Harvard University has suspended its Division I men’s soccer team for the rest of the season after the school’s lawyers found a “scouting report” assessing the physical appearance of women players in vulgar terms was a widespread practice among players, including among those on this fall’s roster. 
 
 The men’s soccer team is currently ranked first in the Ivy League and will forfeit the final two games of the season and forgo any... ||||| UPDATED: November 3, 2016, at 10:54 p.m. 
 
 Harvard has cancelled the men’s soccer team’s season after an Office of General Counsel review found that the team continued to produce vulgar and explicit documents rating women on their perceived sexual appeal and physical appearance. 
 
 Athletics Director Robert L. Scalise wrote in an email to Harvard student athletes that he decided to cancel the rest of the team’s season because the “practice appears to be more widespread across the team and has continued beyond 2012, including in 2016.” 
 
 “As a direct result of what Harvard Athletics has learned, we have decided to cancel the remainder of the 2016 men’s soccer season,” Scalise wrote. “The team will forfeit its remaining games and will decline any opportunity to achieve an Ivy League championship or to participate in the NCAA Tournament this year.” 
 
 Last week, The Crimson reported that the 2012 men’s soccer team created a “scouting report” of that year’s women’s soccer recruits, rating them numerically and assigning each a hypothetical sexual position. University President Drew G. Faust instructed OGC, Harvard’s team of lawyers, to “review” the matter. 
 
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 “As I asked the OGC to undertake this, it had to be on a fairly short time frame because the season is proceeding apace,” Faust said in an interview Thursday. “I wanted a response that would be within the context of the team’s responsibilities representing Harvard and this athletic season.” 
 
 According to both Scalise and a statement from University President Drew G. Faust, members of the soccer team were not initially forthcoming about their involvement in the “reports.” 
 
 “The decision to cancel a season is serious and consequential, and reflects Harvard’s view that both the team’s behavior and the failure to be forthcoming when initially questioned are completely unacceptable, have no place at Harvard, and run counter to the mutual respect that is a core value of our community,” Faust wrote in a statement. 
 
 Faust wrote she “was deeply distressed to learn that the appalling actions of the 2012 men’s soccer team were not isolated to one year or the actions of a few individuals.” 
 
 Harvard Men's Soccer in action against Yale on October 1st 2016. 
 
 Faust also said Thursday that there have been preliminary discussions about whether or not this type of behavior takes place on other sports teams. 
 
 “I felt it was important to at least try to get some preliminary notion of are there people who know of other incidents, so the question has not been delved into deeply beyond the soccer team, but I have asked that it at least be raised as a question: is this wider spread?” Faust said. 
 
 Last week, when Scalise first saw the documents—which were, until recently, publicly accessible through the 2012 team’s Google Group—he said he would immediately reach out to coaches of both men’s and women’s teams to discuss the report, but added that any response should be internal to Harvard and “not a media thing.” 
 
 The Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response will work to “further educate” the men’s soccer team specifically and student-athletes generally, according to Scalise. 
 
 
 
 
 
 “Harvard Athletics has zero tolerance for this type of behavior,” Scalise added. 
 
 Men's soccer coach Pieter S. Lehrer wrote in a statement that the team is "beyond disappointed that our season has ended in this way, but we respect the decision made by our administration.” 
 
 In a statement Thursday evening, Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana wrote that he was “saddened and disappointed to learn that the extremely offensive ‘scouting report’ produced by the 2012 men’s soccer team continued through the current season.” 
 
 When The Crimson initially wrote on the lewd document from 2012, Khurana did not respond to multiple requests for an in-person interview to view the documents, instead writing in an emailed statement that he was “always profoundly disturbed and upset by allegations of sexism.” 
 
 “As I was not Dean of Harvard College in 2012 and do not have knowledge of this particular email, I cannot speak to the alleged conduct of these particular students,” Khurana wrote at the time. 
 
 The six 2012 women recruits written about in the “report” responded to The Crimson’s initial story in a joint op-ed earlier this week, condemning the “report” but ultimately forgiving the men’s team for their actions. The op-ed drew praise from Scalise and many students over social media. 
 
 “We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance,” they wrote. 
 
