The Harvard men’s soccer team wasn’t alone in circulating sexually explicit ratings of female students—the college’s men’s cross country team also built spreadsheets assessing women based on their looks, the Harvard Crimson reported this weekend.
The discovery comes just a week after Harvard canceled the rest of the men’s soccer season over the so-called “scouting reports,” which not only discussed female players’ attractiveness but also speculated about their preferred sexual positions.
Over the weekend, the captain of the men’s cross country team told his coach about the spreadsheets. “We don’t want the school to find this, without us first bringing it to them,” the team captain wrote in an email obtained by the Crimson. “The problem with the men’s soccer team was they tried to hide their stuff,” he said, explaining his decision to “come clean with anything we have typed down in the past.”
One cross country athlete said in an internal group message that the spreadsheets, which were created annually, were not as lewd as the men’s soccer team’s scouting reports. But a 2012 spreadsheet created by the men’s cross country team did include “specific comments about girls’ weight or appearance,” the Crimson reported. “Also 2014 talked about a specific person getting black d*ck a lot,” one recent graduate wrote in a group message reviewed by the Crimson.
The men’s soccer team published an apology in the student newspaper on Friday, calling its scouting reports “an inexcusable manifestation of sexism and misogyny on our part.”
Since the original Crimson report last month, Harvard’s athletics director has met with several coaches to discuss whether other teams had engaged in similar behavior.
A spokesman for the Harvard men’s cross country team could not be immediately reached to discuss what disciplinary actions, if any, are forthcoming.
— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for Heat Street and is a fellow for the Steamboat Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum.