going against the grain, but I'll just say this, when I used to work in politics, and this was back in New York, and I there were there were actually women's hotels, or or there were when I did like, you know, political canvassing, we had women's dorms. And just go in there. Yeah, you had to be you had to know somebody there to be signed in. Well, today, man, you can go anywhere you want to go, really. And it really, I think, leads a lot of people who don't know that, to have a false sense of security. Yeah, about what actually is going on, you know. So you know, that's, that's also the case. Something is something that was very interesting, that occurred over the last week that that came to my attention was, you know, one of the movies we're going to be doing in our class that we teach for the Honors College is a movie called concussion, which is going to be next class. And it has to deal with, you know, all the people who play professional football. Oh, they made a movie about Yeah, they have, they have CTE, though. There was so many of the football players who have, you know, have encephalopathy. They have the brain, you know, damage due to playing sports. Well, anyway, what they're discovering now, which is quite fascinating, is the amount of CTE in young men and teenagers who start playing football when they're seven or eight years old. And now, and now, of course, they're 1819 20 years old. And they haven't slept for Officee. And the encephalopathy that they have puts them in a deep depression, in many ways that it makes you non functional. And it's one of the reasons for the increase in suicide. So they discovered all this, and they actually have an article, which I'm going to which I'm going to be, you know, posting. That's heartbreaking, is it, you know, when you when we talk about social justice? A lot of it is is tragic and sad, because it doesn't have to be. But there isn't. There was an article in The New York Times about this young man. He's sitting in a car, he's 18 years old. He had played football, I guess it was, I guess, what's football, although they say, you know, soccer also is a danger. And he, he's talking to his father, what he wants his father to do. He says, I want you to, I'm going to, I'm going to kill myself now. He tells the Father, I'm going to kill myself. But I love you, dad. And what I want what I'm going to do is I'm going to kill myself and I'm going to shoot myself in the stomach. Because I want you when my when I die, to take my brain to be to be evaluated. He tells the Father, He tells the father, oh my God, and that's exactly what you're seeing. You're seeing these kids, they're starting out some 6789 years old and he's in the small leagues and football. And you know, they play that for so many years. Then they go into high school football. And they get CTE they get CTE and There's obviously no cure for it. But, but it's an it's interesting. Now, there, this is one of the reasons for the increase in teen suicide depression, while the rest of the stuff is violent contact sports, you know, and you can imagine now, if you think about it, like with athletics, you know, when you watch, let's say you watch football or something like that, yeah. What how you will imagine the people who play that sport of professional football. They've played for all those years. Yeah. And then they go into, they go into professional football, where all the athletes have superior speed and size and power and all the rest of those things. And you're getting consistently hit on a regular basis. And it's almost like inevitable that you're going to get this stuff. Yeah, it's very, it's like, really,

Unknown Speaker 21:00
it's very sad to it's very sad. And

Unknown Speaker 21:03
the other thing is like that. The lack of acknowledgement, though, yeah, by by will in this concussion movie, obviously, the lack of acknowledgement. And it was it was the man who was behind a lot of the scholarship on this, what was a man of color, who wasn't who, who wasn't even American, he came to the United States. He became he became a current or a forensic specialists, and all the things that this man had to go through, because they were trying to basically ruin his career. And they didn't want to believe what he was saying. And he had all these case studies of, you know, men who had been harmed by doing this. And they don't want to acknowledge it. They don't want to acknowledge it, you know,

Unknown Speaker 21:50
they only want so that's so sad, because it's so like it could be prevented, you know? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 21:59
yeah. Well, I mean, and then if you if you extrapolate that, of course, you know, when they play, let's say they play hockey, well, that's another sport, that's another sport. But then the ultimate sport is UFC, where they have no, they have no protection, no protection at all. And the rules of the rules of the sport, are almost an invitation for somebody to be really terribly harmed. Because I remember when I was a kid, when I was a kid, I used to, I used to go to boxing matches. And we'd go my dad, and we would see, you know, all these great athletes, Muhammad Ali and all of them. But it was different though. It was a different environments. Like you know, yes, they were fighting it was box everything. But you knew when to stop? Yeah, when the person was down, they would stop you don't keep punching and punching and punching. And then and then you have then you have the women who are doing it. Yeah, and he sees where I'm standing. What are you doing? What is the man's what? What does anybody

Unknown Speaker 23:09
know? Yeah, for me, like I don't understand why people enjoy that sport so much. I don't like seeing people in pain. I don't want I don't want to see someone on the last their last like last like bread. Like it's it's just maybe like, just feels like I can feel their pain. Yeah, no,

Unknown Speaker 23:28
it's well, it's it's interesting because there seems to be today like anything goes yeah, they were talking about one of the there was something called the squid game.

