Reports have emerged that the Harvard men’s cross country team created yearly spreadsheets evaluating members of the women’s team, sometimes with sexually explicit remarks and comments about the students’ physical appearances.
The Harvard Crimson reported Saturday that the team generated the spreadsheets in advance of an annual dance. The 2012 spreadsheet allegedly contained comments about the weights of different members of the women’s team, while the 2014 document, according to a message posted in the team’s GroupMe, included specific comments about a team member’s sexual preferences.
The revelation comes just days after Harvard canceled the last two games of its men’s soccer season after finding that the team had continued to produce an annual “scouting report” in which it rated members of the women’s team on their sexual attractiveness, the Crimson reported.
Men’s cross country captain Brandon Price told the Crimson on Saturday that the team’s culture has shifted since the years in which those spreadsheets were created, adding that the 2016 spreadsheet does not contain any lewd comments.
The Crimson also obtained an email Price sent to his team, in which he said he had shared “a document that contains sexually explicit content” with men’s and women’s cross country coach Jason Saretsky.
Price wrote that he worried about Harvard officials finding the team’s documents without the team coming clean about its behavior.
“We don’t want the school to find this, without us first bringing it to them,” Price wrote. “The problem with the men’s soccer team was they tried to hide their stuff.”