Editorial, Opinion

EDITORIAL: Offensive chants unacceptable at sports games, Catholic Memorial School shows

Unfortunately, sports and hatred make a good match. Boston’s Catholic Memorial School fans chanted “You killed Jesus!” to Newton North High School fans at a basketball game Friday, The Boston Globe reported. Catholic Memorial fans said they only chanted the anti-Semitic slurs in response to the Newton North fans’ chant, “Where are your girls?” — a jab at Catholic Memorial’s exclusively male student body, according to the Globe.

Catholic Memorial’s president, Peter Folan, issued a statement condemning the anti-Semitic cheers and made every student personally apologize to Newton North’s interim principal at the game.

One Newton North parent told the Globe that taunts are common at games, but are not usually this extreme or offensive.

This news comes after anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered on bathroom stalls in Newton’s F.A. Day Middle School, including one message that read, “Burn the Jews,” the Globe reported.

Catholic Memorial’s Folan released a statement Saturday condemning the fans’ chants at Friday’s game and saying the school is committed to addressing any deeper issues in its community, The Washington Post reported. The Anti-Defamation League is looking into the incident.

Boston Memorial’s response is admirable. The immediate reaction, to make all students apologize to Newton North’s principal, is a definitely a moment the students will never forget, but it may not be enough to change their behavior.

An anti-Semitic chant like Boston Memorial’s doesn’t just rise up out of nowhere. There must be some underlying religious tension in the student body. Chanting religious slurs isn’t very relevant to an ongoing basketball game.

The game was likely an outlet for the school’s angsty teenage fans to let out their frustrations in an environment where getting aggressive and angry is not just accepted, but encouraged. These are high school students, and it’s only to be expected that students will say ignorant things to each other. But “teens will be teens” is not a valid excuse for hatred of any kind. Teenagers know what is right and what is wrong. Or at least, they should.

This mean-spiritedness isn’t unique to high school sports. In college sports, fans of opposing teams are hostile to anyone against them. From the T ride to the hockey arena, Boston-area college sports fans can get nasty with their words and actions.

Sporting events should not be covers for people to do whatever they want without fear of repercussion. In the adult world, fans riot whether their teams win or lose. This is accepted as normal. Then there’s the obvious double standard of labeling Black Lives Matter protests as dangerous but ignoring the street fires, smashed windows and overall barbarianism of rioting sports fans. Protesters mobilize for their rights. Fans riot for a sport that will be played over and over again.

Children associate aggression with sports at a young age. It just travels with them as they grow up and see how much they can get away with at sporting events. If the event at Newton North had gone unaddressed by the administration, the students would think nothing of it. But now that they’ve been reprimanded, hopefully the students will consider what they chant and not just how powerful they feel chanting it. It’s up to the students to react in an inoffensive manner at games.

As disgusting as some sports fans can be, sporting events are still great events where people can find communities and bond with each other. High school sports games are not just school-wide events, but community events as well. Vitriol doesn’t belong in public arenas.

Athletes may expect horrible things to be chanted at them, but that doesn’t mean fans in the bleachers should feel threatened due to their identities. It’s one thing for athletes to be scrutinized, but it’s another for fans to be.

In an ideal world that ran on sunshine and rainbows, sports fans would cheer for their team instead of cheering against another team. But this world is cruel and people love to hate each other. So maybe hate-cheers could be kept to an inoffensive minimum. It’s time to put the “sports” back in “sportsmanship” and vice versa.

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3 Comments

  1. You’ve never been to a game where the fans chant “The Ref beats his wife” “The Ref beats his wife” come on, it’s part of the experience.

  2. I think you mean to say Catholic Memorial (or CM as most locals call it) instead of Boston Memorial. Also, although you make a good argument, I think it’s important to mention that Newton students were also chanting “sausage fest,” which is a lot less tame than the chant you seemed to imply was the only one used by Newton.

  3. How come you aren’t complaining about the anti-homosexual innuendo that the Newton kids were throwing at the Catholic school kids, and that apparently they began it.