If you saw them, you know it already – there weren’t many similarities between the Georgetown men’s basketball games against South Florida and Duke last week. In the former, the Hoyas played like a last-place team against the last-place team, and in the latter, they played like a first-rate team against the first-rate team.

I’ll give you one point the games had in common, though – classless chants from the student sections.

That’s right. From “J.J.’s gay!” (directed toward Duke’s star guard J.J. Redick) to “Bull—-! Bull—-” (directed at the referees), there was an abundance of chants that our mothers would be shocked to hear from Georgetown’s student fans.

This type of “cheering” wasn’t limited to those two games, either. It’s present at most, or even all, of our basketball games, in addition to almost every other college sporting event I’ve attended.

In light of that fact, I’m writing this to call on all Hoyas (and people who partake in this behavior in general) to stop.

Vulgar chanting, full of curses and biased slurs, simply should not have a place at sporting events.

This behavior is especially unnecessary in college sports. I’m willing to bet that some of the Hoyas chanting “J.J.’s gay!” at the Duke game are the same ones who belong to GUPride or other social justice organizations. I’d bet further that few to none of us would condone one of our fellow students standing in Red Square chanting, “So-and-so’s gay!”

So why do student fans persistently stand for and partake in such action in the context of a basketball game? We shouldn’t.

For one thing, we are not the only fans attending games at MCI Center. There are alumni and families with young children cheering for the Hoyas there as well. It is a disgrace to our school and to ourselves that they sit there trying to enjoy the game, all the while listening to tasteless garbage spewing from the student sections.

At last week’s game against Duke, the Hoya sitting in front of me made it a point to flip off the Blue Devil fans (including at least one boy of about 10 sitting nearby during the pre-game warm-ups). When warned by stadium security to cease his harassment, he made the nearest guard the new target of his finger and was subsequently ejected from the stadium.

It probably seemed funny at the time, but looking back, would you really want to be friends with – or even to sit near – that guy?

Maybe avoiding negative, profane chants would even help our team win games. Great athletes, including J.J., are said to feed off the very jeers aimed toward them by hostile fans.

What’s more, if a referee makes a bad call, is he really encouraged to make a “better” call for our team next time with 2,000 Georgetown fans screaming “Bull—-” a few times? I know I wouldn’t be.

There are plenty of enjoyable traditions we can use to have fun at games without using curses or slurs. Hoya Blue provides a whole sheet – specialized for each game – of ways to support the team, none of which involve crude behavior. Along with traditional cheers (the Fight Song, “Hey Baby,” etc.) and boos, we have a plethora of ways to encourage the team and send our foes a message without offending anyone or losing our dignity and class.

Fellow Hoya fans, I ask you to join me in boycotting the uncouth, boorish behavior to which college sports have fallen subject.

Buzzer-beating shots and walk-off homeruns are what give birth to great rivalries in sports – not classless vulgarity. So keep supporting Georgetown teams – loudly, fervently and with class.

Hoya Saxa!

James Hilson is a sophomore in the College and opinion editor at THE HOYA.