U.S. | Tue Nov 15, 2016 | 4:19am EST

Columbia suspends wrestling team over lewd, racist texts: NYT

New York's Columbia University has suspended its men's wrestling team as it investigates "racist, misogynistic and homophobic" text messages between team members, the New York Times reported on Monday.

Harvard, another Ivy League university, canceled its men's soccer season on Nov. 4 when officials found out that players had been making lewd rankings of women players for years.

Columbia made its decision after BWOG, a student news website, published several text messages last week dating back to 2014 between teammates that contained jokes about rape and the use of homophobic, racist and sexist slurs and comments.

The school's athletic department "has decided that Columbia wrestlers will not compete until we have a full understanding of the facts on which to base the official response to this disturbing matter," Columbia told the New York Times.

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