Finalist: Orlando (FL) Sentinel, by David Breen, Stephen Hudak, Jeff Kunerth and Denise-Marie Ordway

By Denise-Marie Balona and Jeff Kunerth

Family members expressed their anger and fear in letters, emails, text messages and during meetings with officials after their children told them about a culture of abuse that started almost immediately after students began practicing with the famed Marching 100, according to interviews, student testimonials and public records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

Emerging from the complaints is a picture of an administration that was either unwilling or unable to stem a decades-long, entrenched tradition of hazing despite repeated injuries, lawsuits and the university's efforts to warn band members that the practice was illegal and could lead to suspensions, fines or arrests. 

Students even signed anti-hazing pledges at the start of the school year. But those promises were often ignored on the practice field and in places outside the view of campus leaders.

Champion's death after the Florida Classic football game in Orlando confirmed parents' worst fears, and has sparked two criminal investigations and a national debate over how to stop hazing.

At FAMU, it's also fed a bitter battle of blame between Ammons and band director Julian White, whose attorney claims in a letter that FAMU administrators often met the problem with "reckless indifference" when White asked for help.

Other Sentinel findings include:

• Champion, who was slated to become the band's top drum major next school year, resisted hazing and encouraged other band members not to give in to it. His vocal opposition could be one reason he was so brutally attacked, Christopher Chestnut, the Champion family's attorney, told the Sentinel. Others interviewed by the Sentinel said the same thing. It still has not been determined, however, if Champion finally gave in to hazing on the day he was beaten to death, or if he was attacked against his will, Chestnut said.

• Some parents suspected band staff members of condoning hazing. A letter from one parent suggests band director White did not trust some of the people under him to help eliminate hazing because they would expose the identities of students who came forward. "Dr. White has had to be creative in his handling of these complaints as staff and other leaders were defiant of his authority," parent Berlinda Johnson wrote to Ammons last semester.

• Since 2004, White has suspended, terminated or put on probation at least 40 students from the band because of hazing allegations. That's the same year former band member Marcus Parker won $1.8 million in a lawsuit against members of the band after he was paddled so hard during a 2001 hazing that he suffered kidney damage. In 1998, the year White became band director, clarinet player Ivery Luckey was paddled about 300 times during a hazing ritual and was hospitalized with kidney failure. He sued the school and settled for $50,000.

• Twenty-six of the suspensions meted out by White occurred in the days after freshman clarinet player Bria Hunter was hazed so severely that she was hospitalized with a broken leg Nov. 7 — just 12 days before the Classic. Those suspensions involved students in the clarinet and trombone sections of the band.

Repeated attempts to reach Ammons, White and other FAMU officials through emails, phone calls and text messages went unanswered. Last week, however, the university's board of trustees voted to ask a committee of national experts to study anti-hazing initiatives and recommend changes for the university.

For this article, the Sentinel requested all correspondence about hazing between Ammons and White during the past year. The university's response indicates very little communication between the two men during that time. White did copy Ammons on suspension letters to students, however.

There's little doubt among some parents about where the blame rests for Champion's death. They insist that their complaints to White, Ammons and other administrators about hazing were not taken seriously enough.

Two years ago, parent Cheryl Walker of St. Louis told the Sentinel, she warned Ammons in an email about the dangers of hazing. In the email, she described the abuse that her son was experiencing at the hands of upperclassmen in the band.

"He said, 'Momma, I am scared! We have to run off the field after practice so the upperclassmen and alumni won't beat us up and one day we ran and accidently left one of the freshmen brothers on the field and they kicked him in his stomach,' " Walker wrote Ammons on Sept. 24, 2009, adding that her son would walk to meetings carrying a metal pipe to protect himself and had asked her to mail him Mace.

Her son ended up quitting the band and leaving FAMU. Walker said she met with Ammons and a representative from of the department of student affairs, who said the school was aware of the problem.

"They knew and they said they couldn't stop it," she told the Sentinel.

In an interview with the Sentinel, Felicia Fabre' said she, her husband and son met with White and the band staff on Sept. 4, 2011, to discuss the harassment and ostracism her child experienced last year as a freshman saxophone player who refused to be hazed.

