Chestnut’s clients, Champion’s mother and father, are now directing a round of venting against Sylvester Young. FAMU just selected Young to rebuild
the university band that has been on suspension since Champion died.
According to the Orlando Sentinel: “In an interview with the
Orlando Sentinel, Robert and Pamela Champion also questioned why Florida
A&M University hired a new band director who acknowledged he was hazed
while he was a FAMU student.”
“I just don’t feel like anything has changed,” she told the
newspaper. “We’re looking out for the safety of students.”
“I don’t know Mr. Young at all,” she said. “But my thought
is the culture of that band and the hazing and the things that have been going
on for years that has been just let go…He too admit that he was a product of
being hazed at FAMU, as well.”
Young admitted that back when he was a member of the
Marching 100, upperclassmen bullied him out of a hotel room during an
out-of-town game in Miami and told him to take off a pair of red socks he had
worn.
The Champions are grasping at straws. They haven’t been able
to find any record of Young being soft on hazing in any of the three collegiate
bands he’s led during his career. That's because Young was a tough
disciplinarian and kept students safe while directing the bands at Lincoln
University, Hampton University, and Ohio University.
So the only criticism they can bring up against Young is
that he was a victim of hazing. The fact that Young was a hazing victim doesn’t
make him unfit to direct a band. That’s a lot like saying a person is unfit to become
a police officer simply because he or she was previously a victim of burglary.
Young should follow Demings’ lead by refusing to let the
very personal attacks from the Champion family discourage him. Even though Chestnut
said Demings’ investigation “was botched from Day 1,” Orange County voters
reelected the incumbent sheriff to another four year term.
Demings’ investigation concluded that Champion “willingly participated” in the illegal hazing ritual that left him dead. He continues to
stand by those investigation results despite the fact that Champion’s parents
still refuse to believe that their son asked to be hazed.
If Young simply does his new job with the type of class and skill
that Demings has displayed while performing his public duty, then the Champion
family’s PR campaign against him will also go nowhere.