2nd Harvard team accused of lewd reports

Harvard’s Cambridge campus.Lisa Poole/Associated Press/File

In the wake of the Harvard men’s soccer team’s season-ending suspension for creating a lewd “scouting report” of female athletes, The Harvard Crimson on Saturday reported that the men’s cross country team participated in a similar practice.

“The team created the spreadsheets each year ahead of an annual dance with the women’s team,” the student newspaper reported on its website Saturday night. “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.”

The spreadsheets came to light after team captain Brandon Price told coach Jason S. Saretsky about them, the Crimson reported.

Neither Price nor Saretsky could be immediately reached for comment by the Globe.

In a statement provided to the Globe, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana said he does not know the details of the “alleged spreadsheet.”

“I do know that culture and context matters in shaping individual, group, and collective behavior. 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.”

Bob Scalise, Harvard’s director of athletics, said in an e-mailed statement that “Harvard Athletics does not tolerate this sort of demeaning and derogatory behavior, and we will address any credible information we receive.”

Price, a senior, told the paper “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,” the paper reported.

Price sent an e-mail to his teammates Saturday urging them to “come clean with anything that we have typed out in the past,” the Crimson wrote.

“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 canceling the remainder of the men’s soccer team’s season, Harvard President Drew Faust cited the team’s “behavior and the failure to be forthcoming when initially questioned” as a reason for the “serious and consequential” action.