Don’t Just Invite Me to Your Committee
Introduction
Something that is all too common in higher education, and collegiate esports especially so, is tokenized representation via committees, speaking engagements, and other formats where individuals are approached as subject matter experts on concepts relating to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. While committees are especially guilty of this, and doubly so at Primarily White Institutions (PWI’s), it can be seen broadly across almost all facets of campus. Being one of only a handful of queer staff at my institution, and being only one of two transgender people, I have been looked to as a one-stop-shop for answers and solutions to solve the issues plaguing the larger marginalized community both at my institution and in the industry.
The dictionary definition of tokenize is “to hire, treat, or use (someone) as a symbol of inclusion or compliance with regulations, or to avoid the appearance of discrimination or prejudice” (source) and it can be seen in even the most innocent of places. There’s this running joke that university marketing people get the camera out whenever they see a racially diverse group of students on campus, but it holds true more often than it doesn’t if you look at the marketing for most universities. Having diverse representation in marketing material is incredibly important and representation means the world to marginalized students, but treating these students as the only representatives for their whole identity group is harmful. While this is obviously an edge case, the larger theme of tokenization can be seen in many areas on a university campus and is especially prevalent in esports.
In my own experience, and from talking with others in a similar spot to myself, tokenization in esports comes via committee invites, speaking on panels, and where we are asked to contribute our time. Believe it or not, I have actually turned down a few committee invites due to the way in which I felt I would be monolithically representing a whole group as a part of the committee. The same goes for panels and speaking engagements where myself and my peers have felt tokenized and othered in spaces that were even dedicated to us because we were treated like zoo animals more than experts. One notable example comes from a panel the previous school year where a group did a panel series where the first day was the “old guard” of collegiate esports consisting of 30+ year-old cishet white men and the second panel, which I was on, was the token DEI panel where we were not asked the same questions and our topics were more focused on DEI and not the state of the industry like the previous panel.
In this paper, I want to address how tokenization manifests throughout higher education and collegiate esports, speak to my experiences being tokenized as a part of the queer community, discuss the dangers of monolithic representation, and some suggestions on how to alleviate these issues. I will be fully transparent in saying that I don’t have all the answers, and nor should I, but starting a dialogue about it is the way we progress forward and ensure that we address these ongoing issues. While this is not confined to higher education in any way and has become a systemic, cultural issue, I don’t have the capacity to speak on the broader cultural phenomena as it far outweighs the scope of this paper. As such, I will be mostly confining this paper to just higher education and collegiate esports practices.
Authors Note
As we settle into the new school year, eager to get back to work with our students and get back on the tournament grind, new committees are forming and speaker series are being created constantly. It is important to get ahead of this issue and discuss the broader concerns at play when I evaluate whether I want to be on a speaker series or committee. With collegiate esports schedules being notoriously dense, the time of program staff is at a premium and as such, we need to all be cognizant of our time and where we want to dedicate our energy when it comes down to it, so this felt timely to discuss.
I have had several conversations about this topic and my frustrations surrounding it with some excellent industry colleagues including Kaitlin “Kaitlineh” Teniente (she/her), Harley “HarleyLAdler” Adler (they/them), and Stephanie “Keilet” Takemoto (she/her) and this paper is a collection of my thoughts as well as components inspired by them. Tokenization and monolithic representation is not something that will disappear overnight, but steps can be taken by the whole community to minimize their effects and change the norm. We are an industry that prides itself on how fast things change, so why not make our change purposeful for the betterment of the marginalized community that also calls it home.
I will also be referencing the 2022 Trends In Collegiate Esports Report (hereby referred to as the TR) for some data in this piece for two primary reasons. Firstly, I wrote the DEI section and the data it contains is directly relevant to this piece. Second, I want to show that I am not just citing anecdotal evidence but rather discussing things that parallel the already given data. I am thankful I could contribute as a co-author for the report and it has been an endlessly useful tool.
What is Tokenization
As I mentioned earlier, tokenize is defined as “to hire, treat, or use (someone) as a symbol of inclusion or compliance with regulations, or to avoid the appearance of discrimination or prejudice”. The modern-day cultural zeitgeist sees tokenization manifest in virtually all areas, but it is especially prominent in marketing and other such media. In a race to be inclusive, brands are often seen promoting with members of marginalized communities featured more prominently, but it tends to fall on deaf ears as they stray further away from the true message and just wish to appear inclusive versus actually being inclusive.
