The Rev. William Barber, who leads the state’s NAACP chapter, vowed to watch investigators closely and said their work must be done openly, “so the whole community will feel confident that justice is being served, without regard to racial, economic or social status.”

Brodhead said McFadyen was the only player suspended so far, and that the man was removed from campus. He also said he has heard that other lacrosse team members have changed their places of residence for safety reasons.

“The court released today a previously sealed warrant whose contents are sickening and repulsive,” Brodhead said in announcing the cancellation of the rest of the season. Last week, he suspended the team from play.

Shortly after the e-mail’s release, lacrosse coach Mike Pressler resigned, ending a 16-year tenure marked by three Atlantic Coast Conference championships and a trip to last year’s national final.

Brodhead called Pressler’s resignation “highly appropriate” but declined to say whether it had been requested.

Brodhead said the investigation will include a probe of at the lacrosse team’s culture and the school’s response to the scandal to uncover any “special history of bad behavior with this team.”

The investigation of Duke’s response will be conducted by William Bowen, president of the Andrew Mellon Foundation and a past president of Princeton University, and Julius Chambers, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a past NCCU chancellor.

The university’s critics have complained that it has taken three weeks to reach these actions. There have been near-daily protests on and off campus.

Coincidentally, McFadyen attended a “Take Back the Night” march on campus on March 29.

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“I completely support this event and this entire week,” the player told The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper. “It’s just sad that the allegations we are accused of happened to fall when they did.”

McFadyen’s attorney, Glen Bachman, took over his representation late Wednesday from attorney Robert Ekstrand, who said earlier in the day that while its language was vile, “the e-mail itself is perfectly consistent with the boys’ unequivocal assertion that no sexual assault took place that evening.”

Bachman declined to comment on the e-mail and its contents.

In the warrant to search the player’s room, police provided a detailed timeline of the alleged attack. The warrant also adds conspiracy to commit murder as a crime that police are investigating.

Also, in a February 2005 posting to a friend’s bravenet.com guestbook, McFadyen wrote of enjoying Duke lacrosse, but noting “we have 48 hour rule so we can only drink hardcore on saturday nights ...” He also joked, in error-riddled sentences, about two fellow players “being women on the lacrosse field, menaing they both got hurt so coach rips them appart.”