Students petition to make Gold Pass points equal for male and female athletics

Seven female Boston College students have started a petition to make the Gold Pass points equal for women’s and men’s games. 

The Change.org petition is calling “to change the disproportionate representation and support of men’s and women’s sports. On Boston College’s campus, we want to incentivize equal support for gendered athletics through creating equal Gold Pass points for attendees.

“By equal, we mean collective number of points for games per gender.”

Currently, the Gold Pass rewards drastically unequal points for attendance at male and female athletic events. In October, November, and December, Gold Pass points for male games were 470, while female games were only awarded 170 points.

Consequently, only 26 percent of possible Gold Pass points are for female athletic events.

The petition originally began as an activism project for “Women and the Body,” a class which analyzes how women’s bodies are portrayed in science, religion, politics, culture, and the media. After meeting with their professor, Sharlene Hesse-Biber, the students decided to make a petition to try to reach a large and broad group of people.

The Tab spoke with the student organizers of the petition: Juniors Angela Jin and Abigail Kordell, and Sophomores Chloe Ewanouski, Annie Keller, and Casey Mahalik, and Freshman Anna Seigel.

Angela, the named sponsor of the petition, said: “The Gold Pass currently only incentivizes attending and supporting men’s sports.

“Unequal gendered representation of athletics at BC reinforces the notion that women’s athleticism is perceived as inferior to men’s. This lack of recognition grossly discredits BC female athletes and further widens the gap in gender inequality.”

She added: “I’m sure that men’s games have always drawn higher attendance than women’s games before the Gold Pass ever existed. I’m aware the Gold Pass wasn’t maliciously created to promote inequality but it does currently perpetuate it.”

Abigail, an Applied Psychology and Human Development, is a competitive athlete on the Women’s Swimming team.  She said: “What we have found is that women’s games are consistently allotted less points then men’s games.

“Although, this might seem like a small issue in the scheme of things, the subliminal messages it sends are much larger.”

Sophomore Psych major Annie added: “This unequal distribution encourages students to attend men’s games more so than women’s. It encourages students to prioritize men’s sports.”

Casey at a BC hockey game

Chloe, a Communication major, agreed: “The Gold Pass reinforces the fact that men’s sports are believed more important and more entertaining than women’s. Men and women are not seen as equals.”

English major Casey Mahalik said: “There is no lack of talented female athletes at this school, but when you ask the student body about athletics they all default to thinking of athletes through a masculine lens.”

Annie spoke further about this default. She said: “I think it’s pretty messed up that with something like the Gold Pass, our default setting is inequality. Like if we are thinking about assigning value, such as points, to men or women, we automatically assign more to men.

“It shouldn’t be that way. We should think equality first.”

The goal of this petition is rather straightforward. As Angela said: “Make the total number of points rewarded for male and female sports games equal.”

Annie added: “I would encourage Gold Pass to also be careful about their immediate juxtaposition of men and women’s teams.

“If the hockey teams each have a game the same week, they should receive equal points. There’s no reason why you should allot more points to one team over the other.”

Their next steps are to present the petition and the issue to Boston College administration, the Athletic Department, and the Gold Pass committee.

So far, over 200 students have signed the petition, and many others have left comments.

Another female student commented: “The effort that female athletes put into their sport should be valued just as much as that which male athletes do.

Another concluded: “This shouldn’t even need a petition.”