The petition was published on Jan 22, and has over 1,000 verified signatures. @MANHATTAN.CHEER/INSTAGRAM
Mary Haley, Senior Writer & Joshua Reichard, Asst. A&E
Manhattan University’s (MU) cheerleading team faced uncertainty after its initial plans to go to the National Cheerleading Association (NCA) College Nationals in Daytona Beach, Fla. were interrupted. After months of practicing for the competition, the team reported to the MU community that the school was not allowing the team to attend this year.
After the team reportedly received the news from MU that they were not able to attend, they responded by creating a petition. The petition quickly gained attention from the community, collecting over 1,000 signatures in support of the cheer team. Less than a week later, the team announced that the reported decision had been reversed and the team would be attending the competition as originally planned.
According to the school, it was never said that the team could not attend Nationals, but rather only that the school would not be able to support the team financially due to a lack of cheerleaders’ attendance at men’s and women’s basketball games throughout the fall semester and over the winter break. It was reported that the school spent $17,000 to send the cheer team to Florida last year.
The petition put out by the team stated their issue and context as to why this was a pressing matter to the team members.
“The Manhattan University Cheerleading Team has worked tirelessly all this season—practicing, fundraising and representing our university,” the petition wrote. “After earning a qualifying bid to compete at Nationals in Daytona, one of the highest honors in collegiate cheerleading, the team was informed MONTHS later that the university will not allow them to attend this year.”
Nicole Brosnan, director of student engagement, wrote to The Quadrangle clarifying the school’s position.
“The University never forbade the team from going to Nationals. The University simply could not in good conscience financially support the team due to its failure to attend a significant portion of the games this fall and throughout the winter break.”
However, the team claims that attendance at many games is difficult, as cheerleaders are not offered on-campus housing during the winter break, as well as a lack of priority scheduling for members, meaning that many of their classes overlap with scheduled games. Priority scheduling is only offered to student-athletes on campus, not to members of club sports.
“The reasoning behind this decision is because of the school’s dissatisfaction for this club team’s game attendance, especially for break games,” the cheerleaders’ petition said. “The break games that [cheerleaders] aren’t offered housing for, so the girls would either have to pay for housing or make their commutes from over an hour while paying for gas… This club still, throughout the season, attends 20+ home games on top of all their practice, schoolwork, work to get money, family matters, homework, fundraising events and classes; the classes that they have to be at during game time since they aren’t offered priority scheduling because they ‘aren’t athletes’.”
On the other hand, student engagement’s perspective is that cheer should still be making a higher effort to attend games. When asked during an in-person interview conducted by The Quadrangle, Brosnan elaborated on student engagement’s position.
“We completely understand if [cheerleaders] are not at games because of class, since cheer is not considered an athletic team, they’re considered a club,” Brosnan said. “Only athletes on campus get priority scheduling… We do not expect [cheerleaders] to skip class to come, but we know that not the whole team is in class at the same time. We’ve also had weekend games where we still haven’t seen a presence, and games over the break.”
The position from the university and the position from the team are conflicting, as the team claims they knew about their need to self-fund the trip from the beginning. According to the team, the university originally stated that they would not be allowed to attend Nationals at all, later reversing this decision and clarifying that the trip would not receive school funding. Daniella Beggins, senior co-captain of Manhattan Cheer, spoke about the reversal of the decision, which MU denies.
“We actually got an email today from, I believe, the vice president of student engagement, and she basically said that what we were told was incorrect, that we are allowed to go but we would have to fund everything ourselves, which was what we thought from the beginning,” Beggins said. “We’re completely thrown off from her email because someone under her told us that we weren’t allowed to go. Now in the email… it’s saying, ‘Oh, you guys are able to go, the school is just not going to fund it’.”
Beggins was surprised by the attention that the petition had gained from the community.
“I was the one who started the petition and had the idea, and honestly, I had no idea that so many people would support the cheerleading team, just because the school itself doesn’t really give us much support to begin with,” Beggins said. “It was nice to see support from so many people, especially the students.”
Beggins noticed that many members of the community, including other athletes at the school, were publicly showing their support for the team.
“I was checking up on the petition, and we even had the basketball players signing too,” Beggins said.
Despite the confusion, the team was grateful for the decision reversal, thanking the MU community for its support via Instagram.
“From the bottom of our hearts, thank you to everyone who took the time to sign and share our petition. Your support, voices and belief in us truly meant more than words can express,” they wrote. “We have gotten confirmation that we are able to go to Nationals.”
The Office of Student Engagement concluded its message to The Quadrangle explaining that the team is not in jeopardy and will continue to perform.
“We want to emphasize that the cheer program is not and never was in jeopardy, and the team will continue to participate in scheduled events, including the MAAC Tournament in March.”