Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, March 22, 2018

Confirm Pompeo, Deny Haspel

 BRETT GRAHAM | COLUMN

C

orporate America has a lot of 
work to do if it wants to achieve 
any form of gender equity.

According to a 2014 fact sheet from 

the Center for American Progress, 
women earn almost 60 percent of all 
bachelor’s degrees and 60 percent of 
master’s degrees. Yet, somehow, they 
make up only 14.6 percent of executive 
officers, 8.1 percent of top earners and 
4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. They 
hold only 16.9 percent of Fortune 500 
board seats.

Here we face a dilemma. We 

want the girls and young women 
to grow up and earn these upper-
level business positions, therefore 
increasing gender equality in the 
business world. But we also know, 
based on these statistics alone, 
corporate America isn’t always 
the most welcoming place for a 
woman. How can we ensure the 
women who enter the business 
world feel empowered to believe 
they are capable of earning a 
highly-paid leadership position?

According 
to 
Quinnipiac 

University’s 
Women’s 
Rugby 

Head Coach Becky Carlson, the 
first D1 women’s NCAA coach for 
a full-contact sport, the first step 
to achieving gender equity in the 
workplace is working toward gender 
equity in sports, she said in a phone 
interview with The Daily.

More than 3.2 million girls in 

the United States played high school 
sports in 2010, and about 200,000 
young women played college sports 
in 2012. This is often their first 
experience working as part of a team 
to achieve a greater goal, and one of 
their first experiences taking on a major 
leadership role, such as team captain. 
The skills student athletes obtain 
through their sport translate directly to 
the business world. Unfortunately, for 
female athletes, playing a sport is often 
also their first experience facing blatant 
sexual discrimination.

Carlson often notices major gender 

inequity in college athletics, even when 
it means schools are noncompliant 
with Title IX, the law that requires 
federally-funded institutions (such as 
public schools) do not discriminate 
based on sex. At athletic events and 
seminars, she often explains her 
position to athletic directors and 
administrators by saying, “Women’s 
Varsity Rugby, the only full contact 
sport of women in the NCAA.”

“I get this response from people, 

and it ranges from insulting, to, ‘Oh, 
sweetie, our gender equity is fine, 
we don’t need you’ or, ‘You don’t look 
like a rugby player,’” she explained 
in a phone interview. “I often got 

the, ‘We’re in compliance (with Title 
IX), we’re fine,’ and I would always 
take notes on these universities that 
would say this, and they were not fine 
or in compliance.”

Even though Title IX was 

implemented almost half a century 
ago, the glaring gender inequity in 
today’s sports world is no secret. 
According to Athletic Business, girls’ 
sports lack not only recognition, 
but uniforms and equipment. Take 
a trip to any high school athletic 
facilities and this will be made 
abundantly clear. Or look at the 
ESPN or Sports Illustrated website 
to see that the sports world values the 
accomplishments of its male athletes 
much more highly than those of 
female athletes. Would it be much 
of a surprise if after female athletes 
graduate and enter the workplace, 
they subconsciously internalize the 
idea that their accomplishments are 
not as valuable as those of their 
male counterparts?

“If we’re doing what we’re 

supposed to be doing in athletics — 
and it doesn’t have anything to do 
with dribbling, kicking, running, 
passing — it has everything to do 
with preparing them for what lies 
ahead,” Carlson said. “And what 
lies ahead is a system that is not 
going to ask you if you’d like a raise, 
it is a system that is not going to ask 
you to speak louder, it’s just going 
to pass you over.”

Carlson believes her primary role 

as a coach is to empower her athletes to 
succeed beyond the playing field.

“The first pitch that I make when 

I’m with recruits isn’t, ‘Hey, this is the 
scholarship opportunity and this is how 
great it is to play on the field and this is 
the amenities we have,’” she said. “No, 
the first pitch is, ‘I want you to leave here 
with the understanding that you can 
speak in the boardroom.’”

