Hidden in a crowded audience of UCLA student-athletes, two male athletes laughed and joked that the presenter speaking in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights was “so gay.”
An earshot away sat Jordan, a UCLA basketball player who identifies as gay and whose real name is not disclosed out of a request for anonymity.
These comments stood in contrast to the words of Hudson Taylor, a former All-American wrestler and current coach at Columbia University, who came to UCLA on Monday night to promote Athlete Ally, an organization that advocates for acceptance of LGBT athletes. Taylor is a “straight ally,” a heterosexual who has openly taken a stance against homophobia in the locker room.
Taylor urged the audience of athletes to refrain from using derogatory homophobic phrases such as “That is so gay” and “He’s such a fag” in the locker room.
“I was really disappointed in some of the comments from the crowd – the lack of character and disrespect that was shown,” Jordan said.
As part of the quarterly Wooden Academy Leadership and Development Program sponsored by UCLA Athletics, the event was mandatory for all first-year and transfer student-athletes.
“This was something new to me, I wasn’t quite aware of what was going on. I have a lot of respect for (Taylor), for what he is doing,” said Xavier Su’a-Filo, a sophomore offensive tackle on UCLA’s football team.
Around 200 student-athletes attended the event; however, Su’a-Filo and Jerry Neuheisel, Su’a-Filo’s teammate and a freshman quarterback, reluctantly said that the mandatory nature of the event was the reason they attended. When Ally Week assistant director Cyrus Sinai thanked the audience for attending, a few mutters of “It’s mandatory” floated around Collins Court.
But other student-athletes were willing to show their support of the LGBT community as an Athlete Ally. Throughout last week and after Monday night’s presentation, athletes were invited to participate in photo shoots.
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