Middlebury's Elise Morris of the women's soccer team has been named the 2021-22 NCAA Division III LGBTQ OneTeam Award recipient as announced live at the organization's annual convention. The honor is presented annually for the service, leadership, and promotion of inclusion by a member of the LGBTQ community within collegiate athletics.
 
Tell us a bit about your background. Who are you? What makes you so engaged in topics surrounding inclusivity, consent, and identity?
 
I grew up in Seattle, a fairly liberal coastal city, with parents who work in the medical field. I went to a social justice-oriented, underfunded, public high school in the central district. I feel incredibly lucky that my environment growing up was diverse both in the experiences and identities of people around me; it was a part of my experience. I would carpool to soccer practice and everyone in the car was some type of queer. Another example that really stands out to me is that I never really came out to my parents, I just started doing gay things like going on dates with women and celebrating pride parades. One day, I was in the laundry room and saw that my dad had put a rainbow pride pin on the work lanyard he wears around his neck every day. I cried when I saw it; it was such a simple act of acceptance and love that came without having to explain myself or my experience. He and my surrounding communities taught me compassion over comprehension. This was very different from the culture I encountered at Middlebury. I didn't see or feel the diversity I did back home – racial, economic, or otherwise. I remember going to a recruiting panel for the women's soccer team and thinking, "this would be so fun, it's like having 25 other me's." I quickly learned that being surrounded by sameness is comfortable, but being surrounded by differences actually made me feel safer. That being said, I know many students whose experience at Midd, compared to where they came from, have been a safe haven for them to explore new parts of their identities. So for me, it's been about challenging yourself beyond your levels of comfort, wherever they may be.
 
You work in the Title IX Office here at Middlebury. How did you get involved with consent education, and how has it made an impact specifically on the LGBTQIA+ community?
 
I have been doing consent education for eight years and it has always been a way for me to connect authentically with my community, and to my queerness. The Title IX office was one way for me to continue this work at Middlebury. I think of my queerness as a practice rather than an identity. It is the radical and challenging practice of showing up as my authentic self in the face of social constructions such as gender, sexuality, professionalism, whiteness, etc. The practice of trying to figure out who I am outside of messages I receive about what it looks like to be a woman, what it means to be gay, how I should act, and who I should be. Generations of people in the LGBTQ+ community have been asking these questions for a long long time, and for better or worse, are forced to enact this practice in order to survive. Trans and gender non-conforming people are forced to question the gender binary in order to understand themselves, gay people are forced to question heteronormativity in order to understand themselves. And the truth is, even the straightest, whitest, most able-bodied cisgender "normal" man must question all these things as well if he is to truly understand himself. The practice of consent is the same: building tools that allow us to show up as our authentic selves in the face of these same messages - one's that foster homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, and other forms of oppression. Consent is moving beyond a normative script about what sex should look like, what intimacy should feel like, how relationships (of all sorts) should function, how power dynamics should be navigated etc. – so that we can just be ourselves engaging with each other in ways that we actually want. It's about intentionality and presence. Although my job is to meet the nationally-mandated sexual violence prevention training for student-athletes at Midd, the work is about building a community that I want to be a part of. An intentional community that practices consent and presence is closer to embracing difference and closer to truly understanding itself regardless of the identities of those inside it.
 
You have played a major role in creating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training modules for the entire Middlebury athletics department. How did you approach this work? 
 
Historically, many DEI trainings have been more of check-the-box situations where participants drone through the allotted time in order to be eligible to go about their lives and continue their jobs or play their sports. The NCAA-mandated consent education was no different. When I took this responsibility, it was important to me that the information being shared was changing my community in the same way it has fundamentally changed me. This is really hard to accomplish via click-through videos or online education, so instead, I introduced a program called Athletes As Leaders. This is a program I have engaged in as a participant, mentor, advocate, co-author, and facilitator throughout high school and college. It fundamentally changed my perspective as an athlete and taught me about intentional community building. By facilitating these sessions with each individual varsity team, we harnessed preexisting trust within teams and the shared knowledge of the athletic experience to create vulnerable, non-judgmental, and culture-shifting conversations about consent. I also applied this model when co-creating DEI sessions (Shoutout Crystal Jones) about healthy relationships, white supremacy, body image, microaggressions, homophobia, accessibility, gender norms, athlete privilege, locker room talk, mental health, and challenging harmful stereotypes.
 
Reflecting on your time at Middlebury, how have you seen your work impact our community?
 
It's been amazing to see the growth that our athletic community has made. It was much needed, and plays a huge role in the overall health and culture at our institution. One of the pillars of Athletes As Leaders is recognizing that athletes have influence and privilege, within their communities whether or not we are aware of it. Therefore, we have a responsibility to arm ourselves with the tools and skills needed to set positive norms and contribute intentionally to the community. Through this lens, I have seen a lot of change in the four or so years I've been here. Many teams have changed norms and behaviors to their team culture as a response to last year's session, and now continue to build from those conversations while questioning other norms. For many teams, this is the first, or only, space for addressing dynamics like drinking culture, power dynamics, traditions, communication and many other topics. It gives teams and individuals a chance to be intentional about the culture they create and why. There is still much work to be done, and I am hopeful that it will continue beyond me.
 
We've received a lot of positive feedback from your DEI training modules, and specifically your sexual violence prevention and consent training. How does it feel to know that you've played a major role in fostering a more inclusive environment here at Middlebury?
 
It feels good. I take a lot of pride in playing an active role in my communities. It's always been a part of how I give back and find a reciprocal relationship with the people and places around me. My drive to foster change also partly comes from my frustration with the harmful norms that impact me and the people I care about. I refuse to complain or watch harm happen around me without trying to do something about it. I'm also very aware that, although things have gotten better, the culture at Middlebury has never made me feel safe to be the person I truly am, and I hope that the work that I, and so many other people, do will only continue to create openness, inclusivity, and creativity.
 
You are planning to continue playing soccer after graduating in February. Tell us about how you will approach a new team in the lens of DEI work. 
 
It's a super exciting time to be a part of the women's professional soccer world right now. There are so many important conversations, investments, and opportunities in the women's game that I want to be a part of. I want to be a part of the movement and continue using this momentum to lift up as many underrepresented communities as possible. Sports has always been a platform from which to enact powerful change, and I am excited to continue pursuing it wherever soccer keeps taking me. I see myself doing this through the mentorship of young athletes and challenging old norms in the soccer world.
 
What is one piece of advice you would give to an incoming first year at Middlebury? Maybe something you wished you knew ahead of time, or something you learned along the way. 
 
One piece of advice I would give is that most likely, everyone around is probably just as scared, anxious, and nervous as you are. Most people are figuring themselves out just like you, so don't be afraid to be yourself. Don't be afraid to be different. It's no fun if everyone is the same. Find something beautiful and silly to root down in and explore all the parts of you that bring you joy.