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THE REMARKER | 20 THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2014
Breaking down a barrier
There will always be barriers — racial barriers, gender barriers, sexual barriers. And by now, with the first openly gay NFL prospect, sports teams need to decide if they will open up or not. The question is, will this generation take the barrier down? OPEN BLEACHERS Many students believe change is on the horizon for sexual equality, and sports programs may be key in opening up the bleachers, the locker rooms and the sports fields to everyone.
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hen WFAA-TV sports anchor Dale Hansen first heard that Michael Sam — University of Missouri’s All American, SEC defensive player of the year and first openly gay NFL draft prospect — was expected only to be a third to fifth round pick in the NFL Draft, he was shocked. “Really?” Hansen told The ReMarker in an exclusive interview March 25. “With everything going on in the world today, your biggest concern is that you just don’t think you can tolerate another man who happens to love another man? That’s your concern? Really?” Hansen went on air the next night and spoke about Sam during his “Unplugged” segment, expressing his opinion and expecting an inbox of negative emails. But when he got to WFAA’s station the next morning, he found quite the opposite. “I thought that I would get home and have about 40 emails, and ten of them would say, ‘way to go Dale’ and 30 of them would be blasting me for this opinion,” Hansen said. “I get home and I’ve got 100 emails. By the time I got to work that afternoon it was over 1000.” His commentary went viral — a term Hansen didn’t even know at the time. Two days later, he appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to talk to the lesbian television host about Sam. Hansen’s commentary on Sam has been well regarded across the world, but Sam still has no guarantees for an NFL career. Although no current student has “come out” to a sports team here, the question remains: what do the coaches and players at St. Mark’s do to ensure a strong future for any openly gay athletes? After returning to his alma mater last year, varsity tennis head coach Scott Palmer ’01 has seen the campus change, and he has seen the Dallas community change. He has watched Hansen on TV his whole life — and he knew that if someone were to say something about Michael Sam, it would be Hansen. Palmer hopes to create an open environment on his tennis team. “I agreed with everything he said,” Palmer said. “I think this is more of a human question more than a sports question. I think that if we can’t live in a society where we accept people for who they are, then that’s a pretty sad statement. He obviously took it to talk specifically about sports, but I don’t see it as being any different. The way I view it, if someone is gay, or someone is not gay, they should be accepted everywhere they go.” Palmer believes it is important to do exactly what Hansen said in his commentary “Celebrating our Differences.” “We don’t want everyone to act the same way, to have the same opinions,” Palmer said. “But we do want to treat everyone equally regardless of whether they are gay or not gay, whether they are black or white, whether they come from a wealthy family or whether they come from a very poor family.” Hansen believes this issue is a matter of closed-minded attitudes. “I think this is the single biggest problem in our country today,” Hansen said. “So many people are opposed to hearing a differing point of view. I try to listen to the people and read the columns that I don’t agree with. The ones I agree with are easy.” While everybody might not understand the homosexual lifestyle, players and coaches here are in agreement that Sam should not be viewed differently as a person or a player from prior to his announcement. “Because of loving another man and just how it would change the locker room mentality, they’ve actually said that they’ve devalued his stock in the draft,” senior swimming and water polo captain Matt Mahowald said. “I thought he (Hansen) was completely right that it’s so wrong to value a football player’s skill by his sexual orientation.” Senior football and basketball captain Luke Williams believes the athletic community here would handle a student coming out as gay in the proper manner. “Well, the first thing I would do is try to make them feel comfortable about it with me,” Williams said. “And then hopefully, I would think if they could be comfortable about it with me, that they would be able to be comfortable about it with the other players.” From a coaching standpoint, Palmer believes the approach depends on the specific reasoning for the athlete’s
