Students Target Columbia Wrestlers Over Leaked Chat Room Messages
At Columbia, if you refuse to toe-the-party line, activists will come for blood.
Last week, a Columbia University student blog published a series of leaked chat room messages, leaked to a Columbia student blog, that were sent between school wrestling team players. The team was then suspended, as Legal Insurrection reported, Columbia Suspends Men’s Wrestling Season Over Lewd Texts.
These leaked messages, which were sent in the assumed privacy of a group chat, are described at the student blog as follows: “mock women’s appearances, make jokes about rape, use homophobic and racist slurs, and engage in other distasteful interactions.”
Indeed, many of the messages, which can be seen at this link, would most likely be considered problematic by many on campus.
Yet, many Columbia students believe they’re more than just problematic. They want to go after the wrestlers.
In the past few days, there have been at least 2 protests on campus (one protest in front of a fraternity house, and one occupation protest in the school gym) condemning the private text messages. At these protests, students demanded punishment and expulsion for the wrestlers.
Just two days ago, two Columbia students, Keenan Teddy Smith and Bianca Gurrero, released a list of demands for the wrestlers involved on a public Facebook event page called “OccupyDodge/ holding men’s athletics accountable.” (Dodge is the name of the Columbia gym, targeted for the fact that it’s where the wrestlers in question congregate).
These demands, if acquiesced to, could essential wreck the lives of the young men.
They include:
1) Removing athletes who sent offensive messages from the wrestling team.
2)Striping the athletes of all awards, and have each athlete issue an individual public apology.
3)Release the names of the parties involved in the [group] messages.
While I don’t condone the racist and sexist sentiments that were found in the text messages, there is something positively Orwellian about demanding that students be punished for what they said in private messages.
What’s next? Do all students have their private messages leaked to the campus thought police? How many of us would be left standing if we were expelled for even the slightest of offensive comments?
What’s worse is that students are demanding that the wrestlers names be published so the wrestlers can be scandalized into unemployability.
Publishing their names is likely to lead into an Orwellian blood sport. It’s retribution to the highest degree, likely to cause more damage to these young men’s futures than any harm that could have been done by their private texts.
At Columbia, if you refuse to toe-the-party line, activists will come for blood. If you don’t self-immolate in repentance, then the mob will try to destroy you.
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Toni Airaksinen is a Junior at Barnard College and takes classes at Columbia University across the street. She also writes for Campus Reform, The College Fix and Quillette. She tweets @Toni_Airaksinen
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These were private. So no basis for complaint.
But secondly, all these affluent little white kids, spending their time on this….. They evidently do not know that there are people in their town with real problems, real problems they could help with, but they’re doing this crap.
Every locality has children from broken homes that either are in, or need, foster care, clothing, food. There’s always a group that tries to help. There are always young women trying to find a place to live with their children when hard times hit them. Why aren’t theses fools helping there?
There’s veterans who need help. Old people who need help. And instead they spend their time on private text messages? What a useless heap of humanity. They better hope they never need any help with anything, because their kind won’t be there for them. They’ll be busy preening for their buddies.
I want to make one more comment. I followed the link and looked at some of the messages. Again, these were private text messages that I saw.
One was basically trash talking another guy asserting he liked gay sex and said it in a coarse way. Just for those of you that don’t know, and I know having spent time talking with several men who suffered severe sexual trauma as children, that for such men, that is a sexual fetish they have, and until psychology comes up with a bullet proof therapy, those men are going to continue to have that sexual fetish until they die. Basically, that is a sexual hobby they have, to talk utter gutter trash about sex, and it satisfies their sexual drive.
They have responsible jobs, they have families, all these things, but they have this drive, and they indulge in it privately. I know such men, and they’re good men, struggling their entire lives with the fallout from their trauma.
Not saying the kids here are victims of trauma BUT IF private messages are now fair game for killing a person’s employment prospects, then a lot of good men are going to end up firing all the people that work for them, because they won’t be able to continue their businesses. Their businesses might even become unsaleable. No good comes out of punishing these men again. The molesters and rapists already hurt them enough.
As a matter of fact, if my own text messages and yahoo messenger conversations were put out there, under these naive snowflakes’ standards, I’d be finished, because I talk to these men, and we use much worse language than this.
There is a whole other universe where people deal with this, and most people have no clue. I sure didn’t, until a man contacted me and explained and asked me to speak with him very regularly, which I did.
