UPDATE: Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio this afternoon kicked two Spartan players off the team for “violation of team rules.”
It is not yet know if the players were involved in the dorm attacks, but if they aren’t, that’s a pretty stunning coincidence.
Brittany Shammas of the Michigan State University daily THE STATE NEWS has an alarming report on an altercation at a Michigan State dorm on Sunday night.
Witnesses and students involved in the incident said a group of 15 to 20 men, who some described as MSU football players, stormed into the dormitory and hit and injured about seven students, some of them women.
(Alleged attackers wore ski masks)
Police and university officials were tight-lipped Monday about what witnesses have described as a multiple-person assault that happened at about 9:30 p.m. Sunday in the Rather Hall lounge.
The student daily did locate witnesses who went on the record about the incident.
Brent Mitchell, a communication junior who said he was sent to Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital after being punched in the face, said some of the men wore ski masks, but others were recognized as football team members.
“I walked up and said, ‘It isn’t worth it.’ A guy with dreadlocks hit me and in the scuffle slapped, hit females to get them out of the way,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell added that the men who launched the attack, “said they were looking for a man who had been involved in a spat with one of them the night before during an Iota Phi Theta event at The Small Planet, 16800 Chandler Road, Mitchell said.”
Mitchell, who is a member of the fraternity, “said he was struck after the men realized the person they sought wasn’t there. He said the altercation lasted for about a minute before the men left.”
School sophomore Andrew Green described another confrontation at the same scene: “He (attacker) was coming downstairs and looked at him and punched him in the jaw.”
MSU freshman Mitch Lex said eight campus police officers were in the lobby in the aftermath, with blood present on the floor.
Lex: “There was some medic treating this kid sitting in lounge area. It looked like he had a baseball in his cheek.”
From Mitchell’s description, this sounds like an attack resulting from a dispute between the fraternity and other individuals who could include football players. The conduct, especially as it includes the use of ski masks, is most certainly criminal. Now it’s up to police to sort out who is who.
School officials have acknowledged the incident took place and said they are awaiting the findings of campus police. At the moment, no charges or arrests have been made, but that could change in short order. The MSU athletic dept. is also mum on the subject.
Additionally, I’ve been told that there is video of the incident which could go a long way to determining if Michigan State football players were indeed involved.
UPDATE: The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News are now catching up to the story.
2:10 pm on November 24th, 2009
is he?
2:38 pm on November 24th, 2009
let me guess how many were black….
2:46 pm on November 24th, 2009
wow, to straightup racism in two posts. Nice
2:51 pm on November 24th, 2009
Anyone see a pattern at MSU?
2:54 pm on November 24th, 2009
Dantino has his chance to clean this up the first time, this one is on his hands.
2:58 pm on November 24th, 2009
Mob mentality gorillas boasting their bravado by sucker punching innocent students. I would have taken a bat to these football players knees. Destroy their career ambitions right quick. Seems like a free pass to use the “Self-Defense” card…
2:59 pm on November 24th, 2009
Iota Phi Theta is a historically black fraternity, so, yeah, a lot of the people there will be black.
3:03 pm on November 24th, 2009
They were all black. Is it racism that this suprises no one? How long are stupid people going to continue to apologize for this type of behavior?
3:37 pm on November 24th, 2009
srsly hitler did it
3:48 pm on November 24th, 2009
aboutright,
I’m pretty sure the MSU football player that beat the hell out of an MSU hockey player a few months back for no apparent reason was white. Safe to say they were both white.
Yes to John though. Pattern for sure.
4:20 pm on November 24th, 2009
To see video of MSU football players knocking people out go to youtube and enter “Sam McGuffie”.
4:23 pm on November 24th, 2009
no he wasn’t!
4:25 pm on November 24th, 2009
doushe-bag jockocracy, disband the football team and send them to jail in fact disband ever football team the sport breads criminalls
4:29 pm on November 24th, 2009
This is the exact kind of behavior that results from a culture of overly glamorizing high school, college, and pro sports, giving athletes free passes, and making them more important than everyone else. It’s always everyone else who ends up suffering for their irresponsibilities, yet because of their ’star status’ they never end up getting more than, if even, a slap on the wrist. When are we going to start standing up to it?
4:34 pm on November 24th, 2009
OMG BLACKS
5:21 pm on November 24th, 2009
Obviously?
5:30 pm on November 24th, 2009
considering that this is a public university and they train at state facilities then this could be interpeted as a state sponsored terrorism. send the entire program to gitmo where they can sort this whole thing out. we do not negotiate with terrorists. why should this organization be treated any differently?
5:47 pm on November 24th, 2009
they need to be expelled from the school nothing short of it!
5:58 pm on November 24th, 2009
I hope they will be able to remember such phrases like “may I take your order” and “would you like fries with that”
6:04 pm on November 24th, 2009
HA! MSU thugs strike again! Dantonio sucks - but I’m sure he’s proud of his boys now! Way to go Sparty! I thought Lansing was little brother to Ann Arbor - I guess that should be little brother to Columbus! bwah ha ha!
6:05 pm on November 24th, 2009
I don’t believe it.
The MSU football players can’t beat anybody.
6:07 pm on November 24th, 2009
Black ghetto thugs on the rampage … AGAIN.
6:27 pm on November 24th, 2009
WTF - a little racial tension going around for the holidays?
6:39 pm on November 24th, 2009
You’re focusing on race, but you’re wrong.
FRATERNITIES are to blame. Black or white, fraternities will always be the #1 source of this type of douchebaggery on campus.
9:28 pm on November 24th, 2009
why put a skin color on these actions??? regardless of black, white, hispanic or jewish decent… these actions should not be tolerated from any race… @ rault and the anonymous blogs, don’t be so narrow minded… your better than that… if u do feel the need to express your anger… dont hide behind your blogs, stand up and speak out and maybe something positive will come out of it….
11:18 pm on November 24th, 2009
Silly kids, college is for sex not violence.
1:09 am on November 25th, 2009
Where they black?….do you even have to ask? Of course they were black. In situations like this “they” are always black. You know they were black because A) this is what blacks do. And B) because they didn’t disclose the race of the perpetrators. If they had been a bunch of blonde haired blue eyed white guys, this little article would be plastered all over your TV and subsequently falling all over itself trying to best describe the whiteness of the criminals. Oh yea, plus they said dreadlocks were sported by one of the attackers. Obviously some white guy named tyrone…..
9:50 am on November 25th, 2009
MSU would be without a football team if it were up to me, but Football is so frickin important to the survival of the world nothing will come of this. Same as the fights between Footballers and Basketballers at Kansas University i twas a whoops too bad playball punishment.
9:52 am on November 25th, 2009
Okay! Where is Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton when you need them? Somebody has to blame Whitey for this.
1:01 pm on November 25th, 2009
But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few sick, perverted individuals. If you do… shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty… then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general?
I put it to you, Greg. Isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society?
Well… you can do what you want to us… but we won’t sit here… and listen to you badmouth the United States of America! Gentlemen!
4:14 pm on November 25th, 2009
Sidecarsally is 100% correct. It is frats (and jocks) that act like this at universities, not a specific race.
Quit being such bitches and condemning these kids for an immutable quality that has nothing to do with it. You sound like someone pissed in you cherrios and you need to go cry to mommy to make yourselves feel better - the reason your life sucks and you need someone to blame is because you are dumb, it is not someone else’s fault.
10:08 pm on November 25th, 2009
That’s it, I’m done with football. I’m watching That 70’s Show reruns on Saturday afternoons the rest of my life.