In the past few years, roller derby has surged in a popularity not seen since the campy, televised bouts of the 1970’s. But the derby of today isn’t the same choreographed sport your dad watched on TV. There aren’t clothesline trips, elbow jabs or planned endings to the bouts. Instead, roller derby has become a serious sport, creating a niche community. The sport means something a little different to each skater on the track and fan in the stands.

The DC Rollergirls started with a group of players practicing in parking garages seven years ago, and have since transformed into a local league with a rapidly growing fan base and a competitively ranked all-star team.

Despite their varied backgrounds, many of the skaters stumbled across roller derby by chance and all refused to let anything prevent them from strapping on a pair of skates and competing in the league.

“It just happened exactly at the right time,” said Mara Veraar, who has skated for the past seven years as Scarlet O’Snap of the Cherry Blossom Bombshells. “I thought that I would do it just to make friends—and that is a big part of it— but what I really found to was that I forgot how much I loved sports when I was younger. I realized, ‘Oh, I really am athletic!  I really want to be a part of a team sport!’  And the athleticism and the camaraderie have both been important to me.”

Kari Ryder-Wilkie, who skates as Queen Kamayhemmayhem for the Cherry Blossom Bombshells, said she first caught the derby bug six years ago.

“I heard about it and went to go see a bout, and was immediately fascinated and really wanted to play. It was kind of love at first sight,” Wilkie said. Wilkie was finishing up her graduate degree at Boston University when she decided to start training and tried out for a spot in the local roller derby league.

“I had one friend who was kind of interested in doing it with me— and the first day we went out to the roller rink, I broke my arm,” Wilkie said. “That kind of killed it for her, but it didn’t kill it for me.”

Wilkie stuck with it through the injury and moved to DC over three years ago, where she joined the Bombshells and still enjoys the rough and tumble of the game.

The shoulder slams, booty bumps and all the scrambling to block the other team’s jammer might all rile the crowd up at the bout, but even the audience knows how quickly a jam can run afoul when a skater gets slammed down hard.

Cheers swiftly turned to shocked silence during the December 8th game when Jersey Kill of the DC Demoncats twisted and crashed to the ground in one of the last jams in a bout with Scare Force One. Kill, the lead jammer, managed to touch her hips and call off the jam as she slammed to the floor—but didn’t get up. Enthusiasm turned to concern as the music stopped and the audience fell silent. Flanked by referees and EMTs, Jersey Kill cautiously pushed herself from the floor—twisting a grimace of pain into a grin and raising an arm above her head to uproarious cheers.

Kill finished out the bout with a determined grin on her face, even though her team fell 93-270 to the undefeated Scare Force One. But other skaters have faced more than bumps and bruises after going down in a game.

Wilkie is one of them.  She is out for the next few weeks on a hip injury, and was able to walk around without crutches for the first time in two and a half weeks during the last practice before December’s double-header.  She said she only found out about the extent of the damage to her hip after telling a doctor during a surgery follow-up after injuring her elbow.

Despite the risk of injury, many skaters take the physical contact inherent to the sport in stride and keep coming back for more.

“I think one of the things that got me into it was just that it looked awesome—I mean, you’re on roller skates and you’re hitting people,” said Allie Feras, who is entering her second season of skating as Frak You for the Majority Whips. “But I think one thing that keeps me around even when I’m tired, or feeling down about my own ability or anything is the community.  Everybody’s very supportive.  So even if you’re having a bad day, it’s kind of like your own little family.

She stuck with the sport after being teamed with the newly formed Majority Whips two years ago.  At the time, she was completing a graduate degree and working full time.  She says she has a little more time now that she has finished her degree, but that juggling work and derby proves challenging at times.

“Sometimes it’s exhausting when you get home from practice really late and then you’d have to be up really early for work or when you’re travelling for derby stuff and you have to convince your boss that you can’t be at work because you have to go roller-skate,” Feras said.

