FAMU Marching 100 Suspended…

It appears that the consequences of the hazing scandal at FAMU are beginning to mount up…

Famed FAMU marching band suspended another year

Florida A&M University’s famed marching band is being suspended for at least one more school year as officials try to cleanse the hazing culture that led to the death of a drum major, the school’s president said Monday.

FAMU President James Ammons said the Marching 100 should stay off the field at least until a new band director is hired and new rules for the band have been adopted.

Eleven FAMU band members face felony charges in the November hazing death of Robert Champion, while two others face misdemeanor counts. The band has been banned from performing since soon after he died, and band director Julian White recently retired after it was revealed that at least 100 band members were not students when Champion died.

“There is no question the band must be restructured, there are measures we feel we must take,” Ammons said.

Ammons was already under pressure from many state officials — including Gov. Rick Scott — to keep the Marching 100 sidelined until other ongoing investigations into the band are completed.

The Marching 100 has had a rich history, performing at Super Bowls and in inauguration parades. The band has been one of the main draws during FAMU football games, and some board members on Monday wanted to know if the decision to keep the band off the field until 2013 would impact ticket sales.

But several trustees told Ammons on Monday that they supported his decision to keep the band suspended.

Travis Roberts, a 25-year-old clarinet player from Fort Lauderdale who has been on the band four years, said he also agreed with the decision. Roberts, who said he has never been hazed because he chose not to be, wants to make sure the university takes real steps toward addressing the issue.

“What do we do in that one year process to make sure these things do not happen again?” Roberts asked. “We lack consistency at times, and this is something that needs to change. … No one has taken accountability for what has happened. This thing didn’t start only five years ago. This thing has happened the past 50 years.”

“Not in My House” Tamron Hall Smackdown of Republican Jim Carney

Damn! Don’t bring this crap into MY House!

MSNBC host Tamron Hall whups Rethugy rear end in this clip.

MSNBC’s Tamron Hall handily shut down guest Tim Carney on Friday, in an exchange so fiery that she immediately began trending on Twitter.

Hall asked Carney about Mitt Romney’s testy reaction to a reporter asking about marijuana on Thursday. Before addressing the question, he alleged that she and the rest of the media were focusing too much attention on the candidate’s past — including his bullying of two classmates in high school.

“What you’re doing here is a typical media trick,” Carney charged. “You hype up a story and justify the second-day coverage of the story.”

That set Hall off. She began to tell him that he didn’t have to “answer a single question” she asked or “accept the invitation to come on” and speak. Carney tried to interject, but she told him, “You’re kind of in my house,” and proceeded to smack him down for over a minute.

“You’re not gonna come on and insult me, you’re not gonna come on and insult the network when you knew what we were gonna talk about,” she concluded. “Done.” With that, she cut to another guest.

Hall immediately became a trending topic on Twitter, as people reacted to the segment. Viewers called her a “badass” and a “hero,” and said that she “schooled,” “filleted,” “checked” and “ripped a layer of skin off” Carney.

“Not in my House”…Indeed. Baby – you can have a pair of the BTx3, Made in America by Union labor, steel toed, Size 13 Brogans…

Anytime you want!

13 Charged in FAMU Hazing Death

About time…

13 charged in hazing death of FAMU drum major

Thirteen people have been charged with hazing crimes in the beating death of Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion, a Florida prosecutor said Wednesday.

State Attorney Lawson Lamar said 11 people are accused of death with hazing, a third-degree felony punishable by up to six years for defendants with no criminal record. Two defendants face misdemeanor charges in the November death aboard a band bus in Orlando.

The state also has filed 20 counts of misdemeanor hazing against others in unrelated incidents. Lamar declined to identifiy those charged because they are in multiple jurisdictions and have not yet been arrested.

“I have come to believe that hazing is a form of bullying,” Lamar said at a news conference in Orlando. “It’s bullying with a tradition.”

Champion, 26, was a member of FAMU’s internationally renowned marching band, the Marching 100, which has a history of hazing incidents. He died after being beaten in what prosecutors said was a hazing ritual on a band bus following a football game Nov. 19.

Champion’s mother, Pam Champion, said she was hoping for charges that could bring longer sentences so that her son’s death would become a cautionary tale for students and administrators around the nation.

“I’m a little disappointed that it wasn’t a harsher penalty considering the case,” she said in a phone interview fromNorth Carolina, where she’s attending a seminar. “We are hoping to use this case to try to end hazing.

Pam Champion, whose family founded the non-profit Robert D. Champion Drum Major for Change Foundation to combat hazing, said she and her family will work to get a federal anti-hazing law passed. “We need a federal law in place with harsh and stiff penalties to deter this. We need to educate our students to the consequences,” she said.

In December, the state medical examiner’s office deemed Champion’s death a homicide resulting from multiple blows to his body so severe that he bled out into his soft tissue. There were no signs of drugs or alcohol in his body.

“This is a homicide by hazing,” Lamar said. He urged anyone with additional information in the case to come forward.

