“Remember, you guys are role models for these kids. They look up to you. They watch what you do and copy your actions. You need to set a good example for them.”

I was in a training session at the time I heard these words, for a program, sparked by the Student-Athlete Advisory Board, officially called Cyclones On Educated Decisions, Together Everyone Achieves More, but more often referred to as COED TEAM. (I am glad of this, since the acronym is quite a bit easier to remember than the whole shebang.)

COED TEAM involves ISU student-athletes going into elementary, junior high and high schools in the Ames area, performing skits and talking with students about making good decisions. Depending on the age group, the discussion topics vary. With the older kids, it often deals with smoking or drinking. The younger audiences are more likely to hear about cheating, procrastination, name-calling, challenges that are more along the lines of what kids get into trouble for at recess.

The leader in the front of the room was telling this semester’s group for COED TEAM — about 25 athletes from various sports — about how to handle tough questions from the kids.

“Do you drink?”

“Have you ever lied?”

“Do you smoke cigarettes?”

“Have you ever had sex?”

Just to set the scene, picture yourself staring into the eyes of a skinny little seventh-grader with an ISU basketball sweatshirt covering his short little 99-pound body while faced with one of those questions. What do you say?

Tell the truth? Naturally that’s the best option. It sure would be nice to simply be able to tell the truth, but I would bet the entire mound of moola allotted for football scholarships that there are a few athletes — at Iowa State and elsewhere — who have had some indiscreet instances with a few of the aforementioned “poisons.”

In reality, all students at this university have to make life choices that involve those questions. The only difference is, if Joe Schmo and your typical engineering student on the street (after all, this is ISU we’re talking about) get into a rumble in a bar, you’ll see their names in the police blotter. The end. If a crackerjack football player tosses some punches with another guy in the very same bar in the very same situation, it’s more likely to end up on the front page.

When a student-athlete signs his or her letter of intent to play a sport at ISU, he or she is signing their name on the line for only that: to participate in athletics. The athlete doesn’t check box yes or no in the small print to indicate whether they’ll serve as a good role model to the public. They don’t ask to set the example. It is simply expected.

If a person is in the spotlight, regardless of whether it is because of athletics, politics or movie star fame, that person becomes a role model for the rest of the nation, and sometimes the world.

Perhaps it isn’t fair, but have you ever had anyone take you aside and say, “Kid I have some advice for you: life is fair?” Funny, neither have I. Probably because it isn’t.

This responsibility of setting a good example has been horrendously ignored lately, and not only by athletes (Mr. Rosell “Full Nelson” Ellis) but by the one man you would assume you could … ahem … trust. Our very own President of the United States is having girl trouble again. Articles about all the presidents who chose to do a little dance and make a little love have been appearing in the papers. Does the fact that other presidents did it justify it for our current president?

Absolutely not. The notion that the man responsible for leading our country — the man that in theory should be worthy of every American citizen’s utmost respect — has allegedly been sleeping with a girl close to the age of his very own daughter and beyond that fact has encouraged her to lie about it is well past despicable. It is so maddening that I can’t even think of a proper word to describe how wrong he is to behave in such outlandish ways while running our nation.

Oh, wait. There is one.

Unacceptable.

While the media might be a slightly more ruthless bunch than a crowd of seventh graders gathered in an auditorium at an Ames middle school, I would hate to stand in the shoes of Mr. Clinton if he were to join COED TEAM right now.

“Can you tell us how to make good decisions, Mr. President?”

Wouldn’t it be nice if he could answer yes.

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Joanne Roepke is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Aurora.