Chronicle of Higher Education
12.17.16 | Katherine Mangan
University of Minnesota football players backed off on Saturday from their threat to boycott their coming Holiday Bowl game when it became clear the university wasn’t going to give in to their demands that it reinstate 10 players suspended for their alleged involvement in sexual assaults.
The decision, which the players announced at a 9 a.m. news conference, followed a late-night meeting with university leaders, including two regents and the university’s president, Eric W. Kaler.
The players, who faced a noon deadline on Saturday to decide whether to play in the December 27 bowl game, told reporters they had been up all night considering their options. They said they were still unhappy about what they considered a lack of due process in their teammates’ suspensions.
But the decision was also probably influenced by lurid details of the alleged assaults that emerged on Friday. A local television station, KSTP News in Minneapolis-St. Paul, published a copy it had obtained of an 80-page report outlining the findings in the case by the university’s equal-opportunity and affirmative-action office.
It detailed the varying accounts of what happened when a 22-year-old woman visited an off-campus apartment in the early hours of September 2, after the season-opening football game.
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