The Power of One

"A Hero For Daisy" was one of the movies that we watched in class about the Yale's women's crew team in 1976. This movie centered on one athlete in particular, Chris Ernest, which because of her there are now equal rights for the men and women's crew teams at Yale University. The film has some of the old crew members of 1976 talk about the horrible conditions that the women's team had to endure, such as not being able to shower after practice while still having to sit in the buses in freezing temperatures and wait for the men's teams to shower before heading back to campus. Chris finally deiced that enough was enough and organized her teammates into a very unorthodox protest. Ernest and her 18 teammates marched up to the athletic directors office with numerous reports from the "New York Times" and took of their shirts exposing their bare breast and back with only two words written on each side: Title IX, repeating the line "These are the bodies Yale is exploiting." Because of this dramatic protest Yale changed its ways and began to give the women's crew team the same privileges as the males. It is because of Chris Ernest and her protest for implementing Title IX into the Yale crew teams that all athletes that come into Yale's will receive the same treatment and respect no matter what gender they might be.