University of Portland tennis player kicked off team for misogynistic speech at awards banquet

Heather Tucker | USA TODAY

Goutham Sundaram has been removed from the University of Portland men's tennis team after delivering a misogynistic and violent speech during the school's annual Wally Awards.

Sundaram's remarks came during the fifth annual banquet Sunday evening, a night meant to honor the student-athletes and their community within the Pilots' program.

Instead, Sundaram regaled the audience that included the school president, athletic director, coaches and players with a speech filled with remarks about his lack of sexual conquests, his right to sex and how his entire time at Portland was really about getting white women to sleep with brown men, according to an op-ed piece in the school newspaper The Beacon.

Olivia Sanchez, the news and managing editor of The Beacon and a three-year rower, walked out of the banquet, along with several others.

She wrote that Sundaram introduced himself and said he was going to "make the stage (his) locker room."

He said his teammates engaged in more sexual intercourse than he and continued to draw a parallel between that and being white. "Go brown and turn your frown upside down," Sundaram said often, according to Sanchez.

He also told the story of his parents, who immigrated from India, and how that would be worth it only if he could "hook up with a white girl."

School president Fr. Mark Poorman, who was seated near the front, never tried to stop Sundaram or go up on stage, according to Sanchez.

When Sundaram said "Gandhi didn’t fast for twenty days so that I could get to America and not sleep with white women," many people began to leave.

Rowing coach Pasha Spencer and assistant athletic director of compliance and student services Ryan McAlvey finally approached the stage from the back of the room. Not long after, Sundaram walked off, according to Sanchez.

Men's basketball coach and former Portland Trail Blazers star Terry Porter and some of his players walked out, along with Spencer and McAlvey.

When men's tennis coach Aaron Gross later took the stage, he told Sundaram he loved him but his views didn't reflect those of the team.

Sundarm earned the emcee appointment via the Student-Athletic Advisory Committee. He did not consult with any members of the committee before his speech, Sanchez wrote.

"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.

"They sat in the front row. And did nothing."

Williamette Week reported Monday that Sundarm was no longer on the tennis team and the school president sent a campus-wide email after the op-ed was published that read:

"These offensive statements do not reflect us, and they do not reflect our mission. This important tradition was the purpose of the evening, and I did not want what happened on stage to take away from the recognition of others in attendance. I apologize to all of you that this occurred."

Follow Heather Tucker on Twitter @HeatherR_Tucker.