“coming out” and whether he wishes to let the entire team know. “In terms of actions I would take, I think that would obviously depend on what the player was looking for from me,” Palmer said. “But as an overall action, I would seek to be as supportive as I possibly could be of them. And I would of course be happy for them. I think that is a big step for people who are telling folks, potentially for the first time, that they are gay. I think they need to be met with support, and so I would seek to provide that.” Varsity Baseball Head Coach Johnny Hunter agrees that a player wouldn’t be coached any differently because of his sexual orientation. “I’d be very supportive,” Hunter said. “First and foremost, that would be his business, and I would hope that our other coaches and players wouldn’t treat him any differently because of it.” lthough many Marksmen agree full-heartedly with accepting gay athletes, the prospect of being around a gay teammate isn’t too familiar to most students here. “It’s something that I think would take the actual occurrence of the event for me to know how I would actually react to it,” Mahowald said, “because you can’t predict how your gut, your sub-conscious will react to that sort of thing, or I can’t at least.” In addition, Mahowald believe it would be an adjustment to have a gay teammate. “As much as I wish I would be able to immediately embrace it,” Mahowald said, “having a homosexual teammate would be something that would take some time to be comfortable with, because like Hansen said, we don’t understand their world.” Also, a potential change in locker room culture would need to happen in order for a homosexual athlete to feel just as welcomed and accepted as every other heterosexual one. “People talk about distinct locker room culture,” Williams said. “And I think that it can be extremely insensitive to people who might be different, whether it be homosexuality or different in any number of ways, people tend to lose sight of that. As far as would I act differently if I had a gay teammate, I would definitely be more careful of what I said or of anything that could be taken the wrong way.” If there were to be tension among players over a gay person being on their team, both coaches would take action in support of that player referencing the ideals of St. Mark’s. “I would address the issue collectively first,” Hunter said. “I would remind our team about the philosophy of the school and issue some general statements about being a good human being as far as treating others with respect and kindness and things like that.”
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The support system here would also be a key component in diffusing locker room turmoil. “We have terrific counselors,” Palmer said. “The nice thing about working at a place like St. Mark’s, working with the boys, is that you are never going at it alone. So if there are any issues related to a player being gay, or anything else, as a faculty member you’ve got more than enough resources to handle the situation and make everyone feel comfortable and valued and listened to.” Hansen’s statement on Sam is one of the many things that have shed light on the gay athlete discussion. Like Williams, Mahowald agrees that as time progresses and he becomes more and more involved with different people, being around gay players will not seem as foreign of a concept as it may have appeared in the past or does right now. “I hope that by surrounding myself with people who are different from me, I can learn and gain perspective and hopefully some of that will be about homosexuality,” Mahowald said. “Because I’ve had such a limited amount of interaction, it’s different, it’s surprising.” And for Hansen, it’s all just a matter of time before the locker room is an open place for everyone. “Younger generations always change America,” Hansen said. “Every generation has.”
In his own words: Hansen’s ‘Celebrating our Differences’
OPINIONATED ANCHOR Sitting at the desk on the set of WFAA Dallas, Hansen gives his weeknight sports program.
• Some choice lines from Hansen’s monologue that went viral after airing on WFAA Feb. 12: “Several NFL officials are telling Sports Illustrated it will hurt him [Sam] on draft day because a gay player wouldn’t be welcome in an NFL locker room. It would be uncomfortable, because that’s a man’s world.” ••• “You beat a woman and drag her down a flight of stairs, pulling her hair out by the roots? You’re the fourth guy taken in the NFL draft. You kill people while driving drunk? That guy’s welcome. Players caught in hotel rooms with illegal drugs and prostitutes? We know they’re welcome. Players accused of rape and pay the woman to go away? You lie to police trying to cover up a murder? We’re comfortable with that. You love another man? Well, now you’ve gone too far!” ••• “I’m not always comfortable when a man tells me he’s gay; I don’t understand his world. But I do understand that he’s part of mine.”
OPENING THE LOCKER ROOM story by Matthew Conley, sports editor, Zach Naidu, staff writer | photo by Mason Smith, staff photographer, graphic by Zuyva Sevilla, graphics director