One of the best examples of this is the Pride collection of merchandise at Target. What started as an innocent way to show some inclusivity with cute rainbow merchandise quickly devolved into incredibly tacky, campy, and frankly demeaning takes on queer representation that were then pulled this year in the face of a loud minority of individuals being hateful towards the concept. Creating a facade of inclusivity and then quickly buckling to people who aren’t even in the core audience shows how little actual inclusivity means and only serves to reinforce that queer people are to be tokenized and profited off of as opposed to supported. While this example comes from a retail setting, there are countless other examples that can be found regardless of what field you think of.
Tokenization is also unfortunately embedded in the legacy and current practices of higher education. Title IX is only a scant 51 years old but in that time, tokenization has become all but a staple on campus. At PWI’s, it is all too common that most, if not all, of the non-white or non-cishet staff at an institution work solely in specifically diversity-minded areas such as the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. While my institution is an exception to this due to purposefully diverse hiring practices and a systemic push for an inclusive culture, I have both read and heard horror stories of how marginalized staff get treated like outsiders in their own workplace. This sort of “othering” of BIPOC and/or queer staff can potentially make them afraid to speak up and unsure of whether it is safe for them to even do their job.
Just like in corporate America, there is a race to be inclusive in higher education as institutions and administrators recognize that the modern student population is no longer complacent with not seeing a part of themselves in the institution they choose to go into potentially lifelong debt to attend. In this push to create a more diverse campus, some institutions have, of course, made missteps, one of the most egregious being hiring someone who is not from a marginalized community to serve the campus marginalized community. While examples of this are slim, they do still exist and show the need for a greater number of trained individuals in higher education who are dedicated towards DEI and see it as a priority of theirs.
Moving now to collegiate esports, tokenization can be seen in many areas of the industry. As mentioned in my previous paper, A Look Ahead to DEI in Collegiate Esports for the 2023-24 School Year, a program’s culture can largely determine how safe members from marginalized communities feel in that program. With culture coming from the top as directors lead by example, it is clear to see that tokenization also comes from the top. If a director touts that they have a few marginalized students in their program and consistently shows them off, that is not supporting them, it's putting them on a pedestal where they have to fight to survive. All eyes are on them now and anything but spotless performance and behavior will be weaponized against them where a non-marginalized player would have potentially been given more grace.
One of the greatest fights around tokenization that I have seen in esports is surrounding marginalized gender seasons and tournaments such as Valorant’s Game Changers and Overwatch’s Calling All Heroes. One of the more famous detractors of marginalized gender events is Thorin who had a very public meltdown over ESL introducing a marginalized gender series for CSGO back in 2021, but quieter detractors also exist. I want to make it very clear that under no circumstances do marginalized gender events tokenize their players, nor do they create a discriminatory environment for men or any of the other claims that people like Thorin make. Instead, they create a safe and welcoming place for marginalized gender players to find their home in esports without fear that they are going to be accosted by opposing players for simply existing as we have seen happen time and time again in co-ed events or even just ranked.
When the topic of a GC or CAH style season in collegiate comes up, the same sorts of arguments spring up. To address the concept of tokenization specifically, almost every marginalized gender player that I have talked with or run tournaments with has said they want more events for them where they can feel safe like they have, not less. To have people say that these players feel marginalized by these events is a gross misrepresentation of their sentiment and it has been broadly used to prevent marginalized gender competition from existing in collegiate esports. Providing a purposefully inclusive space that is created for and by marginalized people does not act to exclude and tokenize them further and the argument that it does is comically out of touch.
Monolithic Representation
A topic that goes hand-in-hand with tokenization is the concept of monolithic representation. This is where a person is consistently leaned on for representation for a diverse community that they may not even fully be a part of via panels, committees, and general information gathering by other people throughout the industry. I have personally dealt with this frequently as, for a time last school year, I was speaking on panels almost weekly and specifically having DEI-related questions directed toward me. Because I was one of the loudest voices for queer rights and DEI topics as a whole in collegiate esports, people began to turn to me as one of the only voices, putting me on a pedestal and taking my word as law.
