Amherst Cross Country Team Suspended Following Email Chain

The most alarming thing of this is the school paper uses a Wordpress blog account and can't even pay $10 for an annual domain name.

Seriously though. This is dumb. Not the outing of these idiots but the fact that kids need to learn emails and texts and posts to social media will be used against you.

First off, I'm not totally sure where i stand on the issue. She line of privacy has to be drawn, but I'm not sure where that line should be. However, even if I don't disagree with your position entirely, I do disagree with this reasoning. "How many women's teams have had this kind of thing uncovered? What was the racial makeup...?" Come on, be better than that. African Americans are incarcerated at a much higher rate that whites, but do I think that they are worse people, or even that they commit more crimes? NO! Instead, police patrol their neighborhoods more often, the judicial system is biased against them, etc. So just because more white men are being caught doing this type of thing does not mean that they actually commit more of these crimes. Instead, this could just be that they are punished more severely, or that people are more attentive when these things are said by white men.

That being said, I'm not sure I disagree with your premise that white men do this more often, simply that your reasoning is not conclusive.

Also, if you "find it kind of amusing" that white men are now being discriminated against, the clearly you do feel that they have something to atone for, or are simply bigoted yourself. Again, I think that white men have a responsibility to help those groups who have been marginalized historically, but this does not mean that I want to see white men discriminated against today.

Because this is an opportunity to diss Am-hearst. Why else?

Logician356 wrote:

jjjjjj wrote:

sounds like they applied the very ranking system that is rife throughout our entire society and which decided that Amherst is always behind Williams among liberal arts colleges and cross country teams to what they were not supposed to apply it. it is obviously foolhardy and obnoxious to email others such a disrespectful list, but I am no champion of the thought police and find the penalty overreaching by far.

Why do you have to bring Williams into this? What the heck does that have to do with anything?

wuht wrote:

Your post literally hurt my head. Could someone translate this?

"Boys will be boys."

yes, boys will be boys, but also: the ranking system is endemic in academia and the college presidents are always trumpeting the idea of ranking these intangible entities (the women in this case are untouchable for these would-be masters of the universe), so they internalize it and do it themselves. But, oh no, they express their angst about women in their puerile ranking system so they are suspended.

here's the fact of the matter:

teams have a lot of inside jokes and things that you can totally take out of context and make them seem horrible.

I know one of my teams has gotten in trouble for offensive things in the past that I disagree with, but people who were full of themselves condoned the team for a minor thing they did.

Were they sexist, objectifying things? No.

Here is the deal: the people that write these articles probably say terrible things.

The main hoe, side hoe thing- that's a joke, girls call guys their main hoes and side hoes, guys do it, its all fun.

To call a team out and publicly write an article and then to have their sports team be suspended, stupid.

The issue is that newspaper writers and writers and a lot of democrats and republicans think that they are perfect. Well they are not morally perfect.

Having been on a north eastern DIII XC team during the last 10 years, I can say that this seems like par for the course. Does this mean that DIII XC teams are cesspools of racism and bigotry? Mine certainly wasn't. I'd bet that this group of kids is harmless and can barely get a date, let alone successfully emulate the 'main bitch' 'side hoe' rap-culture-inspired lifestyle that these emails might suggest. They're a bunch of nerds guilty of having a few off-color inside jokes -- none of which cause harm unless somebody decides to take them out of context and put them in a newspaper. Or maybe I'm wrong and they're actually a bunch of sexual predators wreaking havoc on the Berkshires... Call the sheriff and crack open the cold case files - turns out it was Amherst XC all along!

Somebody at Amherst should take a look at these kids and see if they are causing trouble or if this is what it appears to be -- just a bunch of posturing.

That's actually a good thing to say. Nobody wants syphilis on their p3nis.

Actually we do have a free pass. Trump is president. Enough said. It is now more ok than ever before. Just telling it like it is.

If it was the other way around it would be double standard. Societies rules and norms are laughable sometimes.

Not the children... the children.... what on earth are we going to do.... CHILDREN

#OhAmherst. Remember when they got spanked in the DMR a few years back? Pepperidge farm remembers...

Exactly. Happens on pretty much all college teams. No harm no foul.

Over sensationalized wrote:

Exactly. Happens on pretty much all college teams. No harm no foul.

Yeah. Spend some time hanging with field hockey players...

Seems that the administration has suspended team activities, but given that it is final exam time in Amherst and then everyone goes home for vacation, what does that really mean? It does appear that the story could have been considerably worse -- a couple of kids were evidently responsible for the worst of the jokes, and there was at least some team leadership in shutting the thread down over a year ago. Barring some other parallel episodes we don't know about, I'm guessing some sensitivity training is in order, maybe a more formal apology, and some form of probation...?

Please tell us more about the reaction of males and females to your use of the phrase... "You mean warm and moist?"

Please tell us about the reaction at your frat parties

notquitesure wrote:

here's the fact of the matter:

teams have a lot of inside jokes and things that you can totally take out of context and make them seem horrible.

I know one of my teams has gotten in trouble for offensive things in the past that I disagree with, but people who were full of themselves condoned the team for a minor thing they did.

...

It sounds like you may think that "condone" means condemn, but actually it is entirely the opposite!

What if the "Do Asians have sideways vaginas?" question was a legitimate inquiry? There's not one Asian on the team. Maybe they've never seen an Asian vagina before and was seriously wondering.

Here is what is so frustrating about this. There's this whole narrative, whenever these disgusting comments from college guys come to the surface, that "girls have the same conversations too." I ran XC and track for a D1 college team. And I can tell you point blank: no, we did not. Women don't talk like this. We don't talk about our male teammates in such horrifyingly degrading terms. And sure, we'll point out which boys are 'hot" but we won't fixate so much one which ones are not, and degrade them to a point of no return. And this is not me getting on a soapbox, this is actually true. So it's so damn frustrating every time we hear about guys degrading women down to objects. I don't care that it's just "boys being boys" because the minute the girls who are in the conversation find out what you said (and they always do) it has serious consequences. So I have no sympathy for any men who do this, as I had little sympathy for our own men's team and any trouble they found themselves in.