Minnesota football players agree to end boycott over player suspension

The Minnesota Gophers play the Wisconsin Badgers
(Image credit: Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

The University of Minnesota Gophers announced Saturday they will end the team's boycott of all football activities, a walkout they originally said would continue until 10 players suspended over allegations of sexual assault were reinstated. "As a team we understand that what has occurred these last few days and playing football for the University of Minnesota is larger than just us," said wide receiver Drew Wolitarsky after meeting with the university's board of regents, president, and athletic director on Friday.

The suspension which sparked the boycott was ordered by the school's Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action pursuant to an investigation into a female student's claim that a sexual encounter she had with several players was not consensual. The accused Gophers say she did give consent, and local law enforcement concluded there was "insufficient admissible evidence" for prosecution, noting that in videos of the encounter she did not appear to object to her circumstances.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.