The Des Moines Register has some new details in the ongoing investigation into an alleged 2007 sexual assault case involving former Iowa Hawkeye football players Cedric Everson and Abe Satterfield. Everson and Satterfield have both been charged in the case.Here is the executive summary: The alleged assault took place in a dorm room which was not assigned to anyone, yet somehow Everson and Satterfield both had keys to it. The room had previously been occupied by another football player. Subsequent to the alleged assault, that player and another player moved back into the room. They found two condoms (one new, one soiled) and what is described as "an orangish-reddish mess" on a mattress.
Just about all this information was floating around on message boards as early as last fall, not long after the incident. Yesterday's document release merely confirmed the details. What I found interesting in all of this is a university official's insistence that the university is not "a monitor of behavior" and resident advisers are there to serve as "educational assistants." Everyone who was educationally assisted by your RA in college, please scream.
(sound of crickets chirping)
I'd invite everyone whose behavior was monitored by an RA to spit on the ground, but the Midwest is already flooded.
The player who had occupied the room was ordered back in to the room by head coach Kirk Ferentz, according to the official documents. The other player isn't sure who told him to move into the room, but he says it wasn't Ferentz. (I'm leaving their names out of this since they weren't involved in the assault; their names are mentioned in the article I linked.)
So where does it go from here? The former players are charged already; now it seems like the investigation will move on to "who knew what, and when did they know it?" However, I imagine there are other priorities in Iowa City right now.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-21-2008 @ 12:17PM
amy said...
Eh, you'd be surprised. Even if the UI admin would rather this went away, we take this sort of thing pretty seriously in Iowa City. I would expect considerable protest and anger at the home games this fall -- people here regard not just the players but Ferentz and AD Barta as culpable, and believe they should be fired hard. Bad enough that they have these bloated salaries in times when we're losing faculty left and right. This tears it.
It's a tough call because the U's deep in the hole after the floods. However, it's got longer-term problems with loss of prestige and funding, and a rep as a haven for pretend-student rapists and drunken gang-bangs is not going to help. Mason came in after the loss of a president who was doing his damndest to restore the university's status; Cornell thought he was all right, and picked him up. So now we'll see how serious Mason is about restoring the university's rep -- are we going to be the Athens of the Midwest again, or are we some crummy flyover state college? What she does here will do much to set the tone.
The person she really needs to bring in is vice(?)-provost Lola Lopes, who works magic in these situations. My guess is that the athletic dept and regents will be too dumb to see how she can help, though.
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