MIAMI, Florida -- Scroll to the bottom of Florida A&M University’s home page and there, under Quick Links, is one that says, “Stop Hazing.”
Those two words say that FAMU has gotten serious about confronting the scourge of violence and intimidation that go along with “belonging,” with being accepted. The school can proudly cite progress in keeping its students safe from hazing.
Last week, former student Dante Martin was sentenced to more than six years in prison in the 2011 beating death of Robert Champion, 26, a FAMU band member who died after a brutal hazing ritual went off the tracks. Martin is the first of 15 former members of the band to stand trial in the case. Prosecutors said that he took the lead in the smacking, beating and pummeling that some students at FAMU — and other academic institutions across the country — endure just to belong to the clique, in this case, the legendary Marching 100.
Mr. Champion, from Decatur, Ga., was brutalized and killed at the hands of irresponsible band mates while on a bus trip. The death, of course, was the worst of it. But the fallout was significant, too: FAMU’s president, James Ammons, resigned; the band leader lost his job; the band was suspended for two years; and FAMU showed that it had learned little, if anything at all, for a hazing incident 10 years earlier.\
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