text: On Monday, October 24, The Crimson published a story detailing a “scouting report” written by members of the 2012 men’s soccer team regarding incoming female recruits on the women’s soccer team. 
   
   
   
   We are these women, we are not anonymous, and rather than having our comments taken, spun, and published behind the guise of a fake anonymity offered to us by numerous news outlets, we have decided to speak for ourselves. 
   
   When first notified of this “scouting report” each of us responded with surprise and confusion, but ultimately brushed off the news as if it didn’t really matter. As if we weren’t surprised men had spoken of us inappropriately. As if this kind of thing was just, “normal.” 
   
   The sad reality is that we have come to expect this kind of behavior from so many men, that it is so “normal” to us we often decide it is not worth our time or effort to dwell on. Yet as the media has taken advantage of the Harvard name once more, it has become increasingly difficult to evade the pervasiveness of this story, harder still to elude the abhorrent judgment of our peers and the outrageous Internet commentary of the public, and hardest to subdue the embarrassment, disgust, and pain we feel as a result. 
   
   In all, we do not pity ourselves, nor do we ache most because of the personal nature of this attack. More than anything, we are frustrated that this is a reality that all women have faced in the past and will continue to face throughout their lives. We feel hopeless because men who are supposed to be our brothers degrade us like this. We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance. We are distraught that mothers having daughters almost a half century after getting equal rights have to worry about men's entitlement to bodies that aren't theirs. We are concerned for the future, because we know that the only way we can truly move past this culture is for the very men who perpetrate it to stop it in its tracks. 
   
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   Having considered members of this team our close friends for the past four years, we are beyond hurt to realize these individuals could encourage, silently observe, or participate in this kind of behavior, and for more than four years have neglected to apologize until this week. 
   
   We have seen the “scouting report” in its entirety. We know the fullest extent of its contents: the descriptions of our bodies, the numbers we were each assigned, and the comparison to each other and recruits in classes before us. This document attempts to pit us against one another, as if the judgment of a few men is sufficient to determine our worth. But, men, we know better than that. Eighteen years of soccer taught us that. Eighteen years—as successful, powerful, and undeniably brilliant female athletes - taught us that. 
   
   We know what it’s like to get knocked down. To lose a few battles. To sweat, to cry, to bleed. To fight so hard, yet no matter what we do, the game is still out of our hands. And, even still, we keep fighting; for ourselves, yes, but above all for our teammates. This document might have stung any other group of women you chose to target, but not us. We know as teammates that we rise to the occasion, that we are stronger together, and that we will not tolerate anything less than respect for women that we care for more than ourselves. 
   
   While at Harvard, our coaches taught us that the only thing we can control in life is ourselves—our own attitude and effort—ultimately, our own actions and our own words. The actions and words displayed by members of the 2012 men’s soccer team have deeply hurt us. They were careless, disgusting, and appalling, but an aberrant display of misogyny such as this does not reflect the type of environment Harvard Athletics cultivates. Harvard Athletics, specifically Harvard Women’s Soccer, succeeds because despite any atmosphere of competition, we know how to be a team—to lift each other up and bring out the best in those around us to achieve our goals. With these recent events, we have seen this firsthand through our support for and empathy of one another above ourselves. 
   
   “Locker room talk” is not an excuse because this is not limited to athletic teams. The whole world is the locker room. Yet in it we feel blessed to know many men who do not and would never participate in this behavior out of respect for us—out of respect for women. To them we are grateful, and with them we strive to share a mutual respect through our own actions and words. 
   
   As women of Harvard Soccer and of the world, we want to take this experience as an opportunity to encourage our fellow women to band together in combatting this type of behavior, because we are a team and we are stronger when we are united. 
   
   To the men of Harvard soccer and to the men of the world, we invite you to join us, because ultimately we are all members of the same team. We are human beings and we should be treated with dignity. We want your help in combatting this. We need your help in preventing this. We cannot change the past, but we are asking you to help us now and in the future. 
   
   We are hopeful that the release of this report will lead to productive conversation and action on Harvard’s campus, within collegiate athletic teams across the country, and into the locker room that is our world. But ultimately, we hope this will catalyze the cultivation of an environment and a culture that strives to lift up all of its members. 
   
   Finally, to the men of Harvard Soccer and any future men who may lay claim to our bodies and choose to objectify us as sexual objects, in the words of one of us, we say together: “I can offer you my forgiveness, which is—and forever will be—the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.” 
   