Feras and her teammates on the Majority Whips faced off against the Cherry Blossom Bombshells during the last double-header. The team narrowly lost 117-123, in a bout that hinged on a series of jams in the last few minutes of the game.

Plenty of fans packed the bleachers at the Armory for the bout. The whole league hopes to capitalize on the draw of the sport as they face the challenge of considering how best to sustain the league and the community they’ve created.

Their aspirations include purchasing a warehouse for practices, getting a rec league off the ground and potentially forming a junior offshoot of the league. During the December eighth double header, volunteers sold shirts and baked goods made by skaters in an effort to help raise money to fund the costs of expansion.

Interested skaters don’t need to buy out a warehouse to get started in the sport, of course.  Anyone with a roll of tape, a bit of space and a pair of skates can play flat track derby— but it takes a certain sort of determination to go from free-spirited skating to the time consuming work of running a Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) member league.

“They always say that half of derby is getting used to how many nights a week you practice, and the other half is getting used to how many emails you get,” Verarr said. “We run this whole league. We’re on the board of directors, we’re the heads of every committee, we’re the ones setting up volunteers, we’re the ones doing fundraisers—so it’s just a million emails.”

Doing the legwork on the track and behind the scenes is a handful, but being skater-run is a requirement for participation as a WFTDA member league.

“They didn’t want to get in a situation where it was some guy or some girl owning the league and not having the skaters’ best interests in mind,” Veraar said. Even though skaters run the league, they receive plenty of help from volunteers and referees who help run the show on bout day.

Colin Burke, known as Refsputin when clad in the black-and-white officials’ uniform, first fell into roller derby seven years ago as the DC Rollergirls were just getting on their feet.  Burke said he became interested after his girlfriend wrote an article about the DC Rollergirls, and suggested he act on his interest and start refereeing bouts.

“I was like, ‘Wait, there are referees in roller derby?” Burke said.

Today, referees and officials usually volunteer as non-skating officials and go through a certification program after they get used to watching the game while gliding around on a set of wheels. Burke said that since he started out when WFTDA was still getting organized, becoming a ref was a little bit different.

“When I started, everybody was learning—so there wasn’t anything set up,” Burke said.  “Now there’s a little more structure to it, and there’s a lot more help from the WFTDA.  I’m one of their officiating clinic instructors, so now I teach people how to do it.”

Burke doesn’t just stay in the city with the league that drew him in to the sport. He travels to ref games with the DC Rollergirls’ All Star team, and even helps officiate games in other leagues as well.

“I’ve been to Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, North Carolina, Virginia—pretty much everywhere.” Burke said. “I also ref several tournaments a year, and those are in Philly, Vermont, Buffalo— all over the place. I do a lot of travel for derby, and I work a lot of different bouts that have nothing to do with the DC league.”

Wilkie says that the sense of community among skaters definitely extends beyond the city and the league. She isn’t too worried about being separated from the sport if she ever moves out of DC.

That’s not to say all skaters stick with derby forever.  Varaar says that she’s the only player who has been skating with the Bombshells since they first started up seven years ago. Teammate Wilkie adds that several others left the sport during the three years she has been with the team after getting bogged down with life commitments and work.

But those who stick around do so because they’ve found something uniquely meaningful in the sport and the community it creates.  It’s a network of players with common goals and interests, a place for people who want to compete without giving up their day job, and for some a riot grrl mentality informed by a do-it-yourself determination.

Rollergirls spend their time juggling fundraising for the warehouse with squeezing in plenty of practice for the next bout— and just having a good time with like-minded skaters.

“I think the great thing about it is that it’s so many different things to different people,” Wilkie said. “I just think people are finding something there that doesn’t exist in any other place in society.  If I didn’t want to do derby— I can’t think of anything else that would replace all of the things that derby is to me.”

