The University of Mississippi is investigating allegations that a group of about 20 football players heckled actors with "borderline hate speech" during a performance of "The Laramie Project," a play based on the murder of Matthew Shepard, according to ESPN.
The incident was first reported by the university's student newspaper, the Daily Mississippian. Michael Barnett, the assistant theater chair, said that audience members were disrupting the performance by saying derogatory terms for homosexuals, according to Newsmax.
"The football players were certainly not the only audience members that were being offensive last night," Rory Ledbetter, the play's director, said. "But there were definitely the ones who seemed to initiate others in the audience to say things too. It seemed like they didn't know that they were representing the university when they were doing these things."
Garrison Gibbons, a junior theater major, spoke with Fox News and was especially hurt by the comments.
"I am the only gay person on the cast," Gibbons said. "I played a gay character in the show, and to be ridiculed like that was something that really made me realize that some people at Ole Miss and in Mississippi still can't accept me for who I am."
The university's dean of students, Thomas Reardon, told ESPN that the school's Bias Incident Response Team will be looking into the incident to determine what steps need to be taken to address the situation.
"They'll make any recommendations there to us, to me, at the university, and we'll move from there," Reardon said. "I've been in touch with the theater department and the athletic department, and we're waiting on their report."
A joint statement by the school's chancellor, Dan Jones, and the athletic director, Ross Bjork, apologized for the statement while saying that the players responsible for the disruption will be held accountable. In a tweet head football coach Hugh Freeze said that he did not condone actions that offend people, according ESPN.
Dr. Donald Cole, the school's assistant provost, said that many of the players involved apologized after the play. It is unclear if the players will be punished, possibly suspended from playing, because of the incident, according to ESPN.