 Had the men’s soccer team competed and won in its game this Saturday against Columbia, it would have clinched an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. 
 
 —Staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at andy.duehren@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren. 
 
 —Staff writer C. Ramsey Fahs can be reached at ramsey.fahs@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @ramseyfahs. 
 
 —Staff writer Daphne C. Thompson can be reached at daphne.thompson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @daphnectho. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 Harvard University has suspended its men's soccer team after players made sexual comments about members of the women's team. 
 
 A document uncovered by Harvard's student newspaper included ratings of the attractiveness of female players as well as sexually explicit comments. 
 
 University President Drew Faust called the behaviour "appalling". 
 
 The team, currently in first place in the Ivy League, will forfeit the rest of its games this season. 
 
 In what reports indicate may be a yearly tradition, male soccer players at Harvard circulated documents with pictures of their female counterparts, rating their attractiveness from one to 10 and giving reasons for their decisions. 
 
 They also noted which sexual position they thought the women in question would prefer. 
 
 Until recently, the Harvard Crimson newspaper reports, documents from 2012 were publicly accessible through a former team's Google Group. 
 
 'Not isolated' 
 
 Ms Faust said an investigation had found that the practice had continued to the current season. 
 
 She wrote that she "was deeply distressed to learn that the appalling actions of the 2012 men's soccer team were not isolated to one year or the actions of a few individuals". 
 
 Ms Faust added in a statement: "The decision to cancel a season is serious and consequential, and reflects Harvard's view that both the team's behaviour and the failure to be forthcoming when initially questioned are completely unacceptable, have no place at Harvard, and run counter to the mutual respect that is a core value of our community." 
 
 US college sexism and 'rape culture' 
 
 Media caption BBC Pop Up investigates 
 
 The discovery of sexually explicit comments made by male Harvard athletes is at the milder end of what has been dubbed US college "rape culture". 
 
 Banners regularly appear at the beginning of the academic year bearing slogans such as: "Rowdy and fun. Hope your baby girl is ready for a good time". 
 
 Studies have found that members of US college fraternities are three times more likely to commit rape than other male students while members of sororities were 74% more likely to experience sexual assault. 
 
 Past scandals include an email sent around one fraternity entitled "Luring your rapebait" and fraternity members chanting "No means yes". 
 
 The most recent case involved a Stanford University swimming champion who sexually assaulted an unconscious female student before being jailed for six months - a term condemned by many as too short. 
 
 Will Stanford sexual assault case silence future victims? 
 
 BBC Pop Up: Fraternity culture and stopping college rape 
 
 Last week after the original story came out, the female players in question said they were "appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance". 
 
 In an opinion piece published in the Crimson, they said: "More than anything, we are frustrated that this is a reality that all women have faced in the past and will continue to face throughout their lives." 
 
 The university's director of athletics, Robert Scalise, said: "It's very disappointing and disturbing that people are doing this. 
 
 "Any time a member of our community says things about other people who are in our community that are disparaging, it takes away from the potential for creating the kind of learning environment that we'd like to have here at Harvard." 
 
 The men's soccer coach Pieter Lehrer wrote in a statement to the Crimson that the team was "beyond disappointed that our season has ended in this way, but we respect the decision made by our administration".
– What could have been a season for the record books has ended in disgrace for Harvard's men's soccer team. The team, ranked first in the Ivy League, was suspended for the rest of the season after the discovery of what the university calls an "appalling" ranking system for female players, the Wall Street Journal reports. In what appears to be a tradition going back to at least 2012, players on the men's team circulated "scouting reports" with pictures of the women's team, along with lewd comments, numerical rankings based on their attractiveness, and a sexual position assigned to each player, reports the BBC. University officials say they decided to cancel the season because they found the "scouting reports" had continued up to the present season, and because players had not been forthcoming when first asked about the issue, the Harvard Crimson reports. "The decision to cancel a season is serious and consequential, and reflects Harvard's view that both the team's behavior and the failure to be forthcoming when initially questioned are completely unacceptable, have no place at Harvard, and run counter to the mutual respect that is a core value of our community," Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said in a statement. The Crimson notes that the team would have clinched an NCAA tournament berth if it had won its game against Columbia Saturday.