[Content note: Homophobia, racism, homophobic slurs]
Yahoo Sports:
A gaggle of Ole Miss students, including members of the football team, disrupted the Ole Miss theater department's performance of "The Laramie Project" on Tuesday evening with heckling and homophobic remarks, according to the school newspaper.
A coach was notified of the players' actions and a member of the athletic department was sent to the theater. The players then were subsequently asked to apologize for their actions but 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,” per the play's performance report, and according to the paper, the apology given by the players' designated spokesperson caused two cast members of the play to cry.
USA Today reprinted a joint statement from the University of Mississippi's Chancellor and Athletic director:
While we work to determine with certainty who disrupted the Laramie Project play, we want everyone within our university community and beyond to know that we strongly condemn the behavior exhibited Tuesday night. As a member of the Ole Miss family, each of us has a responsibility to be accountable for our actions, and these individuals will be held accountable. Our investigation will determine the degree to which any and all students were involved.
As a first step to addressing behavior at the performance Tuesday night, we will meet today with the freshman student-athletes (from various sports) who attended the play and have a dialogue about what happened, about our university-wide commitment to inclusivity and civility, and about the important role they play in representing the university. It is clear that some students badly misrepresented the culture of this university. From there, we will work with Student-Affairs and the Bias Incident Response Team to determine the facts and appropriate next steps.
Incidents like this remind all educators that our job is to prepare our students to be leaders in life during their years on campus and after they graduate from Ole Miss. This behavior by some students reflects poorly on all of us, and it reinforces our commitment to teaching inclusivity and civility to young people who still have much to learn. We will be engaging our student-athletes with leaders on the subject of individuality and tolerance, so we can further enforce life lessons and develop them to their fullest potential.
On behalf of our 22,000 students, our faculty, and our staff, we apologize.
I'm going to be blunt here. My wife's an alumna of the University of Mississippi. I've been to Oxford on many occasions. A few weeks back, I saw that it became legal in LaFayette County (which I don't pronounce like an out-of-towner) to sell cold beer, and on Sundays at that. I celebrated with a fried pickles (and a recipe for comeback sauce reputably from the Owner of Ajax Diner on The Square and reminisced about Square Books and all my other favorite things about your corner of the world. It was a good day.
So even though I'm a northerner, I think I've got a pretty good sense of where you're at. (Also of note: I have a passing acquaintance with what it's like to be a visibly queer woman in your lovely town.) I get that the University is perpetually under the microscope when it comes to the treatment of people who aren't rich white straight cis protestant men. I get that there are people whose job is to obsess day and night about how to keep shit like this from happening, and more to the point, from getting splashed across the nation's news outlets as expressions of bigotry in Oxford Town are wont to happen.
I find it pretty indefensible that the third and fourth most important people on campus think it's appropriate to talk about dialogue as if there's a two way conversation that needs to take place here, and civility as if there's an appropriate time and place to call someone a faggot.
I don't want to hear a damn thing about how these "young people have much to learn." And honestly, when I hear you say "enforce life lessons", I'm simultaneously disturbed, yet gratified that you or one of your secretaries made sure you avoided calling your students "boys."
You pay people to make sure this shit doesn't happen, but you've failed to address the underlying problem: the University of Mississippi is run by some of the richest, most powerful white men in Mississippi, and largely to the benefit of their two favorite hobbies: affluence, and college football.
I don't care who you pay or what you say to create a better campus climate, until you demonstrate that you're willing to anger the football team and its boosters, your actions don't mean a thing. Remember when you stopped using a Confederate Colonel as your mascot? Of course you remember 2003. Remember how you picked a black bear as its replacement, and then proceeded to name it "Rebel", because you just couldn't possibly risk any more fallout from your donors? That's what I'm talking about.
Don't tell me I don't know how hard it is. You've got a whole lot of donors who are a whole lot bigoted. That's not an excuse for failing to do the right thing. There's a lot of people who aren't you who have to live with the mess you create. Despite (or more to the point because of) my not being one of them, let me make myself clear: I don't give two shits if respecting humanity strikes you as hard work.
I know you've got plenty of people on campus who want to do the right thing. Plenty. You should let them do their jobs, and not just on years ending in '62. The University deserves better, the city of Oxford deserves better, and the State of Mississippi deserves better.