I got the results today. I've only had time to skim them at work, it is 126 pages. I skimmed it all, and I've done a "real read" up through page 70. It is pretty clear what happened, and the two sides have different versions. I'm going to avoid using names.
The frat guys says that a football player had been a problem at a previous party, and they escorted him out. They say the held him and walked him out. They say that then at a party after that, the large group of football players showed up with "masks and pvc pipe." The frat guys say they tried to de-escalate things, but the football players are intent on fighting. One of them sucker punches the kid that got the concussion. Brawl erupts. Cops come, vast majority of football team takes off through the "Lower 40." That side has been in the news. The fraternity guys claim full innocence and sainthood, and were only trying to protect themselves and the women who were there.
The frat claims they had tried more than once to reach out to Eck and the athletic department to discuss the tension between the groups and resolve it. Said they never had that meeting before the big fight.
Football players have a different side of the story. They say the frat has been inviting them over and then "jumping" them at parties they were invited to be at. Can only name the one previous incident, but say he wasn't gently escorted out, he was assaulted with a full beer can to the back of the head, beaten by 5 or more guys, and thrown into a car to be taken to the dorms. They say that the fraternity is full of racism, and the kid that was escorted out of the party says that "after that, people on campus are saying that I sexually assault people." The football team doesn't appreciate the way the fraternity talks about them around campus, and "people stare at us on campus." Multiple of them said they felt disrespected by that fraternity and other students on campus. That they "don't appreciate the rumors going around about the football team." The football team says they intended no violence, but through a group snapchat they got everyone planned to go over to this large frat part (over 100 people there), so that they could calmly and reasonably talk out the issues between that fraternity and the football team. They say nobody intended violence.
The PVC pipes were not broken PVC pipes. They were the foam covered pvc rollers a lot of training rooms use for athletes (they were identified with pictures). The ski masks were actually balaclava masks (not sure that makes a difference).
The football team contends that when they arrived, the fraternity started, unprovoked, yelling racial slurs including the n word and that "Coach Eck needs some bigger cages for you boys." They said they still didn't want to fight. They said the frat guys then started throwing full beer cans and chairs at them, hurting and provoking them. They all identify one guy as the one who hit the kid who got the concussion. That athlete says the frat guy was coming toward him "aggressively," and he felt like he was in danger, so he pushed him down. The kid got up, threw a punch and missed, and so the football player defended himself by one shotting the frat boy and knocking him out. They all contend nobody remembers anyone hitting the kid on the ground, but that after that there was "chaos" until the police arrived. The only phone that caught that first part was either stolen (frat guys' account) or "knocked 60 feet up in the air and landed in a truck bed, no idea after that" (football team). The football teams make themselves out to be innocent saints as well, with one guy saying that when asked to leave he said "yes, sir, we will go, and I hope you have a nice day." (I giggled at that part). Others are willing to admit that when they have been asked to leave frat parties over the last couple of weeks, they have refused because they didn't want to look "weak" in front of the women at the party, so they refused to leave.
There are a couple of serious problems with the investigation. The kid that got the concussion identified the player who hit him from pictures, but everyone on the football team says it was a different teammate. The kid the football team claims hit the kid admits he hit him, but says it was self defense for the way that the frat kid aggressively walked up him.
The second major issue with the investigation was that all of the football players stated very clearly in their interviews that nobody intended to fight. We can all have opinions on that, but their statements were consistent and unanimous to the police. The investigation then hinged on the group Snapchat to determine intent. The police served three search warrants to Snapchat for their server records. Snapchat said twice that the warrants were incomplete, and that the third one was served too late. The lead investigator conferred with the prosecutor and determined that further attempts to fight Snapchat would be costly and time consuming, and quite possibly fruitless.
One football player wanted to press charges for the way he was taken out of the original house party. The frat president wanted to press charges for this. When the football player was told of the conflicting stories, he responded with "well, I guess we kind of have a he said, she said situation then?" And that is pretty much where it had to end at.
Honestly, if not for the PVC pipes and masks, this kind of stuff sounds like a lot of college group conflicts I had been around or tangentially a part of in school. Sucks that some kids got hurt, but fights between different sports or frats and sports is as old as time.