Marcus Fabre' had told his mother that he had been shunned by other band members because he had followed the university and band department policy of not engaging in hazing — either as a hazer or a victim.

Marcus' freshman year was spent as an outcast and object of ridicule, intimidation and derision.

"I didn't hang with anybody in the band. When band was over, that was the last they saw of me. I have other friends on campus," Marcus, 20, told the Sentinel. While he was never physically harassed, Marcus said, his saxophone was destroyed in retaliation for his refusal to go along with hazing.

When the ostracism continued during Marcus' sophomore year, Felicia Fabre' warned White that hazing eventually would lead to tragedy and threaten the prestige the Marching 100 band had worked so hard to achieve.

"I told him if you don't do more to stop this somebody is going to get killed and wash away everything you've worked for in the band," said Fabre', who works in an Atlanta-area elementary school.

White's response, she said, was that the band has policies and procedures in place to address hazing — including the pledge form that each student signs at the beginning of the semester that states hazing is against the law and school rules.

"They just said they were doing what they could. They had things in place," Fabre' said. "They have a paper trail to cover their behinds."

Following the meeting, nothing changed. Still, her son refused to quit the band and lose his scholarship.

Like others, Paulette Hilton did not feel that her complaints about hazing were taken seriously. In 2009, she reported that her nephew had been hazed and that she knew of several other band members who were beaten and humiliated.

She was so frustrated by the university's response that she told an administrator that his e-mail "reminds me of what a plantation owner would say."

After Champion's death, Ammons moved to fire White and asked for an inquiry to "determine if there are any unauthorized and questionable activities associated with the culture of the Marching 100…"

White has said he received little support from the administration in battling hazing at FAMU. A letter from his attorney to Ammons outlines repeated steps White has taken over more than 20 years to fight hazing.

"From an administrative standpoint, however, hazing within the Marching 100 has often been met with reckless indifference by White's superior officers who often ignored his requests for assistance or, who privately lauded his decisions to suspend members from the band for hazing while failing to ensure that hazers were either charged with applicable criminal offenses or expelled as students from the university," attorney Chuck Hobbs wrote.

In the seven-page letter, Hobbs also writes that Champion's death could have been prevented if the university had suspended the entire 420-member band before the Florida Classic.

The letter goes on to suggest that the "appearance of financial gain" — the Florida Classic is a major fundraiser for the university — "may have impacted" the decision by White's bosses not to suspended the band.

Former and current band members disagree about whether White could have done more.

Sebastian Alexander-Chambers made a YouTube video to share his thoughts on the hazing controversy and explain why he thinks White should be held accountable.

In the video Alexander-Chambers identifies himself as a FAMU alumnus who left the band because of the hazing he experienced in 1999.

He said he and other newer students in the sousaphone, French horn and baritone sections would be hit on the knuckles with metal mouthpieces by upperclassmen every time they missed a note during practice.

"I regret that I was not strong enough to say, 'Look, I'm going to continue and be a part of this organization but I'm going to be a part of it on my terms, not on your terms,' " he said. In a follow-up interview, the sousaphone player said, "I still do believe we have the baddest band in the land. You can still love people but hate the things they do."

He compared White to Penn State University's legendary football coach Joe Paterno, who was fired in the wake of a scandal involving the sexual abuse of children. Both men, Alexander-Chambers said, may not have seen the abuse, but they enabled it.

Meanwhile, more reports of hazing keep coming. Since Champion's death, FAMU student media and alumni have launched a blog to collect hazing stories from current students and alumni.

As of early December, the group had collected almost 30 hazing reports involving the band and other campus organizations. "People are submitting their stories at a pretty consistent clip of one or two every day," noted FAMU graduate Peter McKay, a journalist in New York who writes frequently on the blog.

According to the blog, a member of the Marching 100 from 1980 wrote: "I was punched in the chest. I was verbally threatened many times. I heard a girl scream and saw a freshman band sister, saxophone player being dragged across the patch by her hair late one night after band practice."

A current band member wrote: "I was made fun of. I walked home countless nights because no one would take me home. I was called out of my name every day and ostracized because I said no. My section leader told people to steal my instruments and things so I would quit. Because I wouldn't be hazed, my section would not let me march on the field and told me I was irrelevant and bad. They also made me give them part of my allocation money."

