West Point Rugby Team Punished for Demeaning Women

The men’s rugby team at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was disbanded temporarily after players took part in e-mailed exchanges demeaning to women, a school spokesman said.

“It was locker-room conversation of the worst degree” reflecting a “behavior and mindset we don’t tolerate here,” Lieutenant Colonel Webster Wright, a spokesman for the academy in New York state, said yesterday in a telephone interview. “They were mocking each other to some degree, but there was also derogatory comments toward women, degrading comments.”