Student Union
Colleges and Universities Say Yes to Pets
When new students leave home for college or university, mom and dad aren't the only ones left behind.
Kimberly Brubaker said she didn't want to break the connection she has with family members Dino and Mars: her cat and pet snake.
“If an animal is part of your entire life, and caring for them is a huge part of it, to take that away is pretty dramatic,” she told Associated Press.
So when Brubaker left home to attend Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, she brought Dino and Mars with her. College officials gave her permission to live with them in a school-owned dormitory.
In the United States, Eckerd is not the only school to accept pets in student housing, but it may have been one of the first. Since the early 1970s, the college has accepted many kinds of animals.
Brubaker heads a student organization that registers pets on campus. It ensures that the animals are well taken care of and that students follow Eckerd’s pet policies. And it tries to solve any disputes.
“We do pet checks once a month — we go around and knock on all the doors,” Brubaker said. The student group receives an average of one or two problem reports each month. But most issues are minor, such as misunderstandings of the rules governing pet registration.
Law students Josh Richey, right, and Lindsay Stewart play with Hooch, a 19-month-old golden retriever and Stanley, a 4-month-old golden retriever, in between final exams at Emory University in Atlanta.
Pets on campus are mostly problem-free and may help their owners and others.
Miranda Goodman-Wilson, an assistant professor of psychology at Eckerd, recently co-authored a study on the effect pets have on students.
Students reported their pets “reduced their levels of stress, and had incredibly favorable things to say about living with the animal,” Goodman-Wilson said. Also, a majority of students claimed that animals were a good influence on their educational performance.
“I think that for many students, having a pet provides a structure that they otherwise lack,” Goodman-Wilson noted. “If you have a dog who has to go out to the bathroom, that’s a powerful alarm clock right there.”
The results of her study were mixed when it came to measuring exactly how helpful pets were for the students’ mental health. She found that students who owned pets did not have lower levels of stress, depression, anxiety or nervousness.
But there was an effect when it came to somatic anxiety — the physical effects of stress, such as a sudden increase in heart rate. Among the pet owners, increased levels of stress did not result in increased somatic anxiety.
“It may be that they are serving as a buffer,” said Goodman-Winslow. “So yes, I’m still having stress, but by having my animal, that stress is not translating into this sort of anxiety in the same way.”
Law student Amelia Myers, 25, is reflected in a book case in the law library as she plays with Hooch, a 19-month-old golden retriever, between final exams at Emory University in Atlanta.
While pets might be good for students, some might worry whether college life is good for the animal. Last year, Mekenna Hooper decided to adopt a dog and said she wanted a small, older dog.
Hooper, who studies at at Johnson & Wales University in Denver, Colorado, said among pet adoption organizations, “none of them liked the fact that we lived in a dorm.” She eventually adopted Max, a seven-kilogram dog who is now 11 years old. Hooper and her roommate attend classes at different times and have different work schedules, so Max is rarely alone more than a few of hours at a time. He also gets all the attention he could ever want in student housing.
“Everyone knows his name,” Hooper noted. “They know his name better than they know ours.”
Goodman-Wilson believes that there can actually be good reasons for bringing your pet to school. The activities of college students can often change from one day to the next, and there are lots of people around them to look in on the pet.
“More so than your typical animal, there are ways for the wellness of the animal to be checked up on,” she said. “And I think students generally are around their animals more than your average working adults.”
If you are looking for an animal-friendly college or university, know that each school has different rules. There are more schools that accept animals kept in small containers than ones that permit dogs or cats. And where dogs are permitted, school officials may set limits on a dog’s breed or size.
Some colleges and universities limit pets to students who have been at the school for more than a year. Even Eckerd only accepts pets that lived with students before they started taking classes.
Emily Rosenfeld, a first-year student at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, spends time with her Chihuahua, Archie, in her dorm room.
Goodman-Wilson expects the number of pet-friendly schools to grow, partly because of the increase of animals that give emotional support to the owner. Their owners are required to carry a doctor’s note stating that the person needs the animal to help them deal with a mental health condition.
Once policies are in place for emotional support animals in student housing, this can open the door to permitting pets on school grounds, in general.
In a few weeks, Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, will open its first pet-friendly housing. The college’s new policy grew out of increasing numbers of assistance animals, and because of requests to raise service dogs.
Allison Bridgeman is an administrator with Elizabethtown College. She says that on-campus animals are now seen to have a more general value.
“We see this as part of creating a … campus community that … promotes well-being,” she said.
But it also seems clear that there will be more pet-friendly college campuses as long as students have anything to say about it.
“I answer emails all that time that say, “Hey, I’m trying to start a pet policy on campus, what are the first steps?’” Kimberly Brubaker of Eckerd College said. “I probably get at least one email a week from students at other colleges asking about our program.”
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The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
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"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
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