--- title: Harvard Cross Country Team Also Commented on Women's Looks description: After Harvard cancelled its men's soccer season for a "scouting report," the cross country team may come under similar scrutiny. canonical: https://time.com/4560708/harvard-cross-country-scouting-report/ author: Samantha Cooney article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-11-07T16:57:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:03:47.558Z og:title: Harvard Men's Soccer Team Isn't the Only Athletic Group Demeaning Women og:description: The school's cross country team admitted to participating in a similar practice og:url: https://time.com/4560708/harvard-cross-country-scouting-report/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208a1f1621dbcb09/6988ad50e20a876f41a931d5/harvard-university-campus-cross-country-team-scouting-report.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Views Of Harvard University And The Massachusetts Institute Of Technology og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Harvard Men's Soccer Team Isn't the Only Athletic Group Demeaning Women twitter:description: The school's cross country team admitted to participating in a similar practice twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208a1f1621dbcb09/6988ad50e20a876f41a931d5/harvard-university-campus-cross-country-team-scouting-report.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Harvard Men's Soccer Team Isn't the Only Athletic Group Demeaning Women > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Samantha Cooney](https://time.com/author/samantha-cooney/)  ## Samantha Cooney Nov 7, 2016 4:57 PM UTC  The Baker Library of the Harvard Business School stands on Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., on Tuesday, June 30, 2015\. Harvard University, established in 1636, is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images The Baker Library of the Harvard Business School stands on Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., on Tuesday, June 30, 2015\. Harvard University, established in 1636, is the United States' oldest institution of higher learning. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images  by [Samantha Cooney](https://time.com/author/samantha-cooney/)  ## Samantha Cooney Nov 7, 2016 4:57 PM UTC Only days after Harvard [cancelled its men’s soccer season](http://motto.time.com/4557553/harvard-university-soccer-suspension/) after an investigation found players ranked the women’s team on their looks, the cross country team revealed it had participated in a similar practice, [the Harvard _Crimson_ reports](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/11/6/harvard-mens-cross-country-comments/). Each year before a dance with the women’s team, the men’s cross country team created a spreadsheet predicting who the women would invite to the dance and sometimes added remarks about their appearance and “sexually explicit” comments, according to the _Crimson_. A 2012 spreadsheet apparently contained “specific comments about girls \[sic\] weight or appearance,” according to a message from former cross country team member’s quoted by the _Crimson_. “We have really changed the team culture since then, and now the spreadsheet is clean and we try to refrain from making comments like that,” men’s cross country captain Brandon E. Price, a Harvard senior, told the _Crimson_. He admitted, however, that “the team was ‘particularly ashamed’ of the 2014 spreadsheet.” Now, he said, “the 2016 spreadsheet does not contain any lewd comments.” Why a spreadsheet still exists wasn’t made clear. Price said that he reported the spreadsheets to the team’s coach and asked his teammates to “come clean with anything that we have typed down in the past” in order to avoid a similar fate to the men’s soccer team. The dean of Harvard College [told the _Crimson_ he was unaware of the cross country’s team spreadsheets](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/11/6/harvard-mens-cross-country-comments/), and it’s unclear if the team will face punishment. [_Follow Motto on Facebook_](https://www.facebook.com/mottoworkplaylive/)_._ The _Crimson_ [reported last month that the 2012 men’s soccer team](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/25/harvard-mens-soccer-2012-report/) created a “scouting report” of the women’s team that involved ranking the women’s team members based on looks and assigned each of them a hypothetical sexual position. After a university investigation revealed that the practice extended beyond the 2012 team, Harvard announced last Thursday that it was cancelling the remainder of the men’s soccer team’s season. It’s unclear if other teams at the elite school participated in the practice. The 2012 women’s recruits who were the subjects of the initial scouting report wrote a powerful op-ed [last month for the _Crimson_](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/29/oped-soccer-report/), calling on their male Harvard classmates to help fight this behavior to create “an environment and a culture that strives to lift up all of its members.” “Finally, to the men of Harvard Soccer and any future men who may lay claim to our bodies and choose to objectify us as sexual objects,” they wrote, “in the words of one of us, we say together: “I can offer you my forgiveness, which is — and forever will be — the only part of me that you can ever claim as yours.” \[[TheHarvard _Crimson_](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/11/6/harvard-mens-cross-country-comments/)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4560708/harvard-cross-country-scouting-report/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4560708/harvard-cross-country-scouting-report/"},"headline":"Harvard Men's Soccer Team Isn't the Only Athletic Group Demeaning Women","datePublished":"2016-11-07T16:57:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:03:47.558Z","description":"The school's cross country team admitted to participating in a similar practice","url":"https://time.com/4560708/harvard-cross-country-scouting-report/","keywords":["motto"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208a1f1621dbcb09/6988ad50e20a876f41a931d5/harvard-university-campus-cross-country-team-scouting-report.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Cooney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-cooney/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208a1f1621dbcb09/6988ad50e20a876f41a931d5/harvard-university-campus-cross-country-team-scouting-report.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Views Of Harvard University And The Massachusetts Institute Of Technology","caption":"Views Of Harvard University And The Massachusetts Institute Of Technology","creditText":"Bloomberg—Bloomberg via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4560708/harvard-cross-country-scouting-report/","name":"Harvard Men's Soccer Team Isn't the Only Athletic Group Demeaning Women"}}]}] ```