At around 12:15 p.m. on a cold and rainy Tuesday, 11 Dartmouth men’s basketball players took a short walk together from a campus hotel to the school’s human resources office. They looked like any normal, if tall, group of college students on the way to study, grab lunch, or hang out between classes. But they were actually headed to do something quite abnormal: deal a potential death blow to NCAA amateurism.

The Big Green became the first NCAA team in history to officially join a union, voting 13–2 to become members of the Service Employees International Union’s Local 560 chapter. The Dartmouth unionization effort, which began with a petition filed in September, is one of several cases challenging the NCAA’s model that bars players from being considered employees. In February, the NLRB regional director struck down that model, ruling players are employees and have the right to hold the election.