After BWOG’s release of several text conversations of the Columbia Wrestling Team, many students at Columbia University and Barnard College were shocked by the disrespectful and dehumanizing content of these messages. Ranging from sexist remarks about young women they interacted with to blatantly racist commentary on police violence, the list of pejoratives goes on and on. These messages reveal a perverse culture of sexism, homophobia, and racism within the team’s community that has moved from beyond the “locker room” and into the public eye.
According to a statement released by the University, these repugnant messages violated team guidelines and the team was banned from competing in an upcoming match at Binghamton University. The team has since released an apology, which was also published on BWOG, an independent news source at Columbia.
Reactions around the University community have ranged from disgust and anger (even leading to protest) to condemnation of BWOG for releasing these messages. While the messages were released without revealing specific names of those involved, many within BWOG’s comment section and throughout campus believe posting these conversations was an invasion of the student’s privacy. However, the issue here is the content of the messages, which reveal not only the acceptance and promotion of sexism, racism and homophobia, but also the implications for how these words on a screen manifest themselves into action and widespread belief.
Harping on about privacy and disregarding these messages as just “boys being boys” is exactly why this is such a pressing issue: why is this kind of conduct “tolerated” in the first place? While these messages have incited public outrage, their behavior had been going on for years without any reproach. The texts are more than just texts — they reaffirm attitudes that diminish entire groups of people. These are the kind of attitudes that lead to violence against minorities, women, and members of the LGBTQ community and, at the very least, promote complacency towards inequality.
For me, this incident feels like the release of Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood video all over again – A man who, as our President-Elect, represents the values of our nation had been caught speaking about violating and demeaning women. Along with remarks about women, Trump’s divisive comments on Mexicans, Muslims, and African Americans have lead to an increase of crime against minorities. The problem is not that “we’ve probably heard much worse in real life so what’s the big deal,” because the big deal is that we have heard much worse in everyday life. This offensive culture has become so normalized that people are willing to dismiss it as simply “locker room talk” without addressing the larger issues behind it or the injustices caused by it.
It is appalling that within an accepting, tolerant campus, this kind of hateful rhetoric continues to be present. Our athletic teams are representatives of our schools and our values and their comments carry a great deal of weight because of this. While the actions of the team have been rightfully condemned, their attitudes unfortunately reflect greater societal issues that cannot be fixed on one team or on one campus. However, this incident can motivate us to further educate ourselves and others to tackle the inequalities in society that fuel prejudice. Individually, we should always strive to be aware of what we say and how it affects others.