Sexual Violence in Intercollegiate Athletics: A Historical Perspective of Male Athletic Entitlement

Background and Purpose: Sexual violence within intercollegiate athletics is an understudied area of research in social work.  Feminist theorists suggest that sexual violence reinforces male dominance as a result of living in a patriarchal society.  Male student athletes participating in commercialized sports develop a sense of entitlement due to public admiration for their heroic athleticism.  The college sports culture at large universities sets the stage for sexual aggression and exploitation of women.  This research seeks to identify historical patterns of male athletic entitlement that perpetuates violence against women through a feminist perspective.  To fulfill the Grand Challenges in Social Work to stop family violence, social workers play a vital role in designing targeted prevention for male student athletes to reduce gender-based violence.

Methods: Using ProQuest Historical Newspapers database, an advanced search was used to find articles that matched key words “sexual assault” and “player” or “athlete” across several major newspaper outlets.  Professional and youth sports were not included.  Articles were archived by decade starting from the first known case in the 1950’s to the present day.  Cases were organized in a table by year, school, type of sport, number of accused athletes, and charges and outcomes if available. Themes were then coded based on the patterns that emerged from the cases. Out of approximately 400 articles, there were a total of 96 cases that involved 59 schools and 195 male student athletes.   

Results: Several main themes emerged from the cases: multiple perpetrator sexual assaults, recruiting parties, recruitment of athletes with a violent past, racial hierarchies, threats to victims, and organizational culture’s mishandling of sexual assault. More than half of the cases involved multiple perpetrator sexual assaults in which two or more players were accused. Many incidents occurred during recruiting parties where prospective recruits attend parties with recruiting hostesses or strippers. The cases demonstrated that coaches continue to recruit athletes despite their violent past with women. There were also racial hierarchies as alleged perpetrators who were of color were more likely to face more consequences than White males. A number of victims who went public about their cases received threats from male athletes, coaches, and school administration. Finally, the organizational culture of schools abused their power to control outcomes of sexual violence incidents that involved student athletes. 

 

Conclusions and Implications: In analyzing incidents of sexual violence within intercollegiate athletics reported in major newspaper outlets, there were a number of revealing patterns over time that confirm ways in which athletic entitlement continues to perpetuate violence against women.  Each theme depicts how the sports culture operates as a patriarchy and facilitates male athletic entitlement.  This, as a result, creates an environment conducive to sexual violence toward females.  It also points to possible media bias which is predominantly male lead in the sports industry and supports the feminist ideology. Social workers should study these trends in order to develop prevention programs for student athletes. They could also advocate for more clear guidelines for athletic departments to effectively manage alleged assaults involving student athletes.