Texas A&M Apologizes for Football Player’s Anti-Gay Remark

The president and the athletics director of Texas A&M University apologized last week for an anti-gay comment by a football player at a pep rally the week before.

Ray M. Bowen, the president, and Wally Groff had said nothing at the rally. They issued statements after some students and professors expressed outrage over the remarks by Dan Campbell, a senior who plays tight end.

Mr. Campbell made the speech before about 40,000 students, staff members, and alumni at the Aggie Bonfire, a tradition that leads up to the football game against the University of Texas at Austin. After expressing hatred for archrival Texas, he said he was proud to attend a university where “men like women and women like men.”

Since the incident, gay students and others have encouraged anyone offended by Mr. Campbell’s comment to write to Mr. Bowen, said Eric W. Trekell, a spokesman for Texas A&M University Allies, a support network for homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered people on the campus. “I suffered the pain of listening to a football player tell me that A&M is NOT my university,” he wrote to the president.

So far, the president has received a dozen or more e-mail messages from students, faculty members, and alumni, according to James R. Ashlock, a spokesman for the university.

Mr. Campbell could not be reached for comment last week. A local newspaper, The Eagle, however, published the following apology from him: “I offended some people, and I’m sorry for that. It was heat of the moment. It’s not necessarily that I directed it at anyone.”

In his statement, Mr. Bowen acknowledged that the player’s remark was inappropriate. “The university’s position is that the university is inclusive,” he said.

Mr. Trekell said the president’s apology was a welcome first step, but not a solution to the problem. “This university has a history of refusing to recognize its gay, lesbian, and bisexual community,” he said, noting that in the 1980s, a gay-student organization had to sue the university to gain official recognition. Texas A&M Allies wants the administration to develop more programs to deal with anti-gay sentiment on the campus, he said.

Mr. Ashlock, the university spokesman, said Texas A&M had come a long way since the 1980s, and now offered many educational programs for students and faculty members that involve issues of sexual orientation.

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