University Athletes Suspended For Posting Offensive and Racist Texts
University Athletes Suspended For Posting Offensive and Racist Texts
Two recent cases highlight the need for increased monitoring of messages posted to social media sites by University students.
The most recent took place at Columbia University, where members of the school’s wrestling team, over a two year period, posted lewd and racists messages to the team’s GroupMe page and were recently exposed by student-run BWOG.com. The school suspended those involved and issued a statement which read in part: “Columbia University has zero tolerance in its athletics programs for the group messaging and texts sent by several members of the men’s varsity wrestling team. They are appalling, at odds with the core values of the University, violate team guidelines, and have no place in our community.”
The Columbia suspensions came on the heels of the cancellation of Harvard’s Men’s soccer team’s games in 2016 when it was discovered that team members had a tradition, going back at least four years, of describing and ranking the looks of female soccer players with lewd and offensive comments. The “Scouting Report” was disseminated over a group email distribution list.
Harvard officials also issued a statement which said, “We strongly believe that this immediate and significant action is absolutely necessary if we are to create an environment of mutual support, respect, and trust among our students and our teams.” “The decision to cancel a season is serious and consequential, and 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,” they added.
Both Columbia and Harvard could have easily avoided these embarrassing situations by letting all members know what conduct isn’t allowed and assigning a person or group to monitor content. Mzinga recommends that it be a third party, so there is no collusion. That way, violators can be rapidly identified and their posts removed, so they don’t appear in more-widely-distributed student (and national) publications.
