Stanford swimming made international news two times in 2016, for very different reasons. In Rio, Stanford women raced to a record eight Olympic golds. Months earlier, former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, who had sexually assaulted a woman on campus, received world media attention for a judge’s reasoning behind a light sentence and excuses from his family for his behavior.

Given the huge successes in Rio and Stanford’s Olympic tradition, a record number of alumni will undoubtedly attend the Stanford swimming alumni meet on October 21 and draw a large crowd. The alumni meet is a yearly tradition that both the men’s and women’s teams take part in.The event can be an incredible experience for the swimmers — as a freshman on the Stanford women’s team, I remember feeling overwhelmed with pride that I was swimming in the same pool with such heroes as Jenny Thompson, Tara Kirk and Lea Maurer.

This year, I also considered flying to Stanford, putting on my old swim cap that I’ve kept all these years and jumping into the water that I used to call home. During the 2016 Olympic races, I read the news first thing every morning to see how the Stanford women were doing — among them Simone Manuel, Lia Neal, Maya DiRado and then soon-to-be freshman Katie Ledecky. I cried when I saw DiRado win gold and was thrilled by the historical moment when Manuel won gold in the 100 free. I even made my girlfriend watch Misty Hyman’s 200 fly win from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, one of my favorite races of all time. Stanford women’s swimming has always had a knack for golds and upsets.

Then I remembered how I felt when I shared something else this year about Stanford swimming with my girlfriend: the night we read a woman’s statement to Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who had sexually assaulted her and received an unusually light sentence. I sobbed as I recalled how, when I was captain, a teammate confided in me that she had been drugged and didn’t know what had happened. I remembered the time the men’s coach asked me to switch to the men’s practice because I was swimming so well and then yelled at the male swimmers for swimming “so slow that a girl could beat them.” I recalled troubling comments I heard at an alumni meet, such as “Ew, look at that! I can’t even look at that,” in reference to an older Stanford swimming alumna wearing a swimsuit. I remembered countless social situations in which I heard men’s team members attack my teammates as fat, ugly or slutty.

My experiences span only four years, but they speak to the deep disregard for women in Stanford men’s swimming culture. Whether or not each individual on the team was explicitly sexist, the unapologetic disrespect for women was so blatant that even as a proud, queer woman, I found myself reduced to sobbing with frustration years later.

So when I was considering attending the alumni meet in order to celebrate the incredible, history-making feats of 2016, I realized that Stanford swimming is facing two very different legacies this year. One legacy is of athletic prowess, teamwork, friendship and overcoming extremely entrenched racism in our sport; and the other is of the darkest, all too common expressions of white, hetero-patriarchal exceptionalism that led one individual to rape a woman and barely feel remorse.

What angers me, and what will ultimately keep me from returning to Stanford’s campus, is what I am certain will happen there this October. I can’t watch as the men who judged and despised us rely on the success of a new generation of Stanford women’s swimmers to recuperate their egos and pride in their own program. In order to truly recuperate pride in their program, Stanford men’s swimming team and alumni need to take a closer look at the culture of sexism and exceptionalism that allowed this to happen and make connections between their own behavior and that of Brock Turner. They should of course celebrate the accomplishments of the women this year in Rio, but do so humbly and with reflection on their own treatment of women.

— Laura Pierson Wadden ’09

Contact Laura Pierson Wadden at lpw ‘at’ posteo.de.