State News reporting football players involved in campus fight

Police mum regarding Rather Hall altercation By Brittany Shammas 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. 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. 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 said members of his fraternity, Iota Phi Theta, had just finished a potluck event and were folding chairs in the lounge when the men entered. The men 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 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. Mechanical engineering sophomore Andrew Green said he saw one of the men hit another student on his way out. “He was coming downstairs and looked at him and punched him in the jaw,” Green said.