OH YEAH? NAME FIVE PLAYERS.

Art by Alex Youngquest

“BDJ sports guys,” “finance bros” and “frat boys”—anyone who’s spent some time on Syracuse University’s campus (or at any school, for that matter) is probably familiar with these titles. Whether it’s the guy in the group project who can’t stop pitching stories about the Eagles or the one-night stand walking around Whitman in business professional, men adhering to these stereotypes are everywhere in college life.

While they’re usually the butt of the joke—and hey, we’re laughing too—many of these descriptors come from and contribute to places of real issue in male-dominated fields. As much as SU would like us to think it’s tirelessly working toward gender equality in every industry, we’re not quite convinced.

Year after year, men make up the minority of SU’s population—for Fall 2025, male students make up 42% of the first year enrolling class profile. But this distribution is far from consistent across schools. The incoming freshman male proportion peaks at 71% in the School of Information Studies, closely followed by 70% in the College of Engineering & Computer Science and 65% in Falk College of Sport.

While there are programs in place to support women in these fields during and beyond their college years, we see a need for even greater top-down, systemic and meaningful change. From hiring more female professors to investing in marketing to a diverse pool of prospective students, SU has far further to go in the task of balancing representation across its majors.

Sport management and sport analytics (SAL) within Falk are two programs with the starkest disparity in gender representation. Sport analytics’ largest ever cohort of women was nine out of 70 total students in the class of 2028, according to SAL sophomore Rachel Harris.

This makes clubs like Sport Analytics Women (SAW) especially important. SAW helps build connections for members through professional development and networking events.

“It was great just meeting the other girls. It was a good safe space,” Harris, director of outreach for SAW, said. “Definitely feeling that support, knowing we’re all kind of feeling surrounded. And they also connect us with women in the industry and [we] learn from them.”

The faculty advisor for SAW, Professor Keri Rubenstein, was hired last fall as the first female professor in SAL. She works with program coordinator Jackie Dorchester on the club’s trips and events. Beside these two, the faculty in the program are overwhelmingly male, and all of Harris’ classes have been taught by men.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve had negative interactions with any of my professors that I felt have been misogynistic in tone. I also wouldn’t say I’ve even felt direct misogyny from any of my classmates. But there definitely is a boys’ club culture that I think just comes naturally, and I would say some guys are better about it than others,” Harris said.

Harris would like to see greater numbers of women as faculty and students, a goal that is even further out of reach this year: the SAL class of 2029 has only four women out of 62 total. This drop-off happened despite efforts by the Falk dean, Jeremy Jordan, who frequently speaks about supporting women in the field and arranges networking opportunities with groups like Women Leaders in Sports.

But no matter how well-supported the women in the major are by voices like Jordan’s, until their numbers can stand up to the rest, there will be inherent challenges.

“A lot of times in our classes if there’s a group project, all the girls group together. And then every other group is all guys,” Harris said. “We don’t want to set ourselves out from them as well, because the networking is so crucial to it. And you need to kind of know all the guys. Unfortunately, we need them, because they’re also gonna have jobs.”

Even at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, a female-dominated school, there are spaces where women feel intimidated because of the “BDJ men” idea. Eloise Pearsall, a sophomore studying both television, radio and film sports media and SAL, dealt with imposter syndrome her freshman year in places like the broadcast studio.

While she’s had some very positive experiences with male professors and classmates, that isn’t always the case.

“When referring to athletes or managers, he uses ‘he.’ Once he was referring to lipstick as the opposite of football,” Pearsall said of a sports writing professor. “It’s kind of hard to tune it out, but it happens every class so you just kind of have to ignore that.”

Once again, extracurricular organizations are a critical part of a support system for the women in these majors. Pearsall is the executive producer of Women’s Sports Update on the Orange Television Network and has enjoyed her time working in ACC Network.

“Doing Women’s Sports Update and recruiting was a little intimidating, because it was like: do guys really wanna be talking about women’s sports?” Pearsall said. “But then this year we have a really great group of guys who are passionate about women’s sports, and it makes me really motivated to keep the show going and be surrounded by good people who want to make women’s sports more of a focus.”

Aside from the few who will mansplain women’s sports before admitting they don’t actually watch women’s games, there are plenty of students throughout SU who are excited about them. Faculty in various schools mirror and encourage this trend and some are doing individual projects on organizations like the WNBA.

But these individual feelings are not reflected in the decisions that SU makes. Instead of touting collegiate and professional women’s teams as opportunities for prospective and current students in management, athletics or communications, it seems like all of the school’s resources and marketing power get poured into football and men’s basketball.

We get that these sports are money-makers for the school, and no one’s expecting the programs to be scaled back. All we’re saying is that other teams (like the 2024 ACC Champion women’s rowing) have the power to attract and retain more students if given more of a spotlight.

Beyond sports, elevating more women into positions of leadership in areas from engineering to investment banking is necessary to create the safe spaces that all students deserve.

Here’s to hoping next year brings more women in underrepresented fields to our campus. For those of you already here: we see you, and we’re rooting for you.