Student Union
- By Charles Fern
Pride Events Encourage Acceptance of LGBTQ Community
Watching men in exaggerated makeup parade down a busy Washington street in high heels and big-hair wigs, Thuien Nguyen commented that this was not likely to happen in his native Vietnam.
Nguyen, who moved to the United States as a child, said LGBTQ+ persons — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and others whose lifestyles do not fall in the heterosexual mainstream — do not enjoy the cultural acceptance in Vietnam that they do in parts of the U.S.
"I know the LGBTQ community in Vietnam is frowned upon," Nguyen said. "It's very viewed as taboo. A lot of countries are becoming progressive [in Asia], but a lot of them are very discriminatory."
In many U.S. capitals, including Des Moines, Olympia and Albany, LGBTQ+ events are being held throughout June to raise awareness about sexuality and gender.
It's "about celebrating being who you are and being open and honest and feeling appreciated and feeling loved," said Ryan Bos, executive director of Washington's Capital Pride events.
Some LGBTQ+ people may not follow their birth gender or mainstream sexuality. Some, like drag queens, may dress or behave as a gender or lifestyle that is out of the mainstream. Drag queens are typically men who dress in women's clothes and perform onstage.
Famous American drag queen RuPaul explained why to The Guardian.
"We are wearing clothes that are hyper-feminine, that represent our culture's synthetic idea of femininity," she said.
In the U.S., alternative lifestyles are often celebrated but not always tolerated.
Last year, 52 individuals identifying as LGBTQ+ members in the U.S. were slain in hate crimes, according to a report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs in New York. This was an 86 percent increase from 2016. Sixty-seven percent of those crimes were committed on LGBTQ+ people who were 35 or younger. Almost half of the cases involved people meeting each other online or through personal ads.
In many parts of the world, homosexuality is acceptable. But in others, it is feared, disparaged and sometimes punishable by death.
Same-sex activity is illegal in 23 Asian countries, according to a 2016 index by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) in Geneva, including Singapore, India and Malaysia.
While Vietnam does not criminalize same-sex sexual activity, it is not culturally embraced, according to the Institute for Studies of Society, Economy and Environment (iSee) in Hanoi. Pride parades have been held in recent years, but many people who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender say they've faced discrimination or punishment. Some LGBTQ+ children and teenagers have left home and taken to the streets, according to a 2014 study by iSee.
Same-sex activity is illegal in 34 of 55 African nations, including Kenya, Gambia, Cameroon and Ghana, according to ILGA. In Angola, homosexuality is illegal, and parents have the legal right to physically punish their children.
In Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria, same-sex relations may be punishable by death.
"We will fight these vermins called homosexuals or gays the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more aggressively," said former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh in a 2014 speech on state television to mark the 49th anniversary of Gambia's independence from Britain.
Homosexuality is punishable by death in the Mideast nations of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Iran, and in the South Asian country of Afghanistan.
In the Chechnya region of Russia, there has been a "purge" of gay men, according to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. At least 100 men the government said were gay have been detained.
One in three transgender youths has considered suicide, research published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry shows. This was nearly two times higher than the figure among youth who did not identify as transgender. Transgender youths were also more likely to engage in substance abuse.
Transgender youths who used a name they chose to correspond with their gender identity — rather than their birth name — were significantly less likely to have suicidal thoughts, according to research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Pride organizers say statistics like those are the reason public displays of acceptance are necessary for society to manage its conflicts in lifestyles.
"Income inequality is worsening, and many states still lack LGBTQ employment protections, making it increasingly important to highlight the contributions of queer workers," wrote Jessie DeStefano and Michael A. Fowler in the 2018 Boston Pride Guide. "Queer immigrants are facing increasingly outrageous attacks from the current administration. While we have won many battles, our continued Rainbow Resistance remains as imperative as ever."
Pride events are widely attended in many parts of the world. The 2017 Worldpride festival held in Madrid attracted 2.3 million people.
"It's amazing how people come and be united," Angola native Volkeria Zamgo said of the parade in Washington.
See all News Updates of the Day
Payments to college athletes to range from a few dollars to more than $1M under settlement
Thousands of former college athletes in the U.S. will be eligible for payments ranging from a few dollars to more than a million under the $2.78 billion antitrust settlement agreed to by the NCAA and five power conferences, a deal that also paves the way for schools to directly compensate athletes while attempting regulate payments from boosters.
Details of the sprawling plan were filed Friday in federal court in the Northern District of California, a little more than two months after the framework of an agreement was announced. The deal must still be approved by a judge.
"College athletes will finally be able to share in the billions of dollars their compelling stories and dynamic performances have generated for their schools, conferences, and the NCAA," the filing said. "This is nothing short of a seismic change to college sports following more than four years of hard-fought victories in this case."
The full term sheet includes guidelines on roster caps for individual sports that will replace scholarship limits; how the new financial payments will be monitored and enforced to ensure compliance by schools; how third-party payments to athletes will be regulated; and how nearly $3 billion in damages will be doled out over the next 10 years.
Those payouts will vary drastically and are determined by sport played, when, how long and what conference an athlete competed in. While Division I athletes across all sports will be eligible to collect damages, the majority of damages is expected to go to football and basketball players from power conferences because those leagues and teams generate most of the revenue that comes from billion-dollar media rights contracts.
