Are Yale athletics "out?"

The locker room. It's a place where athletes shower, prepare for games, and bond—and it is a strongly heterosexual environment. Discussions of hook-ups and boyfriends and girlfriends abound, so to be gay in the locker room is a very different scene.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH

Some Yale teams have the reputation for being homophobic. Track team member JC Reindl, BK '03, felt that such a reputation keeps many Yale athletes in the closet. In honor of Pride Week, he organized a panel entitled "Out in Athletics" to deal with this frequently ignored issue in the Yale community. One of the Pride Week organizers, Laura Horak, CC '03, said that while there was a core group of people interested in speaking on the panel, "It was particularly hard to find gay male athletes." No statistics exist on the actual number of gay athletes at Yale, but Horak and Reindl agree that it is probably greater than the number of people currently out to their teams. National statistics show that 10 percent of the population is gay, and panelists suspect that the same statistic applies to Yale.

Yale is considered a fairly accepting place for gay people, and many other groups on campus have large gay contingencies. However, the panelists expressed the common sentiment that "There are gays everywhere, except really in the locker room." Reindl believes that "as we talk about [homosexuality] more and as we make it more of an issue, people will feel more comfortable with their sexuality and they'll choose to come out."

The panel consisted of five students, all with different coming-out stories but similar Yale athletic experiences. Surprisingly, all of the athletes that spoke had positive experiences with coming out. Jon Mikhalevsky, MC '03, a former member of the heavyweight crew team and a current member of the sailing team, came out in high school and then as soon as he came to Yale. He was hesitant about coming out to the crew team because of rumors about heavyweight crew's homophobia. Mikhalevsky joked, "I actually found that I didn't need to say anything, because you're with crew all the time and people talk. Since I was already out to the whole rest of campus, people just knew."

Margaret Aiken, SY '04, avoided coming out immediately to her team because she wanted them to know her as a person before bringing sexuality into the equation. She originally came out to another gay member of the team, but her full coming out was on a training trip. Speaking with her girlfriend on the telephone from the hotel room, she turned to the girls in her room and said, "You know, she's not just my friend, she's my girlfriend," which her teammates acknowledged they had already suspected.

REBECCA ROSENTHAL/YH

When Reindl came out in high school, he did so in the most simple manner possible: he told the girl with the biggest mouth, and by dinnertime everyone knew. At Yale, Reindl did not come out to his team right away, and when he did, it was an accident. He was dating the roommate of a team member, and the team member saw him sneaking out one morning. "I kind of `outed' myself along with the boy I was dating," he said. By the end of Reindl's freshman year, everyone knew. His camaraderie with his teammates has increased. Now, "anal sex is talked about no less than three times a week on my team." Reindl could not imagine a better experience as a gay athlete.

Gwynna Biggers, MC '02, who has also had a positive experience, calls her sexuality a "non-issue" with her women's crew teammates. She adds that her coach is "the most heterosexual male," and she originally feared that he would treat her differently because of her sexuality. Instead, she said he has "grown a lot" and has toned down the gay jokes.

Lauren Mangini's, CC '03, overall experience with being gay on the women's crew was similar to Biggers'. Although she encountered no overt homophobia, she said—in a slightly irritated voice—that everyone assumed that she was a lesbian. Mangini is bisexual and does not like the idea that people look at her and assume things about her sexuality. She said one of the most helpful things about being out was the fact that Biggers was, too.

Since all of the panelists seemed to feel accepted as gay athletes, audience members attempted to discern what the panelists hoped to accomplish through "Out in Athletics." People questioned the accuracy of Yale's liberal reputation. However, none of the panelists truly addressed this question. Reindl attempted to answer by describing his experience with postering for the event. None of his posters were touched except for those at Payne-Whitney Gymnasium, all of which were either defaced or stolen. Most of the panelists agreed that Yale athletics has a decidedly conservative edge, but they gave few personal examples of major problems they had encountered.

It was an interesting afternoon, but the question remains: how is the issue promoted in the arena where it matters most—the locker room?

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