Two more football players at Guilford College have been arrested and charged for their alleged roles in beating up three Palestinian students on the North Carolina campus last weekend, the News & Record, a local newspaper, reported today. As a police investigation into the assault continued, the Quaker college remained shocked by the ferocity of the alleged attackers, all members of the football team, and their reported uttering of racial and ethnic slurs in the incident.

It remains unclear what started the fight, in which the Palestinians were quickly overpowered, according to witnesses, and left with concussions, a broken nose, and a broken jaw. The college’s president has urged everyone to withhold judgment until the police complete their inquiry. Perhaps mindful of how wrong assumptions turned out to be just 50 miles away at Duke University, where men’s lacrosse players were accused last year of rape but now face lesser charges, some people are withholding judgment.

But on the campus and off, including on this blog, Guilford students and alumni have spoken of their shame over the incident and their disbelief that it could have happened on the Quaker campus. Some have even questioned whether a sport like football has a place at an institution that espouses the pacific values of the Society of Friends. Others have criticized a “rush to judgment” and assailed the equation of football, as a sport and as a team, with a thirst for violence.