Columbia suspends wrestling program pending review of sexist, racist text messages

Columbia has suspended its wrestling team in the wake of the reveal of “lewd and racist text messages” according to The New York Times.

On Monday, Columbia released a statement saying that the university’s athletic department “has decided that Columbia wrestlers will not compete until we have a full understanding of the facts on which to base the official response to this disturbing matter.”

The messages were revealed by a Columbia student news website called “Bwog,” and were shared on the team’s GroupMe chat over the last three years.

In the screenshots we received, the wrestlers sent each other numerous photos of female Columbia students and mocked their appearances. One of the men said a female student looked like “a dude in a wig.” Another woman was referred to as “fish pussy.”

It is the second Ivy league sports suspension this month. On Nov. 4, Harvard cancelled its soccer team’s season after athletes “continued to produce vulgar and explicit documents rating women on their perceived sexual appeal and physical appearance.”

A former Columbia volunteer wrestling coach, Hudson Taylor, wrote a personal statement in The Columbia Spectator in which he acknowledged the misconduct by the team and tried to look forward at how the program could make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

“How can Columbia and the wrestling team ensure that these attitudes and behaviors stop in their tracks?” he wrote. “How can apology today lay the groundwork for cultural competency and restoration tomorrow?”