Rivera Calderón, who emerged as a leader on his team, was invited to work in the student affairs office and was asked to help interview a potential senior at the school, along with several returning students who were established leaders on campus. After the interview in late November, the other students went to Rivera Calderón for lunch, so he found himself sitting, for the first time, for a meal in the dining hall that did not include any athletes. The returning students assured him, as they all spoke, that their problem was the administration, not the athletes. But they wished the athletes didn’t stand out so much from the rest of the campus. For Rivera Calderon, the message was a huge weight off his shoulders. “I actually realized that the returners don’t hate the athletes,” he said. “They really want to get to know us. I always thought they didn’t want us there. That’s when I realized that a lot of people have this whole thing wrong.” Around the same time, someone chalked on a campus sidewalk: “Your coaches are lying to you. We don’t hate you.”
“My coach told me that we have a lot to learn from these guys. And now I know what he means.’
New College’s final party of 2023 (theme: “Nearly Naked”) struck Maya Rees, a freshman at the school newspaper, as a breakthrough. More athletes watched this event than any other, even if they stayed in their own circle, doing a typical dance: arms waving in the air and shouting, “Ay, Ay, Ay!” Nearby, returning students danced their own way — Rish described it more like a Grateful Dead scene — but the presence of so many athletes at the party suggested a new degree of openness.
Garcia, the softball player, happily rekindled her interest in theater and set design in high school. As a result, she was one of the rare athletes who spent a lot of time with returning students, some of whom were fascinated by what she did as a catcher on a softball team, even if it was clear they didn’t completely understand it. How exactly was softball different from baseball? they asked her. How the hell did he squat for so long? It was good; Their curiosity was touching and a little funny. She answered all their questions and knew they appreciated her dedication to her sport. Now he wanted the athletes to appreciate a little more what the theater students had. “About to try it to force all the athletes to come to the game,” he told me in January.
If the athletes changed schools, there was also evidence that the school affected the athletes. Totten, who had no choice but to change majors as a senior, had taken a bunch of classes and decided she might be interested in sociology. Sociology classes opened her eyes to many things, she told me, like “how you change your community and your society, your perspectives and ideas change.” She, for example, had a new understanding of the LGBTQ community at New College. “I just wasn’t exposed to it — and now that I am, I realize where they’re coming from and why they feel threatened in the world the way they do,” she said. “Just getting out there and exploring, finding new things, that’s how you’re going to learn and get along with more people.”