Illustration by Ellyse Stauffer

Rallying cries for a tuition freeze and for student bargaining rights filled AU’s campus on Friday afternoon as members of the Coalition of American University Students (CAUS) led a march that culminated in a rally outside of Butler Pavilion in an attempt to directly voice their concerns to Gail Hanson, the university’s vice president for campus life.

The students said they decided to hold the rally after university administration failed to respond to a list of demands and to a petition signed by over 25 percent of the student body. Members of CAUS hand-delivered the demands to President Kerwin during his kickoff speech for All-American Weekend on October 20.

“We want the administration to understand that students should have a say in the decision making at the university,” said Zachary Moore, an AU student and CAUS member. “Our petition isn’t just for a tuition freeze. It’s for collective bargaining rights for students. Both the tuition freeze and the collective bargaining were completely ignored by the administration—and we’re going to show them that we don’t like being ignored.”

Close to fifty students turned out to march—far fewer than the 1700 students who signed the organization’s petition, but plenty enough to draw the attention of anyone around campus during the time. An improvised band led the group as participants yelled, distributed flyers and motioned for onlookers to join in the rally. A handful of spectators joined in on the march, but most opted to stand by and snap photos with their smart phones or simply gape at the group as they marched by.

“Ideally we want to come up with a system where students—as the main bankrollers of the university—have a meaningful say in the policies that the administration makes,” CAUS member Paul Grobman said. Grobman pointed out that eighty percent of the university’s revenue comes from student tuition and fees, as shown clearly in the university’s publicly available budget for the 2012-2013 school year, but said he felt that students lacked meaningful representation in the school’s decision-making process.

“We want to let the administration know that we’re here and we’re serious about this,” Grobman said. “We are not just going to deliver a petition and go away. We are going to be here for the long haul to make sure that tuition hikes don’t happen.”

Both Grobman and Moore cited the student strikes and protest movement in Montreal, Quebec as one of the main inspirations for CAUS. The most recognizable symbol of CAUS, a red felt square fastened to a shirt or backpack with a safety pin, is a direct adoption of the red square symbol used by the Quebec students on strike from last February through this September.  Marches through Quebec drew up to 500,000 students at a time over a hike in university tuition from $2,168 to $3,793 between 2012 and 2017.

After winding around the quad and through the campus, a delegation of 17 students marched up to Hanson’s office as the rest waited outside the entrance to Butler Pavilion. Upon arriving at the office, Hanson’s assistant told the group that the campus life vice president was out of the office at an off-campus meeting. The group left a message with a list of their demands, including a two-year tuition freeze, access to an itemized budget and collective bargaining rights for students.

“Students came out and they were here rallying—that was the biggest success,” Sophia Miyosha said. “Even though she [Hanson] wasn’t there, we’re not going to stop.  This is just the beginning.”

“We’re going to keep up the pressure. We’re going to start contacting donors, alumni and faculty.  Anyone who can help us put pressure on the administration—we’re going to reach out to them,” CAUS member Chris Litchfield said. “It’s important to stress that we don’t want to have to do this.  The administration is pushing us into crushing poverty—and they’re okay with that.  And if they’re okay with that, we need to tell them we’re not okay with them living their lives in ease while we’re living in difficulty.”

CAUS is already planning a night march on October 30, where students will gather at the amphitheater and march around campus banging pots and pans while shouting their demands.  Even if the administration continually refuses to meaningfully acknowledge their demands, CAUS members don’t plan on being quiet anytime soon. While the Montreal protests included many more students, CAUS members are making up the difference with dedication to their cause and to sparking structural changes in the school’s decision-making process—and inspiring change in schools across the region.

“With student power, we can make a real difference,” Litchfield shouted through a megaphone as the rally drew to a close, “We can stop tuition hikes here and across the U.S.  It starts here—and it starts with us!”

Photos by Taylor Kenkel.

More than 600 colleges in the United States ban smokers from lighting up on university grounds — and some administrators and members of the student body think AU should become a smoke-free campus as well.

