Harvard cancels men’s soccer season for players’ ‘appalling behavior’

The Ivy League school takes its community values rather seriously. After allegations that soccer team members were rating female athletes online, top dogs stepped in. Here’s how.

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The Harvard men’s soccer team is under fire.

Harvard has canceled the remainder of the men’s soccer season after a report from the school’s Crimson revealed a sexually explicit “scouting report” from 2012 that ranked the appearances of players on the women’s team.

Harvard president Drew Faust issued a statement that called the players’ behavior “appalling.”

Faust said that an investigation had led her team to believe the actions of the 2012 team “were not isolated to one year or the actions of a few individuals.”

Here’s more from her statement:

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.

In its initial article, the Crimson called the soccer team’s scouting report “a yearly team tradition.”

In an op-ed published in the Crimson, six players from the women’s soccer team expressed its disappointment.

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