When a football player being charged with a hate crime is just the start of the embarrassing news for your Ivy League football program, it has been a pretty bad week for the school.
The news from the NBC affiliate in New York that Chad Washington, a defensive lineman at Columbia, had been charged with a hate crime after threatening another student and calling him Asian slurs was followed by a report from WKCR (the "radio home of the Columbia Lions" according to its Twitter feed) that multiple players had sent out dozens of tweets containing homophobic slurs and racist jokes. The station saved the tweets and posted them online. The school said on Thursday it is investigating the situation.
This kind of news wouldn't go over well at any school, but especially not at an Ivy League school that considers itself to be at a higher standard.
[Also: Former Notre Dame fullback Asaph Schwapp dies at age 26]
According to NBC's report, the arrest came after an Asian student was walking with two women, and the women were heckled by a man. When the victim tried to defend the women, slurs were directed at him by the suspect, identified as Washington, and the victim was followed and pushed up against a wall. Washington faces a misdemeanor charge of aggravated harassment. His lawyer Daniel Fetterman told the Columbia Spectator student newspaper that his client did not commit a hate crime.
Read More »from Report: Columbia football players’ offensive tweets revealed after player charged with hate crime"The allegations do not accurately portray the events that occurred," Fetterman told the Spectator. "When all






