Harvard administrators cancelled the remainder of the soccer team's schedule after explicit scouting reports surfaced that rated female athletes on their appearance and guessed at their favorite sexual positions, according to multiple media reports.
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The Harvard Crimson, the university's student newspaper, first wrote about a scouting report that was written in 2012. University officials subsequently discovered the practiced continued through this year, and then a series of events occurred in rapid order. Harvard canceled the rest of the men's team season; the team in a written statement, apologized; and the university's general counsel's office said it would review the 2012 document.
Then, on Saturday, six former women soccer players fired back in a op-ed piece in The Crimson. It said, in part: "We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance."
Harvard moved quickly on an issue —- the treatment of women in society and on college campuses —- that has gripped professional sports leagues and the presidential campaign. The New York Times interviewed several students, who were appalled and repulsed, by the scouting reports. Dr. Mary Water, the chair of Harvard's sociology department, told the Times: "Even at a college with very smart and generally very politically progressive students, you can still have this kind of really unexamined male entitlement,"
The men's team won't play the final two games of the season, and — even though it was close to qualifying for the NCAA tournament —- won't be able to participate in post season play.
The faux reports might be dismissed as locker room talk, but it was vulgar and insensitive, as the men's team has now acknowledged. According to The Crimson, one part of the 2012 report said: "She seems relatively simple and probably inexperienced sexually, so I decided missionary would be her preferred position," the author wrote about one woman. The Crimson went on to say, "Doggy style," "The Triple Lindy," and "cowgirl" were listed as possible positions for other women.