The thorny issue of students smoking on campus is not unfamiliar territory for the administration.  The school banned lighting up in the Tavern way back in 1998 (wait, you mean people used to smoke inside?) and stomped out smoking in and around residence halls back in 2003.  The prospect of a campus sans cigarettes has faded in and out of debate since 2007.

AU came close to a smoking ban in 2008, when a bill to enact new guidelines on limiting smoking on campus made its way before Student Government; the bill passed the senate despite a veto from SG President Joe Vidulich.  At the same time as the kerfuffle over smoking shuffled through SG, the University President’s council began investigating the feasibility of a campus smoking ban. When confronted with the issue in 2008, University President Neil Kerwin expressed cautious disagreement with both the limits of the bill and the prospect of a ban, instead opting to begin a more passive courtesy campaign and implementing smoking cessation programs.

SOC Professor W. Joseph Campbell, PhD, served on the President’s Council when they considered the possibility of the ban four years ago, and said he was disappointed when the effort did not result in a smoke-free campus policy.

“It’s clear that it would take a concerted effort to get it done,” Professor Campbell said of the current effort to ban smoking on campus.  As a self-described “reformed smoker” who gave up the habit several years ago, Professor Campbell cited the health issues, financial expenses and the unsightly nature of smoking as the main reasons for his support of a campus-wide ban.  Campbell indicated that phasing the regulation in over the course of a few years might make a ban easier to swallow, and said he hopes the University decides to take a firmer stance on the issue as the debate picks back up again.

Dr. Gary Weaver, a professor in SIS, takes a different stance on the prospect of a smoking ban.  Although Weaver kicked the habit 20 years ago and is not a fan of smoking, he does not think an all-out ban is the best idea

“When I was a smoker, I always resented the self-righteous fanatics who believed it was their personal responsibility to stop me from smoking,” Weaver wrote when contacted, underscoring the main source of tension in the debate.

He also pointed out that AU attracts a number of individuals— including faculty, staff and students— from cultures where smoking is common, and questioned if the University should necessarily require them to “give it up” upon arrival.

Just to clarify: I don’t smoke, and don’t plan on picking up the habit any time soon.  I oppose smoking for health, environmental and animal rights reasons (cigarettes are still tested on animals, after all).  I become annoyed when I walk out of a building and into a cloud of smoke and disheartened by all the cigarette butts littering the sidewalks and garden areas around campus.  These irksome experiences, though, largely result from the irresponsibility of individual smokers—and warrant more of an emphasis on the personal responsibilities and courtesies associated with electing to smoke.

To be fair, making AU smoke-free does seem to mesh with campus sustainability and health goals, and banning smoking would certainly prevent piles of cigarettes from littering the quad—an especially offensive reality, considering the role the campus plays as an arboretum.  But a number of more realistic avenues for limiting the harmful impact of smoking and encouraging personal responsibility already exist and could easily be enforced.

Taking more of a middle road in promoting environmental stewardship and personal health —including stricter enforcement of existing smoking policies or relegating smoking to only select areas of the campus— could help alleviate the constant haze of secondhand smoke surrounding campus buildings and lessen the number of smoldering cigarettes on walkways without infringing on the choice to smoke.  Greater promotion of smoking cessation programs or provision of discounted nicotine patches, gum or other over-the-counter treatment to any student who voluntarily commits to a smoking cessation program could provide encouragement for students to quit smoking, and an education campaign on the health effects of smoking and of secondhand smoke could heighten awareness of the issue as well.

Of course, a middle-of-the-road approach is precisely what President Kerwin favored during the last round of smoking ban debates in order to limit the effects of smoking on campus—and neither the cigarette litter nor the disregard of smoke-free zones provide evidence that the current policy works.

Before lighting a blaze of controversy by hastily enacting a blanket ban, let’s hope a more serious discussion between smokers and nonsmokers about rights and responsibilities takes place and a reasonable solution emerges before the issue is left to smolder and fade in an unresolved haze.

Photo by Latente via Flickr.

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