Walker, the parent from St. Louis, said she told Ammons she could help him root out the hazers and end the tradition if the school would provide her with a list of the students who had left the band and gave up their scholarships.

"It was to talk to those students to see who drove them away, who attacked or hazed you to walk away from your scholarships, your music, your dreams, from the school you wanted to graduate from," Walker said. "My heart goes out to those who have left the band never to return. We work so hard to get our sons on a black campus and you have the gall to drive them away."

But she never heard from the president or the student affairs official again, Walker said.

"We wouldn't be here if they had listened to me in 2009," she said.

Coley Harvey of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. 

FAMU drum major Robert Champion died because band members defied repeated warnings against hazing

By Jeff Kunerth and Denise-Marie Balona

It's 7 p.m. on Aug. 22, 2011. A thunderstorm is passing through Tallahassee as 350 members of the Florida A&M University Marching 100 assemble for the first time inside the school's cavernous band-rehearsal hall.

The students are seated in a semicircle of padded orange chairs on the green-carpeted floor — all dressed as if attending church. Behind them high on a wall, looking over their shoulders, is the portrait of the legendary William P. Foster, clad in white, who founded and made famous the Marching 100.

It's the first time freshmen and upperclassmen have been together as a band, seated by section, arranged by instruments: clarinets, piccolos, French horns, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, tubas, drums.

The freshmen are coming off one week of drills to teach them the basics of marching band: steps, movements, routines, music. It's their first taste of what the semester will bring: long, exacting practices on the open field they call "the patch" and the initiation ritual of hazing. They've already been scolded and taunted by the upperclass band members, warned never to walk on the patch. Freshmen don't deserve to walk. They have to run across the grass.

Before them are longtime band director Julian E. White; his nine-member staff; and an array of high-profile officials, students and alumni: FAMU President James Ammons, the director of the university police department, the president of the student government and the head of the band-alumni association. Off to one side are the six drum majors, all dressed alike and arranged by height.

The drum majors represent the pinnacle of achievement in the Marching 100: the student field generals of one of the nation's most celebrated marching bands. Among that group, Robert Champion — poised to become the head drum major the following year — is hard to miss.

He's a big guy, 26 years old, a little more than 6 feet tall and 235 pounds. He is remarkable in a number of ways. He's gay and doesn't hide it. He appeared as a teenager in the 2002 movie "Drumline," loosely based on the FAMU band. More importantly, he has managed to move up the ranks, for the most part, without subjecting himself to the semester-long hazing that faces the freshmen seated before him.

Hazing is the reason they are all assembled. Since 1998, the university has held hazing workshops to drill into the heads of the band students that hazing is unacceptable, hazing is against school regulations, hazing is against the law.

The university has good reason to beat the drum. Ivery Luckey, a clarinetist, was hospitalized for two weeks after being paddled more than 300 times in 1998. Trumpeter Marcus Parker went into renal failure following a 2001 hazing. Luckey won a $50,000 settlement. Parker was awarded $1.8 million in his lawsuit against the band members who beat him.

Speaker after speaker — Ammons, White, campus-police Chief Calvin Ross — repeat the same mantra: Participating in hazing, either as a victim or a hazer, can cost you your music scholarship. You can be expelled from school. You can be arrested and charged with a third-degree felony.

In the workshop, band members hear that hazing extends beyond physical abuse. It includes doing chores and running errands for upperclassmen; extorting money from freshmen; and demeaning and abusive language.

Marcus Fabre', seated in the saxophone section, knows from experience the gap between what the adults say and what happens inside the band. He's a 20-year-old sophomore who spent his freshman year refusing to be hazed and paying the price with ostracism. The upperclassmen used him as an example: If you don't submit, you'll end up alone, just like Marcus.

There are others inside the rehearsal hall for whom the anti-hazing warnings are hollow admonishments and empty threats. Some of them belong to small groups within the sections: clarinetists who call themselves the "Clones," trumpet players who go by "Thunder," and a group of students from Georgia called the "Red Dawg Order."

They know hazing is banned but are determined to perpetuate it. Within six months, 26 of them will be suspended from performing at the Florida Classic football game in Orlando for hazing. Seven will be arrested.

In the final act of the hazing workshop, all band members sign a "hazing and harassment agreement" that acknowledges participating "as a hazer or hazee will immediately terminate my membership in the band."

