The America East’s decision to rule Stony Brook ineligible for postseason contention in all sports as the program moves to the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) in July has drawn outrage extending all the way out to national basketball reporters. Here on campus, the people most affected by this action spoke out in defiance to make their voices heard.

On Wednesday, Feb. 9, Seawolves student-athletes took measures into their own hands by organizing a protest at the Stony Brook men’s basketball game against UMass Lowell.

The effort was led by the Stony Brook Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), which held a poster-making session inside the Goldstein Family Student-Athlete Development Center at 5 p.m., two hours before tip-off.

“It’s really nice that all of the different teams are coming together, because we don’t always tend to see each other together,” Claire Lewis, a junior on Stony Brook’s swimming team, said in an interview with The Statesman. “All of us are banding together, supporting our athletes on the floor who are still working through all of this.”

Lewis and her team became the first Seawolves to feel the impact of the decision, as the America East Swimming and Diving championship meet began on Thursday, Feb. 10, with Stony Brook still barred.

“Everyone is really upset about everything that’s gone down,” Lewis said. “The America East has been a great place for Stony Brook to grow and build the athletic program that we have. It’s upsetting that we’ve worked our entire season to not be able to finish it out.”

Dozens of signs were displayed in the student section, with the video board drawing extra attention to the protest during a first half media timeout. Loud chants of “Let us play!” echoed throughout Island Federal Arena. After Stony Brook scored, the student-athletes only cheered louder and raised their signs higher up into the air.

“Stony Brook is a family,” guard Tykei Greene said. “If one goes down, it hurts everybody else, so I feel like the support they gave us, it means a lot as well.”

The messages read on the posters included “Was the pandemic not enough?,” “At a date TBD, they chose February 1,” “Our mental health matters … right?” and “Hartford can … why not us?,” referencing the America East allowing Hartford to compete for the postseason championship despite also leaving the conference after this season as it transitions to the Division III level.

That inconsistency was similarly referenced by Stony Brook’s leading scorer, guard Anthony Roberts.

“It’s wrong because they let Hartford play,” Roberts said. “But at the end of the day, it is what it is. We’ve just got to keep going out there and just play.”

Director of Athletics Shawn Heilbron also expressed his shock over how the America East did not accommodate Stony Brook as it did Hartford.

“We were aware of the by-law, but we were also aware that Hartford had been given the opportunity to compete when they announced their decision to leave,” Heilbron said. “We’ve been pretty clear in our communication throughout that preserving our student-athletes’ opportunities was paramount and there was nothing more important than that. And so to receive that news, while we knew it was a possibility given the by-law, we certainly were surprised by the ultimate decision.”

The by-law in the America East Conference Constitution states that “upon notice of an institution’s intention to withdraw from America East, the institution’s teams become ineligible, on a date to be determined by the remaining members of the Board of Presidents, to compete for Conference championships.”

The ultimate decision laid in the hands of the nine other university presidents of America East schools, who had the choice to decide when — if at all — Stony Brook would be ineligible for postseason contention.

“We’ve worked so hard this entire season,” Lewis said in a message to the administrators who made the choice. “We practice and go through all these different meets and games, all these days of recovery, balancing schoolwork and outside lives. And then it could just be taken away from us in a second.”

The CAA formally announced Stony Brook’s addition alongside Monmouth and Hampton on Tuesday, Jan. 25, in the middle of the winter sports season and before the spring season. Neither Monmouth in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference nor Hampton in the Big South Conference have been barred from their respective league’s automatic bids.

“Those schools have their own conversations with the CAA, and obviously it was the goal to have them timed up as far as when an announcement was made,” Heilbron said. 

Still, it became worth pondering if Stony Brook could have delayed the official announcement until after all sports seasons had concluded.

“When we first started engaging in conversations with the CAA, I was very open and honest with our commissioner in the America East, and ultimately, those conversations have to come to a resolution,” Heilbron said. “There’s a finite window of time that you have to accept the opportunity … To be fair to my athletic director colleagues, to President McInnis, to the Board, once we arrived at the decision, we let them know.”

He also disclosed that America East by-laws require two years of notice in advance for conference changes, but that would result in an even longer period of immediate ineligibility.

“The reality was, once we made our decision, I felt it was in the best interest of all involved to let the America East know rather than just hold on to it,” Heilbron said. “I expected consideration for our student-athletes. We obviously didn’t get it.”

A week after the America East ruled Stony Brook ineligible, the Horizon League announced that it would do the same to UIC for joining the Mountain Valley Conference, sparking similar ire. The CAA, Stony Brook’s future home, also punished James Madison for its departure to the Sun Belt Conference.

“It’s not just us. There’s a much bigger picture,” Lewis said. “We need to focus more on the student-athletes and how we can benefit them rather than punishing them in situations that they have no control over.”

America East did not get back with comment in time for the publication of this piece. 

Jeremy Portnoy contributed reporting.