Bring Back Columbia Hockey

As some of you may know there was a small campus controversy over the phrase "Stop being a pussy" featured on a recent flyer made by the Columbia Men's Club Ice Hockey Team to recruit new players. The student government complained to the athletic department and the Spec ran an article about it. As of right now, we are being told by the athletic department that we will have to cancel the first half of our season as punishment, removing us from eligibility in the league we play in and crippling the program that we have built up over the past few years. The following is a list of the reasons the heads of the athletic department gave as justification for this punishment:

We did not follow protocol by receiving approval for the flyers before posting them:

To our knowledge, none of the club sports teams were ever aware of a need to approve flyers by the athletic department or have ever received it in the past.

--

The flyers were offensive:

The administration approved t-shirts saying “We eat PUSSYcats like you for breakfast” which were sold at homecoming two years ago. This is virtually the same joke that we were trying to make with the flyers. The point of the flyer was to be slightly provocative and catch the eye of potential players, not to offend anyone.

--

We used the Columbia Lion Logo last year which is reserved for varsity sports:

Last year, our team captain sent the head of the athletic department a gift basket with a note telling her about the progress our team has made and thanking her for the athletic departments help. The note was written on a piece of paper with the Columbia lion logo. Instead of thanking us for this gesture she wrote us back reprimanding us for our use of the logo. She then made an official policy change, disallowing club sports use of the logo and told us that we had to take down our banner in Lerner that also featured the logo. Apparently the banner was not removed quickly enough and she is citing this as part of the reason for our punishment.

--

Members of the team three years ago were reported to have carried alcohol onto athletic department vans:

Three years ago, senior members of the team were seen carrying beer onto the vans. After reviewing the complaint, the athletic department placed the team on probation for one year. During that year, no further complaints were reported and the team returned to its non-probation status. Now, the athletic department wants to retroactively amend its decision, stating that the punishment they gave us was too lenient and use an incident in which no current team members were involved to validate their current punishment.

---

We have refuted every argument the athletic department has given us but they continue to persecute us with senseless zeal. What started off as a harmless pun has been blown way out of proportion. We’re in the process of putting together a petition that we can take to the administration and we can use all the support we can get.