At first glance, the name Dixon Cider looks innocuous enough for a recreational hockey team who found a generous sponsor for their jerseys.

But, say it out loud and it becomes shockingly apparent that this isn’t a sponsor, but a vulgar play on words.

The name — used for at least two years — has landed a group of Western Law students, a team comprised of both men and women, in hot water for plastering it on their intramural hockey jerseys along with a picture of a man carrying a box, and has the school tuning up its gender sensitivity training.

Since the school’s dean was alerted to it two weeks ago, the jerseys have been destroyed and the name has been changed to the Crash Test Domi’s .

“The name is wholly inappropriate and it doesn’t reflect our values and it doesn’t reflect the values of the university,” dean Iain Scott said Monday.

“As soon as we learned of it, then we put an end to it.”

The hubbub over the name comes in the wake of the Dalhousie University dentistry school scandal when male students were caught exchanging misogynistic and violent comments on a private Facebook page about female students, leading to a wider investigation about the treatment of women in the program.

The Western Law team name isn’t even that original. It comes from a song released by a California comedy duo called Smosh who are a YouTube sensation. The video for the song has been viewed more than 16 million times.

Western Law isn’t the only school where the name has been used. A quick Internet search shows it’s used frequently and there are other intramural teams at the University of Waterloo and McGill.

Scott said he learned about the team on Nov. 19 after he received an email from a female student “describing the name to me just out of the blue.

“I met the next day, with my assistant dean, with the student legal society representatives to understand, quite frankly, how the intramural system works and how this all came about,” he said.

On Nov. 23, Scott met with the team, and had “a long and very direct conversation about why it was inappropriate.

“I don’t think I was two minutes into the conversation before all of the students involved recognized how inappropriate it was, apologized and asked quite frankly what they could do to make things better.”

They’ve moved on to “the more important issue,” Scott said, for the entire school “on why we don’t tolerate any behaviour that’s demeaning to anyone else whether it’s in a gender context or any other context.”

Scott said he was disappointed that law students would choose that name.

The students have been told wearing the jersey is a breach of the Western code of conduct. Those involved have been dealt with, and Scott wouldn’t say, for confidentiality reasons, what the sanctions were by the university.

He met with student leaders Monday to discuss the education program and said “we’re going to treat it as a learning experience — a regrettable one to be clear, but a learning experience.”

Nick Frid, president of the students’ Legal Society, said the team’s name has been around “for a couple of years” and there hadn’t been a complaint, not even from the women on the team.

“At this point, with the way everyone is talking about it, I think most importantly we’re having really good talks with all the students right now.”

Frid said the recent meetings have been “making sure the students’ concerns are heard and voiced and we’re moving on from this in a way everyone feels comfortable.”

Scott was applauded for acting quickly, but there are still questions from critics about why future lawyers wouldn’t understand the name is sexist.

Megan Walker, executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre, said she was glad the school had taken action but “I am incredibly disheartened that future lawyers, prosecutors and judges have that mentality.”

The recent Shine the Light on Woman Abuse campaign held events at the university, she said, “and law students still believe this is appropriate.”

Walker said that the school turns out lawyers “who will eventually have so much power, it’s very frightening to me that this is their view on women.

“And I would certainly hate to be a victim in front of one of those law students who becomes a judge one day if I was a woman.”

“It’s not funny,” said Peter Jaffe, director of Western’s Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children.

“You expect more at every stage of development. You expect more from university students than we do from high school students in terms of maturity. And you expect more from those who are training for work and profession whether it’s medicine or law or psychology. You expect more.”

Jaffe commended Scott’s plan. “At the end of the day, zero tolerance on these issues isn’t necessarily disciplining somebody. What it means it’s not ignoring and giving feedback as soon as possible and taking appropriate action.

“I think we all learn from each other and I think we need to be the best role models we can be.”

jane.sims@sunmedia.ca

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