Kayla Faria, Intern

My Take

‘Bully’ movie to instigate change in school culture

Posted by Kayla Faria, Intern | Posted on: April 06, 2012 at 04:17 pm

My 5-hour trip to a New York theater this weekend was the longest I have ever traveled to watch a movie, but the 1.5-hour “Bully” film was an even longer emotional journey.

It’s hard to sit in a theater and eat popcorn as kids are being brutalized and taunted in front of your eyes. “This can’t be happening,” you think, before remembering your childhood - it does. This isn’t a John Hughes’ movie. Jokes about “geeks” aren’t funny. It’s real life and kids go home thinking their lives are not worth living.

Alex, 12, is stabbed with pencils, strangled, punched and pushed, but it’s what he says that makes you really cry. When asked how the abuse makes him feel, Alex replies, “I don’t feel anything anymore.”

The film shifts between the stories of five children, capturing the struggles of these different families and their powerful stories in context of a systemic crisis. With more than 13 million children falling victim to bullying each year, the problem transcends geographic, racial, ethnic and economic borders.

It forces us to look at greater issues, including violence, homophobia, and a pervasive “kids will be kids” attitude that perpetuates bullying culture in schools, rather than focusing our anger on the faceless child issuing beat-downs on the skinny kid in glasses who has trouble making friends.

UVA football player on hunger strike for low-wage women

Posted by Kayla Faria, Intern | Posted on: March 05, 2012 at 06:16 pm

News outlets across the country, including ESPN, The Nation, and the Chicago Sun Times, have been covering the Joseph Williams’ story - a University of Virginia football player who joined several other students on a hunger strike organized by the Living Wage Campaign.

Williams’ hunger strike protested the $7.25 hourly wage of some university employees. At the intersection of sports and politics, the story is about race and class, but it’s also about gender, an angle largely neglected in media coverage of the strike.

“As one of four children supported by a single mother, I have experienced many period of economic hardship in my life,” wrote Williams in an essay on reasons for striking. “On a personal level, this cause is one that hits very close to home.”

He is not alone. Thirty-four percent of families headed by working black single mothers were living in poverty in 2010.

Williams specifically identified women and African Americans as most of the university employees affected by low wages, acknowledging one full-time female employee at the university who was unable to pay rent and forced to go without electricity for three months. When asked why it was important for him to take this stand, Williams named two women workers he knows personally who are “being marginalized and exploited.”

Sports study shows progress, persistent gender inequities

Posted by Kayla Faria, Intern | Posted on: February 15, 2012 at 11:40 am

The whistle just blew. It’s halftime.

You’re losing. Your coach is telling the team we’ve made progress since the beginning of the season, but we still have a long way to go. You think to yourself, “What is progress? We’re down – what’s the score again?”

A 35-yearlong study on women in intercollegiate sport released the score last week, showing an unprecedented number of women’s teams leading to the highest women’s participation and employment numbers in intercollegiate athletic history.

“Some would point to this progress and say we’ve arrived,” authors R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter wrote in a 2009 Academe article. “But progress is not completion. Movement toward equity is not full equity.”

Increases in athletic participation have not mirrored the percentage of women represented as coaches, athletic administrators and trainers. Despite a record-setting 200,000 intercollegiate female athletes, only 1 in 5 intercollegiate teams is coached by a female and the same number of athletic directors are female, according to report estimates.

Tags: Athletics, Title IX, Athletics, Education & Title IX | Add new comment

Title IX Pioneers Make the Pass Before the Assist

Posted by Kayla Faria, Intern | Posted on: February 03, 2012 at 05:14 pm

After a day like Wednesday, the rest of the week seems painfully ordinary. When I told my friend this, she said I sounded like Timmy Turner asking for Christmas every day.

National Girls and Women in Sports Day may not have been Christmas, but it was a gift.

As a journalism major, I’m supposed to have a way with words, which is why I make it my business to own all of my opponents in Words With Friends, Scrabble, and Bananagrams. However, I realized yesterday I couldn’t tell a single story about the day without repeatedly using the words “great” and “amazing.”

Whether I was relaying Lillian Greene-Chamberlain’s sports and advocacy stories, bragging about meeting Barbara Mikulski or talking about how Representative Linda Sanchez can talk some serious softball, I couldn’t help reiterating those same words.

Marcia Greenberger to Receive Award

NWLC Co-President Marcia Greenberger has been chosen to receive the 2012 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award at American Bar Association's annual meeting on Aug. 5 in Chicago. The award honors outstanding women lawyers who have achieved professional excellence and paved the way to success for others, and previous winners include Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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