Here Are The Racist, Sexist Text Messages That Put Columbia's Wrestling Team Under Investigation

The young scions of the Harvard soccer team got their season canceled last week after the university wrapped up an investigation of the team’s codified practice of sexually rating the women’s soccer team’s recruits. As it turns out, Harvard is not the only team from an Ivy League enclave with a culture of embedded misogyny. Columbia student paper Bwog received a batch of group chat messages shared between members of the Columbia wrestling team from 2014 through to last week, and they aren’t pretty.

Bwog released anonymous snippets from the group text, and they chose to remove names from the messages because, “Our intention is not to defame any individuals, but to bring up a larger question of how this sort of culture has continued for so long among students who are supposed to represent the University.” The texts in question include wrestlers regaling each other with descriptions of their fellow students such as “fish pussy,” “ugly socially awkward cunts,” and “nigs.” You can find a sampling of the messages below, and the full cohort is over at Bwog.

Columbia released the following statement, acknowledging the investigation and noting that the team would skip out on their meet this weekend:

Columbia University has zero tolerance in its athletics programs for the group messaging and texts sent by several members of the men’s varsity wrestling team. They are appalling, at odds with the core values of the University, violate team guidelines, and have no place in our community.

Upon learning yesterday of these messages, Columbia’s Department of Athletics and our office of Student Conduct and Community Standards initiated an investigation. The Department of Athletics has decided that, as the investigation proceeds, Columbia wrestlers will not compete in Binghamton University’s open meet this weekend.

[ Bwog]