Sentinel’s less polished version of Bill Maxwell uses racially loaded language against FAMU

The Orlando Sentinel editorial board is continuing its journey down the low road that its counterparts over at the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) have taken on FAMU issues for decades.

Members of the Orlando Sentinel’s opinions staff are still fuming over not being taken seriously by the FAMU Board of Trustees, who have ignored their rants demanding a new university president. Columnist Darryl E. Owens is now doing his best impression of ex-St. Petersburg Times editorial board member Bill Maxwell. Owens has the task of using racially loaded language against FAMU that his fellow editorial board members wouldn’t dare put in print, just like Maxwell did for years at the Times.

Owens accuses FAMU of practicing “black protectionism” by not giving in to pressure from the Tea Party governor’s office.

“It's why FAMU trustees ignored Gov. Rick Scott's idea to suspend [the university president] ‘for the sake of appearances,’” Owens wrote.

Owens must have a hard time following the news. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) all but promised to penalize FAMU if trustees let Scott bully them into placing the president on administrative leave. It’s difficult to believe that Owens would ever attack trustees at the University of Central of Florida for refusing to do something that SACS told them would likely jeopardize the institution’s accreditation.

The most recent column by Owens also makes another lame attempt to write FAMU into the Penn State script. But he does include a disclaimer that: “I'm not comparing the alleged crimes involving the schools. Sexual crimes against children occupy a special level of disgust. I'm equating the schools' responses.”

What Owens can’t seem to grasp is that the FAMU’s current senior administration has never excused hazing. But the administration of former Penn State President Graham Spanier (1995-2011) did initially the excuse questionable actions of Jerry Sandusky.

The Spanier administration first learned that Sandusky, then an assistant football coach, had showered with underage boys in a university locker room in 1998. It continued to let him freely roam the campus for years even after it received that information. Penn State police failed to seriously investigate a report that Sandusky raped a child in a football building shower in 2002. The most that the Spanier administration ever did to stop Sandusky was to take away his locker room keys.

Robert Champion, the FAMU drum major who died after being hazed on Nov. 19, is nothing like the alleged Penn State victims. The reported Penn State victims were underage children who did nothing wrong. Champion was a 26-year old man who, according to a criminal investigation, deliberately broke university-level anti-hazing rules that were in place to protect him.

The adult students who participated in the “Crossing Bus C” ritual did it secretly because they knew the senior administration would kick them out of school if it found out. They understood that the top-level officials in the school were committed to getting rid of hazers.

FAMU’s big problem does not center on the need to do more to shield underage children from alleged adult predators. The key challenge on FAMU’s campus is finding a way to break the cycle of underground hazing traditions that adult college students pass down to other adult college students year-to-year. This is an issue that FAMU has publicly acknowledged and sought to address for years.