2001: Colson protects Shalala after Meredith hazing death

Florida Board of Governors (BOG) Chairman Dean Colson has used the hazing death of Marching 100 drum major Robert Champion as a reason to question the leadership of FAMU President James H. Ammons.

“The safety of students enrolled and the experience they deserve are directly challenged by events during the past year,” Colson wrote in a recent letter about FAMU.

Colson’s take-no-prisoners stance against Ammons is the complete opposite of the stance he took when a student at his alma mater, the University of Miami (UM), died on the watch of President Donna Shalala.

Shalala, the current UM president, took office on June 1, 2001. On Nov. 4 of that year, 18-year old UM student Chad Meredith died from drowning during a hazing ritual led by the campus’ Kappa Sigma Fraternity.

Colson was a member of the UM Board of Trustees at the time. Shalala didn’t take drastic steps to eliminate hazing on UM’s campus before Meredith’s death (such as suspending all Greek organizations). But Colson still opted to protect her. He continued to be one of her biggest cheerleaders during his tenure as board chairman from 2004 to 2007.

There are other big differences between Colson’s treatment of UM and FAMU. Colson gave his full backing to Shalala’s efforts to expand UM’s key health sciences programs, such as the medical school that receives millions of dollars from the Florida Legislature each year. But he and most of his fellow BOG members were less-than-supportive when Ammons pushed for a FAMU College of Dental Medicine. Nor were they excited back in 2010 when two FAMU alumni legislators close to Ammons introduced a dental school bill without bothering to wait for a BOG vote on the matter.

Colson has always wanted his alma mater to have the very best when it comes to health science education that is financed on the dime of Florida taxpayers. He didn’t let the Meredith incident get in the way of his support for a president who shared that goal. His concern about Champion’s hazing death rings hollow when it is compared to his response to Meredith’s.

If Colson has any role in determining FAMU’s next president, you can bet that he won’t back a person who poses any serious challenge to UM’s efforts to net big appropriations from the shrinking pool of health science funds that are available from the legislature. His recent attention to FAMU has nothing to do with accountability. It has much more to do with competition for the declining amount of state taxpayer dollars.