Hypocrisy in Sports Coverage

On April 13, The Crimson ran a photo essay on "Women in Sports." Earlier this fall, the paper printed a three-part series on athletics at Harvard, and devoted dozens of column inches to uncovering the gender inequities of the Harvard Athletic Department. The Crimson took a fairly high moral ground in the series, suggesting and even accusing the department of gender bias in its allocation of funds, practice times and training trips.

But on April 12, the paper's article on the April 10 crew regatta, while describing in some detail all three of the men's teams races--varsity, junior varsity and novice heavyweights--only discussed one of the three women's races that had occurred that day, and even gave that short shrift. The article interviewed men's varsity coach Harry Parker and one oarsman, while it only quoted the varsity women's coxswain. In the final paragraph, titled "Other Crews," reporter Ahmad Atwan interviewed novice rower Terran Senftleben about the novice men's heavyweight race, which Harvard lost. Radcliffe's junior varsity and novice teams both beat Cornell University, but those races were completely ignored.

What kind of mixed message--even hypocrisy--is this? Before it prints another "expose" of the sexism of the Harvard Athletic Department, The Crimson needs to examine its own treatment and coverage of Harvard (and Radcliffe) women athletes. The Radcliffe Crew Team.