The emotional weight of monolithic representation cannot be understated as it feels like everything I say will be used to paint in broad strokes over the whole queer community in esports. I developed this anxiety about speaking on panels and raising my hand in committees where I was an outlier because I felt like I was under all this pressure, perceived or not, to be perfect and some idyllic, angelic representation of my identity groups. I felt like I couldn’t truly talk about issues because some “allies” may not like what I had to say. I stepped back from panels for a while to reevaluate my priorities and determine where it was worth spending my time and the few speaking engagements I had in the latter half of the school year were with groups and on panels where I knew I wouldn’t be the only person they ask DEI questions towards if that was the topic at all.
When looking at collegiate esports programs, the 2022 Trends Report does show a relatively healthy ecosystem with 82.5% of programs reporting their makeup being up to 50% from diverse backgrounds:
While it is unreasonable to expect programs to entirely consist of students from diverse backgrounds, seeing this be more akin to a bell curve and less a right-skewed curve would be a positive sign. Something frustrating when looking at DEI statistics is they tend to talk about percentages more than quantity, so in the TR I took a deeper dive into the actual number of female and fem-identifying staff and students in a program versus on a competitive team, and this is where you start to see a difference and how monolithic representation can be manifested even unknowingly:
This data shows that while there may be a fair number of female and fem-identifying students in a program, that number falls off drastically in the competitive side of things where we go from 84% of programs having up to 10 identified individuals to 92%.
This paints a much different picture and shows how few female and fem-identifying staff and students, the largest of the DEI categories in programs last year, actually exist in the competitive side of esports where many of us focus most of our time. It is also very easy to see how these players can feel tokenized and in many cases be seen as a monolithic representation of fem-identified gamers as a whole. Being one of maybe a handful of fem-identifying players in a program can have the program turn to them for representative matters that would paint them as a monolithic representative. All of the same emotional effects I dealt with speaking on panels and being treated like a monolithic representative are amplified for these players because they are sometimes the only one like them in their program, othering them from their peers and focusing all eyes on them as they still push to compete and be treated like any other player.
Inherent Politicization of Marginalized Communities
I would also be remiss if I did not discuss the inherent politicization of marginalized communities recently and how this can tokenize them further. When a state is trying to take away your right to exist, competing becomes the last of your worries. While some may think I am overstating this worry, it is very real. Speaking to the community that I know best, the politicization of the transgender community has been newsworthy almost daily this year. There have been 566 proposed anti-trans bills in the US this calendar year with 83 of them passing and yet another 358 still currently active (source). I have personally been contacted by a handful of transgender players who currently compete or live in states that are looking to erase them and who are seeking to transfer or find a way out of their state or institution simply to survive and some queer players I have talked with for recruiting purposes have gone out of their way to ask me whether they will be truly safe at IWU and in the broader community. Needing to have these sorts of conversations is truly heartbreaking but highlights how damaging this movement has been. Notable activist Erin Reed put out a sobering map for where transgender people can safely exist right now (source) and one of my biggest concerns is the states we go to for virtually all of our esports events are trying to criminalize my mere existence and outlaw transition for not just youth, but adults too. I have gone so far as to say to my supervisor that if we are invited to an event in Florida, I personally will be attending because the simple act of me wearing a dress is a criminal act under the guise of labeling me as a drag performer.
I see myself and others getting accosted for “bringing politics into the workplace” by mentioning that I am trans and I have had some people say that I am scaring off recruits by even talking about my identity. But mentioning who I am isn’t a political statement, it’s a statement of fact. I shouldn’t have to be fearful that someone figures out I’m trans because they might start treating me differently in everyday settings, let alone my own industry. It’s not just the queer community either, but BIPOC and especially Native American people as well who are being told that discussing their identity is making other people uncomfortable, therefore labeling it a political statement and only something to be discussed privately. Identities aren’t political and someone's mere existence isn’t something that should be up for debate.