I think we’ve passed the point where the appropriate response would be to dematriculate the protesters. Though policing private conversations, regardless of content, is beyond the pale of acceptability. This is chatter, not conspiring to rig an election.
Can we tell the truth here? All men — or at least the ones interested in women — talk like that amongst themselves. It isn’t just in locker rooms, it’s at bars, it’s out joking around, it’s everywhere. And I’d be willing to bet that all women talk about men like that, in their own ways, of course, with college women being among the more talkative. That’s simply how people act, and it isn’t just young people, either. Men in their forties, fifties and sixties talk that way at work.
Thing is, all of these Special Snowflakes™ know it, and behave that way themselves, unless they are simply sexually abnormal.
Is it worse than the dialogue references from the show TWO BROKE GIRLS?
How about rap lyrics?… Oh, but that’s ok, because it is art? Just look at what JZ did during a HRC rally!
Not since I was thirteen did I talk like that. I remember, because my dad overheard me talking about girls with a friend. As soon as my friend left my dad laid into me.
My dad was a career sailor. A Coastie actually, although when he joined the Coast Guard at seventeen the USCG was part of the Navy. He was a retired Senior Chief Radioman. But when he started out at the tail end of WWII he was stationed in the Philippines and his real mission was to take pictures of the graves of the sons of family friends and send them home.
I suppose I had a different relationship with my dad than many people. I always respected him. No doubt because of my respect for him I made the Navy my career. He and my mom went without furniture so they could send us to Catholic school. What, didn’t everyone substitute crates from the local grocery store for furniture? So when my father, who had heard more and seen more s**t than most of you jokers laid into me and laid down the law about how in our family we definitely DO NOT talk about women I took it to heart.
I had basically a two year window between learning the words and learning there was no way no how I could use them.
My parents spent their blood, sweat, and tears to ensure I have a vocabulary. Sure, I drop the occasional f-bomb and profane term for excrement. Sometimes you have to emphasize a point. Got it.
But I don’t have a special “locker room” language. I don’t speak in ways privately I’m unwilling to speak publicly.
Also I like women, as they giggle and smell nice. Which is a complete joy after a six or eight month cruise.
I hit the submit button too late. Or, depending on your POV the reply button too early.
Throughout my twenty year career it always disgusted me when senior officers would assemble the troops and start swearing right and left, claiming, “I’m a Sailor, that’s just how I talk.”
No. No it isn’t, @$$hole. Not when you’re back in DC that’s not how you talk.
After we were dismissed I used to ask the Sailors who worked for me:
Me: Petty Officer McCoy, are you capable of understanding me if I don’t say f*** or s*** or @$$hole in every sentence?
Petty Officer McCoy: Yes sir.
Me: Just checking.
Apparently this is what they teach at the Naval Academy; how to talk to the primitives.
Let the thumbsdownpalooza commence. I always got along pretty well with the sailors by respecting their intelligence.
That said, the witch hunt is insane. “Not my wrestling team?” Goddam right, honey, it’s not your wrestling team. You chicks didn’t train and sweat off the pounds doing push-ups and jumping jacks in a rubber suit in a sauna to cut weight. So shut up. I think it goes without saying, at this point, that I don’t approve of their language. But they deserve a course correction, not destruction. My dad did it for me.
Your bringing up filthy language and the excuse often used that “I’m a Sailor, that’s just how I talk” brought back a memory for me. I was “Recruit education petty officer” in my company at SDNTC back in 1977. As such, I posted scores to the records of each member of our company, among other things.
I was doing this one evening, when my company commander asked how the OBA (oxygen breathing apparatus” class had gone that day. I replied that it likely could have been 40 minutes shorter had the lecturer removed “m.t…..c..r”, “m.t…..ck..g”, and “m.t…..c.” from his presentation.
My CC burst out laughing. “Oh! That sounds like Chief SoAndSo!” It was indeed. Even the “brothers” were rolling their eyes in boredom after the first 15 minutes of this nonsense.
All I read was the Left’s invasion of privacy and their desperate struggle for complete control.
When it’s a wrestling team being hacked, a hotbed of testosterone and whiteness, the story is what’s in the texts.
When it’s the DNC or the Clinton campaign the story is the immorality of hacking.
likely to cause more damage to these young men’s futures than any harm that could have been done by their private texts.
And just what damage could have been done by their private texts?
Primitive, distasteful, annoying do not add up to damaging.
