Is an offensive chant performed at an off-campus party reason enough for a college to suspend an entire men's rugby club indefinitely?
That's the question that Jezebel just posed and then tried to answer in a really thorough investigation that they performed after hearing about what went down at the University of Mary Washington late last year. According to their report, a small group of rugby players who are a part of the school's Mother's Rugby club threw a party in November 2014 in Fredericksburg, Va. And at one point during the party, several of those players broke out into a chant that is reportedly used amongst some rugby players. You can listen to that chant here, but we should warn you that it is not safe for work and features a lot of profanity:
Someone who attended the party and didn't care for the chant took out their cell phone while it was going on and recorded it. That person then uploaded it to YouTube and reported it to UMW's administration. And from there, things get confusing.
The school launched an investigation into the chant and eventually decided to suspend the entire rugby club indefinitely. They also forced all 46 members of the club to take sexual assault training classes. However, there are some people who don't think that the entire club should have taken the fall and, as Jezebel explains, there is also a lot of hostility now between Mother's Rugby members and the school's Feminists United on Campus, the group that pushed the person who posted the original video on YouTube to speak with school administrators. So Jezebel talked with a number of people from both sides to try and get to the bottom of the debate surrounding the rugby club's suspension and to evaluate whether or not the whole club should have been punished for a chant that was done by a few of its members at a party off school grounds.
You can read the full report here.
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[via Jezebel]
