FAMU’s Marching 100 is done with its football halftime performance
schedule for this school year. There were no reported incidents of
hazing.
Former FAMU President James H. Ammons suspended the 100 in November,
2011 following the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion, Jr. According to
the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Champion “willingly participated” in a violent,
unauthorized pledging ritual aboard a parked bus after that year’s Florida
Classic in Orlando.
At Ammons’s request, the FAMU Board of Trustees approved a
new comprehensive Anti-Hazing Plan. It introduced new band regulations that
included a four-year cap on the number of years a student can participate in
music department bands, a requirement that all band members be enrolled
full-time at FAMU, and a ban on practices that are not supervised by music
department staff.
Young, who marched at FAMU under former Director William P.
Foster, brought some old school discipline back to a band that had spun
completely out-of-control since his days on The Hill. He offered former band
students with clean records a chance to try out and make the roster. But such
students ultimately made up less than a third of the 2013 band’s membership. At
the beginning of the marching season, Young said that approximately 70
percent of the 100’s members were new.
Young also shrunk the band’s to size to about 149 (down from
more than 400+ in 2011) and supervised the process of acquiring more chaperones
for out-of-town performances.
The fight against the student-led hazing at FAMU isn’t over.
But this year’s marching band season shows that FAMU is getting solid results
in efforts to increase the safety within its student organizations.