The presidents of the Tallahassee Chapter and Florida State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) jumped to support a one-sided probe into ex-FAMU band director Julian E. White’s recent allegations against FAMU's senior administration. But they have given Gov. Rick Scott a pass for jeopardizing FAMU’s accreditation and talking down to FAMU’s students.Dale Landry, president of Tallahassee NAACP said that he and the president of the NAACP’s state conference asked the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) to investigate White’s claims that the FAMU administration did not do enough to help him fight hazing.
An opinion column Landry submitted to the Tallahassee Democrat said that he reached out “to Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and ask[ed] her to request that Chancellor Frank Brogan and the Board of Governors intercede and conduct an independent investigation of the allegations by Dr. White. I want to thank President Nweze for her efforts, and Chancellor Brogan and Chairwoman Ava Parker of the Board of Governors for interceding and bringing objectivity in discerning the allegations by Dr. White.”
Landry’s description of the BOG probe as objective is a joke. If the BOG had any intention of being objective, it would be looking at both sides of the story. Ammons has said that White did not show competence in reporting incidents of alleged hazing within the band. The BOG has not announced any plans to investigate whether White did anything wrong.
Landry and Nweze both remained quiet when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) warned the Florida governor that his actions against the FAMU administration might cost the university its accreditation. Scott tried to publicly pressure FAMU trustees to suspend Ammons. SACS reminded him of its rule against political interference.
The Tallahassee and State Conference of the NAACP also sat back and did nothing after Scott spoke in an offensive manner to the FAMU students when they marched in protest of his attempt to get rid of Ammons.
“FAMU students marched on the governor’s mansion to protest his attempt to suspend Mr. Ammons,” the Miami Herald’s editorial board wrote. “That led the governor in his usual tone-deaf manner in dealing with black people to tell them that he grew up poor in housing projects as if all students at this majority black campus define themselves as poor and products of the projects.”
It is also apparent that Landry and Nweze are not interested in pointing out the unfairness in Scott’s decision to ask for Ammons’ suspension while state officials investigate Champion’s death when the presidents of the University of Miami and University of Central Florida were not forced to step aside during investigations into student deaths on their respective campuses.
“Scott's intervention had critics noting that serious hazing incidents at largely white Florida universities — including the University of Miami, where Chad Meredith's death in 2002 inspired a 2005 hazing law — never drew such gubernatorial intervention from Tallahassee…,” the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial board wrote. ‘We can't help but point out that while hazing wasn't at issue in the death of Ereck Plancher, no state leaders called on University of Central Florida President John Hitt to step aside in 2008 amid serious allegations of negligence by the football staff. Neither should they have.”
The editorial staffs at the Orlando Sentinel and Miami Herald are actually doing more to speak out against what Scott has tried to do to FAMU than the NAACP has.
The Tallahassee and State Conference of the NAACP have both shown that they are not serious about fighting to make sure FAMU is treated fairly or respectfully by the governor’s office.