University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto and Athletic Director Mitch Barnhart on Monday backed the men’s basketball team, which faced side effects after players and coaches, including John Calipari, knelt before Saturday’s victory in Florida to protest social injustice days after the insurgents stormed the Washington, DC Chapter
In addition to the criticism the team faced on social media, a local sheriff posted a video of him burning Kentucky T-shirts, and local officials asked state lawmakers to open the university.
“One value we all love in our country is the right to free speech and self-expression,” Capilouto and Barnhart said in a joint statement. “This right for young students like them is also important, because they learn, grow and find out who they are and what they believe. We will not always agree with every issue. However, we hope to agree on the right to self-expression, which is so fundamental to who we are, as a higher education institution. We live in a polarized and deeply divided country. Our hope – and that of our players and coaches – is to find ways to make the connection divided and unified. “
Sheriff John Root of Laurel County, Kentucky, released a video on Sunday showing him and a jailer burning shirts commemorating some of Kentucky’s final races. The video has been deleted since then, but in a Facebook post on Saturday, the sheriff wrote: “I think the so-called coach and the team would do such actions make me sick.”
On Monday’s radio show in Lexington, Calipari explained why the team chose to kneel.
“There were all the images they saw and they wanted to hear their voice, and I said, well, ‘Tell me what this is about,'” he said. “They talked to me about it. Then they said, “I’d like you to kneel with us,” which I did. I held my heart, but I knelt with them because I support the boys. But it wasn’t about the military. Six of these players come from military families … It wasn’t about the military. “
In Knox County, Kentucky, about two hours from Lexington, officials responded to the team’s decision to kneel by proposing that the state close the University of Kentucky through a resolution “reallocating tax funding from unpatriotic beneficiaries in Kentucky who work hard.” . [taxpayers] in this Commonwealth, “according to the Times-Tribune in Corbin, Kentucky.
The players said on Monday that they had anticipated the adverse reaction.
The great man Olivier Sarr said that they use their platform as players to protest peacefully.
“I think our action speaks for itself,” Sarr said. “What has happened in the last few days, a few weeks and even during the quarantine, we just want to show support for our community and raise awareness of what has happened lately. It comes from a place of understanding peaceful conversations and opening the mind. That’s it.”
Isaiah Jackson spoke of the people who stormed the US Chapter and referred to a noose that was seen erected outside the building.
“There were a few things,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. That was – it was out of pocket. That’s just something people shouldn’t do. I feel like people have their own opinions, but that was just out of pocket. Just my penetration is crazy for me. “