The recent article in The NCAA News on the difficulties faced by homosexual athletes, coaches and administrators ("H -- the scarlet letter of sports," October 8 issue) was a welcome addition to the discussion on the issue.

At the 2000 Faculty Athletics Representatives Association (FARA) Fall Forum, we had a lively panel presentation addressing these same issues. Since then, some of the participants in the panel have had considerable success in keeping attention focused on the problems faced by gays and lesbians. When the FARA first proposed the panel presentation, some questioned whether the forum was the appropriate venue for such a discussion: We are faculty, what do we have to do with gay and lesbian issues? The response then was the same as it is now. As a group and on individual campuses, faculty athletics representatives have two key responsibilities. We are there to ensure the academic integrity of the athletics program, a role with which most of us are quite comfortable. But we also are charged with helping to ensure the welfare of the student-athletes.

While our responsibilities as advocates for the latter are much less clear, three points apply to the current challenges brought about by homophobia. First, all of our student-athletes deserve to be able to participate in their chosen sport, free from verbal and psychological abuse and harassment. Given that most gay and lesbian student-athletes are not comfortable "coming out" to their teammates, inevitably they would have to suffer in silence when the worst anti-gay and lesbian invective is spewed about. These often unwitting insults are made more difficult because they are frequently hurled out by friends and teammates whom the student-athletes have come to depend upon.

What is the faculty athletics representative to do? We do what faculty do, we educate. The simple truth is that given the percentage of gays and lesbians in the general population, most institutions probably have gay and lesbian student-athletes. We need to help educate our student-athletes so that they are not unintentionally creating a hostile environment for some of their own teammates.

Second, we need to ensure that our institutions avoid discrimination in any form, against anyone. The competition for coaches, for student-athletes and for administrators is tough, and we should help wherever we can to recruit the most talented, qualified people for their positions regardless of sexual orientation or any other potential basis for discrimination.

Third, we need to be available to all of our student-athletes. That means being there for student-athletes who choose to be open about their sexual orientation. There can be no more fundamental issue of welfare than who a person really is. We can and should be available to help.

I am not Jewish, but I would not hesitate to confront a student who was using anti-Semitic slurs and try to impress upon them the need to be more aware of the effect their words can have and the inappropriateness of their behavior. I am not African-American, but I would not hesitate to involve myself if a student-athlete were being subjected to racial invective. I also am not gay. And I wonder how quickly I would respond if a student-athlete was casually tossing about anti-gay insults. I hope I would react just as quickly and as forcefully as I know I would in the first two instances. I hope we all would.

As faculty athletics representatives we have a responsibility to help ensure the welfare of the student-athlete. Permitting the hidden minority group among us to suffer in silence means we fall short of that responsibility. The NCAA has begun to take notice of the issues confronting the homosexual community, and we should join in those efforts.

Michael Miranda is the faculty athletics representative at Plattsburgh State University of New York, and a member of the Board of Directors of Sexual Minorities in Athletics, an advocacy group dedicated to promoting student welfare and combating homophobia in athletics (www.smiaonline.org).