Introducing Athlete Ally – Brandeis University

This story was originially published in February of 2025, but we wanted to spotlight Athlete Ally once again during Pride Month!

Over the past five years or so, student-athlete advocacy in the NCAA has grown by leaps and bounds. At Brandeis, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC), which has been an active part of student-athlete life for decades, has seen an increase in affinity groups. These smaller subsets of the SAAC enable student-athletes with shared experiences to have a place to grow within those groups and discuss issues that affect them. In addition to Student-Athletes of Color (SAOC) and Athletes Without Borders for international students, this year, Brandeis Athletics is sponsoring an Athlete Ally chapter for LGBTQ student-athletes.

The idea to bring an Athlete Ally chapter to Brandeis started in earnest during the spring of 2024 when Steven Bunson ’82 and his wife, Joy, who sits on the board of directors for the national Athlete Ally organization, reached out about a Brandeis student-athlete attending Athlete Ally’s annual Athlete Activism Summit.  Rani Balakrishna ’25 of the softball team, who currently serves as President of the Brandeis Student Union, eagerly accepted. 

For two-and-a-half days at the Summit in Louisville, Kentucky, last summer, Rani met with student-athletes, coaches and administrators from around the country and from all levels of the NCAA. 

“We brainstormed ideas and listened to speakers,” Rani said, including Dr. John Carlos, the bronze-medal-winning 200-meter runner from the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, known for his raised-fist protest along with gold medalist Tommie Smith on the podium. 

“We talked about how to be inclusive of queer folks through sports. One of the most important things I learned about being queer in collegiate athletics is that it doesn’t look like one thing at all.”

Inspired by her time at the summit, and with financial help from the Bunsons and other generous donors, and the on-the-ground assistance of staff members Dempsey and baseball coach Derek Carlson ’91. 

“I wanted to be involved with Athlete Ally because I think it is important for LGBTQIA+ athletes to compete as their authentic selves,” said coach Carlson. “It’s also important for us as coaches, administrators, and teammates to demonstrate the importance of inclusivity in sport.”

With a full plate on campus already, Rani worked diligently to find like-minded student-athletes who could help her start an Athlete Ally chapter at Brandeis.  Among those she enlisted were classmates and softball teammates Fiona Doiron ’25 and Anna Kolb ’25, and a pair of incoming first-years, Elle Yung ’28 of the track and field team and Jordan Wallace ’28, also of the softball team. 

Elle had been involved with advocacy at the Trinity School in New York City, serving as president of Trinity’s Gender Sexuality Alliance, where she was able to help educate the entire student body about her experiences living life as a queer person. She was also inspired by meeting another trans track student-athlete, Artemis Reynolds ’24. Jordan was drawn to Brandeis because of the level of acceptance she felt at Brandeis as a whole, through the University’s Gender and Sexuality Center. 

“Coming into college as a trans athlete, I felt the need to have a platform to educate people,” Elle said. “Not only that, considering the political climate we are in, queer athletes and queer people in general needed a support group and a sense of community in order to talk and get through the hard times.”

Since getting started last fall, Athlete Ally has focused on finding representation in the organization from all 19 of Brandeis varsity teams as well as the 22 club sports so that smaller moments can start to feel bigger and bigger.  The organization will hold its first big event on Friday, February 7, when it hosts a Pride Night during Brandeis’s basketball doubleheader against University Athletic Association rivals Washington University. The men face the Bears at 5:30 pm and the women at 7:30 pm. Both teams will be sporting rainbow tape on their uniforms and shoes. There will be raffles and food for all those in attendance as well as stickers with a Pride-themed version of Athletics’ new ‘B’ logo. Triskelion, the University’s long-time queer affinity group, and Intersection, the more recent group for queer people of color, will have informational tables.

“I view this as a huge visibility opportunity for Athlete Ally,” Elle said. “We can create more dialogue with students, starting with ‘Oh, that Pride game was cool.'”