Academics tend to be able to find their calendars when money or prestige is involved.

This is the second one.

They need not promise to have results in a particular time frame, but they should commit to giving an update by a particular date, even if that update is just, "We've made progress investigating this incident, but we are not yet ready to report our findings. We will give our next update no later than $DATE."

I have also seen many times a university happy to throw a student or even a faculty member under the bus, and in this case it seems extremely clear that they were running an unethical sociological experiment that was probably not reviewed by the IRB there. That's grounds for the university very rapidly turning on you.

Violating IRB ethics is a very serious issue, and has timelines in place once a complaint is filed. I expect that this statement was intended to be fast, short, and direct because of the time sensitivity.

They’ve explicitly said before that this was reviewed by the IRB and cleared by them as not being an experiment with human subjects

Which means either they mislead the IRB, or the IRB also needs reform. That investigation should take a while either way to figure out how that is possible.

My experience with anything that involves other faculty (at worse, tenured faculty) is that it will get done some time between later and never. With prioritization slipping the further you venture from your home department.

And this is by definition a matter that will involve a lot of parties. At minimum, as everyone in the chain tries to ensure their ass is covered and how it's not really their fault, because it wasn't really their job to say no to this.