Men's hoops faced racial slurs from crowd in loss at Yale earlier this season

Ahmed El Nokali walked off the court at Lee Ampitheater in New Haven Feb. 9 while one pained thought raced through his mind, repeating itself again and again. Yale had just defeated Princeton, 60-50, bumping the Tigers down to second place in the league. But there was more.

"There was some racial and ethnic stuff being said," El Nokali said two weeks later. Though he said this was not the first time he had faced anti-Arab abuse, Yale "was the worst game I've ever played in terms of that," he said, "It was just classless. All I could think was, How could we lose?"

Winning, he said, is "the way that you handle crowds like that."

Yale officials and many students strongly denied that inappropriate comments were widespread, attributing any to a small number of fans, vastly outnumbered by the rest of the large, enthusiastic crowd.

"I was not aware of the comments while I was at the game," Yale Director of Athletics Thomas Beckett said. "There were 3,100 people in the building, if one person makes a comment it's not indicative of the whole crowd.

"It was a very exciting game, he added. "You would have felt the same had you been there."

"I didn't hear anything at the game," Eli captain Ime Archibong said.

But several students and players said that they heard at least one person shout "you dirty arab" and a reference to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. El Nokali also claimed to have seen posters with his picture on them that had "wanted" printed across the top and other writing underneath, though others, including Princeton players Konrad Wysocki and Pete Hegseth, said the posters read "One Ugly Mother."

According to other Princeton players and Yale students at the game, there were also widespread chants of "token" at Will Venable, one of the Tigers' few minority players.

Princeton Director of Athletics Gary Walters '67 said he had spoken several times with Beckett, who apologized for the Yale fans' behavior. "They got back to me and said, in fact, apparently some things were said and they really regretted them," Walters said. "They regretted anything that happened and they would take very, very active steps to make sure something like that didn't happen again."

El Nokali said that Thompson pulled him aside the day after the game and said that Princeton would not have played the game if he had been able to hear what was said and seen the signs.

During the game, no announcement was made at Lee Ampitheater urging the fans to tone down their comments. Walters said that the Princeton athletics procedure in the face of inappropriate fan behavior would be to "go over and talk to the fans and tell them it's inappropriate. "Ultimately," he said, "we should be there to root hard for the home team and not to villify the away team and not to engage in any kind of slurs that are personal in nature. I think that goes over the line."

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Jeff Orleans, the Executive Director of the Council of Ivy Presidents said that he had spoken with each athletic director and is facilitating the communication between the two schools.

"The important thing for all of us as educators whenever this happens, and it happens on Ivy campuses and all campuses, is to try and help people understand what's right speech and what's not and then move forward in a way that it's unlikely to happen again," Orleans said. He said that no formal complaint had been filed.

Senior captain Mike Bechtold said that some have overreacted to the crowd.

"It was college fans being college fans," he said. "I didn't think it was that big a deal. It didn't bother me at all, but nothing was actually said to me."

Yale students Luis Poza and Robert Womack, who wrote a guest column in The Yale Daily News in response to mounting criticism of the fans' behavior, agreed that reports had been exaggerated. "The token chant was definitely going around. No matter where you go, there will be isolated events. There will be one or two people that will say something stupid. This has turned into people pointing a finger at Yale students that is so out of line."

But Yale junior Najah Farley was so disgusted by the crowd reaction that she wrote a guest column in The Yale Daily News after the game. "I was really appalled at how Yale behaved," she said. "Why should the standards of how you deal with athletes be any different than usual? You can't yell racist comments at an athletic competition just like you can't yell them out on the street."

Whether or not the comments were largely racial in tone, Wysocki criticized the crowd for crossing the line. Though he did not see "wanted" on any of the posters, he called them, "probably the worst thing I'd ever seen. It was very, very offensive. I think a crowd should be there cheering on and being totally into it, but there should be no violence or stupid stuff going on like we saw at Yale."

After the game, the Princeton players walked quietly back to the locker room.

"Sometimes when you do hear stuff like that your first instinct is to say something back," El Nokali said. "But it's just better just to keep quiet and play.

"That stuff," he continued, "would never fly in Princeton."

(Silla Brush contributed to this story.)