Unknown Speaker 23:39
Yeah, the show Yeah, yeah. Netflix shows

Unknown Speaker 23:43
all kinds of protests about a lot of stuff was not appropriate for this but this today, like there's nothing that's not appropriate. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 23:53
I mean, you can I feel like you can make the argument that that's like Ed's how like people are today like they would literally join like a game show or whatever, just to make some money, you know?

Unknown Speaker 24:08
Yeah, it's crazy. Well, I remember when I was when I was younger. I think I mentioned this in the class but it's really bizarre. There was a guy you know, today we have you know, pay per view we we have video on demand, we everything we have ever done. 9 million things you can watch the television. Well, this man. He decided that he was going to he was going to do something where date the video on demand, the pay per view was in a theater. Oh, so you would have to like have a theater and like when Muhammad Ali used to fight, they would show a lot of his fights in the theater. This was before cable. So he got the idea He was going to have a winner take all contest. Oh, man versus shark. Oh, And versus shark? And I guess an aquarium somewhere, right? And what was crazy about it before the Humane Society intervene, they had signed up, like hundreds of theaters to show it that people are so like you say to yourself, oh my God, why would you be showing something like

Unknown Speaker 25:23
why? Why do people want to see each other? Like, why do we want to see each other in pain so badly? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 25:28
that's it. So we could we could we could, I guess, close out our show was with the Middle East. Yeah. And you know, what's sad that there's so many things that are sad. They're, you know, the loss of all these people's lives and all the rest of it. But it's like, it's like a replay of what's gone on for so many generations, you keep seeing the same, the same, same

Unknown Speaker 25:56
thing over. It's like

Unknown Speaker 25:59
the people, the people haven't learned anything. Yeah. And, and you will think with all the years that the people have lived in close proximity to one another, that you would say, Well, you know, we got to find a way to work together, we got to find a way where we got to coexist. Yeah. And you don't see it, you don't see it, they had a guy who won last night, I guess it was less than the other night, who was from the UN aid. department of the United Nations. And the man the man was, there was a good man, he was trying to, you know, help help the situation. But you could see like, how the man was so disillusioned, like, because they go to all these places around the world. You know, like, they had a woman on one night from CNN, about the Sudan and Darfur war. And she's going through this place, and you say to yourself, Oh, my God, it's like, it's just people don't want to change. People do not want to change. People want the same. I didn't know that they wanted I don't know how to cope with it, or they don't have the skills to, to work together. I don't know what it is at this point. But when you see all those people that, you know, you see the people that were Hamas killed, and then you see all the other people that were killed. And you'd say to yourself, Well, clearly, that's not the answer. They can't keep. We can't keep doing this. We got to figure out a way in which we all can work together. But it never seems to count.

Unknown Speaker 27:31
Yeah, like you want to, like, you want to, like kill people, but you're not even killing the right people. You're killing innocent people. At what point do you go like, maybe like we shouldn't we shouldn't like, have like, any one? That's not like, I don't know. It's like, yeah, how do you how do you do that? Yeah, I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 27:50
It was a whole thing. The whole thing is, the whole thing is sad. Because for many years, both of those people's used to coexist alone. Yeah. So you know, and see, the other thing about it now, too, is that conventional war, as we know, it is over. You know, if you look back at World War Two, or whatever, had the troops and everything with the armaments that people have the bombs and all the rest of us, it was crazy, when the note will end the show, and this little note that the United States has is somehow involved in developing a nuclear weapon. That will be so many times what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And I'm saying to myself, that's insane. Why,

Unknown Speaker 28:42
what is the purpose for this?

Unknown Speaker 28:44
What is the purpose? Are you because you once once even one of those things is launched? There's no going back from it. Exactly. And us and our budget and the budget of probably Russia and China and all these countries, is spending 10s of billions of dollars on weapons that you can never be able to use, because it would mean the end of civilization. Exactly, you know, well, listen, we hope that our next broadcast will be a little more hopeful, but you know, we try to bring the truth to the broadcast. Yeah. And we try to you know, reach out to you as the people who listen to the broadcast, that perhaps you in the in your small way, can I can try to make things better. So I will I will say, I will say good night in everyone. Thanks for listening. Take care. See you on the next broadcast. Bye, bye.

Unknown Speaker 29:36
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is t a M G one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai