Amherst Cross Country Team Suspended Following Email Chain

Tufts luck wrote:

Combine that with an athlete on the team getting in trouble for alleged sexual harassment, and the administration is policing a culture that led to some specific outcomes, not thoughts.

Are you suggesting that in the absence of a team culture of making crude jokes about women, that kid would not have committed sexual harassment?

Skips Arm Day wrote:

but you really cross the line when it gets personal and you start talking about specific people you know in crude sexual terms behind their back.

What qualifies you to say where the line is drawn?

It just takes on creepy predatory vibes.

You're projecting.

Oh the irony wrote:

Guessing that the soccer and cross country teams have separate locker rooms...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/locker-room-talk_us_5803819fe4b0e8c198a89710

There is always a David Lander. Always. 50 bucks says he ends up a politician in some sort of twisted sex scandal. Will report back later.....

Wrong, they do. Stop being self-righteous because you clearly are naive. Also, it's clearly a joke so no harm no foul.

Then it is the fault of the person who forwarded it to the boss. People are so stupid sometimes.... like ratting people out will do any good.

Truth Tellor wrote:

bunch of silver spooners that can't get laid complaining about women... hmmm where have i heard that before???

Starts with an "L" and ends with a "etsRun."

Thoughts wrote:

I'm kind of on the fence about this. Thinking back to college there was a lot of slinging of abusive language. The only thing is that it wasn't meant to be abusive. I'm not saying it was justified, or even entirely harmless, but maybe that the people participating were good kids who weren't taught this boundary. It goes without saying that college kids are really dumb and immature. God, if the internet was a platform back then so everything we said was written down and saved I'm sure I would cringe reading it now.

Despite saying a lot of dumb stuff, who are these kids? What do their action say?

Pretty sure this was taught in Preschool 101.

whambulance wrote:

DiscoGary wrote:

I wonder what is going to happen when the intellectual class who sits in judgement of these young men are presented with the nasty things they've said about Trump supporters, conservatives, Tea Partiers, uneducated white men, Southern Christians?

Will they suspend themselves?

Always the victim, aren't you?

I just want everyone to live by the same rules. Don't you?

MemberBerries wrote:

Member when this country had free speech? I 'member. Saying some inappropriate stuff should not be grounds for punishment if no one actually acted on any of it. Yeah its probably a little messed up to be an incoming freshman and getting these emails in the summer but nothing that they said or did actually hurt anyone. At worst some one felt uncomfortable, but I'm sure Amherst has plenty of safe spaces for those people.

Umm...ever heard of libel?

Blame the rat wrote:

Then it is the fault of the person who forwarded it to the boss. People are so stupid sometimes.... like ratting people out will do any good.

You don't think the other NESCAC teams are talking right now about emails that they might have? This will definitely curtail "jokes" like this in public forums.

Whether that translates into an actual change in team's cultures is hard to say. But I think it might.

whatthewhatthewhat wrote:

For those of you saying all mens teams do this: NO. Not true. You'd never hear the guys on my team say crap like "I don't consider them to be human" or whatever.

celery wrote:

4th paragraph of article uses the word "transphobic" so yeah I would guess the writers are liberals on a righteous crusade to ride the world of free speech and humor.

I don't get it, I'm not a liberal but I'm aware of the word 'transphobic.' How does that immediately tell you they are a liberal?

Transphobic means "fear of transgender, transvestite, etc." Labeling a criticism of transsexual behavior as being due to a phobia of transsexuals, is a straw man argument. Straw-man arguments, while being employed by both sides of the cultural war, are by far and away the predominate technique employed by liberals. Examples; if you think marriage should be defined as a lifelong union between a man and woman, you are homophobic. If you think affirmative action is a destructive policy that undermines personal responsibility, you are a racist. If you think high cooperate tax rates stifles economic growth, you hate poor people. If you think a woman choosing to be a homemaker is a completely admirable career choice, you are sexist. The examples could go on and on. The left constantly assignes despicable motives as the reason for every conservative opinion.

Not sure how many people saw it before it got deleted, but the first post after the link to the story was a picture of an Amherst runner with a caption "Snitches get Snitches"

That right there tells you all you need to know.

Exactly. It's easy to shrug it off as no big deal when you haven't been a victim of this sort of "culture" directly. Yes, there were people like this in college. I hope your daughter/sister/mom/dad/brother/friends never have to deal with them.

Pretty lame looking guys...not that they have much in the looks dept, can any of them even break 27 min for 8K?

Any indication wrote:

H.S. Coach #6543 wrote:

A very good editorial from the campus newspaper too:

https://theindicator.wordpress.amherst.edu/special-reports/editorial-after-mens-xc-email-examine-all-athlete-spaces

The Indicator is actually the college's literary magazine, not its newspaper. This distinction may sound trivial, but the reality is that it's just another example of the modern decay of subjective sensationalism taking the place of objective journalism.

How about putting that in good ol' English, instead of poncy academia.

messi wrote:

Any indication wrote:

The Indicator is actually the college's literary magazine, not its newspaper. This distinction may sound trivial, but the reality is that it's just another example of the modern decay of subjective sensationalism taking the place of objective journalism.

How about putting that in good ol' English, instead of poncy academia.

Uh... what does "poncy" mean?

I often disagree with the brojos, but I have zero problem with them piping in on these threads.

There is no such thing as journalistic integrity. And, if there was, no sane person would expect it on LRC.

Culture is important. 90 percent of guys on any given team will key off of the standards and norms set by the 10 percent. Situations like this don't arise from a team full of a**holes, they arise from a very average team that gets steered toward a toxic culture by a few key a**holes.

My team was very different when I came in as a freshman to when I left as a senior. We had a totally different culture in terms of drinking behavior, training behavior, misogyny, homophobia, etc. and the changes were almost all good. A lot can change in four years, particularly with such a relatively small group of people (~15-25 distance guys in most programs).

It sucks that these are the examples we hear about and not the good ones, but the key takeaway should be that if a few bad apples can bring down a team then any team is only a few years and a few good apples away from changing for the better.

Tufts luck wrote:

Blame the rat wrote:

Then it is the fault of the person who forwarded it to the boss. People are so stupid sometimes.... like ratting people out will do any good.

You don't think the other NESCAC teams are talking right now about emails that they might have? This will definitely curtail "jokes" like this in public forums.

Whether that translates into an actual change in team's cultures is hard to say. But I think it might.

I would hope it is a conversation teams are having. Certainly it is a conversation that many folks need to have. It isn't just someone forwarding an email. If you work for a state institution or a school or a business, etc, and you use their server to send an email, that email becomes in a sense their property. As you say, emails are a public forum. The phrase "private email" is an oxymoron.

getoveritlibs wrote:

Why is anything that happens in a private situation an issue? Yes, what they said was wrong but if I come home and complain about my co-workers and say mean things to my wife about them should I get fired for that? No, because I don't say it to them or treat them any differently I just secretly despise a few of them. Private should stay private.

This stuff is impossible for college educators. While I think the fear that we are turning into a 1984 type thought police is legitimate, I also see how a lot of this stuff would make incoming freshmen uncomfortable. And I do think people are greatly influenced by the college culture. If everyone drinks, you eventually will, etc. If everyone treats women a little less than they should, you are more likely to as well.

I always just tried to correct guys from calling people pu**ies. If they said that I'd say, "You mean warm and moist?" And they'd look at me like I was crazy. I didn't think it was cool to associate weakness with the female sex.