Guilford College releases findings after alleged racist remarks yelled at VSU women’s soccer team

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WWBT) - Virginia State University wants answers and calls for immediate action after the president said its women’s soccer team experienced racial slurs from the crowd at their game last Tuesday.

VSU wants Guilford College to apologize to their women’s soccer team for racial slurs made toward their players, allegedly from Guilford fans.

However, Guilford College’s athletic director says they couldn’t find evidence that racial slurs were used after 10 hours of interviewing people and an internal investigation.

According to an online statement from VSU, Guilford’s fans reportedly yelled the N-word and made monkey noises aimed at their student-athletes.

When the claim first came out, Guilford’s president apologized to VSU by saying in part, “Spectators had poor sportsmanship and used profanity and derogatory remarks toward VSU players.”

VSU’s president also released a statement saying in part, “Racist and abusive language has no place in college sports.”

“I need to share that the investigation did not discover any racist remarks directed by Guilford fans toward Virginia State players,” Guilford athletic director Bill Foti said.

During their internal investigation, Foti said they interviewed 30 students, staff, and parents in the stands. After they reviewed the video and audio, they couldn’t find any racist remarks made. However, Foti admits the comments made by their spectators were unsportsmanlike, calling them disrespectful and unacceptable.

You can hear fans yell, “Scoreboard,” “You Suck,” and “Go back to Virginia,” among other things.

14 Guilford students have been reprimanded, and one student-athlete in the stands has been suspended from their next game.

“We acknowledge that Virginia State found the environment to be unwelcoming hostile. And that’s a deep concern to us,” Foti said. “We’re troubled by that, and that’s why we took the steps that we did. We want our guests to be treated with respect. We think all student-athletes certainly need to be treated with respect, and we’ve had a lot of conversations here in athletics. We think we need to do better.”

Guilford College also put new protocols and training sessions in place.

On Wednesday, both Guilford and VSU presidents met to discuss the findings and the new protocols the school is putting in place. We are told that the meeting was productive.

NBC12 did reach out to VSU for their comment on these latest developments, but they have not gotten back to us yet.

To read Gilford’s full report on fan behavior, click here.

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