The Tallahassee Democrat ran an opinion column by former FAMU trustee and Student Body President Larry O. Rivers that placed FAMU’s current challenges into a historical context. Rivers says President James H. Ammons is part of a long line of FAMU leaders who confronted the university’s factional infighting head-on and found ways to succeed in spite of it.From the column: “FAMU doesn’t need a peacemaker”:
The tendency to view African-Americans as a largely undifferentiated group that shares a single set of ethics, habits and politics remains one of the foremost obstacles to fact-based dialogues about race. Black civic society — the body of voluntary organizations and institutions created in response to social challenges faced by Americans of African descent — is not and never has been dominated by a single way of thinking. It is a contested space.
In contested spaces, unity comes from the lowest common denominator. For most black civil institutions, and especially public historically black colleges and universities such as Florida A&M, that lowest common denominator is race.
During times in which a perceived threat from whites seems imminent, FAMUans quickly circle wagons, take up picket signs, march in the streets and flood elected officials with letters. But as soon as that immediate danger is gone, the crisis-induced unity dissolves and gives way to the day-to-day norm of pandemic factionalism.
The deep rifts among FAMU's students, staff, faculty and alumni were not as visible to the outside public when university presidents reported directly to the Board of Control or its successor, the Board of Regents. These majority-white governing bodies had records of stringently enforcing discriminatory policies that treated blacks as inferiors. Any FAMUan who appeared to side with them over the president on a major issue risked being labeled, rightly or wrongly, as a sell-out.
However, much has changed since the Legislature abolished the Board of Regents in 2001 and established a board of trustees at each state university. FAMU's factional infighting took center stage and has become a recurring spectacle.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the heated debates concerning President James H. Ammons' handling of FAMU's hazing problem, particularly in light of band member Robert Champion's death. For example, many FAMUans, believe Ammons was right to dismiss band director Julian White for incompetence in reporting hazing. A passionate faction, though, sees White as a scapegoat.
Tallahassee Democrat Executive Editor Bob Gabordi is correct in saying White deserves a "full airing" with respect to his allegations that higher-ups did little to help him combat hazing. White should also candidly address any questions about his own credibility that might arise from a new Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into suspected "financial irregularities" involving Marching 100 funds.
A vocal minority of FAMU trustees that includes Rufus Montgomery and C. William Jennings found common cause with some of White's angry supporters last week, calling for Ammons to join White on administrative leave. They also seem to have found a sympathetic audience with Gov. Rick Scott, who has now thrown his support behind their proposal. Before assuming that Montgomery and Jennings are genuinely committed to FAMU's best interests, though, the public should take a careful look at the legacy to which these two men are heirs.
In 2001, numerous members of FAMU's first Board of Trustees descended upon the university with a colonial mindset, staked out claims within the operating budget, and jealously defended those self-declared territories from competitors.
Many of the worst offenders were among the first generation of blacks who benefited from affirmative action in America's biggest companies. They had gracefully faced derisive names such as "quota hires" and "set-aside recipients" in hopes of ascending to the top of the corporate ladder; but more often than not, they collided with a glass ceiling. Affirmative action could mandate black access to employment and contracting opportunities, but it could not help most beneficiaries enter the "good-ol'-boy network" of backroom kickbacks.
The reshaping of Florida's higher-education system into a quasi-"corporate governance" model gave such disenchanted individuals a chance to try and replicate the system of sweetheart deals and buddy-hiring seen in many corporate boardrooms.
As trustee-led fights for influence over lucrative housing, athletic, consulting and personnel contracts increasingly dominated FAMU's internal politics, the university's financial division began mirroring the corrosive state of board affairs. FAMU's proud record of clean, unqualified financial statement audits from 1978 to 2002 came to an abrupt halt, replaced with a spate of blistering findings that soon landed the university on probation with its accrediting body.
James Corbin, the era's most powerful trustee, strove to deflect blame by insinuating that FAMU's board had inherited a financial mess from white state officials who did not hold previous FAMU administrations accountable. "We were not held, in my opinion, to the same kind of rigorous standards as the other universities," he asserted in a St. Petersburg Times article shortly after becoming FAMU's chairman.
As Ammons started cleaning up the finances in 2007 and put FAMU back on course for clean audits, Corbin — then an ex-trustee — persisted with this rhetoric. "They let FAMU get away with things other schools wouldn't because they didn't want to be labeled racists," Corbin remarked in a 2007 Tallahassee Democrat article.
To this day, Corbin has failed to provide evidence that any of FAMU's previous clean state audits were incorrect.
Jennings, Corbin's former vice-chairman, and Montgomery do not stand far from Corbin's mentality. If state officials finally launch a much-needed investigation into whether any FAMU trustees have attempted to abuse their positions, do not be surprised to see them wave the race card as frantically as Corbin did.
Former President Fred J. Gainous tried to work peacefully with conniving, power-drunk trustees and was eventually fired in the wake of problems that emerged after obvious board micromanaging. Former Interim President Castell V. Bryant did little to question possible conflicts of interest or breaches of public trust among the trustees who backed her.
Ammons has survived these past four years for the same reason that makes him fully capable of completing the next five years of his employment agreement, despite efforts to use the Champion tragedy as a pretense to end his presidency. He has not wasted time trying to appease the trustees and other so-called "FAMU supporters" who are focused on their own personal agendas. Ammons wisely negotiated a contract that requires a "supermajority" for termination, and he has maintained a robust following among the student, faculty and alumni groups that care about the university.
FAMU's strongest presidents never tried to heal the internal university factions that are often undergirded by opportunism, greed and self-importance. They thrived in spite of these factions.