Rice University’s football coach has publicly apologized for comments he made about gay players in an article last week in The Chronicle. The apology came at the behest of the institution’s president, Malcolm Gillis, who reprimanded Ken Hatfield for sharing personal views on homosexuality that run counter to Rice’s nondiscrimination policy.
The article was about homophobia in college sports. In it, Mr. Hatfield says that homosexuality clearly conflicts with his religious beliefs and that while he would not necessarily kick a player off the team for being gay, he probably would think hard about doing so. According to an article in the October 31 issue of Rice News, the university’s faculty-staff newspaper, Mr. Hatfield contended that the latter part of that sentence “does not accurately represent his words.”
President Gillis became aware of The Chronicle article late Monday morning, and then called Mr. Hatfield that afternoon, according to the Rice News article. The president said that he and Mr. Hatfield discussed the need for the coach to affirm his commitment to the university’s nondiscrimination policy and to apologize for “the damage done by the comments.”
Later that afternoon, both the president and coach sent letters to the editor of The Chronicle as well as to faculty and student leaders and to the university’s student newspaper.
“The views attributed to football coach Ken Hatfield ... represent neither Rice University policy nor practice,” Mr. Gillis wrote in his e-mail message to The Chronicle. “Our university is committed to carrying out to the fullest its policy of nondiscrimination: ‘Rice University does not discriminate against any individual on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, or veteran status in its admissions, its educational programs, or employment of faculty or staff.’”
Mr. Gillis further wrote that he has told Mr. Hatfield in “unequivocal terms” that “he is entitled to practice his personally held religious views in his private life, but as Rice University football coach he must wholeheartedly execute university policy. He has agreed to do so. No student at Rice will be denied equal participation on a team based on sexual orientation, period.”
Rice “is very, very proud of being a very, very inclusive university,” Mr. Gillis said in an interview Wednesday. “There would be people who might conclude as a result of those comments that we’re not. But we are, and we work very hard at it.”
In his own letter, Mr. Hatfield committed himself to carrying out university policy. “In my role as football coach, a position of authority assigned by my university, I am aware that I must thoroughly carry out university policy, including its prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation. While I have personal views on the subject, I have assured the president that I can and will follow the university’s nondiscrimination policy sincerely and completely. I apologize to the university and the entire community for any distress this story caused them.”
On Tuesday, at a general meeting of Rice’s faculty, those in attendance unanimously approved a resolution repudiating “any statement by a Rice official that might seem to imply that the university discriminates” and reaffirmed the university’s nondiscrimination policy.
“We do not have a test for sexual orientation at this university,” Mr. Gillis told the faculty, according to an article that will appear in the November 7 issue of Rice News. “We do not have a test for students. We do not have a test for faculty. We do not have a test for staff or any other part of the university, including athletics. And we are not going to have one, ever,” he said, striking the lectern to emphasize his point, according to Rice News.
This was the first time Mr. Gillis exercised his right to vote as a faculty member, and he did so, he said, because of his background. “I grew up in the Jim Crow South, in Jackson County, North Florida, so discrimination is not an abstract concept to me. It’s something that I feel very strongly about. I wanted to show my personal agreement with the faculty.”