It is too soon for Florida A&M University’s famed marching band to resume activities, Gov. Rick Scott said the day after authorities charged 13 individuals in connection with the hazing death of Marching “100″ drum major Robert Champion.

“I think we ought to finish and make sure that there’s not going to be anything like this happen again. I don’t think we’re in that position yet,” Scott told reporters after a “National Day of Prayer” event in the Capitol this afternoon. “The band’s got a great history. But we can’t afford to lose another individual like Robert Champion. So I think they ought to continue the process they’ve been going through with their task force but I don’t think it’s ready yet.”

FAMU administrators suspended the celebrated marching band and all other ensembles in the music department in the aftermath of Champion’s November death. The 26-year-old died of a homicide by hazing, authorities said, after being pummeled by his peers following the Rattlers’ loss to rival football team Bethune-Cookman.

As of Wednesday afternoon, seven of the 13 individuals charged had been arrested or turned themselves into authorities, including two in Tallahassee. Eleven individuals were charged with felony hazing, punishable by up to six years in prison. Still others may be charged in the future, Orange County State Attorney Lamar Lawson said yesterday.

Champion’s death exposed a “culture of hazing” at the historically black university. Long=time FAMU music director Julian White was put on administrative leave and the university and Board of Trustees created a task force to look into FAMU’s troubled history with hazing and how to reverse it.

Four members of the fabled band were arrested in January in connection with an unrelated hazing. And two music professors who were allegedly present during the hazing of band fraternity pledges resigned last week.

Both faculty members had been placed on paid administrative leave in late March after a Tallahassee Police Department report quoted witnesses as saying they were on hand when the hazing occurred at the home of one of the professors in early 2010.

Prosecutors have charged 13 people in the hazing death of Florida A&M University “Marching 100″ drum major Robert Champion.

Orange County State Attorney Lamar Lawson announced the charges at a press conference Wednesday afternoon in Orlando, where Champion died after being pummeled to death aboard a charter bus outside a hotel in November.

The 22-year-old’s death “is nothing short of an American tragedy,” Lawson told reporters before announcing the charges.

Lawson said the charges include 11 felony hazing charges, which carry a penalty of up to six years in prison, and 20 misdemeanor hazing charges.

The prosecutor indicated more individuals may yet be arrested and asked “others who have facts about Champion’s homicide to come forward and tell the truth.”

Champion’s death exposed a long legacy of hazing within the celebrated marching band. FAMU administrators have halted all of band’s activities until the investigation was complete and launched a task force to look into the “culture of hazing” at the historically black university.

Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, whose child is a student at FAMU, said his team interviewed four dozen peopel in Tallahassee and spent more than 1,000 hours investigating the case.

“As the parent of a current FAMU student, I know the importance of the work that has been done in this case and how it has impacted the institution,” Demings said.

Hazing that involves bodily harm is a third-degree felony in Florida. The charges filed Wednesday were made possible by the 2005 law passed in the wake of the death of another Florida college student. The law defines hazing as any act that endangers the health or safety of a student for the purpose of admission to a school group.

Lawson said that without the law, he would not have been able to file the charges that carry enhanced penalties when someone is injured or dies after being hazed. No single blow killed Champion, who died after being pummeled to death, Lawson said, thereby preventing him to file more serious murder or manslaughter charges.

“The testimony does not support a charge of murder. We can prove participation in hazing and a death,” Lawson said.

Gov. Rick Scott refused to back down from his contention that FAMU President James Ammons should step down, at least temporarily, even after the university’s board of trustees decided to keep Ammons in his post.
Scott issued the following statement shortly after the board’s conference call this morning:

Florida A&M University President James Ammons will remain in his post after the historically black university’s governing board this morning rejected Gov. Rick Scott’s recommendation that Ammons be suspended until investigations into the hazing-related murder of FAMU Marching 100 drum major Robert Champion are complete.

The board also agreed this morning to meet weekly for at least the next two months to receive updates on the investigations into Champion’s death – ruled Friday a homicide by the Orlando medical examiner’s office – and alleged financial wrongdoings.

