The Harvard University men’s soccer team has been suspended for the remainder of their season after they were caught ranking members of the women’s soccer team based on their physical appearance.
The Harvard men’s soccer team, which is currently ranked first in the Ivy League, will be forced to forfeit the final two games of their season in addition to any postseason play. Concerns arose after Harvard lawyers found a “scouting report” conducted by members of the 2012 men’s soccer team, which ranked the members of the school’s women’s soccer team based on their physical appearances.
“I was deeply distressed to learn that the appalling actions of the 2012 men’s soccer team were not isolated to one year or the actions of a few individuals,” Harvard President Drew Faust offered in a statement regarding the incident.
Harvard administration moved to suspend the team in response to concerns over the use of sexually explicit language in the “scouting report” to describe members of the women’s team.
A report by The Harvard Crimson revealed that the “scouting report” assigned a ranking out of 10 to each member of the women’s team, as well as a guess at the girl’s preferred sexual position.
Harvard’s Director of Athletics, Robert L. Scalise, claimed that the actions of the soccer team destroy the learning environment that the schools is trying to foster: “Any time a member of our community says things about other people who are in our community that are disparaging, it takes away from the potential for creating the kind of learning environment that we’d like to have here at Harvard.”
Faust added that the decision to suspend the team “reflects Harvard’s view that both the team’s 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.”
Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com
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