Athletics Director Changes Travel Plans After Soccer Season Cancelled

Harvard’s Director of Athletics Robert L. Scalise cancelled his trip to China with the men’s basketball team “in part because” Harvard found that the men’s soccer team continued to produce sexually explicit documents after 2012 and ended the team’s season.

Last month, The Crimson reported that the 2012 men’s soccer team created a “scouting report,” evaluating women on their perceived sexual appeal. After the Office of the General Counsel discovered that the “reports” continued through 2016, Scalise announced that the men’s soccer team would not compete in the rest of their season.

The Crimson reported Saturday that past men’s cross country teams had also created online documents where they sometimes wrote “sexually explicit” comments about members of the women's team.

“I decided it would be best not to travel with our men’s basketball team to China, in part because of this situation, but I also had the wonderful opportunity to present the Ivy League championship trophy to our field hockey and women’s soccer programs,” Scalise wrote in an emailed statement.

The men’s basketball team will be traveling to Shanghai to play Stanford, and Scalise had been expected to speak at a Harvard Alumni Association event. According to an Alumni Association email, Harvard Divinity School professor and Pusey Minister Jonathan L. Walton will “provide additional remarks” in Scalise’s stead.