   
   
   
   
   Brooke Dickens '16, Kelsey Clayman ’16, Alika Keene '16, Emily Mosbacher '16, Lauren Varela '16, and Haley Washburn '16 are the six members of the Harvard Women’s Soccer recruiting class of 2012. ||||| UPDATED: November 6, 2016, at 12:06 a.m. 
   
   The Harvard men’s cross country team produced yearly spreadsheets about members of the women’s team, sometimes writing “sexually explicit” comments about them, according to team correspondence obtained by The Crimson. 
   
   The team created the spreadsheets each year ahead of an annual dance with the women’s team. In the documents, the men guessed which women would invite certain men to the event. In certain spreadsheets, the men added comments about the women’s physical appearance. 
   
   Details about the men’s cross country team’s spreadsheets indicate that organized written evaluations of female athletes’ physical appearances have not been limited to the men’s soccer team. Last month, The Crimson published a story about the 2012 men’s soccer team, which produced an explicit document evaluating freshmen recruits on the women’s team on their perceived sexual appeal, prompting current and former members of the cross country team to discuss their own prior practices. 
   
   In a previous cross country team’ group message, whose membership consists of current and past members of the cross country team, individuals raised concerns over previous years’ spreadsheets, including one from 2012 that contained “Specific comments about girls weight or appearance,” according to one cross country alumnus on the group message on the mobile application Group Me. 
   
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   “Hahaha dude 2012 was the absolute worst I saw. It got tamer each year after that,” wrote one recent graduate. 
   
   “It’s terrible God,” agreed another member of the group, a recent College graduate. 
   
   “Also 2014 talked about a specific person getting black dick a lot," he wrote. 
   
   In an interview Saturday evening, men’s cross country captain Brandon E. Price ’17 said the team was “particularly ashamed of” the 2014 spreadsheet, but that team culture has since shifted and the 2016 spreadsheet does not contain any lewd comments. 
   
   “We have really changed the team culture since then, and now the spreadsheet is clean and we try to refrain from making comments like that,” Price said. 
   
   Last Thursday, after the Office of the General Counsel reviewed the men’s soccer team’s “scouting report” and discovered that the practice had continued after 2012, Harvard cancelled the rest of the men’s soccer season. University President Drew G. Faust said in a statement that the men’s team had not been “forthcoming when initially questioned” about their involvement in the “reports.” 
   
   In an email sent to members of the men’s cross country team Saturday afternoon, Price asked the team to “come clean with anything that we have typed down in the past.” He wrote in that email he had shared a document that “contains sexually explicit content about the girls’ team” with Coach Jason S. Saretsky. 
   
   “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.” 
   
   In their internal cross country group message, one member expressed relief that none of the spreadsheets were “as bad as anything that made the article on soccer.” 
   
   According to their messages, the multiple recent graduates of the cross country program also removed viewing permissions on some of the spreadsheets. 
   
   One member wrote that the team should restrict access to spreadsheets because of the “untrustworthies” who could view them. 
   
   “We know who they are,” the member wrote. 
   
   “Should I change the sharing on 2012?” one member asked. 
   
   “Yeah probably for the best,” another responded. 
   
   Some members of the group message also expressed concern that The Crimson would gain access to the spreadsheets, according to the correspondence. 
   
   In an interview Thursday, before The Crimson reported information about the men’s cross country team, Faust said there have been preliminary discussions as to whether traditions like the men’s soccer team’s “scouting report” take place on other teams. 
   
   “I felt it was important to at least try to get some preliminary notion of, are there people who know of other incidents, so the question has not been delved into deeply beyond the soccer team,” Faust said. 
   
   “I have asked that it at least be raised as a question: is this wider spread?” she added. 
   
   Faust also said that Athletics Director Robert L. Scalise had brought together coaches from across Harvard’s Athletics Department to discuss the cultures of their respective teams. 
   
   “Harvard Athletics does not tolerate this sort of demeaning and derogatory behavior, and we will address any credible information we receive,” Scalise wrote in an emailed statement Saturday evening. 
   
   Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana wrote in an emailed statement that he did not know the details of the cross country spreadsheets. 
   
   “We must strive toward a culture and context of respect, dignity, and compassion - and all of us have a role to play in that work,” Khurana wrote. 
   
   —Staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at andy.duehren@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren. 
   
   —Staff writer C. Ramsey Fahs can be reached at ramsey.fahs@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @ramseyfahs. 
   
   —Staff writer Daphne C. Thompson can be reached at daphne.thompson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @daphnectho. ||||| On behalf of all of us at Harvard Men’s Soccer, we sincerely apologize for the harm our words and actions have caused women everywhere, and especially our close friends on the Women’s Soccer team. Our team has been blessed with the opportunity to know and learn from these incredible women, receive their unconditional support, and form with them some of the strongest friendships on this campus. In return, we hurt them with the things we said, in the form of the inappropriate scouting reports, and with the things we did not say, in the form of our dishonesty toward them, and for that we are very sorry. 
   
