A pair of University of Arizona students accused of attacking a black student on campus have been suspended from the school, according to their attorneys.
Matthew Frazier, 20, and Matthew Rawlings, 19, are facing charges of misdemeanor assault in the Sept. 10 incident, although reps at the 44,000-student public university had previously declined to say whether they faced any discipline after their cases were reviewed by the school’s dean, citing federal privacy laws, the Arizona Daily Star reports.
But attorneys for the men confirmed after their arraignments in Pima County on Monday that they had been formally reprimanded, with Rawlings’ lawyer adding that it was an “interim” suspension, according to the newspaper.
Witnesses told campus police that Frazier and Rawlings punched and kicked the black student after tackling him to the ground during an unprovoked, late-night attack. The pair also called the unidentified victim — whom they did not know — the n-word up to 10 times during the assault, according to a campus police report.
Rawlings, who admitted he had been drinking, said a black student yelled at him before a fight broke out, while Frazier denied being at the scene despite blood being found on his shirt, campus police said.
The victim, meanwhile, had scrapes to his hand, elbow and knees after the attack and later said he would see a doctor for a possible concussion, according to the police report.
Frazier and Rawlings did not appear in court for Monday’s proceeding. A judge barred them from contacting the victim or returning to the dormitory where the incident occurred, the Arizona Daily Star reports.
“There have been a lot of statements made without having access to all of [the] facts,” Rawlings’ attorney, Louis Fidel, said Monday. “We’re going to review all of those facts and we’ll show Matt is not guilty.”
About 300 people protested on campus after the assault and called for Frazier and Rawlings to be expelled. Some students chanted “Black lives matter” as they demanded university officials release a campus police report on the incident.
“This has a very big and obviously negative impact on students’ mental health, their sense of belonging and their feeling of safety [on] campus,” the school’s director of African American student affairs, KC Williams, told the newspaper last week. “It makes me sad.”