Her goal is for her athletes to 

graduate feeling comfortable asking 
questions, speaking up and negotiating 
their salaries. She doesn’t want them to 
graduate with the belief that no matter 
how hard they worked, they would 
still be second class compared to their 
male counterparts. Achieving this goal 
begins on the rugby field.

“I coach a full contact sport 

and we’ve been three-time national 
champions,” she said. “And I still see 
that when an athlete tackles and goes 
down for a second and needs a moment 
to shake it off and get up, our male 
trainers are up, off the bench, running 
out there. I’m like, give them a second. 
Give them a second … That never 
happens when a male athlete needs a 
second. They’re not running out there. 

We rush; we see (women) as weaker. 
That’s something in our athletes that I 
would like to see change. I would like 
for us to be able to say, ‘I would push this 
athlete the same way I would push a 
male athlete.’”

In other instances, she has seen 

women coaches criticized for being 
too “harsh” on their athletes, when 
male coaches are respected for the 
very same coaching tactics.

“It’s always, ‘She’s tough on them 

and he’s a great leader,’” she lamented. 
“They show Coach K and they’ll show 
Geno and in every photo those guys 
are coaching and they look serious and 
they look badass, right? It’s revered: 
It’s strength, it’s impressive, it is a 
champion’s face. And then you take 
the pictures that DNT has been using 
of Shannon (Miller) and she’s greedy, 
stubborn, unwilling to work.”

Carlson noted that this mindset 

translates directly to the business 
world. “That male CEO that you 
work under goes in and tells everyone 
how it is and everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, 
he’s a boss, he’s badass,’” she said. 
“And you go into the boardroom and 
the woman tells you what to do 
and she’s considered bitchy, or 
considered moody.”

Several times, Carlson has seen 

her athletes reap the benefits of 
her female empowering coaching 
tactics. One of her athletes had been 
interning for a company for two 
years and wanted to be hired there 
after graduation, but believed she 
deserved more than the entry level 
salary that employees who had never 
worked there would earn.

“She went in,” Carlson recalled. 

“She directly said, ‘This is the value I 
bring to the company and if you want 
to hire me, this is my requirement.’ 
They said no initially, but she kept 
her head up after that, and she was 
still interning with them. Two weeks 
later, they turned around and were 
like, ‘You know, we really don’t want 
to lose you, we’ll take that salary 
bump and we want to hire you.’”

Why 
was 
this 
athlete 
so 

confident? Carlson explained: “A 
recognition and appreciation and a 
reverence for strength in athletics 
moves over to this life after college.”

The answer is simple. If we treat 

women as second-class citizens when 
they’re on the rugby field, we 
can’t expect them to understand 
that they’re equal as soon as they 
enter the boardroom.

L

ast week, in the latest 
round 
of 
“Survivor: 

West 
Wing 
Edition,” 

President Donald Trump fired 
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson 
and nominated Mike Pompeo, 
current CIA director and former 
Tea Party congressman, to take 
his place. To fill Pompeo’s post, 
Trump 
nominated 
Pompeo’s 

deputy, Gina Haspel. Each of 
these people would be a disaster 
in their post and potentially 
irreparably harmful to both U.S. 
foreign policy and what little 
moral standing this country 
has left. Senate Democrats, 
however, in the current political 
climate, should consider biting 
the 
bullet 
and 
confirming 

Pompeo, 
while 
remaining 

firmly opposed to Haspel.

First of all, it is important to 

establish why both are so odious. 
Pompeo is your standard order, 
run-of-the-mill Republican hawk; 
his career has been financed 
almost entirely thanks to the 
Koch brothers, he puts forward 
a “hard line” on terrorism that 
often bleeds into Islamophobia, 
he thinks the National Security 
Agency’s surveillance program 
does “good and important work” 
and he wants Edward Snowden 
extradited 
and 
sentenced 
to 

death. He resembles, in more 
ways than one, an external-facing, 
slightly younger Joe Arpaio, the 
former Arizona sheriff known 
for his controversial stance on 
immigration law.

