Photo courtesy of Yoshi via flickr.com
The Harvard men soccer team’s 2016 season has come to an early end after the school revealed a long history of lewd yearly “scouting reports” about freshmen players on the women’s team. The team was forced to forfeit its remaining regular season games and will not participate in the Ivy League Tournament or the NCAA tournament.
“Both the teams’ behavior and the failure to be forthcoming when initially questioned are completely unacceptable, have no place at Harvard, and run counter to the mutual respect that is a core value of our community,” Harvard President Drew Faust said in a statement Thursday.
The investigation began after The Harvard Crimson released a story claiming that in 2012, the team created a physical “scouting report” on the incoming women’s recruits, describing them in a graphic and degrading manner. The men ranked them numerically by attractiveness, fabricated stories about the females’ sexual behavior, and went as far as to designate them sexual positions.
Upon deeper prying into the team’s conduct, the University discovered that the practice was annually consistent, even into the 2016 season, as a team bonding tradition.
Harvard Athletic Director Bob Scalise stated that the university has “zero tolerance” for the men’s actions and that “immediate and significant action is absolutely necessary.”
“I understand that this practice appears to be more widespread across the team and has continued beyond 2012, including in 2016, and that current students who participated were not immediately forthcoming about their involvement,” Scalise said.
The incoming recruits of 2012 shared their insight after the story was published, explaining how it felt to be hurt by people they considered to be “close friends for the past four years” and that the men “for more than four years have neglected to apologize until this week.”
The women hope that their story will spark a change in the sexist culture that they were unfortunate enough to be raveled into, directing the conclusion of their statement at the men:
“Finally, to the men of Harvard Soccer and any future men who may lay claim to our bodies and choose to objectify us as sexual objects, in the words of one of us, we say together: ‘I can offer you my forgiveness, which is — and forever will be — the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.’ ”
Harvard Men’s Soccer at the time of the suspension was in first place in the Ivy League with a 10-3-2 record.
In response to the team’s suspension, there are initial reports that the men’s cross country team also participated in similar activities. The cross country team reportedly used spreadsheets to rank the women’s team ahead of their annual formal. Instead of hiding the spreadsheets like the soccer team had tried to do, the men’s CC team is trying to be forthcoming about the whole situation, according to an article by The Washington Post.
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