Don’t you see, these atheletes were committing wrongthink! That is much worse than actual damages.
Go and read the texts, then read the responses- not much support beyond a group of angry future dictators. Mao would be so proud…
One of the responses …”neurotic liberals got their feelings hurt when they read a private conversation and now want to punish people for daring to speak in a way they dont approve of in the security of their privacy?”
Maybe the boys should have gone to State schools. All of ’em.
How long before the SJWs decide that all college sports are just icky, and start demanding that they be eliminated? And then the money spent on athletics could be spent on good things like safe spaces for the athletically challenged.
These “protesters” just have too much time on their hands… worrying about locker-room-talk on a wrestling team? Give me a break!
Private conversation is PRIVATE.
The only problem I can see is “group chat” was used. And a record of the conversation was made.
There is always one idiot in every group who has to screw with the entire group in the most destructive way.
Face-to-Face in the locker room leaves no electronic record. Offensive remarks are usually rebuked / corrected very quickly as well. And everyone knows “who/what/why” the fight occurred.
Standing up for yourself is a good way to build respect/self respect.
I have no respect for “backstabbing”. That is what this is.
Not condoning the private texts, and certainly not condoning the public airing of them. But if I were an employer I still would rather hire someone with the guts to wrestle at the collegiate level than any perpetually offended snowflakes.
It takes seven snowflakes to hold up the sign so being that wimpy could mean a lot of sick days.
I keep having this reoccurring daydream of 20-30 SJW bent over a desk, holding on for dear life – while their parents or teachers take turns giving them spankings with a BIG ventilated paddle. Ten to Twenty ‘swats’ should leave a lasting impression on their soft fat butts – and on their delicate psychs.
But, but, but…….child abuse! LOL!
To all who indulge in social media, this could be your fate too. Anyone who thinks that e-mail, tweets, Facebook, snapchat, or any other electronic venues are secure, then read this article and then remember hillary’s dilemma. When you use any of these media you are basically saying that you are telling anyone and everyone your thoughts. Caveat Emptor.
“Meatspace Baby!”
Stupid whiners – if my son were involved I would not encourage him to participate in the public shaming the SJWs are looking for.
Lord of the Flies meets the cultural revolution. Oh that’s gonna end well.
There’s something to be said for not saying things in private that you wouldn’t say in public. (Does it pass the “Would your mother/grandmother approve?” test?)
There’s also something to be said for not snooping into private conversations that aren’t directed toward you.
I am far more disturbed by those who want to police what others say and think than I am by coarse, crude language and jesting ~
Perhaps they could have a Planned Chat Room. It worked well to secure abortion rites. Or something more overt, like an Office of Diversity, to secure institutional racism, sexism, etc.
The wrestling team should beat the crap out of these morons.
But the truth is: any wrestling team is not the team of these bratty, insecure, low self-esteem drones.
I was a collegiate ice hockey player, not a wrestler, but our seasons overlapped so we shared the weight rooms, showers, and other facilities. I’m sure the members of the Columbia wrestling team are every bit as intimidated by the student protesters as my old hockey team would have been. Hockey players and wrestlers are known for being wimps.
“But when they persisted in asking Him (Jesus), He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” John 8:7
These folks should start cracking more Bibles and less private texts.
Just a note, these were students complaining of students, not administrators enforcing some policy. We got a few guys learning about how no conversations is private any more and some others learning about free speech.
I predict there will eventually be a backlash where these SJW idiots will be hunted like vermin. Eventually they’ll crawl back under their rocks and cower in silence the rest of their miserable lives.
I suppose I just don’t know when to quit. Which is a trait that has occasionally betrayed me but often served me well. Just ask my DI.
For all of you saying, “All men talk this way,” consider. Less than 200 years ago I would challenge you to fight to the death if you talked about my mother, sister, wife this way.
http://www.marylutyndall.com/2012/05/code-duello-rules-of-dueling.html
It’s amusing. In the early 1800s Congress outlawed dueling for Army officers but not for Naval or Marine Corps officers. The difference being Army officers fought duels on US territory while Naval and Marine officers could simply wait until they entered foreign territory to fight. And Congress didn’t think at the time they had authority to outlaw that.
An early version of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
But, yeah, not OK for the Columbia wrestling team to talk that way. It’s not manly. Juvenile and macho are not dancing in the same nightclub when it comes to manliness.
Again, though, at most they need a talking-to.