TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — It felt like family inside the football stadium at Florida A&M University on Saturday night. Old friends shouted greetings and delivered tight hugs; students clustered in the stands, snapping photos with their cellphones. Grandparents adjusted their orange cushions on the metal bleachers in more or less the same spots they had claimed for decades.
But try as they might to enjoy the game, something was missing. It felt a little like a reunion without a favorite cousin, the one who gets people laughing and mingling, leaving everyone to wonder whether the party would be the same without him.
For the first time that anyone here could remember, the Marching 100 — the university's celebrated high-stepping, tight-playing band — was sitting out the football team's first home game. And while there were many determined fans awash in the school colors of orange and green ready to support the team, the Rattlers, and provide plenty of noise, it seemed to rise in the wrong key, at least compared with the polish of the Marching 100.
The team won its game against Hampton University, but its touchdowns, and there were three, did not groove to brass and percussion. Timeouts lacked their usual musical score. And the field sat vacant during halftime, while Future, a rapper brought in to substitute for the band, performed off to the side on a small stage behind a fence. A few fans even left their seats during the break to buy food, unheard of when the Marching 100 is spread across the field.
"They got you ready," Brystal Burton, 22, a senior from Los Angeles who is majoring in biochemistry, said of the band. "You always knew it was going to be great. The halftime — words can't describe it."
The Marching 100 has been suspended for the academic year, one of the many profound changes that have rocked Florida A&M since November, when Robert Champion, 26, a drum major, collapsed and died on a band bus in Orlando, Fla., after a brutal hazing. Mr. Champion was beaten by band members who used drumsticks, bass drum mallets and their hands to hit him as he walked to the back of the bus in a ritual that was called Cross Bus C for the letter on the bus.
Mr. Champion's death exposed a longstanding culture of hazing among the Marching 100 and led to investigations that also revealed financial and administrative wrongdoing at the university, primarily in the band program. The university's president, James H. Ammons, resigned; the band director, Julian White, was fired; and 12 band members were charged with felonies in Mr. Champion's death. Other hazing episodes surfaced soon after, including one in which a young woman's leg was broken.
The scandal badly tarnished the reputation of one of the most admired institutions among the nation's historically black colleges and universities.
Mr. Champion's parents are suing the university, accusing administrators of failing to do enough to stop hazing and protect students. In papers recently filed in the lawsuit, the university argued that it should not be held liable because Mr. Champion understood the dangers of hazing and still participated in the ritual. A friend told investigators that Mr. Champion had taken part because he wanted to earn the respect of a group of band members.
Since his death, the university has moved aggressively to eliminate hazing by introducing new programs, safeguards and penalties. Still, the tradition is ingrained here just as it is at many other universities.
This month, the interim president, Larry Robinson, suspended the university's all-female dance group after it was reported that the team had engaged in hazing over Labor Day weekend.
"You always have to be vigilant about it," Dr. Robinson said. "I don't think any institution out there that has had the type of tragedy we have had here, or who understands the nature of hazing, can ever wake up feeling entirely confident that the bottom is completely gone. We are going to have to keep working on it."
On Saturday, the first game day at the university's Bragg Memorial Stadium this year, the loss was palpable; at halftime, Dr. Robinson, standing on an empty field, asked for a moment of silence to honor the victims of hazing.
But the desire was evident among alumni, students and supporters to overcome the hardships and emerge stronger.
"We are definitely missing the band, but as a FAMU alum, I'm here do or die, with or without the band," said Sonya Demps, a 1996 graduate and a teacher in Jacksonville, Fla., who made the trip to the game with her husband and children. "As an African-American school, we have learned to be resilient. We've had a lot of adversity, and we have continued. We will be strong."
She added, "I think we can endure anything for a year."
Many people in the crowd agreed that the university had done the right thing in suspending the band and cracking down on hazing. Several students and alumni said that while the band was the university's marquee brand, the school's academic reputation was just as important.
"There is more to us than the Marching 100," said Ms. Burton, who emphasized that it was Florida A&M's academic reputation that had lured her to the university.
In the stadium's student area in Section R, where members of the Marching 100 would ordinarily sit in their uniforms, some of the band members piled into seats wearing orange band T-shirts. They did what they could to energize the crowd and carve out new roles: They stood in unison and vocalized the beat of fight songs. They fingered imaginary instruments. They stomped their feet.
Many also agreed that it had been necessary to suspend the band because the university needed to send a message against hazing. But they said they felt bad for freshman band members, who did not get to experience their first year of high-stepping, and for the seniors, who would not get a last chance to take the field.
The band members swayed as Future rapped. But they said they could not help but feel restless.
"People are making a good effort," said Jamael Medlock, 22, a senior who plays saxophone. "People are trying to keep up the spirit. But Future, he is no comparison to the 100."
University enrollment has also suffered, falling by 1,000: the Marching 100 served as a major recruitment tool. Dr. Robinson said the economy was mostly to blame for the falloff, although he added that the hazing charges and the band's suspension had contributed to it.
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ 17 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/florida-am-band-sits-out-its-first-home-game.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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