US Football
Harvard women respond to men's sexually explicit ratings
Following the sexually explicit "scouting report" devised by Harvard men's football team, the female players in question have responded with their own call to arms.
Harvard acts on sexist behaviour
In the heat of the US election, and following the sexist behaviour of President-elect Donald Trump making the headlines, the country's proud Harvard University has taken the decision to suspend the players of its men's football team due to them scoring the members of the women's team with a ranking based on their physical attractiveness and sexual appeal.
It was the University's own newspaper, Harvard Crimson, that uncovered the report and they were clear that this wasn’t a new problem, it had been going on for years and was a tradition on campus. According to the publication, this particular ranking was from the 2012 recruits, and it rated the girls from 1 to 10 according to their appearance and also assigned each of them an imaginary sexual position. The president of the institution, Drew Faust, was quick to apologize on behalf of the University to all students and their families and the current men’s football coach, Pieter S. Lehrer, said in a statement upon reading the report that he was “shocked and disgusted”.
The women respond
Several of the players written about, including Kelsey Clayman, Brooke Dickens, Alika Keene, Emily Mosbacher, Lauren Varela and Haley Washburn, have come out on the back of the media attention and made their feelings known.
This episode has been covered by much of the media outlets in the US. Most major newspaper columnists, including the Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, have been extremely critical of the behaviour and have had no trouble making the connection to some of Trump’s activities that were seen during his election campaign, but weren’t enough to turn the majority of Americans off voting for him.