Back during the presidential search in 2006, Rattler Nation first learned about certain “FAMUans” who wanted to encourage former State University System of Florida (SUS) Chancellor Adam W. Herbert to apply for FAMU’s top job. That small group sat down and shut up after it became clear that most of the FAMU interim administration’s supporters were going to back then-University of Maryland Eastern Shore President Thelma Thompson.But now that more than five years have passed and the Marching 100 controversy is creating headlines, there are some who are quietly reintroducing the idea of a Herbert presidency in certain circles. This has the potential to turn into a bitter fight that FAMU doesn't need right now.
Herbert is currently back in Florida working as an independent consultant after leaving the presidency of Indiana University in 2007. Retired FAMU Journalism Professor Roosevelt Wilson did the best job of summing up the case against Herbert in an editorial that ran on November 2, 2006.
“And as for Herbert, I don’t think the [Board of Trustees] would go there,” Wilson wrote. “There would be angry protests in the streets if the BOT seriously considered him. He became perhaps the most reviled person in FAMU’s history for campaigning while he was chancellor to relegate FAMU to the bottom tier of Gov. Jeb Bush’s discriminatory three-tiered system.”
Herbert’s three tier plan labeled each public university as Research I (UF, FSU, USF), Research II (FAU, FIU, UCF), or Comprehensive (FAMU, UWF, UNF, FGCU). Comprehensive institutions were to focus mainly on teaching undergraduate students. The plan recommended that the tiers guide long-term funding decisions from the legislature with a 30 percent increase for Research I, 20 percent increase for Research II, and only a 10 percent increase for Comprehensive.
Following protests led by FAMU students, faculty, and alumni, President Frederick S. Humphries and Provost James H. Ammons finally got the Board of Regents (BOR) to agree to a compromise. FAMU would receive a special “Comprehensive/Doctoral” category that would permit it to start Ph.D. programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields in which blacks were severely underrepresented.
The argument being used by those interested in Herbert seems to focus on President Ammons’ apparent unpopularity with the Florida Board of Governors (BOG). It is being said that FAMU needs a president who can actually get along with them.
Since when has unpopularity with the governing board of the SUS meant that a FAMU a president was not doing the right thing? President Benjamin L. Perry was not very popular with the members Board of Regents and politicians who wanted to merge FAMU with FSU. He also angered regents by fighting an attempt to place the architecture school FAMU received as part of Florida’s desegregation settlement with the federal government in Tallahassee rather than on the campus of USF in Tampa.
No real FAMUan would try to use the tragedy that happened after this year’s Florida Classic to push an agenda that would take the university backwards. Now is the time to assist the law enforcement officials who are investigating Robert D. Champion’s death and to work hard to stamp out all hazing at FAMU. It is not the time for behind-the-scenes lobbying and deal-cutting.
Let's keep the old internal power struggles far away as the university deals with the problem of students who violate FAMU policy and Florida law by hazing others.