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Alleged FAMU Hazing Homicide Stirs Florida's Tense Racial Past


Members of the Florida A&M University band at a funeral for fellow band member Robert Champion, Nov. 30, 2011 in Decatur, Ga.
David Goldman / AP

By Tim Padgett with Michael Peltier / Tallahassee Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011

Florida Governor Rick Scott didn't exactly endear himself to the African–American community earlier this year when he told black state legislators, "I grew up probably in the same situation as you guys. I started school in public housing. My dad had a sixth–grade education." And Scott did it again last Thursday while talking to black students who were protesting his call to suspend the president of Florida A&M University, the state's only publicly funded historically black college, until officials finish an investigation into last month's alleged hazing homicide of a FAMU marching band member. "I come," the conservative multimillionaire Governor felt compelled to remind them, "from public housing."

Aside from the implication that all African–Americans hail from the projects, Scott's remark was a reminder that race, fairly or not, hovers over the FAMU hazing tragedy that has made national headlines since Robert Champion, 26, a drum major for the university's famed "Marching 100," died Nov. 19 in what officials now say was a homicide. His killing, allegedly by other band members during a brutal beating ritual, has intensified calls for FAMU to confront a long and entrenched tradition of physical hazing at the school. It's a problem shared by other historically black colleges, and many African–American leaders and scholars say it goes back as far as the era of slavery. There is a "pent–up urge to be dominant over somebody," says former state Senator and FAMU alumnus Al Lawson of Tallahassee, the state capital, where FAMU is located.

That's an uncomfortable discussion for a community like FAMU's, popularly called Rattler Nation, which overcame harsh Jim Crow discrimination and neglect to make its school a topflight institution — named college of the year by TIME in 1997. FAMU's seeming denial of the problem stems in large part from a fear that admitting it might invite renewed racial disparagement from the outside world. "There is certainly an us–versus–them feeling that there are forces out there that would love to use something like this to write us out of existence," says veteran FAMU journalism professor Joe Ritchie. "But we've got to pull our heads out of the sand, talk about it and solve it."

At the same time, Scott's recommendation to FAMU's board of trustees last week that university President James Ammons be suspended, as well as the announcement of an investigation into possible financial misconduct at the school related to the marching band, has many FAMU loyalists asking whether the Governor would have called for similar action at any of Florida's other 10 state universities. Scott assured FAMU students demonstrating outside the Governor's mansion Thursday that there was no bias involved. "I care about what happens to FAMU," he said.

Still, state Senator and FAMU alumna Arthenia Joyner of Tampa says she fears an unspoken double standard. "FAMU has always been the stepchild of the Florida university system," Joyner argues. "Suspending Ammons gives the impression that he personally has done something wrong, and that the Governor is saying, 'I'm gonna straighten out this black institution.'" As for the financial probe, Lawson, who attended a meeting between Scott and Ammons on Friday, suggests FAMU "may be scrutinized more than any institution in the state" in part because it's a historically black college.

But others contend the opposite — that FAMU, starting at the end of the civil rights movement in the 1970s, has received less scrutiny from the state because politicians and education officials fear accusations of racism. In 2007, when FAMU's finances were in disarray and the school temporarily lost its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Steve Uhlfelder, a former chair of Florida's university regents and the recipient of a special FAMU award for service to the school, conceded that "we didn't look at [FAMU] the same way we did other universities. We were very sensitive to...past discrimination [and] the criticism we received if we came down on them too hard." Other regents voiced the same concern. In 2004, James Corbin, then chairman of FAMU's board of trustees, had made a similar point: "We were not held, in my opinion, to the same kind of rigorous standards as the other universities."

Peter McKay, a journalist and 1997 FAMU graduate, agrees that at times "FAMU has been soft–pedaled" in that respect. His "FAMU Hazing Blog" has urged Rattler Nation to own up to its often dangerous secret initiation rites: "Jim Crow is still a living memory for this community," he says, "but I think things have at least improved enough that we can start talking more openly about what's going on here." McKay, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and co–founder of the mobile–first news start–up Roscoe Labs in New York, also believes Scott was right to call for Ammons' suspension. "The cold underlying fact is that in this case a student died," says McKay, noting that in the recent alleged child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University, which didn't involve deaths, the school's president and legendary football coach, Joe Paterno, were both removed.

McKay, like many other FAMU watchers, says a core factor is that "FAMU simply doesn't get enough attention paid to it" by the rest of Florida. "The old problem for the school was Jim Crow hostility," he says. "A big part of the problem now is neglect, letting things fester."

In that sense, FAMU's trajectory is typical of many historically black colleges in the U.S. In the 1950s, for example, the Florida legislature's racist Johns Committee harassed FAMU professors and students about their participation in the Tallahassee bus boycott. After the civil rights movement, Tallahassee let FAMU fall into disrepair until newly elected black lawmakers like Lawson helped spur its revival. As recently as 2006, Black Enterprise Magazine rated FAMU the best U.S. college for African–Americans.

Yet amid the well–deserved accolades, student hazing worsened — in 2001, a jury awarded a Marching 100 member $1.8 million after he suffered hazing–related kidney failure. Financial irregularities plagued the school as well. FAMU administrators insisted that the university was underfunded compared to other Florida institutions; and state higher education officials complained that any time they tried to scrutinize FAMU's accounts, college administrators cried racism. Either way — and there is some truth to each argument — FAMU got hurt. Champion's homicide (as well as another band hazing incident last month that led to three arrests last week) and the latest probe of possible malfeasance are all too unfortunate reminders that things need to change on both sides of the campus' walls.

A key question now is president Ammons' status. Uhlfelder, who says he remains "a big FAMU supporter," still believes that "despite the very real history of discrimination against [FAMU], it needs to be put under the same microscope as other schools." He also defends Ammons, who was hired in 2007 to fix FAMU's practices and has "made some tremendous gains." Ammons has indicated he'll leave his fate to the university's board, which is expected to announce its decision on Monday. After his meeting with Scott, Ammons told reporters, "We are all going to do what is best for the university." Whether he's suspended or not, what would be best is for people both inside and outside FAMU to put aside race and focus on a student's homicide.

© 2011 Time Inc.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2102739,00.html [with comments]