Big content warning/cw:

Sexual assault in the ultimate frisbee community

This is gonna be long

Not going to post the allegations against the player but DM me if you want the link. Tl;dr this accusation is both credible and a long time coming for the northeastern program.

THREAD 1/?

SO a recent graduate of Northeastern Ultimate just got hit with sexual assault/harassment/grooming allegations via anonymous insta account. Im glad this person made their story public and is trying to hold the program accountable. I’m disappointed that it came to this

since it’s not the program’s first opportunity.

Something important to understand is who has power in NU ultimate- on the men’s/open side we have three teams and ~95 players each year since 2018. Women’s I’m not as sure on numbers, but prob approaching the need for a C team.

I played a bit of A freshman year but for my 5 years at NU, I was a dev team stalwart. I fully committed myself to growing playing and social opportunities, including planning/implementing c team, for ALL(so dev) players and basically said fuck it to any personal development.

That’s important because while I had some respect from a decent amount of people on the program, I didn’t have any hard power (despite already being a captain my sophomore year at a 5 year school). Hard power was reserved for A captains and the exec board, who were also all A.

I spent my first two years as captain focused on toxicity, trying to make sure any new players felt comfortable (especially when there were no out queer men and not a single black male player in the program). But I also made a point to constantly talk about consent with my team

& on an individual basis. I made myself a resource and remember multiple trips in the team van where guys younger than me would ask questions about consent and it would turn into a full van discussion. this is with engineers and CS kids who might not get that discussion elsewhere

After two exhausting years of captaining, during which I worked on a ton of equity pushes behind the scenes, including pressuring leadership to start holding elections for exec board, I was frustrated. I’d lost basically all of my social capital by pushing for these things,

especially with the senior A team and exec board. I knew I wanted to do something about troubling sex/party culture issues that nobody was publicly addressing & exec wasn’t stopping. So it couldn’t be accomplished through exec. It would have to be done behind their backs until I

had proof, essentially. So in the spring of 2019 I made use of my Ethnographic Field Experience course to interview ~12 members of the NU ultimate community with the guidance and advice of the renowned professor teaching the course. Not gonna explain ethnography, look it up.

These interviews were often more than an hour long, and I spent long hours transcribing them before turning in a 35-page paper for a 15-page final assignment (professor said they’d read anything under 50). Below were my conclusions relating to dating/sex/consent/partying

1) there is a belief among the team that we have “the right kind of people” with shared values, NOT that the team CREATES these values in our members. (so coincidentally we don’t need to train our members in consent/bystander situation, bc they found us so they’re good people)

2) our parties were always viewed as safe, and any implication that there weren’t actually any protections at these parties was met, in all cases, with the sentiment that they “were a lot better than frat parties”. Obviously concerning whataboutism.

3) every SINGLE person I interviewed identified a particular group of men, which included the currently accused, that most described as “creepy guys”. they wouldn’t slip something your drink, but they would start grinding on you out of nowhere, or not “take the hint”

3 continued) they also repeatedly were involved with women who were 1st/2nd years. I was in a relationship with someone 4 years older than me and also women can make their own choices, but the REPEATED involvement with those much younger/new to the program is what’s problematic

4) any proactive effort to avoid any sexual violence(/misconduct?) mandatory consent training was viewed as too stringent “since the time commitment for B and C are supposed to be lower”. Thus, proactive measures were viewed as a hindrance to men’s participation because

they might quit if they have to give up free time, NOT a hindrance to non-male players’ participation because they may not feel comfortable being at parties or coming forward with an accusation (see the current anon accusation, which I completely understand).

From my final conclusion:

My original plan was to publish this paper online, or at least share it with the team. I didn’t for three reasons:

a) difficulty figuring out how keep my sources anonymous (as well as the program if it was to be published for the ultimate community)
b) ending a toxic relationship and moving home for the summer
c) the diagnosis of my professor, who had agreed to help me, with cancer

(a battle he recently lost. RIP Jeff Juris, an incredible ethnographer and wonderful teacher. @NUCSSH was lucky to have him)

my point is this- our ultimate community is not as high and mighty as it likes to think it is, for many things but rape culture and toxic masculinity especially. I know too many survivors who were targeted by ultimate players, though it shouldn’t take knowing peoppe personally.

(as an important note, I also found cases of men who experienced assault/harassment by members of the women’s team who did not believe any allegations would be taken seriously by the women’s program and never brought them forward)

Sexual assault in the NU ultimate program was a ticking time bomb because we weren’t doing enough proactively to stop it. That includes me, bc even if I tried, I got tired and didn’t see it through. Last night the bomb went off and I applaud the individual for their bravery.

I hope this thread didn’t seem self-touting. It’s an attempt to show other likeminded folks the barriers they may face in changing their teams.

Also- the leadership of our program has changed significantly & I definitely believe their attempts to course correct will be genuine