The deal covers three antitrust cases — including the class-action lawsuit known as House vs. the NCAA — that challenged NCAA compensation rules dating to 2016. The plaintiffs claimed NCAA rules denied thousands of athletes the opportunity to earn millions of dollars off the use of their names, images and likenesses.
The NCAA lifted its ban on athletes earning money through endorsement and sponsorship deals in 2021.
The agreement does not settle the issue of whether college athletes should be deemed employees, but it does include language that would suggest the deal would be subject to change if "a change in law or circumstances permits collective bargaining."
The NCAA and college sports leaders continue to plead for help from Congress in the form of a federal law that would supersede state laws and allow the association and conferences to self govern without fear of future antitrust litigation.
"This settlement is an important step forward for student-athletes and college sports, but it does not address every challenge," the commissioners of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, Southeastern Conference and NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a joint statement. "The need for federal legislation to provide solutions remains. If Congress does not act, the progress reached through the settlement could be significantly mitigated by state laws and continued litigation."
While that help still seems unlikely to come soon — especially with a presidential election months away — college sports leaders hope the settlement can provide some certainty for schools and finally stem the constant legal attacks on its antiquated model of amateurism.
Paying athletes
The NCAA and conferences have agreed to amend their rules to permit a landmark compensation system that allows schools to share up to about $21 million in athletic revenues with their athletes annually, starting in 2025.
The NCAA and conferences will be permitted to make rules that prevent schools from circumventing the cap.
That number is derived from taking 22% of the average revenue generated through media rights contracts, tickets and other sources by power conference schools. The agreement will create an audit system that allows plaintiffs to monitor athletic revenue, which is expected to rise in the coming years as new media rights agreements kick in for conferences and the College Football Playoff.
Athletes are projected to receive $1.5 billion to $2 billion annually.
All athletes will be eligible to receive the new financial benefits, but each school will be permitted to determine how they want to divvy up the money among sports. How exactly Title IX gender equity rules apply is still unclear and will require federal clarification. How schools comply with Title IX will be the responsibility of each institution.
Scholarships and rosters
Replacing scholarship limits with roster caps could mean even more athletic scholarship opportunities in Division I.
Most notably, major college football teams will now be permitted to have 105 player on scholarship instead of the current 85, though schools will no longer be required to give full scholarships to every football player.
Partial scholarships have been used in some sports for years, but will now be permitted in all.
The roster caps for baseball (34), softball (25) and volleyball (18) will also allow for a significant jump in the number of scholarships schools can provide in those sports, though schools will not be required to meet the cap.
NIL deals and oversight
NCAA rules have been tweaked to allow schools to be more involved in providing NIL opportunities for college athletes, but they will still be allowed to strike deals with third parties.
However, athletes will be required to report deals with third parties that surpass $600 to an outside clearinghouse.
The NCAA is also creating a public database that it hopes will allow athletes to assess fair market value.
Booster-funded NIL collectives have become a common way athletes are compensated, but now those deals will be subject to review through an arbitration process to determine if it is for a "valid business purpose," according to the agreement.
Violations could lead to eligibility penalties for athletes and sanctions for schools.
Damage payments
The plaintiffs in the House case are responsible for doling out damages. Included in Friday's filing was a chart breaking down the categories of eligible athletes along with four different types of payouts they could be in line to receive.
According to the plaintiffs, about 19,000 power conference football players and men's basketball players will be in line to receive an average of $91,000, with payments ranging from $15,000 to $280,000 just for what is referred to broadcast name, image and likeness.
Some of those same athletes could also be in line for tens of thousands of dollars more related to lost opportunities to earn NIL money while in college and what is deemed by the plaintiffs as pay-for-play. Plaintiffs' lawyers say a few athletes will be eligible to receive upward of $1 million.
Next steps
Plaintiffs' attorneys say they will file a motion for preliminary approval and — if granted — a public website will go up in about two months where former college athletes can determine how much they are eligible to receive.
Still, the settlement is months away from final approval. There will be an opportunity for athletes who are members of the plaintiffs' class to object to the settlement and ask to be excluded. Already one school, Houston Christian, has objected — though the judge denied its request to intervene.
"We are moving forward in the right direction by giving college athletes what they have EARNED & DESERVE which has been long overdue," said Sedona Prince, a college basketball player now at TCU and one of the plaintiffs in the House case. "We still have a long way to go and I pray athletes ask more questions and demand more answers from the leaders at their schools, conferences and the NCAA."
Survey: US college students score low in civic literacy
A recent survey commissioned by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that college student in the United States are lacking in civic education.
Writing for Ed Source, Emma Gallegos reports that most of those surveyed don’t know the terms lengths for members of Congress, and a third couldn’t identify the speaker of the House of Representatives. (July 2024)
Tips for first-year international students in the US
Book your flights right away, get a U.S. phone plan, make sure you have linens for your dorm and attend orientation – that’s some of the advice international students have for first-year college students coming from abroad.
U.S. News & World Report compiled helpful tips for students studying in the United States for the first time. (July 2024)
Survey: Social integration, career prep are important to international students
A recent survey of international students in the United States found that before starting school, they were concerned about personal safety, making friends and feeling homesick.
Inside Higher Ed reports that international students want specialized orientations, peer connections, career preparation and job placement to help make their college experiences successful. (July 2024)
US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
