At the annual Buckinghams, the Student-Athlete Showcase of Excellence Tuesday night, there were many awards and honors given out, and many student-athletes who showcased their talents, to much applause. That night, no one got more applause than freshman track and field athlete Tiffany Ike.
Ike, who hails from Houston, Texas, is an accomplished poet and activist in addition to her success on the track. At the Buckinghams, she combined these passions and performed an original spoken word poem entitled “To Whom it May Concern,” which touched on many issues of racism that people of color face in college.
“It’s basically a poem that speaks specifically about how it is time that we start to notice that Black lives do matter,” Ike said.
Ike’s poem included impassioned stanzas about life as a student of color in college such as this one:
“Hell does not recruit with pitchforks and tightropes. Does not congregate in mobs at your front steps. It sits in your classroom, tells you to turn to unrepresentative textbooks, passes out invites to its parties and makes sure to forget the back of the bus. College.”
When her entire poem was done, a good majority of the room full of mostly student-athletes got out of their seats and gave Ike a standing ovation. Many of Ike’s fellow student-athletes said the poem left an impression on them.
“[Ike’s poem] was really good,” said Mellissa Channell of the women's hockey team. “It was something I’m not really used to seeing, but she did a very good job and she was very passionate about it. It was just something that brought the issues to the forefront.”
Channell’s teammate Sarah Nurse agreed. “It was very thought provoking, very riveting. It got people thinking in the crowd and it was more than just a performance,” Nurse said.
Perhaps the biggest fan of the night though was men’s basketball player Nigel Hayes.
“True story, I DM’ed her on Instagram right afterwards and told her that it was a great job and if she had the video link, to send it to me so I could tweet it out to the world,” Hayes said. “I told her it was that wonderful, and I think a lot more people than just us student-athletes should hear it.”
Ike knew that the Buckinghams came at an especially crucial time to educate many in the athletics department, in the wake of many instances of racism and bias against people of color occurring both on the UW campus and off.
“I thought it was an important opportunity to be in a space where a lot of people who don’t have to necessarily be in the line of fire for a lot of the bad things that are happening in the community, they don’t actually have to talk about it and things like that,” Ike said. “I thought that this was the perfect space [to perform the poem], especially in front of a group full of people who can change the school, being athletes who have a lot of power.”
When asked about how student-athletes specifically can take action involving issues of racism, Ike didn’t mince her words.
“I think a lot of times, [student-athletes] just let it ride and do our sport and do nothing about it,” Ike said. “This was a great chance to speak out and have my voice heard as well as the voices of Black people everywhere.”
