Columbia's wrestling season suspended during investigation of lewd, racist texts

NEW YORK, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- Columbia University said it has suspended the wrestling team's season amid a school investigation of text messages allegedly sent by team members that were racist and lewd.

The school announced Monday the athletic department "has decided that Columbia wrestlers will not compete until we have a full understanding of the facts on which to base the official response to this disturbing matter."

The program is considered the nation's oldest intercollegiate sport, dating to 1903.

A university official confirmed told The New York Times late Monday that the team was still practicing.

Columbia withdrew from a meet Sunday in Binghamton, N.Y., after the messages were published Thursday by Bwog, an independent, student-run Columbia news website.

The texts were allegedly sent over the past three years by wrestling team members through the messaging app GroupMe, Bwog reported.

"They were sent to us by an anonymous tipster who felt this conversation had no longer become entertainment," said sophomore James Fast, Bwog's publisher.

They said that additional screenshots of the texts were not published because they were about specific students.

The group messages mock women's appearances, joke about rape, and use homophobic and racist slurs. One of the men said a female student looked like "a dude in a wig."

On Monday, the university called the messages "appalling" and noted the school had "zero tolerance in its athletics programs for the group messaging and texts sent by several members of the men's varsity wrestling team."

Last week, the school said the messages are "at odds with the core values of the university, violate team guidelines and have no place in our community."

Students protested outside the fraternity house of Kappa Delta Rho, which includes wrestlers, on Friday and Saturday night.

Last week at another Ivy League school, Harvard men's soccer season was canceled after The Harvard Crimson, the university's student newspaper, reported players created sexually explicit "scouting reports" about members of Harvard's women's soccer team.

Ivy League schools do not provide academic or athletics scholarships but financial aid is available.

Intercollegiate sports at the Ivy League schools receive financial and personnel resources.