As one band member signs the pledge, he thinks: They're going to do it anyway.

In another row, a freshman signs the document with little thought to the promise he's making. "Nobody took it seriously," he said.

That would become obvious within three short months as the band marched blindly toward tragedy.

In early September, days after the hazing workshop, five "pledges" line up according to height before members of the Clones, the clarinet subgroup. Inside the off-campus home of two Clones, the pledges begin their initiation into the group. They are exercised past the point of exhaustion and made to perform music to the strict satisfaction of upperclassmen. They are punched, slapped, paddled and belittled with profane insults. At least one leaves the hazing with bruises on her buttocks.

One pledge, Shantivia Conley, has had enough. When she doesn't return for the second hazing, the others are "prepped" — slapped hard on the back with two hands — for allowing Conley to quit. One is ordered to prep Conley for not showing up for further hazing.

In subsequent hazings, the four remaining pledges are extorted for money by the Clones, beaten, demeaned and pushed to exhaustion. It's the pain and indignity some FAMU students are willing to endure to win acceptance into the most famous college marching band in the country.

The legend of the Marching 100 draws students from throughout Florida and across the nation to the historically black university in Tallahassee: kids from Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, but also Atlanta, Detroit and Chicago.

This is the band that starred in television commercials, marched in presidential inaugurations, performed at Super Bowl halftimes, played with Kanye West at the Grammy Awards and was featured on "60 Minutes."

Everywhere band members go, from campus to the courthouse to the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Tallahassee, they see pictures of the famous FAMU bands of the past. For some, this is the realization of the dream they had in high school. For others, a band scholarship to FAMU is their only way to attend college. About half the band is on scholarship or receiving financial aid.

Many are music majors, but some are not. They plan to pursue careers in business, pharmacy, law and education, but for now they are willing to sacrifice for the glory of belonging to the "Incomparable Marching 100, World's Best."

They are young men and women, many away from home for the first time, with the need for acceptance and belonging. The most vulnerable are willing to do just about anything — endure pain, risk their scholarships — to make it inside the secret and select subgroups of the Clones, Thunder, Gestapo, Red Dawgs, Screaming Demons, B Tone Express, Whales and The Z.

But this is not the kind of hazing students endured in some high-school bands — silly stuff such as forcing a boy to wear a bra on the outside of his shirt or making a girl wear a "kick me" sign to class.

As in the military, the youngest recruits endure taunts on the practice field meant to break their spirit or force them to work harder. Go kill yourself, freshman. Why are you here? Women are insulted with sexist slurs. Male freshmen are made to feel emasculated, ignored as if they don't exist, when they try to talk to upperclassmen.

Freshmen are forced to remain together at all times. Eat together. Arrive for practice together. Walk your freshman sister to class. When they travel to football games and other events, they're bullied and made to turn over the money they receive to pay for their meals.

In text messages and phone calls, upperclassmen order them to provide everything from candy and sports drinks to liquor and a barbecue grill.

Sometimes, when a student doesn't know his music or plays a wrong note, he's hit with the bell of a horn or punched in the arm.

The long hours of practice in the hot Florida sun — from 3:30 p.m. to as late as 7 p.m. Monday through Friday — make it tough. The hard work, paired with the constant degradation, makes some feel like quitting virtually every day.

"Everything made you want to quit," said a freshman who stuck it out.

Hazing predators and their willful victims were there when Bernie Hendricks was in the band from 1991-97. They were probably there, too, when his father was in the band from 1958 to 1963. Hendricks' father was director of student activities from 1986 until his death in 1992, and one of his duties was to suspend and expel band members caught hazing.

When Bernie joined the band as a drummer, his father warned him against hazing: "If you do something, I'll have to kick you out of school, just like I've had to kick other kids out of school."

But the line is sometimes blurry between what constitutes hazing and what is part of the militarylike drills, discipline and precision that go into becoming the best marching band. A section leader may yell at a trombone player for missing a note, or an upperclassman may belittle a freshman for failing to master a complicated drill step. Are those acts of hazing or expressions of what it takes to make it in the Marching 100?

"It's not for everybody," said Hendricks, 38, the band director at Ocoee High School. "It's a big commitment, and some can't handle it so they quit and use that [hazing] as an excuse."