Compared to his deputy 

and potential successor, he’s 
also the more palatable of the 
two. Haspel ran a CIA torture 
site in Thailand in the early 
2000s, where prisoners were 
waterboarded, slammed against 
walls and confined within coffin-
like boxes. For those not already 
sold on her, she later oversaw the 
destruction of the video evidence 
that would have almost certainly 
damned her as a war criminal in 

violation of the United Nations 
Convention Against Torture. 
So, torture and a cover-up. 
Double trouble.

There are, though, a few 

fundamental situational factors 
to take into account. First of all, 
consider the current state of 
the agencies that each of these 
would-be 
Kubrick 
characters 

have been nominated to run. 
The 
State 
Department 
has 

been understaffed to the point 
that, by many accounts, it is 
struggling to function properly. 
As recently as February, no 
fewer than 45 ambassadorships 
were 
left 
vacant, 
many 
of 

which are to important world 
powers and allies. South Korea, 
Australia, 
Germany, 
Turkey 

and Saudi Arabia all belong to 
this group. Though the thought 
of 
staffing 
these 
positions 

with conservative, reactionary 
ideologues is not the most 
appealing eventuality, there is 
foreign policy merit to having 
warm bodies in those chairs. 
Pompeo has been, according 
to reports, decently effective 
and well-liked at the CIA. A 
lukewarm 
performance 
like 

that would be a major step up 
from what State looked like 
under Tillerson.

Secondly, after he staffs the 

place up and gets it in working 
order, there’s a good chance that 
most foreign policy will still 
be run out of the White House. 
More than temperament, what 
impeded Rex Tillerson’s ability 
to get things done was the fact 
that any diplomatic conversation 
or stance could and would be 
thrown out the window in 140 
characters or fewer. Twitter is 
Trump’s State Department and 
he is his own ambassador to 
the world. That is not likely to 
change depending on whom is 
serving in that post.

For 
those 
news 
sources 

that seem to suggest Pompeo 

is different in any way to the 
sycophants that came before him 
— that Trump listens, trusts or 
respects him more than anyone 
else who has come through the 
White House to this point — 
please stop. There was a time 
that he listened to Steve Bannon, 
too. At other times, it was going 
to be Jared Kushner and Ivanka 
Trump’s cooler heads prevailing. 
Remember 
when 
we 
were 

supposed to collectively breathe 
a sigh of relief when John Kelly 
entered the picture because he 
was a moderating force to who 
Trump listened? How’s that 
working out?

Pompeo 
is 
not 
a 
game 

changer and, at this point in time, 
we should treat that as a victory. 
Republicans face a tough road 
between now and the midterm 
elections. Now is not the time to 
pick a confirmation fight over a 
nominee as qualified as Pompeo, 
just to give them a bit of slack 
and make people think that this 
is partisanship business as usual.

Senate 
Democrats 
should 

nonetheless make a distinction; 
Pompeo, 
though 
abhorrent, 

is qualified to do the job and 
the State Department needs a 
secretary. The CIA, on the other 
hand, is not in any state of crisis 
whatsoever (that we know of). 
It does not necessarily need this 
modern-day 
Torquemada 
to 

keep the lights on and the trains 
on time, so to speak.

Pompeo is just about on 

par when it comes to what 
we expected from a Trump 
nominee. Confirm him. The 
State 
Department 
needs 
a 

secretary. Haspel is almost 
undeniably a war criminal. 
The CIA can wait for someone 
much better.

Gender equity starts on the rugby field

HANNAH HARSHE | COLUMN

Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz

Samantha Goldstein

Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan

Lucas Maiman

Magdalena Mihaylova

Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Ali Safawi

 Ashley Zhang

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 Lecturers vary from part 
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 The University has taken 
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