Freshman anthropology major Stephen Attaway and his friends attend almost every home Stony Brook men’s basketball game. They sit near the front of the student section, cheering for every 3-pointer and booing each foul call.
However, among Stony Brook University’s nearly 27,000 students, their dedication to the Seawolves is in the minority.
“A lot of students either don’t know the games are happening or they’re just kind of apathetic towards it,” Attaway said. “People always ask me, I say, ‘Are you going to the game?’ They say ‘Oh, don’t they suck?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, not always.’ There’s not really a passion for our school spirit.”
Attaway’s experience represents a larger trend: most Stony Brook students are not invested in their sports teams. Students and staff alike acknowledge this with a resigned acceptance, and yet no one involved with the University has pinpointed a solution.
Given the number of students enrolled at Stony Brook University and the millions of people in surrounding Nassau and Suffolk counties, it should not be hard to regularly fill Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium’s 12,300 seats for football games and Island Federal Arena’s 4,000 seats for men’s basketball games. Taking that into account, Stony Brook’s attendance numbers have remained under its potential throughout the years.
In October 2021, The Statesman began a series of interviews and data collection to determine the reason for Stony Brook’s athletic apathy. The results show that the school’s athletics department has largely failed to engage its student body with its sports teams.
However, comments from students around the University revealed that high academic pressure and a low percentage of students that live on campus make the issue more prevalent at Stony Brook than at comparable universities.
Apathy among students
The investigation showed that the indifference exists because of a catch-22: students don’t care because their peers don’t care. In a survey conducted over Facebook and Instagram, 94 out of 157 students said they had no emotional investment in Stony Brook’s sports teams. Just 15 described themselves as “very invested.”
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