After two student-athletes from the University of Washington were dismissed from the menās rowing team and charged for allegedly distributing a video of both men having sex with an intoxicated female freshman student without her consent in 2017, coaches had to take a hard look at the culture being fostered in their program.
Menās and womenās rowing team physician Hank Pelto told the Seattle Times, āThere was kind of this guttural feeling that something more needed to happen, or we needed to take it in our own hands.ā The result was the founding of Student Athletes Against Sexual Harassment and Assault.
Then-captain of the womenās rowing team and current assistant coach Maggie Phillips was a driving force in that conversation, sharing her vision that the initiative against rape-culture at the UW would be student-driven. āAt the end of the day, the people that are creating the culture are the people that are rowing the boats,ā she said. āAny change is going to come from them.ā
With the goal of creating change from the bottom up, Phillips began by getting womenās rowing coach Yasmin Farooq and Pelto on board. Then she started recruiting students, starting with members of the menās and womenās rowing teams and then reaching out to other UW athletics programs with hosted discussions.
Phillips and Pelto gave a joint presentation of SAASHA at the most recent U.S. Rowing conference with the hope of spreading awareness to other universities. The group has also begun meeting with local youth rowing groups.
āThereās a real realization from all of us that college is too late to address this,ā said Pelto. āPeople are forming their relationships and their ideas about relationships and sex and alcohol consumption much earlier than college, so the real power of this group is using the strength and societal force of a college athlete to go to some of these younger groups and say, āHey, this is an important topic. You need to pay attention to this. This is real life.āā