Centering Your Stories

The Alumni Board strives to connect alumni with one another and with Macalester, and each board member supports those efforts by joining a working group focused on athletics, career connections, or diversity.

In 2021 and 2022, the Alumni Board’s athletics working group is delving into how stories from the past can inform the present and shape priorities for the future—and how alumni athletes’ experiences reverberate far beyond in-game memories. “Athletics is a lens into broader political discussions that were happening at each step in the college’s history,” says chair Matthew Bergeron ’08. “There are lessons to learn from stories from the past.”

Last year at Reunion, alumni shared their experiences as BIPOC athletes at Macalester in the 1970s at a panel put together by Eric Anderson ’75. This year, the working group will again center stories from that decade, but this time with a focus on the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX, which ensures equal access to activities at institutions that receive federal funding. At Macalester, Title IX’s impact included launching varsity women’s athletic teams for the first time in the college’s history.

Alumni Board members are working with the Athletics Department and Archives to learn more—and they want to hear from athletes who were involved in building the women’s athletics program at both the varsity and club levels. “We want to tell that story as part of Reunion this year—the first decade of Mac women’s athletics—but we don’t yet know the story we need to tell,” says Bergeron. “I have no doubt that steps forward were contentious and incremental. What did the college do in the ’70s and ’80s that led to the current programs? What lessons from early successes and mistakes can we apply to other endeavors today? It’s important to be honest about how we got to where we are today.”

Share your story

• Were you part of women’s athletics at Macalester before or after Title IX and the rise of women’s athletics? Email interim director of alumni engagement Erin Updike at [email protected].

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