Amelia Stapley plays for Queen's Women's Rugby team and is a member of Athletics & Recreation's Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Indigenization (EDII) Task Force. At the 2021 U SPORTS Women's Rugby Championship in the fall, Stapley was Queen's recipient of the Col. W.D.C. Holmes Award, recognizing off-field contributions to the game of rugby by a Canadian University Women's Rugby student-athlete.


 
Stapley sat down to discuss her off-field work at Queen's and the BIPoC student-athlete network and mentorship program.
 
You have done a lot of work with EDII causes and were recognized with the Holmes Award at the U SPORTS Women's Rugby Championship. How has that work impacted your time at Queen's?
 
I've only really been diving into the EDII stuff in my third and fourth year. Once I got a handle on university as a whole, I was a lot more open to doing EDII work. I think it's really opened my eyes to not only how my experience is different from my non-BIPoC peers, but how the BIPoC community as a whole is represented and how our experiences have differed and continue to differ from the stereotypical Queen's experience, and the experiences that are often advertised. 
 
It's also given me a better awareness of how little conversation has been produced about equity and diversity and the BIPoC experience of students and athletes and administrators at Queen's. That would be the biggest difference it's made in my experience, making me more aware of both sides of it.
 
How have your teammates supported you in your initiatives while at Queen's? 
 
Queen's Women's Rugby have been really open-minded and super eager to get involved in any way they can and be educated as much as possible. When a teammate of mine and I originally brought up incorporating equity and diversity education into our practices as a team, and into our socials and our scope of attention, (Head Coach) Dan (Valley) was really open to it. He acknowledged that it wasn't something he was super comfortable doing, but if it was an initiative we wanted to take on, he would give us the resources, support, and access that we needed.
 
Again, that opened my eyes to how little people know about equity and diversity and I think because of the lack of representation and the lack of BIPOC student-athletes at Queen's, it makes it really difficult for the larger Queen's community and the varsity teams and clubs communities to start to do EDII work. I don't think that a lot of people feel that it's their position to, or that they have enough education.
 
As a varsity community as a whole, there's been less, and I don't think that it's in any way, ill-intended. I just think that because of the lack of representation and the lack of diversity a lot of my peers are exposed to, it flies under the radar until you have a BIPoC teammate who is really comfortable expressing their experiences and making people aware of it. 
 
What do you want a BIPoC student-athlete network and mentorship program at Queen's to look like?
 
My answer has definitely changed since we've been communicating with other BIPoC athletes and hearing their experiences and the things they need. The more exposure I've had to other athletes' needs and wants, the better grasp I've got on what my dream is for it.
 
Ideally, I would like it to be a place where we can be supported and where we can find community that share our identities. We can share our experiences and have a sounding board if something happens and we're not comfortable advocating for ourselves just yet, we have a community of people who are comfortable listening and commiserating with us. A place that we can find support and comfort, a place where we can share our experiences and have older students give advice and support and provide those resources that aren't always available to us elsewhere.
 
How would your experience at Queen's have been different as a younger student-athlete with a BIPoC student-athlete network and mentorship program?
 
I think right from the get-go it would have been very different. Being able to connect with the older students before I got here would have given me a much better grasp of what to expect coming to school.
 
A lot of the talk that I heard coming into Queen's was people were very surprised that as a BIPoC athlete, I was choosing Queen's over some of the larger city schools that may have catered a little bit more to diversity. I think having a community of people reach out and say, 'hey, we do exist, we are here, and there are people you can come to.' Right from the get-go that would have made a huge difference.
 
As a first- and second-year student, as an athlete we have so much to wrap our heads around. For rugby, we dive right into training camp before we start school. And then there's Gaels 101 and tutoring and travelling and there's this instant family that you're apart of that doesn't always necessarily provide the kinds of marginalized communities that I think would have made a difference.
 
If I had had contact with an older version of myself, it would have been huge to have someone to validate those experiences and someone to talk things over with. And just encourage me that there are those of us that get to fourth year and we can make a difference and we can exist with our identities and our experiences in the Queen's environment.
 
What types of information or advice do you think would help current BIPoC student-athletes just joining the Queen's Varsity Sports community? 
 
There are a lot of things I would love to say to incoming athletes or people considering Queen's. Firstly, try and keep an open mind. It can be very daunting, especially being recruited by a predominately white institution. It can be very daunting imagining yourself as a minority in that situation, especially for people who came from high schools that were diverse and who had access to those kinds of communities.
 
I would definitely say try and keep an open mind and find people who share similar interests once you get here. A lot of times, as athletes, it does mean branching outside of athletics, and that is ok. I know a lot of us are not always comfortable doing that right away but it's ok to find people who share your experiences and that you can verbalize those experiences to.
 
And lastly, I think it's really important to learn the language to express your identity and your experience. That's one of the really amazing things about coming to university, you have access to people who can teach you about diversity and different identities, and how to advocate for yourself and speak in an educated way about your identity and your experiences.
 
And it's also ok to not always want to be an advocate or an activist for your position or for people in a similar position. It's not easy; it's very, very hard. It takes time, it takes emotional energy, and it's ok not to want to do that all the time. I think a lot of times BIPoC individuals and specifically in this case, athletes, are expected to take on the role of our own advocates and our own activists and make that change by ourselves. If there's one thing that I've learned that I'd like to tell younger kids it's that you don't always have to do that, it's ok if you're not always comfortable being in that role. You can just exist and be proud of your identity and express your identity without always having to be an activist for yourself.
 
What impact do you hope a BIPoC student-athlete network and mentorship program will have on the Varsity Sports community at Queen's?
 
I would love for it to become the norm. I would love for it to be so well-known that BIPoC athletes think of it as a given. If they have an experience that they'd like to share, or if they need to know where to get their hair cut, or someone makes a comment, that they just have that as a given. That it's as natural as going to talk to your team, to know that you have that kind of support.
 
For the Queen's community as a whole, just knowing that we exist. I think we're definitely seen as a bit of a rarity, but to have a BIPoC student-athlete network and a mentorship program that highlights our existence but also our achievements. We are a minority group but we're athletes and we're Academic All-Canadians, and OUA All-Stars. Being able to highlight that and recognize there was work that went into that, and there were a plethora of different experiences and identities that came together to create that. I think that would be my dream, just have everyone know and be comfortable with it and have it become part of an athlete's daily life.