Locker Rooms are A Culture: Cultures are Created
Sally Vance-Trembath, Ph. D.
October 14, 2016
I have never been in the Men’s or Women’s Basketball Team’s Locker Rooms at Santa Clara where I work. But I know something of their cultures because I taught an incoming class of scholarship athletes in a summer session a few years ago. On the first sleepy summer day, each of them greeted the other students as they gathered. “Hello, I am Noe, what is your name? Where are you from? This is my friend and teammate, Telisha.” Then Meagan and Ashley chimed in, “Glad to meet you. Is this your first Santa Clara class too?” And when the basketball men came in they displayed the same welcome and graciousness. “Julian here, looking forward to this class.” “I am Evan, so happy to meet some new people, where are you from?”
When class was over that first day, the athletes lingered and I thanked them for their graciousness. “That’s our Team Culture, Professor; people recognize us; we represent Santa Clara so we are expected to do that well.” In addition to the level of graciousness, these athletes raised the level of critical discourse that summer. They were always prepared for class and brought a depth of questioning that was contagious. Students admitted to Santa Clara are very bright and expect the rigor that we offer. Because the basketball players were so engaged, the rest of the students were more active and vocal than usual in an intro class. Each person picked up the culture and made everyone else feel important and valued, including me, the teacher.
Soon after that lovely summer, I needed treatment for cancer. Those students heard about it and did dozens of little things that helped me through treatment and recovery. In the next fall, after a year of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, when I was worn down, another locker room lifted me up. This time it was a clutch of baseball players who came into my morning class after working out to prepare for spring ball. I had shared with the class that I had been ill because I had noticed that I was not as intellectually quick in the classroom. I explained that my physicians were confident that the deep fatigue would pass and I would get “back to normal” even though I myself did not trust that; my confidence was shot. After that first class, Nick stopped me, “You’ve got this Professor,” he said smiling. And then every day, he and his teammates came into the 8:00 am classroom with the energy and cheer of midday. Like the basketball players, their style was contagious. I know that it carried me.
I carry those shimmering faces with me now; they have become a part of my inner-life as a teacher. They are so present that I can gather them quickly from the storehouse of my memory for a handy charge of strength when I need it.
I have become practiced at conjuring such faces. Such a “practice” also flows from a cultural location: my Catholic university, my professional home. Our educational philosophy invites us to “find God in all things” through our work in the exchange and generation of knowledge. If God is the source of all goodness, so goes the reasoning, any and all movements towards goodness involve God. Chasing after greater goodness, whether on the court, the ball field, the chemistry lab or the theology classroom, involves the united presence of God and human persons.
This week those bright faces came to mind when a 2006 radio interview with Howard Stern and Donald Trump and his adult daughter Ivanka was on my television. Stern says, “Seriously Donald, you know about sexual predators and the like.” His co-host chimes in, “You are one.” With a Cheshire Cat smile, Trump appears to say, “That’s true, that’s true” as his 24 year-old daughter laughs and pats him in what surely looks like affirmation. Ivanka’s comely face is made dreadful by her glib complicity in her father’s use of women’s bodies for his disturbed gratification. Like the menacing Disney image of the beautiful Queen that slips into the ugly hag in Snow White’s story, a chill descended that I have be unable to shake.
In addition to the sparkling faces that populate my memory, I carry the faces of adult men who were groped, grasped, and raped when they were blossoming into adulthood. When The Boston Globe finally forced the sexual predators who resided in Catholic parishes and schools into the open, I was just beginning my work in Catholic Ecclesiology, which is the study of the Church. Since I was so trained, I became involved with the courageous group of lay people in Boston, The Voice of the Faithful. They had approached Cardinal Law when the story was first breaking to offer their help. He brushed them off the same way Mr. Trump seems to think he can shed the women whose bodies he has violated. During my time with this organization that has tirelessly worked to support victims of clergy abuse, I met victims and their faces now also populate my memory.
Even though the 24 year-old Ivanka looks similar on the surface to my the fresh faced women basketball players, her face roused the images of the adult men, most of them broken at 11 or 12 or 13 years old. Surely the malicious scene of that radio show ambushed some of them. Like the young boy who was being raped in the Penn State locker room when a coach came in, they were ignored and abandoned. I will never forget another radio talk show host discussing the rape of that boy when the story first broke. No Howard Stern he, Tom Tolbert on KNBR in San Francisco, broke in on the reporter, asking about the raped boy: Did anyone cover him? Did anyone take care of him? Did anyone at least grab a towel for him? In the days and weeks that followed I listened carefully, very few people talked about the boy; instead they talked about the assistant coach and Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky. They pondered how they must have felt. The boy was invisible and remains so. Just like the women that Ivanka’s father grabbed, groped, penetrated.
Just as Catholic education chases after goodness, it also demands that we recognize and name its opposite. Recognizing goodness requires the identification of the things that diminish goodness, prevent it, and destroy it. In the naming is the power; when we fail to name, we empower the evil. The laughter between Trump and Ivanka is like a blood supply for the wounds of victims of assault and predation. Calling it “banter” or “normal male talk” refreshes the assault and spoils any healing that may have begun. And the fact that these agents of malice are father and daughter makes the image harder to banish. My archive of faces has not been enough to driveway the chill. So I went in search of another talisman, another image with which to summon robust goodness: goodness that thwarts the craven selfishness on display in that father-daughter exchange.
My own father died when I was very small so I do not have personal images readily at hand. But since I was pondering athletes and locker rooms, my imagination came to the rescue. I live in the land of the Golden State Warriors where little Riley Curry is a regular presence at games. Like a sacred incantation, I called images of that dad and daughter to mind. Riley is pre-school age in my favorite image. Tucked into his lap while he speaks to the press after a game, Curry treats her with care and respect. The man who holds that little girl with such joy surely does not go into the locker room and talk about other girl’s bodies like they are so much meat.
Because goodness is actually the ultimate force in all reality, that sweet relationship has helped me drive away the ghoulish image. But I have no deep wounds that linger encrusted with psychic scar tissue, as do the young men and young women who have been assaulted. They require more goodness; the harm is so toxic. Victims carry images of harm, abandonment, and degradation. Such images require a community of care to stockpile memories of grace that will overshadow and dim the memories of harm. And therein lies yet another culture. Just like the Santa Clara coaches and athletes, our national culture must be in the business of shaping a culture where the bodies of young women and men are cherished and treated as the centers of goodness that they are. We do not have such a culture yet; if we have learned anything from the disaster of the Trump candidacy, we have learned that we must be relentless in destroying what he and people like him have wrought.