Summer Spotlight: John DeRuff of Sailing

Later this month, Athlete Ally will release its latest Athletic Equality Index (AEI) measuring LGBTQ inclusion policies and practices in collegiate athletics. For the first time, the ratings will span the Division I ranks after previously covering only the Power Five Conferences.

The expanded AEI is the product of months of data collection and grading from dozens of researchers, including John DeRuff of GW sailing. The senior from California spent his summer as part of the Athlete Ally team while also working with members of the GW athletic department to help increase the Buff and Blue's score.

Working remotely in his native California and later Foggy Bottom, DeRuff has relished an enlightening summer promoting an important mission, particularly learning a lot particularly in his efforts to support non-binary and transgender athletes.

"For me, it's broadened the athletic community by leaps and bounds, just discovering new communities of people who are just as athletic but haven't been welcomed into the traditional athletic club," DeRuff said. "It's about trying to open people's eyes and make sure that (college) athletic departments and youth sports organizations and coaches have all the information. I'd say nine times out of ten in the world we live in, they're willing and wanting to do more but just don't have the time or the resources or the know-how to do these things."

Amid the COVID-19 global pandemic, DeRuff's search for a work-from-home summer job landed the opportunity with Athlete Ally, a national non-profit founded in 2011 by former University of Maryland wrestler Hudson Taylor with a goal of making athletic communities more inclusive.

"I'd known of Athlete Ally previously but wasn't intimately familiar with any of their work," said DeRuff, a Civil Engineering major. "I really enjoyed learning more, and it turned out to be a great fit."

Working under the direction of Senior Manager for Research Anna Baeth, PhD, DeRuff largely split his hours with Athlete Ally among three projects: AEI calculation, research toward a similar grading scale for pro sports teams and preparations for an upcoming academic study based on the sporting experiences of non-binary and transgender athletes.

DeRuff tackled formulating AEI scores for about 15 athletic departments around the country, which involved checking websites for a list of policies and digging into the language within them to form a picture of the department's commitment to inclusion. The idea is to approach the search for the information as a prospective student-athlete or donor might.

In addition to producing a grade, Athlete Ally sends each school a rubric to showcase a pathway to improvement.

"A big piece of why I was drawn to Athlete Ally in the beginning was how obviously the goal is to help schools change," DeRuff said. "We're doing that through carrots vs. a more old-school model of chastising and screaming and yelling. We want schools to change, and we've realized the best way to do that is to incentivize and to provide best practices and resources so that it's as easy for schools who have a will to change to make those changes."

As he dug into researching other schools, DeRuff also turned attention to his own. He realized that there was work to be done to make sure GW's inaugural AEI score would better match his experience as a member of the Buff and Blue.

"Knowing the culture myself, I was like, 'The score we're about to get really does not reflect our internal culture,'" DeRuff said. "I wanted to make sure those line up."

Thanks to the spark from DeRuff, GW Athletics has more clearly outlined its inclusion policies and made them easier to find in an updated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion page on GWsports.com.

The changes include the creation of a Fan Code of Conduct specifically outlawing homophobic and transphobic language and a policy on Transgender/Gender Non-Conforming (T/GNC) Student-Athlete Participation, in addition to the expansion of the department's non-discrimination policy.

"Not that I didn't expect it, but seeing GW both embrace this work and having immediate support behind it meant a lot," DeRuff said.

DeRuff started the summer with a series of conversations with Associate Athletics Director for Internal Operations John Square and continued work with Senior Program Associate of Student-Athlete Development Sarah Vollaro.

Danya Ellman, Assistant Athletics Director for Educational Support Services and a co-chair of the department's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Task Force along with Square, also had a leading role in crafting the statements that serve as the foundation for reinforcing GW's continued commitment to an inclusive environment.

DeRuff is proud he could be a part of it.

"So often within the department we say that because of how we accept each other and embrace who we are that gives us a competitive advantage on the court, on the field, on the river," said DeRuff, who is set to share his experiences as part of a US Sailing townhall panel on inclusion in the sport next week. "To see a higher (AEI) score will increase the image we want to have out in the world, so that the next generation of student-athletes know that this is a place they'll be embraced."

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