Apparently some SMU football players didn’t get the message of last fall’s rape-chant flap

I guess when St. Mary's University was riven with controversy over the so-called "rape chant" during frosh week at the Halifax school last fall, the football team was too busy practising to notice.

Whatever the reason, some members of St. Mary's Huskies apparently didn't get the message coming out of the national flap over the chant, which seemed to glorify underage, non-consensual sex.

A number of players are being suspended from the team after an online article in the King's College School of Journalism's UNews revealed a series of sexist, racist and homophobic tweets.

The offensive tweets date as far back as last fall, in the midst of the rape-chant outcry, and as recently as mid-January.

“Some of them are upsetting for sure,” Huskies coach Perry Marchese said after being shown some of the tweets by UNews. “It’s very disappointing to see it. Very disappointing, absolutely.”

[ Related: What does the rape-chant furor tell us about the value of frosh week? ]

Marchese said he has looked at players' Facebook profiles but no one regularly monitors their overall social media activity.

But he said he has repeatedly talked to players about the image they project as Huskies, the student paper said.

The university reacted quickly after the story was published Monday, promising the authors of the offending tweets would be suspended once an investigation confirms the facts.

“The comments posted by these individuals are completely inappropriate and unacceptable,” Dr. David Gauthier, Vice-President Academic and Research, said in a statement.

“They are inconsistent with our university values and with what we have committed to address as recommendations from the President’s Council Report.”

Gauthier was referring to a report tabled last month following the rape-chant controversy. It made 20 recommendations aimed at making the university a safer, more respectful environment for women, including hiring more female professors and administrators, developing a code of conduct and setting up a team to deal with sexual assaults on campus.

The football players' tweets suggest the backlash from the rape-chant controversy had no impact on some. UNews noted at least two were no longer active, though their names were on the roster.

Some tweets echo the sentiments in the rape chant, one denigrates the penile endowments of Asians and another requests oral sex from someone referred to by a nasty slur for gays.

"See a girl who's feeling down? Feel her up." says one tweet.

"No means yes and yes means anal," says another.

[ Related: Saint Mary's pro-rape chant sparks 20 new recommendations ]

Saint Mary's athletics director David Murphy said he was meeting with 10 players who have been suspended to discuss further discipline.

"I was appalled," he told CBC News on Tuesday. "I'm discouraged, I'm disappointed.

“If you bring disrepute to the university, then you are automatically suspended,” said Murphy. “We’re taking a black eye. This is not something we want to promote.”

Murphy said five of the players are 18-year-old freshmen.

"They're not malicious people," he said. "They’re good kids. They made a mistake."

UNews noted the football team was at an off-campus training camp at the time of the rape-chant debacle, but Murphy told CBC News that officials reached out to athletes.

“We really buckled down with the student athletes, I did, and we really put out that you have to be very, very careful with social media, don’t be doing this,” he said.

But no one in his department was actually monitoring athletes' social media activity, he said.

“I’m falling behind in my due diligence and my ability to teach these kids,” said Murphy, who is 71. “Maybe that’s a breakdown in the communication. You have an older person who is not savvy to all that.

"I feel very badly that I let the university down."

Not everyone's regretful, though.

Tweetist Rhys Tansley, who UNews said was still on the roster but not an active player, seemed unconcerned by the flap, the Halifax Chronicle Herald reported.

Tansley reported tweeted "didn't know twitter can make you famous. people so sensitive. too much time on there hands," the paper said.

That Twitter account no longer appears active.