A North Carolina college is under fire after supporters of the school’s women’s soccer team demonstrated outlandishly bigoted behavior toward the guest team during a game last week.
The crowd became unruly and yelled racial slurs at the HBCU team, and now their administration is demanding an apology.
Guilford College’s President, Kyle Farmbry, a Black man, said he launched an investigation into the incident that offended the Virginia State University team when they came to play at the Greensboro, North Carolina, campus on Tuesday, Sept. 26.
The 2023 season marks the first year of the Lady Trojans soccer program. Their game against Guilford’s Quakers was one of their first games, making the offense even more amplified to the Virginia State team, which eventually lost the game 8-1.
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The good-sported Quakers heard the racial slurs and apologized to the team for the behavior of the fans.
The incident was made public after VSU released a memo after the game requesting an apology from the institution directly to their student-athletes.
“During the game, the opposing team’s fans reportedly yelled the N-word and made monkey noises aimed at our student-athletes,” the university said in the memo. “While there have been direct apologies to our administration, VSU says that our student-athletes also deserve a personal apology.”
Farmbry did not give remarks to the students but, via the school’s website, gave a blanket apology to the university and mentioned he spoke to the institution’s president, Dr. Makola M. Abdullah.
“According to the information that I have already gathered, loud outbursts from a group of spectators included profanity and derogatory remarks toward the Virginia State team. It was in very poor taste and was very poor sportsmanship by anyone’s definition,” Farmbry said.
“Virginia State parents and other fans observed the behavior and have reached out to me about it,” he continued, saying, “They have also shared on social media their disappointment with Guilford, given its stated commitments to diversity, equity, and sportsmanship.”
Guilford athletics director Bill Foti also reached out to VSU associate vice president for athletics, Peggy Davis, and apologized for the offensive experience to The Trojans.
Davis still believes the young women deserve an official apology from the institution, faculty and spectators.
“Many of our student-athletes are freshmen who are just starting their collegiate career and their collegiate athletic career,” she said. “These types of racially insensitive comments, there’s no place in athletics for that … So I’m very saddened because our student-athletes were subjected to this type of incident at Guilford College.”
Abdullah addressed the incident, saying that “racist and abusive language has no place in college sports.”
He also talked about how “very hard” the students work to represent the university.
Foti and Dean of Students Steve Mencarini said they conducted a thorough investigation into the incident and released results on Tuesday, Oct. 3.
“The investigation did not discover any evidence that racist remarks were directed by Guilford fans toward VSU players. However, the fact that VSU supporters found the environment to be extremely unwelcoming for their players is of deep concern to the College and resulted in action that has been taken,” a statement from the school read.
The college said the investigation proved that the heckling came from a group of 14 people. The school admitted that the probe showed that four students joined in with the “unsportsmanlike” behavior.
Three of those students have since been brought up on student conduct disciplinary action. One student was not allowed to compete in a sporting event because that student’s participation in the name-calling was a violation of the college’s athletics code of conduct.