Douglas Fierberg, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and expert on hazing who has represented hazing victims in civil cases for 15 years, said he knows of no other hazing case that resulted in so many people facing criminal charges. He said Florida’s relatively stiff anti-hazing laws could result in jail time.

Fierberg said that would be a departure from what usually happens in hazing cases.

“Florida has a serious, comprehensive law on hazing,” he said. “Ideally, it would be fully expected to bring justice to the family, including jail time.”

Champion’s death touched off a series of criminal and administrative inquires into hazing on FAMU’s campus in Tallahassee and led to the indefinite suspension of the famed Marching 100 and its longtime director, Julian White. It also sparked a rancorous fight between Gov. Rick Scott and the university’s board of trustees that threatened the administration of President James Ammons.

Champion’s parents have filed a lawsuit against the bus company and sent FAMU a state-required six-month notice of their intent to sue for their son’s wrongful death.

FAMU Marching 100 – Something Rotten in Florida

WTF is the deal with this violent hazing crap? These kids are going way overboard and seriously injuring their fellow band mates, sorority sisters and brothers and initiates. This isn’t fun – it isn’t a “rite of passage” and it damn sure doesn’t reflect on any o the values of the organizations involved.

FAMU Marching 100 Rocked by Hazing Scandals

4 Florida A&M band members arrested for hazing beatings

Four members of the Florida A&M marching band were arrested Friday and charged with hazing.

Pictures: Florida A&M University hazing scandal

FAMU Drum Major Robert Champion Died After Hazing Beating

According to police records, pledges of the band club for clarinet players known as the Clones were punched or paddled while they played music during a hazing initiation.

The four students arrested are: Denise Bailey, 22; Brandon Benson, 23; Hakeem Birch, 21 and Anthony Mingo, 22. They were booked on a misdemeanor hazing charge and released on bail.

The arrests are the latest fallout from a scandal that has rocked the university. In November, FAMU drum major Robert Champion died hours after the Florida Classic football game in Orlando in what authorities said was a hazing ritual. His death has been ruled a homicide, but no charges have been brought.

The 26-year-old drum major suffered blunt trauma blows to his body while he was aboard a bus and died from shock caused by severe bleeding.

Friday’s charges are not related to Champion’s death, but to “three or four initiation meetings” that began around Sept. 1 in a house about a mile from campus. Five pledges to the Clones were lined up and “forced to exercise, play music, and were either punched, prepped (slapped with both hands on back) and/or paddled,” police said.

One of the pledges took photos of her bruises and quit after the first meeting.

During the initiations, pledges were forced to give money and were pressured to keep exercising “even after exhaustion.”

FAMU president James Ammons originally fired band director Julian White after Ammons said he failed to report hazing he knew about. White, who is now on administrative leave, denies that he didn’t do enough.

White previously provided copies to The Associated Press of letters that he sent to the newly arrested students Hakeem Birch and Anthony Mingo in November, saying he was suspending them until a hazing investigation by university police was finished.

In December, three band members were charged with hazing after allegedly beating pledge Bria Shante Hunter’s legs with fists and a metal ruler to initiate her into the “Red Dawg Order,” a band clique for students who hail from Georgia. According to CBS Miami, the beating was so severe Hunter suffered a broken thigh bone and blood clots in her legs.

The Board of Governors – which oversees the state’s 11 public universities – launched an investigation in November into whether FAMU officials ignored warnings about hazing. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement also is investigating the Marching 100′s finances.

Complete coverage of the Florida A&M hazing scandal on Crimesider

Jackson State University Band Hazing

This one raises a lot of questions -

These are not street thugs, these are college educated kids – who supposedly will go on to join our society as productive members in white collar professions.

And they are not going to face criminal charges?

They can come back to the University and resume their scholarships?

Hitting people with 2 x 4′s and chairs? Breaking bones, and sending people to the hospital?

That isn’t hazing, it’s freaking criminal assault.

What the hell is going on with these kids judgment?

Speaking of societal influences, I watched a couple of the Mixed Martial Arts matches the other night. It’s apparently the fastest growing televised sport in the country. What few people seem to realize is most of the guys who are in that sport will be dead by the time they are 50, or suffer the sort of debilitating Parkinson’s disease like Muhammed Ali. The sort of head injuries suffered in that sport, due to the lack of protection are cumulative – and may not show up for 10 or 15 years. Roman Gladiators should have had it so good.

Now I’m not blaming MMA as the sole culprit, but in a lot of our media and entertainment there seems to be a devaluing of consequences. Nobody wants to show what happens to these guys when they can no longer fight, can’t remember their names, or have to be spoon fed because they shake too bad to feed themselves. There are no consequences in violent video games, where if somebody dies – you just start over…

Maybe we do need that universal military service – if for no other reason than to bring these young folks back to the reality of the fragility of life.

Zeta Phi Beta Banned at CSU

Here is an out of control Zeta Chapter, which has been banned from Colorado State University for brutal hazing. Think the National chapter should consider removing this young lady who was Chapter President…

more about “Pledges eat cat food (VIDEO)“, posted with vodpod