TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida A&M University’s dean of students wanted to suspend the school’s Marching 100 band for hazing practices three days before drum major Robert Champion’s death, according to notes obtained in a public records request.
Dean Henry Kirby urged university administrators to shut down the famed band similar to the manner it did with a fraternity in 2006. The school suspended the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity chapter on campus after five members were charged with using wooden canes to beat a pledge during an initiation ritual. Its charter was revoked in 2007.
Kirby’s notes were in materials obtained through public records requested by various media. And while the professor has not discussed his notes, they suggest he sought a long-term suspension to put an end to hazing practices within the band.
“It would effectively stop all this hazing,” he wrote.
And it wasn’t the first time Kirby has recommended the band and band director be suspended for failing to eradicate hazing.
“My comments were not well received [in] that administrators, in the past, in my opinion, did not take a firm stand on suspending the band,” Kirby wrote.
Former FAMU police chief Calvin Ross, who retired earlier this year, asked administrators to keep the band home from the Nov. 19 game because of the hazing issues. It was after that game when Champion died following a beating he received during a hazing ritual aboard one of the buses that carried the band to Orlando.
