US: Football players to attend ‘educational dialogue’ for anti-gay slurs during Matthew Shepard play
Football players from the University of Mississippi have been made to attend an “educational dialogue” for interrupting a performance of a play with anti-gay slurs.
According to the Daily Mississippian, many of the players were in attendance at the Laramie Project performance as a requirement for a theatre course at the university.
Reports said that the players were “taking pictures of cast members while making fun of them, talking on their cell phones, hollering at the females in the cast and talking to other audience members during the acts.”
The athletic department at the school has reportedly forced the players to apologise to the student performers. The chancellor Dan Jones, and the athletic director Ross Bjork, issued a statement into the players’ actions, and confirming an investigation.
On Thursday, the Clarion-Ledger reported that the students responsible would be made to attend the “educational dialogue”.
In a statement to USA Today on Friday, the school said it was difficult to get to the bottom of which students and players were responsible for the slurs.
It said: “The task of identifying specific individuals who were purported to have disrupted the performance is difficult because of the dark theatre, and initial reports vary in regard to the frequency, volume and source of the comments or disruption. Although initial reports indicate that student-athletes led the action, it is important to note that this has not been verified and they were not the only students present. Reports indicate that comments were made by student athletes and students but no report has singled out a specific student or mentioned any names.”
