KHALID, TAKE IT FROM STUDENTS OF LIFE

Donald Gaynor knows just what to do whenever any of the star athletes
he looks up to does something wrong. The 11-year-old sixth-grader at
Hartford's Noah Webster elementary school just drops the troubled
player and moves on to somebody else.

He didn't have to take such an action when the news broke that UConn's
Khalid El-Amin had been arrested on charges of marijuana possession
Tuesday. Gaynor has never been a big fan of the round-faced guard
from Minnesota.

``I like Duke,'' he says.

Still, Gaynor, who hopes to become a pro football player, finds the
whole thing sad because ``he shouldn't have been trying to get drugs.''

Sports fans and writers all over the country take the Donald Gaynor
approach in dealing with young athletes who get into trouble. They
drop them and move on to somebody else.

Sometimes it seems the landscape, the fields of dreams, are littered
with the reputations of players who've done things we wish they hadn't.

Knowing that the players have done things that many ordinary people
do, knowing that the players have done things that sainted athletes of
the past did and got away with in times of a less intrusive and
adversarial press, knowing that most of the players are decent men and
women, understanding that no one can be fairly judged by one small
incident, offers no real consolation.

Instead, we find ourselves shaking our heads and saying, ``Not him. I
believed in him.''

I still believe in Khalid El-Amin.

In exchange for getting the marijuana charge cleared from his record,
the 19-year-old UConn star has been sentenced to talk to
schoolchildren about making the right decisons.

An apparently remorseful El- Amin said, ``I hope I can tell them the
right things, so they can make the right choices.''

I don't know what El-Amin will say, but if the children he talks with
are anything like Donald Gaynor's classmates at Noah Webster, the
UConn guard would do well to listen as well as speak.

Joseph Dunn, 13, wants El-Amin to understand that he shouldn't mess up
because he has ``such a bright future.'' Because of that bright
future, Jessica Watterson, 11, is glad El- Amin seems to be getting a
second chance because ``everybody makes mistakes.''

Katie Stewart, 11, has seen the grownups make a lot of
mistakes.

With her chin resting just above Winnie the Pooh on her T-shirt,
Stewart said kids have faced too many huge disappointments from older
people, from the president to star athletes.

From the troubles of her celebrity elders, Stewart has learned to rely
more upon herself for moral guidance. She believes that anyone who
knows right from wrong can be a good role model.

I believe Khalid El-Amin knows right from wrong.

Like everyone else, he has the rest of his life to show he knows what
to do with that knowledge.