I guess that it is National Show Your Bigotry Week at our nations’ colleges.
Yale U. Investigates Alleged Hazing of 2 Freshman Tennis Players
By BRAD WOLVERTON
Yale University is weighing whether to punish members of its men’s tennis team after reports surfaced this week about an alleged hazing incident that has riled gay and lesbian students.
Last fall during dinner hour, according to several students who witnessed the incident, a group of athletes escorted two freshman players dressed in women’s underwear into two campus dining halls, where the first-year students stood on tables and sang, “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman.”
The players — Connor Dawson and Matt Schimmel — reportedly had homophobic slurs written on their bodies. According to witnesses, the athletes had words that included “I’m a faggot” written on them in marker, and an arrow drawn down their backs, along with the words “Insert here.”
Many gay, lesbian, and transgender students were offended by the team members’ actions, Ben Gonzalez, a Yale sophomore and coordinator of the campus’s Queer Resource Center, said in an interview on Thursday.
In response to the incident, several gay and lesbian students met on Monday with Betty G. Trachtenberg, the university’s dean of student affairs, who plans to help organize a forum between athletes and concerned students to raise awareness of gay and lesbian issues.
In an e-mail message sent to a gay and lesbian student group on Wednesday, Brandon Wai, captain of Yale’s tennis team, apologized for the incident, saying that he and his teammates “meant no harm to anyone” and that in hindsight, they believe their actions were inappropriate and harmful.
In a statement, Thomas A. Beckett, Yale’s athletics director, said that the university is “extremely disappointed” by the team’s actions, which he described as “inappropriate initiation” activities.
The university and athletics officials plan to investigate the matter further before deciding on any punishments. In the meantime, the team’s players will be allowed to keep competing.
Yale officials have avoided referring to the incident as hazing. But according to the university’s Student-Athlete Handbook, any activity that requires “indecent exposure of the body” is considered hazing.
Are you kidding me? That’s not an apolgy. That’s a “I’m sorry that I got caught” apology. The only thing that I hate more than groups that haze are people that willingly are hazed to belong to that group.