“We will stand firm against outside influence regardless of how well-intended that lead to detrimental consequences that threaten the viability of the university,” Board of Trustees Chairman Solomon Badger said during a telephone conference call this morning. “Our decisions will be fact-based and will result from a deliberative process…Therefore, it is my recommendation that until a final report results from these investigations with official facts, the president’s status remains the same.”

There was no discussion of or vote on Badger’s recommendation.

Scott has repeatedly asked Ammons to step down, and called Ammons into his office Friday afternoon to urge him to step aside until the investigations are complete.

But the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools – the accrediting organization for the university – warned that Scott’s interference may threaten FAMU’s accreditation which requires that schools be free from political influence.

FAMU’s Alumni Association President Tommy Mitchell held a press conference Sunday afternoon warning Scott to let the university operate independently.

And late Sunday evening, Scott’s office issued a statement defending his actions thus far.

“It is up to the FAMU Board of Trustees and Dr. Ammons to determine how to proceed. I have not and will not try to influence their decision. I simply offered my advice and opinion based on the events and the facts I was made aware of. Like all other Floridians, I will abide by the decisions made by the Board of Trustees and President Ammons tomorrow, and I do not plan to release any further comment before then,” Scott said.

Two weeks ago, the trustees rejected a motion to suspend Ammons and instead publicly reprimanded him. Ammons abandoned an effort to fire the renowned band’s director Julian White and instead placed him on administrative leave with pay until the investigations are over.

Read more about the “culture of hazing” here.

Gov. Rick Scott is asking the Florida A & M University board of trustees to suspend the historically black college’s president James Ammons at its Monday meeting.

The request comes after Scott, who returned from a trip to Israel today, was briefed by his aides on the latest investigations into the death of FAMU Marching “100″ band drum major Robert Champion, according to a press release issued by Scott’s office. Scott spoke with FAMU board of trustees chairman Solomon Badger, asking him to suspend Ammons.

“Governor Scott has strongly recommended to Chairman Badger that at the meeting, the Board of Trustees place FAMU President James Ammons on suspension, effective immediately, until the investigations at the University are completed. Governor Scott has also placed a call to FAMU President Ammons to personally notify him of these discussions,” the release reads. (more…)

Gov. Rick Scott spoke out about the death of Florida A & M University “Marching 100″ drum major Robert Champion today, saying he did not order the ouster of band director Julian White. And Scott said he supports putting FAMU’s internal inquiry on hold until other investigations are complete, likely ordered by Scott’s chief of staff Steve MacNamara.

Scott sidestepped questions about his support for FAMU President James Ammons, whom White accused of ignoring his repeated pleas for help to combat hazing.

“I think we are doing it through the most appropriate agency, which is the Florida Dept of Law enforcement. As long as we should expect that everybody cooperates,” the governor said. “Look, we cannot have another child, another student die this way. No one expects sending their child off to school having any pressure like this. I don’t have all the facts. I hope no one did anything inappropriate but…”

Ammons late last night called off the hazing task force – scheduled to meet next week – “based upon input from the Governor’s Office,” Ammons said in a press release.

Scott said he didn’t have a conversation with Ammons about the task force, headed by former attorney general Bob Butterworth and former corrections chief Walt McNeil, now Quincy police chief.

“But I think it makes sense for them to allow the FDLE investigation to happen first. I think Steve MacNamara did, though,” Scott told reporters this morning.

Scott ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to conduct an investigation into Champion’s Nov. 19 death, which the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, also investigating, says is related to hazing.

The university system Board of Governors is also doing its own inquiry into hazing practices at the historically black college, this time with MacNamara’s support.

“Hopefully this will alleviate the need for the ‘citizen task force’ the Dr. Ammons has appointed. In my opinion we don’t need duplication and dueling tasks forces and the Inspector General’s are much better suited to review this matter than the group assembled,” MacNamara wrote in an e-mail to BOG Chairwoman Ava Parker on Nov. 29.

Scott this week also ordered all university presidents to reevaluate their hazing policies but insisted he did not thwart the task force.

“No, what I did was ask FDLE to join the investigation, and Chancellor Brogan to join in. When something like this happens, what we should be doing is making sure this doesn’t happen again…You’d hate for something like this to happen to your own family,” he said.

