For Oberlin track and field standout Monique Newton, a defining moment of her college experience came away from the track: the 2014 killing of Tamir Rice by Cleveland police.
"All I knew at the time was that a 12-year-old Black child, the same age as my cousin, Amani, back home, had been killed," said Newton, who was a freshman at the time of the killing. Rice's death ignited her passion in Black political organizing and protest.
A first-generation college student unsure of her future, Newton originally thought she would study computer science when she arrived on campus in Ohio from Sacramento, California. She left Oberlin as a two-time track and field national champion and eight-time All-American with majors in politics and law and society, a minor in Africana studies and an invigorated sense of purpose.
Now a political science Ph.D. student at Northwestern studying Black politics, Newton has applied experiences from her undergraduate years to new research.
"I'm getting ready to embark on a dissertation that looks at traumatic events, and particularly police shootings of unarmed Black residents, and how that affects poor Black local politics thereafter," she said.
Newton has realized through extensive research in her Ph.D. program that tragic events like Rice's killing may be helping to galvanize local organizing and political change. "At least my initial research seems to indicate that for Black Americans in particular, these traumatic events happen, and people feel the need to act," she said.
She believes student-athletes in particular have been mobilized by these events to fight for change.
In the last several years, student-athletes have helped to create change in higher education by advocating for things like racial equality and increased campus mental health resources for student-athletes.
Newton's message for current student-athletes championing important causes is simple: "Keep going, keep asking those questions you think are going to get you in trouble. That's how you make change. Keep pushing those in positions of power to be uncomfortable to make uncomfortable decisions."
She is grateful to those who pushed for change before her, allowing her to become an athlete, and she recognizes the unique opportunities afforded to women in collegiate athletics thanks to Title IX, the federal legislation enacted in 1972 that bars discrimination in education. "There would be no women's sports without Title IX," she noted.
"We're not finished, obviously," Newton said. "And I really see it as a steppingstone as the first step towards gender equity and all these other areas, especially in sports and higher education in general."
From an early age, she was taught that sports could be a valuable teacher. She got involved with track as a middle schooler and played multiple sports in high school.
"My mom just really instilled in us that sports were a way for different educational experiences," she said. "And so, I got involved in sports at a very young age."
At Oberlin, Newton found supportive communal environments on campus with her teammates, the athletics department, Africana studies associate professor Charles Peterson and the campus African American Heritage House. In particular, she credits her older teammates with demonstrating the intensity, planning and skill it takes to succeed in college athletics.
And she found great athletics success, winning the 2017 Division III indoor shot put title and 2018 Division III outdoor discus championship. "It means absolutely everything," she said of her titles. "I mean, until this day, it's one of the coolest things I've ever accomplished in my life."
She was the first woman to win a national championship for Oberlin, something she knows current student-athletes look up to.
However, Newton wants to be remembered for far more than her athletic accomplishments. "I know people saw the work I put in, and they saw the results," she said. "But I don't think my legacy has anything to do with what I did on the track. I think my legacy has everything to do with what I did for the campus, for the community and who I was as a person. And that's what warms my heart."
She is still forging that legacy, using the lessons sports taught her in her work at Northwestern. Recently, Newton taught a course titled "Sports, Politics, and Public Opinion," where students spent time examining topics including the Olympics, the WNBA and athlete mental health. "I always tried to integrate my sport experience into my academics. I'm in a political science program, and on paper that might not mix, right?"
She noted, "I've been very fortunate to get creative with how to bring my love for sports, both as a student-athlete and just as a sports fan, and as a scholar of politics and power, and combine them all into a classroom setting."
