Bluefield College basketball players have decided to stay in the locker room during the pre-performance of the national anthem for the rest of the season instead of running the chance of penalizing the additional loss of games, Stanley Christian said Friday.
A day after the Virginia school lost the NAIA Appalachian Athletic Conference match against Reinhardt after suspending all players for kneeling during the national anthem before several matches in January and February, Christian he said the players met and agreed to save the team’s season, but have no intention of refraining from speaking out against racial injustice and police brutality.
“He’s bigger than us and we don’t want him to take us out of the season,” the Norfolk, Virginia senior told ESPN. “We feel like we’re in a fantastic position to get a title at this school. So we’ll stay in the locker room during the national anthem. They don’t want any more reactions and we would definitely get on our knees during the anthem.”
In a statement Thursday, school president David Olive announced the suspension of the entire team after players knelt by the anthem before their home game on Feb. 9.
Christian said the team “had a couple of meetings” and decided to kneel for the anthem in January in response to the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Players knelt before several road games, but Christian said it was only after local media aired a story about the protests that the school told them to stop.
Olive said in a statement that she had tried to work with players to find other ways to express their concerns without disturbing “our alumni, friends and donors of the College,” but Christian said the players were not satisfied with the suggestions and believed that the school simply wanted to force them out of public view.
“In that meeting we had with him, he didn’t really listen to us. We tried to tell him our side of the story and it was like we were talking to a wall,” Christian said. “He showed us he didn’t care about the meeting, so we were going to stand up for what we believed. They wanted us to do it their way so they wouldn’t have to deal with media or people outside of Bluefield.”
Christian said the players specifically referred to a recent large-scale rally on campus in support of former President Donald Trump, which stretched from the school’s basketball court to the football stadium. and during which Confederate flags were made, as an example of the school allowing for forms of protest on campus previously.
“So it’s okay for everyone to have a Trump rally with Confederate flags, but it’s not okay for us to kneel down for our people who have fallen,” Christian said. “He had no answer for that.”
ESPN emailed Olive, athletic director Tonia Walker and the school’s student counseling coordinator for comment, but none has responded.
After the suspensions were announced, the players of the Bluefield men’s basketball team, along with others in football, women’s basketball and women’s football, joined a video call to discuss their options and exhaust frustrations for the meaning that their rights from the First Amendment had been violated.
In Olive’s statement, he specifically addressed these concerns.
“We are a private entity, not a government entity,” Olive said in a statement. “We have policies and guidelines throughout the student handbook and the academic catalog that limit certain rights you might otherwise have elsewhere, such as at home or in a public place. The most important thing to me on this issue, however, is what I shared earlier.When someone puts on a uniform or performs a function on behalf of Bluefield College, that person now represents Bluefield College.Now higher expectations are placed on who can or cannot he may not do or say “as a representative of the College”.
Christian said he was frustrated by this response and argued that the position of the players on the team should not determine their ability to protest against racism.
“Dr. Olive told us our rights are limited when we put Bluefield on our chest,” Christian said. “Well, this t-shirt is basically shackles for us. Now we feel like we’re chained now, and that’s not right. And when this t-shirt comes out of us, we’re still black in the United States and I have to deal with that reality.”
A Bluefield football player left training on Thursday also in protest of the suspensions, and football veteran Collin O’Donnell issued a statement of support for basketball players. Christian also said he grew up in a military home and that his grandfather was a veteran.
“We don’t respect the flag or the country. That’s not our intention,” Christian said. “People take it on because they don’t try to understand why we do it.”
Christian said he hopes the public debate over the protests will force Bluefield to enact major changes, including hiring more teachers and black staff and establishing more student groups to debate and participate in important social justice issues.
Bluefield’s next game will be at home Monday against Milligan University.