I am frustrated seeing this cultural trend move into esports as well where the discussion of “trans women aren't women” keeps coming up when discussing whether they should be allowed in marginalized gender tournaments. Identity verification requirements that are demeaning at best only serve to “other” an already marginalized community and when a vocal member of the community steps forward to change things, they can often be then looked to as the only representative people go to for these topics. While I am not advocating for a “council of elders” sort of situation, leaning on one person ties back to this concept of how harmful monolithic representation is for that specific person and the community as a whole.
Avoiding and Preventing Tokenization
Avoiding and preventing tokenization is not a small task, nor is it one that can be accomplished alone. While I will be discussing it from a variety of perspectives and some methods to alleviate it, I am not the sole source of knowledge on this. Talk with those around you and do some thinking for yourself as what I discuss will need to be modified and adapted to fit your specific situation. As always, there is no singular solution to all of our DEI-related problems, and acting as if there is flies in the face of all logic and reasoning. I will be discussing these solutions from the perspective of a collegiate esports director or coach as they have the most power to broadly create change. While this can apply to club programs, it may need to be modified to fit your specific situation.
Preventing Tokenization of Students
Genuinely caring about the students: As baffling as the concept may be for some people in collegiate esports, actually caring about your students’ well-being and happiness, and showing them that you care, means a great deal to them. They are more likely to come to you with struggles, whether you are from their identity group or not if you show you care about them and want the best for them. It seems simple but the effort it takes to do this for all students in a program is no small feat. However, putting time into it pays off in the end. If you care about your students, you are more likely to think about them holistically rather than just as a checkbox on a diversity checklist.
Treat them as more than just a statistic: Along with the above point, marginalized students are more than just a statistic to show off to admin and say “Look how good we’re doing!”, they are actual human beings with their own emotions, struggles, successes, and many more things that need to be considered. Showing them that you see them as something solely to just show off to others when you need an example has the same energy as someone saying “But I have one black friend!” and is viewed the same way in my mind.
Listen: Genuinely, sit down and listen to your students. When they come to you with a concern, don’t blow it off, don’t sit there and tell them they’re seeing ghosts, and don’t tell them that you don’t value their feedback. If they felt like it was important enough to bring to you, then it is important enough to listen. I am so tired of marginalized communities bringing up an issue they’re having only for a non-marginalized administrator or program staff to fight them and tell them that they’re interpreting their own experience wrong. If you want students to not feel tokenized despite being one of maybe a handful of their identity in the program, actually listen to what they have to say and stop treating them like a show pony.
Preventing Tokenization of Staff
Don’t just invite me to your committee: There have been several committees I’ve been invited to or been on where it has openly been told to me that I am a diversity hire, and this experience rings true for other colleagues I have talked with as well. To not only say that I’m a diversity hire but to then not listen to me when you specifically ask me a DEI-related question defeats the purpose of ever having me there in the first place. The same goes for panels or any sort of environment where I am expected to contribute my thoughts on DEI policy and practices. If you invite someone to speak in some capacity, consider what you will do if they say something you don’t like. If you are going to dismiss them for acting contrary to your opinion, don’t bother having them there in the first place. Furthermore, if you do bring someone onto a committee or panel, don’t treat them like the sole representative for their identity. They are providing their opinions, not pure fact, so treat it as such too.
Identity is not the only factor: Identity isn’t the only factor that makes up a person and if someone is a professional in their field, they should be treated like one. This whole “stay in your lane” nonsense when it comes to DEI professionals in higher education is absurd and telling higher education professionals they can’t talk about non-DEI topics because that’s what they were hired for is a slap in the face to the notion that you respect them in any way.
Listen: Just like with students, listen. Listening is the most important thing when it comes to tokenization for staff members as they generally advocate for themselves. They shouldn’t have to advocate for themself in spite of someone else’s efforts. Listen to them first and address concerns going forward.
To be honest, all of this is to say that the best way to prevent tokenization and make someone feel welcome and not like an outlier is to genuinely want them there and care about them. Putting care first elevates everything else you do and caring about your students, staff, and anyone else around you goes much further than it otherwise might. Of course, there are still concerns about tokenization and monolithic representation, but that is something you address actively by working through it instead of passively letting it happen. Start with a conversation and let it take you where it may.
