On Wednesday, March 11, 2020 representatives from Recreational Sports met with officers and instructors of the UM Taekwondo Club. We assumed this would be a meeting on how to manage the COVID-19 crisis, which has already been difficult, but the news was far worse. After a Club Sports risk audit by the Office of Risk Management, it was determined that the Taekwondo Club represented a particular risk due to scoring with contact to the head. In that meeting, actual reported injury data from the club was discounted as misleading and thus not relevant. However, safety is paramount in both our team and the ECTC, our competitive league, and removing our status as a club sport without even considering the facts of the scenario would incapacitate the club, thereby removing a supportive and welcoming campus community.

Michigan Taekwondo was first founded in 1964 and is the oldest collegiate Taekwondo Club in the United States. It is the largest martial arts club on campus, and accepts anyone with a desire to learn, giving people with no athletic experience or years of training access to club sports and a chance to compete at the national level. The club travels to five tournaments a year with the support of Recreational Sports, and has given members opportunities to travel as far as Puerto Rico and South Korea to train.

Additionally, as a martial art, Taekwondo teaches philosophy and works to make its practitioners better people—for over 20 years, the club has done a kick-a-thon fundraiser for the Ann Arbor Safehouse to combat domestic violence. It also exposes its members to Korean culture, and members regularly perform at different cultural celebrations. It is an incredibly diverse community, with club members coming from all over the world, such diverse countries as China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Iran, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Mexico, and Cuba, in addition to Korea. The Taekwondo club has also become a home for other martial artists, with practitioners of TangSooDo, Shotokan Karate, Kempo Karate, Muay Thai, and Kick Boxing in the club.

When we were first informed that the club might lose its club sports status—and thus also its practice and equipment storage space—members asked for a way to submit personal statements about what UMTKD means to them. When a form was sent out, statements poured in from both students and alumni, some many years removed from the club, about ways the club has changed their lives: not only improving their health, but helping them in times of financial stress, alleviating depression and anxiety, giving them a sense of ownership over their bodies, a welcoming community to come out of the closet, a network to find jobs, even meeting spouses, and building friendships that have lasted lifetimes. This club makes the University a better place. Please let us stay.