The Harvard Crimson has recently revealed the details of what appears to have been a yearly list created by the men’s soccer team, rating female freshmen recruits on their attractiveness, with sexually explicit descriptions to match.
The “Scouting Report," which was written by a member of the 2012 men’s team, is nine pages long, and was originally circulated through the team’s e-mails on July 31, 2012. The beginning referred to the previous year's scouting report, saying that one female player had, as predicted, turned out to be the "hottest and the most STD ridden." This makes it seem like the report was an annual tradition, at least at the time.
The report gave each woman a number rating along with a paragraph or more describing her, and contained photographs stolen from the women's personal Facebook pages. Many of these descriptions were sexually explicit—for example: “She looks like the kind of girl who both likes to dominate, and likes to be dominated.” Each girl also got assigned a sexual position, and a nickname such as “Gumbi” because “her gum to tooth ratio is about 1 to 1.”
The author rated one woman a three, because she was “strong, tall and manly” and he “felt bad.” It’s no surprise that many members of that year’s team refused to comment on the list.
Robert L. Scalise, Director of Athletics, saw the document for what he says was the first time on Monday. He condemned the report, telling the Crimson, “Any time a member of our community says things about other people who are in our community that are disparaging, it takes away from the potential for creating the kind of learning environment that we’d like to have here at Harvard.”
Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana issued a written statement, saying, “As a human being, and a member of the Harvard College community, I am always profoundly disturbed and upset by allegations of sexism, because I feel it is wrong and antithetical to this institution’s fundamental values. …we must work together to build a community of which we can all be proud.”
CBS News reports that the Google Group used to share the list was, until recently, available to the public eye. While we can’t say we’re surprised, but it's just disappointing that guys would do something like this. On a hopeful note, Harvard Women's Soccer Team Coach Christopher P. Hamblin wrote to the Crimson that he's seen a "huge shift in the culture of the men's soccer program" since men's coach Pieter S. Lehrer started in 2013—So it's possible the "scouting report" no longer happens on a yearly basis.
