Senior tennis player at the University of Portland, Goutham Sundaram, was booted from his team after he gave an inappropriate speech at a co-ed sports banquet
A senior tennis player at the University of Portland was dismissed from the team after he offered an offensive banquet speech detailing his sexual pursuits to a horrified crowd of educators, parents and fellow student athletes.
Announcer of the Wally Awards, Goutham Sundaram, took the stage on Sunday to urge ‘white women to sleep with brown men,’ according to a column published in the university’s student newspaper.
Female athlete and The Beacon writer, Olivia Sanchez, expressed her disgust over the tennis player’s speech, which left several individuals in the audience darting out of the auditorium.
Sanchez said Sundaram kicked off what was supposed to be a ceremony honoring athletic achievements by instead informing the audience that he would be making ‘the stage (his) locker room.’
Sundaram went on to shamelessly share various jokes involving race, ethnicity and sex.
The Portland Pilots took to Twitter sharing this photo of Sundaram at the ceremony on Sunday and said: ‘Let us introduce to you this year’s MC for the event!’
It’s unclear what the terms of Sundaram’s dismissal from the team are. Above shows the tennis team on their website (Sundaram not pictured)
He repeated: ‘Go brown and turn your frown upside down.’
He also said of his French teammates, who are seemingly luckier with the ladies: ‘Go French and your panties get drenched.’
The male athlete, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India, further shared the only way he would appreciate the country completely.
The solution for him he explained would be to finally ‘hook up with a white girl,’ Sanchez’s column states.
He at one point also added: ‘Gandhi didn’t fast for twenty days so that I could get to America and not sleep with white women.’
While some coaches apologized for Sundaram’s speech and he was booted from the tennis team, Sanchez said she was disappointed more action wasn’t taken at the sports banquet.
Female athlete and writer of university student-led newspaper, Olivia Sanchez, expressed her disgust over the tennis player’s speech in a column
Sanchez said she walked out of the auditorium and that ‘Sundaram’s words were actively marginalizing all the women who worked hard all year for this’
‘Forget being an athlete for a moment. As a student at the University of Portland, and as a journalist compelled to hold power to account, I am deeply disappointed in our university president, our senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator,’ Sanchez wrote.
University President Fr. Mark Poorman addressed the horrific speech in a public statement
‘They sat in the front row. And did nothing.’
Others even sat in the crowd laughing at the student’s tasteless speech.
She chose to take the risk of coming off as the ‘crazy lady’ who ‘can’t take a joke.’
Sanchez added: ‘Sundaram’s words were actively marginalizing all the women who have worked hard all year for this.
‘It’s been a long road, paved with Title IX regulations and sexism, to create a place for women in athletics. And tonight proved that that place is not even promised to feel safe.
‘They might let us in the room, but they don’t have to acknowledge that we’re there and that maybe we don’t need to hear about how as women, we owe an immigrant sex, because Gandhi starved for that very purpose.’
University President Fr. Mark Poorman addressed the offensive speech in a public statement on Monday.
Poorman said: ‘These offensive statements do not reflect us, and they do not reflect our mission.’
This Facebook photo shows the University of Portland campus in Portland, Oregon