   We want to affirm that the scouting report did not and does not reflect our view of the members of Harvard Women’s Soccer or of women in general. The relationship we have enjoyed with their team to this day means the world to us, and we are deeply ashamed that it took a public revelation, a loss of trust, and damaged friendships for us to fully grasp the gravity of our conduct, for which each member of our team takes full and equal responsibility. No woman deserves to be treated in this manner; not our mothers, our sisters, nor our peers. We apologize to them, and to all those who trusted us, supported us, and believed in us. 
   
   Please do not misconstrue our silence up until this point as a lack of remorse on our part. Out of respect for the women’s team, who expressed their desire to focus on the remainder of their season, we postponed the release of our public apology so as not to burden them with further distractions. Now that the Athletic Department has decided to terminate our season, we feel it is appropriate and necessary to address the situation publicly. We accept responsibility for the mistakes and serious lapses in judgment that have led us here, and, in addition to accepting the sanctions from the Athletic Department, are shifting our focus toward the concrete actions we can take to address the fundamental issue of sexism in our community. 
   
   When our current coaches took over the program in 2013, they sparked a massive culture change, one in which it is paramount to hold each other accountable for our actions. These scouting reports, an inexcusable manifestation of sexism and misogyny on our part, persisted in spite of this culture change, and we must now hold ourselves accountable for them. Our coaches have also taught us to be open in accepting our mistakes and to always focus on the next most important thing—and the next most important thing for us now is to do everything we can to start rebuilding the trust and relationships we severed, while doing anything possible to help heal the pain we have caused Harvard Women’s Soccer, their families, and women everywhere. 
   
   To do so, we must first confront the issues of sexism and misogyny within our own locker room, so that we can take up the call issued by the women of the Harvard Women’s Soccer Class of 2016 to join them in combatting this sort of behavior. Starting with ourselves, all players on this team now commit our efforts to spur a cultural change that goes beyond the scope of our own team. 
   
   Over the course of the previous week, we have been devoting our attention to this problem as our top priority, and our meetings as a team and with University officials have yielded a few specific proposals to educate ourselves and to help others come to the same realizations that we reached without repeating our mistakes. We hope to guide conversation among the other athletic teams about sexism, and we ask for input from the community at large, openly welcoming and encouraging any and all constructive discussion of and collaboration with our efforts. 
   
   There are no excuses for our behavior, and all we can do now is take it upon ourselves to be an example of change for the better. Our apology comes from a place of optimism and a willingness to advance an agenda of gender equality that is in line with the relationships that we want to cultivate. We take responsibility for our actions, and we accept the consequences that come from them and now focus on what we can do to move forward. We wholeheartedly promise to do anything in our power to build a more respectful and harmonious athletic field, classroom, and Harvard community. 
   
   This op-ed was written by the members of the 2016 Harvard Men's Soccer Team. 
   
   Editor's Note: Due to this apology's content and its relevance to the Harvard community, at the request of the team we allowed it to be signed by the team as a whole rather than as individuals. 
   
   
   
   —Nelson L. Barrette '17 and Ryan P. O'Meara '18, Editorial Chairs 
   
   —Mariel A. Klein '17, President
target: – When Harvard suspended its men's soccer team last week for the rest of the season due to an "appalling" system of ranking female players, one of the reasons the school gave for its harsh punishment was the fact that team members weren't exactly communicative and cooperative at first (the team as a whole has since apologized). Per Inside Higher Ed, the men on the school's cross-country team were obviously paying attention to the smackdown: Now members of that roster have come forward to admit to their own past spreadsheets (some containing "sexually explicit" remarks) describing female athletes and compiled each year before a dance held with the women's cross-country team, the Harvard Crimson reports. The cross-country team's documents included speculation as to which guys would get an invite to the dance from which girls, with some comments referring to the women's weight or other physical attributes. And per correspondence between alumni seen by the Crimson, even former and current team members acknowledge how bad past spreadsheets were, with one noting, "Hahaha dude 2012 was the absolute worst." Team captain Brandon E. Price, who on Saturday emailed the team to "come clean" about any female rankings, says the team has tamped down the lewdness since a 2014 spreadsheet the team was "particularly ashamed of." The school's athletic director says in a statement: "Harvard Athletics does not tolerate this sort of demeaning and derogatory behavior, and we will address any credible information we receive." (A response from some of the former female soccer players.)