Four students were expelled from the university in relation to Champion’s death. In the meantime, the Tallahassee Police Department is investigating the alleged hazing-related battery of a second band member, 18-year-old Bria Shante Hunter, who said she was injured weeks before Champion died.

UPDATE: Longtime FAMU Marching 100 band director Julian White has been fired. FAMU President James Ammons sent White a termination letter Wednesday, citing White’s inability to stop suspected hazing in the music department.

Gov. Rick Scott has ordered an investigation into the death of Robert Champion, a drum major with the renowned Florida A & M University Marching 100.

Champion, 26, was found unresponsive on a bus parked outside an Orlando hotel on Saturday night after the school’s football team lost to rival Bethune-Cookman. Investigators believe hazing occurred before 911 was called. Champion was vomiting and had complained he couldn’t breathe before he collapsed. He died a short time later at a hospital.

Champion’s death has “generated great concern throughout the state and indeed the nation,” Scott wrote to Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey on Wednesday.

Acknowledging that the Orange County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Champion’s death, Scott said the FDLE inquiry is necessary as well. Under Florida law, any death involving hazing is a third-degree felony.

“The reality is that the death investigation significantly impacts the university, the Tallahassee community and the state of Florida as a whole,” Scott wrote.

Scott ordered FDLE to work with the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and any other investigative agencies “to assure that the circumstances leading to Mr. Champion’s death become fully known, and that if there are individuals directly or indirectly responsible for this death, they are appropriately brought to justice and held accountable.”

University officials on Tuesday suspended the famed Marching 100 band and all other FAMU music department ensembles, affecting more than 400 students.

The Marching 100 — whose rich history includes performing at several Super Bowls and representing the U.S. in Paris at the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution — was scheduled to perform at the fall commencement on Dec. 16.

Florida Senate President Jeff Atwater’s son, John, is a member of the fraternity that could be permanently barred from Florida Atlantic University because of a hazing incident in the fall.

John Atwater — a 21-year-old senior, homecoming prince and president of the university rugby team — is a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, the fraternity known as Sig Ep that has been suspended from campus activities pending the outcome of an investigation into an Oct. 17 hazing incident.

The Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office is conducting a review of the hazing ritual in which a 19-year-old frat brother wound up in the emergency room after being bound with duct tape and forced to binge drink, according to FAU police.

Sen. Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said he was unaware of the incident or of the fraternity’s suspension.

“I know he’s a member of the fraternity but I’m not aware of any incident or that they’ve been suspended,” Atwater said in a telephone call on Christmas Eve. “This is the first I’m hearing about it. If you weren’t telling me this I wouldn’t be up to speed on this at all.”

Nicholas Letteri, a Sigma Phi Epsilon member from the Tampa area, told police he was the victim of a “kidnapping” prank at an off-campus home of a fraternity brother.

Letteri said he was bound and forced to drink a liquor and beer concoction from a cereal bowl while Sig Ep members drew on his back with markers and others used squirt guns to drench his crotch, face and chest.

He was forced to chug beers and repeatedly threw up, he said. Letteri said he was still sick the next day and a friend took him to the Boca Raton Community Hospital emergency room.

Campus police have closed their investigation and forwarded the case to the State Attorney’s Office for review, Police Chief Charles
Lowe said.

Lawmakers have beefed up anti-hazing laws to discourage hazing, which frequently involves fraternity brothers forcing initiates to drink alcohol. Hazing – rituals that involve a risk of bodily harm or death – can be a first-degree misdemeanor or a third-degree felony.

A law passed in 2005, based on a bill filed by House Majority Leader Adam Hasner of Delray Beach, expanded misdemeanor hazing crimes to include high school students and increased to a third degree felony hazing rituals that result in serious injury or death.

The university temporarily suspended the Sig Ep chapter and is conducting its own review. A decision on chapter’s fate is expected in January. Discipline can range from suspension to banishment from campus.

The college does not tolerate hazing and the chapter of the national fraternity, known as Sig Ep, could face severe consequences, said Charles Brown, FAU’s vice president for student affairs.

“I don’t tolerate it. I will close the chapter down,” Brown said, if its members are found to be at fault.