Minnesota must stick with decision to suspend 10 players for bowl game
Channel: chawki sports
Date: 17/12/2016

Criminal court, civil court, on-campus hearing: There are many places to try to determine if a sexual assault happened. A sports column is pretty low on that list. So let’s say, up front, that we don’t know if 10 University of Minnesota football players are guilty of an obscene crime. What we do know is this:
1. Police did not charge the players after a Sept. 2 incident.
2. The university’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action investigated on its own.
3. The school suspended the players.
4. The rest of the team is threatening to boycott the Holiday Bowl unless the suspensions are lifted.
Unless the players back down, this leads us to: Goodbye, Holiday Bowl. The University of Minnesota has no choice. It must stick with its decision to suspend the players. Again, this isn’t me presuming guilt. But the university made that decision for a reason. It can’t back down just to quell an uprising on its football team. That would be an act of cowardice that sets a frightening precedent.
Is it possible that the university overreached or botched the investigation? Of course it is. But the school can only alter its ruling if it believes it made a mistake, or if new evidence emerges. And so far there is no indication of either.

Minnesota can’t just change course because players are unhappy. What message would that send to future victims of sexual assault? Why would anybody believe in the university process if the school itself doesn’t even believe in it?
The rest of the Golden Gophers clearly believe this was a travesty of justice. They are willing to take a major stand for their teammates. It’s one thing to grumble privately or sneak a message of solidarity onto a wristband. It’s quite another to boycott a bowl game.  And while they haven’t actually abandoned the Holiday Bowl just yet, senior wide receiver Drew Wolitarsky said in a statement, “The boycott will remain in effect until due process is followed and the suspensions for all 10 players involved are lifted.”

The school could try to finesse this situation and offer some small concession to the players in exchange for their participation. But that would be a cop-out, and it would signal that a football game is more important than the university’s process for investigating sexual assaults.

Schools around the country should be watching this very closely. The threatened boycott may seem anomalous now, but it could happen elsewhere. Sexual-assault investigations are almost always a quagmire.
MINNEAPOLIS, MN -- One by one, the entire Minnesota football roster walked out of the locker room and onto the practice facility turf to face a group of reporters.

Wearing their maroon game jerseys with gold numbers, they lined up behind 10 of their teammates who were suspended earlier this week after an internal university investigation into an alleged sexual assault.

Three senior leaders stood in front of the group and delivered a defiant rebuke of the university's decision, saying they would not participate in any football activities until the school president and athletic director apologized and revoked the suspensions. If that meant they don't play in the upcoming Holiday Bowl against Washington State, they appeared ready to stand firm.

"All these kids' reputations are destroyed," senior quarterback Mitch Leidner said Thursday. "Their names are destroyed. It's extremely difficult to get back and it's very unfair for them and that's why we're sticking together through this thing."

According to police records, a woman told officers she was drunk when she was sexually assaulted in running back Carlton Djam's apartment on Sept. 3 by several men, including some of the suspended players. She said her sexual contact with two men may have been consensual, but her contact with four of them was not. Several players told police it was consensual, and an investigator who watched a video Djam took of the incident wrote that "she does not appear to be upset by the sexual activity and does not indicate that she wants it to stop ... and the sexual contact appears entirely consensual."

Four players were