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Before Election Day, Harvard Takes a Stand Against Sexist Locker Room Talk

The election is still to come, and who knows what will happen as polls tighten in the key battleground states.

But at least one major university has already taken a key theme of this campaign seriously.

110716_harvardAfter discovering a salacious scouting report where its men’s soccer team members rated women’s team members and even wrote about female players as sex objects, Harvard has canceled the remaining two games of its men’s soccer team season and forfeited any right to post-season play.

The scouting report, written in 2012, was until recently still searchable and shared on Google. But the school investigated and discovered that, even this year, the practice of ranking female players by sex appeal was still in place.

The team has apologized for its actions in the college newspaper.

But the incident shows how pervasive and deeply rooted sexism continues to be in society. Even as the country could elect its first female president, sexism at a prestigious school as Harvard remains as Trumpy as any other school in the land.

It’s not that different from the realization that racism didn’t end after an Obama election.

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American sport has always served as a platform for resistance and has been measured and critiqued by how it responds in critical moments of racial and social crises.
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A New Track: Fostering Diversity and Equity in Athletics