Timeline re: MSU alleged assault info and NSD
Per the Freep's FOIA requests, the timeline was as follows:
Jan 16 - alleged assault occurs
Jan 16 or 17 - alleged assault is reported to police (not clear since they say assault occurred at 2 a.m. and was reported "the next day")
Feb 1 - National Signing Day
Feb 2 - contract is signed to conduct internal Title IX investigation (though investigation may have started prior to that day)
Feb 9 - MSU statement says report of assault was made to police in "late January" (giving impression that action was taken quickly) and Blackwell is suspended
Feb 10 - MSU hires Jones Day to complete investigation of football program compliance with university policy on sexual assault
Feb 16 - MSU sends internal findings of criminal investigation to Ingham County prosecutor
Dunno how I feel. Looks a bit shady, but a few weeks is still pretty quick for an internal investigation.
There goes an eargasm?
I see what you did there . . .
that all three guys under investigation have been moved out of their dorm and haven't been attending classes. This comes from a friend at MSU who has friends who saw them getting moved out. I know it's hearsay and you can believe it or not; but my friend seems pretty confident that they won't be returning to the football team. Just give it a little more time.
The names have been leaked and with enough digging you can find them. At the lastest everyone should know by April 1st when they not at the spring game.
Y'know, I had been on the record as saying speculation as to the names was irresponsible. I think it is, in cases like this. But the longer the school lets it drag on, the harder it is to take a stand on that hill. Eventually, we reach the point where the school is complicit in letting the speculation get out of hand. It's not possible to keep a lid on anything forever, and rumors become more and more substantiated with circumstantial evidence.
in cases like this. While the names might circulate on the internet, but you don't see and hear the mainstream media speculating about them or much else. As long as there is an active investigation going on, that's not likely to change. I'm not seeing much benefit to MSU in releasing more info at this time.
Strongly disagree here. That's not remotely fair. MSU has done its fair share of dumb things, and handled athlete misbehavior poorly before, but this isn't even the same planet as DB's handling of the Morris concussion.
Guys criticizing MSU for not publicly shaming the players involved are in error, in my opinion. What has been alleged (or rumored to be alleged, I forget how much is actually documented on record) is pretty awful. But until judgments are rendered the alleged perpetrators still have rights, including the right not to be kicked out of school presumptively, including the right to presumption of innocence.
The guy saying "don't worry" about them keeping their housing isn't being ridiculous. The guys got kicked out of the dorm, but that doesn't mean that they are homeless with no way to eat. It's not wrong to be concerned about that, even for someone alleged to have done something as horrible as the event under discussion.
It has been less than 2 months since the alleged incident took place. The police are investigating. The university investigated and took rather decisive action within a relatively quick timeframe (the idea that they'd hold on to a guy for an extra week, which is all that could possibly be involved, just to avoid a signing day problem is farfetched). They continue to investigate.
There may be much to criticize in their actions and response later. But not now.
Of course, this IS the correct, lawful, and fair way to perceive this situation, both as to whom allegations might eventually be made against, and as to MSU also at this point.
If and when charges come, it is not going to be pretty for the college with that situation and Nassar going on simultaneously, and the inevitable dredging up of the older rumors/stories about unwarranted considerations by prosecutors for MSU athletes.
MSU will deal with that the best it can. The alleged victims and the alleged perpetrators will undergo life changing experiences, but until there is a conviction after a trial, or the entry of a guilty plea, the defendants will be, according to our law, presumed to be innocent.
I thought I saw umbig11 or the guy who was a former FSU player (MichiganMan something?) or some other well connected mgoblogger strongly suggest those 3 were done
The not attending classes piece would be news to me and would be very telling, but I'm pretty sure it was reported that the three players involved were moved off of campus immediately.
Why would a MSU player not attending classes be news?
Doing the right thing = falling on the sword in EL apparently.
This isn't hearsay. The information that they were kicked out is well known, and has been published in many newspaper articles.
