Police have decided not to pursue their own charges following a college-campus altercation that some have likened to the Duke lacrosse case in its involvement of student athletes, race relations and alleged assault.
Six football players at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., were recently charged with misdemeanor assault, and five of them were charged with ethnic intimidation by a magistrate judge in response to complaints filed by three Palestinian students after a Jan. 20 fight outside a dormitory.
"We didn't obtain any further evidence that would allow us to pursue additional charges, which is what we were investigating," Lt. Brian James, an investigator with the Greensboro Police Department, told the News & Record of Greensboro Wednesday.
According to court documents, the accusers-two Guilford students and a student at North Carolina State University-said several members of the Guilford football team beat them, referred to them as "terrorists" and used racial slurs.
In the widely publicized Duke lacrosse case, a black exotic dancer initially accused white members of the 2005-2006 Duke men's lacrosse team of rape, sodomy and strangulation, and neighbors of the house where the party occurred said they overheard racial slurs.
In the following weeks, team members David Evans, Trinity '06, and then-sophomores Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were indicted on charges of rape, kidnapping and sexual offense.
Finnerty and Seligmann were placed on interim suspension after receiving their indictments and were offered reinstatement in early January, nearly two weeks after rape charges were dropped Dec. 22. Neither player has accepted the University's offer to return.
Due to safety concerns and "heightened tension on campus," Guilford students involved in the incident were asked by the college to move away from school grounds while they prepare for a hearing with a board of Guilford students and faculty-but will retain all other privileges of full-time students, said Nic Brown, assistant director of college relations at Guilford.
"There have been no findings yet, and until we make a decision about what has happened, our students are still students here," Brown said. "Our priority is to get this right, not to get this fast."
Although Finnerty and Seligmann were eventually placed on interim suspension, Larry Moneta, Duke's vice president for student affairs, said the University followed a similar policy this spring by not taking disciplinary action against members of the lacrosse team until formal charges were filed.
"That's not uncommon when a behavior is not in the purview of the University," he said.
Duke President Richard Brodhead said that like at Guilford, the Duke administration was guided by safety precautions in making critical decisions.
"In essence, interim suspension is invoked in circumstances where there is a risk of harm to the community or to the student in question," Brodhead wrote in an e-mail. "Duke like many colleges and universities has used this measure when a student is indicted for a crime with an element of violence, and in certain other situations with a possibility of danger. This is a way of coping with a possible risk-it is not a disciplinary measure or a judgment of the student's guilt."
Moneta said the extremity of the Duke case warranted the players' suspension.
"We don't deploy that tool cavalierly-it's used quite rarely," he said.
Prosecutors said they will not proceed in the Guilford case until the school completes its investigation, which Brown emphasized will remain independent from all other related investigations.
"They're like railroad tracks," he said. "They may run parallel in many ways, but they won't cross."
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.