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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 5, 2002)
rrr aprii 5. 2ÛÛ2 ' M ill! n T v îlîie W S Want to be on Eric Brown S porting C hance Lewis & Clark professor fights homophobia in college athletics District Manager in Portland I ■ * ) J 500 NE Multnomah Portland OR 97232 top of the world with your investments? 503.238.6036 by M elissa Say ler A football player beats up a tennis player because he is gay. A coach outs a student to his teammates and family. A coach is outed and his students become the victims of vandalism and verbal and physical assaults. A known lesbian grows out her hair, begins wear ing skirts and puts away pictures of her girlfriend when she gets a job as an assistant coach at a large university. For most, college is a time of great self-discov ery, idealism and freedom. But not for many gay athletes and coaches. Every day they have to struggle with the pressure of staying closeted— or going back in the closet— for fear of being harassed, not being played or not being promoted. But Nora Beck, faculty athletic representa tive and professor of musicology at Lewis &. Clark College, and a handful of like-minded peers are hoping to change that. Two years ago she attended her first N CAA Annual Conference in San Diego. After sitting through a panel on diversity and hearing no mention of sexual orientation, she made one simple action that hopefully will send waves through the sports world for a long time. During the question-and-answer period, she stood up and said: “This was a wonderfully informative panel, but I’m a lesbian and I played j basketball at Barnard College in New York for four years, and it was really hard being in the closet and our coach was in the closet and it was just a tough time. Could someone address homophobia on the diversity panel?” The convention hall, packed with hundreds of people, answered her with dead silence. But offi cials eventually came forward from the NCAA and assured her they were working on the issue. After two years and a few well-placed letters urging them to address the matter, they held their first panel on homophobia in sports during * the 2002 conference Jan. 12 in Indianapolis. Speakers included Laurie Priest and Michael Muska, openly gay athletic directors at private colleges; Dwight Slater, a student and former football player at Stanford; Jenny Allard, head softball coach at Harvard; and Beck. About 200 people listened as the panelists shared their experiences with homophobia and outlined the issues facing campuses nationwide. The common threads connecting everyone’s stories were performance and well-being— as a student, an athlete, a coach, a teammate, a teacher or a mentor. According to NCAA News, Slater explained that keeping his sexuality secret in a team envi ronment rife with anti-gay and offensive com ments and jokes was eating him alive. “My aca demics were affected, my football was affected. I couldn’t sleep or eat.” Allard said coming out to her team brought about a stronger sense of trust, which improved the level of play and classrcxim achievement. Muska said he could’ve been a better coach had he been honest about his sexuality earlier in his career. “1 just couldn’t concentrate,” Beck ex plains of her experience as a closeted athlete. “My grades went dow n.... I was nervous someone was going to find out. I just didn’t perform well.” Beck is also a musician and writer; she just finished publishing Fiammetta, a novel about les bian love and adventure. “I come from a world where the more honest you are, the better your art is,” and she hopes to relate that understand ing to gay athletes and coaches. t ■ m Mutual Funds Investing Sure, you can get a lot of information on the Internet. Too much information, in fad. Where do you begin? How do you know it's reliable? And, most important, how does that information apply to your specific situation? IRAs and Roth IRAs IRA Rollovers Estate Planning Those are some of the reasons to meet with Erk Brown, a personal financial advisor from Waddell & Reed. Eric takes the time to get to know you and your family and help you create a workable, personalized, financial plan specifically tailored to help you reach your goals. Retirement Planning Investments for Retirement Income Savings Plans for College For information without the confusion, call Eric Brown, financial advisor from Waddell & Reed. Tax Advantaged Investments Working with the Gay and Lesbian Community for over Ten Years waddell.com Nora Beck spearheaded the NCAA’s first panel on homophobia in sports But is the country ready for its beloved star quarterbacks and record-breaking home-run hit ters to he openly gay? Considering athletes often represent the penultimate image of masculini ty— not to mention the shaky ground of gaining acceptance female athletes still stand o n - change will come slowly. Beck points out an added obstacle for col leges is their focus on having a good image to attract new students. Out gay athletes might damage the school’s reputation and bring them unwanted attention. But “education is where it has to start,” Beck says. Although administrators have been slow to address the matter, “the students won’t let the issue he dropped.” T his summer Beck is planning to meet with the N C A A ’s Management Councils and Student A th lete Advisory Com m ittees, which then will start building an informa tion base on what kind o f support systems are in place and get ideas about niles that can he enacted for dealing with homophobia. She says the association has the right language regarding discrimination in its bylaws hut doesn’t have any policy to deal with it when it does happen. In the meantime, she and Andy Holder have co-founded a nonprofit called Sexual Minorities in Athletics. Its goal is to develop financially sustainable programs to combat homophobia within the world of athletics and its connection to societal acceptance of gays. |H S e x u a l M in o r it ie s in A t h l e t ic s can be found on the Internet at www.smuumline.org. Other sites to check out are www.outsports.com and www.axtchgum by.com , which has mformatum about form er track coach Eric Anderson's coming- out experience in Southern California. ^ » c C o n se rv a Por« a n ci * 0 ® * b ia W' n cb o < rO , 0 O 0 f ° Y p « e n d s gon t e s P 'f ^ t v pro ?* * * W h e n y o u b u y o r se ll a h o m e w ith m e , you'll k n o w y o u r d o lla r s a r e h e lp in g s u p p o r t a g r e a t e r c a u s e . I c o n t r ib u t e at le a s t 10% o f m y e a rn in g s t o c o m m u n ity and e n v ir o n m e n ta l o rg a n iz a tio n s . Millynn James ^ ^ A s s o c ia te B r o k e r . G R I t* # fB A B R : A c c r e d ite d B u y e r's R e p r e s e n ta tiv e ¡¡¡W /A f; S 0 3 . 3 3 0. 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