The facts are they remain on scholarship. They were kicked out of the dorms. They were given compensation for off-campus housing.
About not returning, certainly nothing official has been said. The MSU athletic department is in full lockdown. MSU's student paper has weekly meetings with the athletic department and since this incident, their emails have gone unasnwered and the meetings cancelled. Complete silence.
Lauren Thompson of Lansing TV6 actually told the viewers not to worry they were moved to off campus apartments and were still getting their stipens.
I had to rewind three times to verify what she said.
is filing a protection order, which often requires that the accused be removed from campus.
This could be 100% happenstance. But if is discovered that they "kept this quiet" even just a few days to make it past NSD before revealing these allegations and launching an investigation, this will become an absolute PR and legal mother fucking shitstorm nightmare...
I'm sure Graham Couch will write something scathingly...supportive of Dantonio.
Then again, with the bar so low, it's not hard to look good by comparison.
I hate Sparty and their fans, but it seems like they handled things fairly quickly and appropriately. We can all pick nits here and there, but without more bad facts coming out, it is hard to really slam the University for its response here.
Is there an inference from this post that this information was sat on until signing day was behind them? I'm not sure I'm buying that.
My guess is they (as in Blackwell allegedly) were hoping the whole thing would just "go away". I'd be surprised if signing day played any role in their decision at all. And the police have the information on January 17th so it's not like MSU has any real control of the situation at that point do they?
FWIW - seems to me like things are moving pretty fast over there once they got Blackwell out of the picture.
On RCMB, they are saying Blackwell was at NSD - and then suspended almost immediately after. Looks a lot like an, "ALL IS WELL, ALL IS WELL, COME TO MSU! Oops, now that you're here, your recruiter has been fired."
It WAS bad
I'm not sure if that is correct. Someone posted that suspended with pay is very common and a way for the school to protect themselves from future litigation.
It's a due process protection
I tend to agree. However, the Freep article pointed out (and I'd definitely agree), that's it's odd to characterize the reporting of the incident as "late January". Sure seems like a deliberate mischaracterization.
I've worked on internal investigations, and three weeks is pretty quick. Takes at least a week for basic information to be gathered and higher-ups to get time together to decide how to even start.
But I'm just hoping this comes to an end so the parties who may or may not have been affected can move on with their lives. I know some people in here enjoy the misery that's being brought upon MSU, but the sooner this ends, the better.
Seeing the recaps and the grab for any type of news on here is a bit fatiguing.
Im not enjoying the misery thats befallen the school, the team (not including the players involved), the community or the victims. But I sure as hell am enjoying the misery that thier insufferable, utterly clueless fanbase is dealing with. I dont hate MSU, I hate their fanbase.
would have never guessed.
That timeline strikes me as incredibly fast for an institution to respond to something like this. Obviously it should take even less time, but what other examples do we have of institutions initiating, completing, and turning over materials in an investigation like this in such a short period of time?
Presumably the evidence is overwhelming, or the victim is well-connected. Would that all assaults were dealt with by universities so expeditiously.
If a garden-variety non-student citizen is raped, can identify who their attacker is, and reports it to the police promptly, would it really take almost two months for the LEOs to decide whether or not to file charges?
Sometimes? Cases like that can be wildly variant - wildly more than you'd think would be even close to appropriate, sometimes.
If I had to guess as to a good cause for not sending this over, it'd be that they had blood/DNA work going through the labs, and those can take a while. It could also just be that there was pressure from the University/Football Program to slow things down and that's what happened. Even if the labs involved weren't busy, it's really hard to argue with "I forgot."
These types of cases are very fact-specific. Most of the time it's a he-said she-said situation. When additional material evidence and/or witness testimony is available, or the prosecutor has reason to believe such evidence may be discovered upon further investigation, then deciding whether to move forward with the case becomes more complicated.
it's impossible to know. The burden of evidence required to move forward with the case is very low.