That gradation of what constitutes hazing leaves it up to every band member to decide what he or she is willing to do, and where to draw the line.

Jason Lawrence, who played clarinet from 2007-09 along with Robert Champion, never considered verbal harassment an act of hazing, but he drew the line at physical contact. Nobody was going to put their hands on him — and nobody did.

"People only go through what they allow someone to do to them," said Lawrence, 22, who graduated in 2011.

The roughest, most physical hazing takes place off campus — often late at night. Students have to find a ride to get there and then find their way home afterward.

Timothy Barber, a former head drum major who graduated in 2002, drew his line at the end of practice. He didn't hang with upperclassmen. He didn't go to their dorms or apartments after hours. He didn't meet them on the practice field after midnight.

But he, too, heard the competing voices. They came from alumni who reminded everyone in the band how easy students had it now. Today's band was not as good, not as accomplished, not as tough as those illustrious bands of the past.

And Barber, 37, heard the voices of upperclassmen saying hazing is the tradition of the band, it's what builds camaraderie, it's the fire in the forge that makes us stronger.

"Who are you going to listen to? You have students coming into the FAMU band and these underground sources saying you have to do it because these people did it," said Barber. "You don't have enough people saying, 'It didn't happen to me, so you shouldn't let it happen to you,' or 'It happened to me, and it was wrong.' "

Not enough voices, speaking loudly enough from within the band itself, saying hazing isn't what makes the band great. It's the marching and the music, nothing else.

Humiliation and assaults are not humbling — they are harmful.

"They call it 'humblizing,' " said Marcus Fabre'. "But humble doesn't mean getting hit and not doing anything about it. It means you are willing to learn, and you don't know everything. Paddling doesn't help you do anything better."

On Oct. 31, inside an off-campus apartment, 18-year-old Bria Hunter is being berated for trying to skip a meeting of the Red Dawg Order. Hunter, a freshman clarinetist, is from the same Atlanta-area high school as Robert Champion. Champion tells Hunter she doesn't need to subject herself to hazing. She ignores him, but after enduring physical abuse during Red Dawg meetings, Hunter has second thoughts.

Inside that apartment with about 11 other pledges, she is punished for telling a lie to skip the initiation meeting. For lying, she is forced to march in place while two of the other Red Dawg members beat her on the legs with their fists.

Hunter is 5-feet-1 and weighs 112 pounds. The two Red Dawgs beating on her legs are 6-feet-3, about 175 pounds, and 5-feet-8, 150 pounds. One is 19, the other 23.

The next day, the Red Dawgs repeat the treatment, this time using a metal ruler across the top of Hunter's thighs. The beatings cause blood clots in her legs, deep bone bruises and a broken femur. On Nov. 7, unable to stand the pain, Bria Hunter is taken to the hospital by ambulance.

Within a few days, Band Director Julian White suspends 26 band members from participating in the Florida Classic for hazing.

As word of Hunter's injuries and the suspensions spread through the band, Fabre' remembers his attempts to convince freshmen members that they didn't need to be hazed.

You can be in the band without submitting to the abuse, he told them.

Yeah, but look at what happened to you, they responded: You're shunned, you're all alone.

But if you all stand up to hazing, you won't be alone. You'll all be together, he replied.

"I tried to get the other freshmen to stand up," Fabre' said. "Nobody wanted to be in my shoes."

The injury to Hunter and the suspensions should have been the warning shot that things have gone too far, the tradition is off the tracks. This is Ivery Luckey and Marcus Parker all over again.

Instead of backing off, the FAMU hazers stand defiant and undeterred.

They would prove true the prophecy by the mother of Fabre'. Earlier in the semester, she met with Julian White about the harassment of her son for refusing to be hazed.

"If you don't do more to stop this, somebody is going to get killed," Felicia Fabre' said.

On the afternoon of Nov. 19, Orlando's Florida Citrus Bowl fills with 60,000 spectators for the 66th meeting of the Florida A&M University Rattlers and the Bethune-Cookman University Wildcats.

They are here — dividing the stadium into opposite sides of green and orange, gold and maroon — ostensibly to watch a football game, but really to watch the halftime battle of the bands. The Classic — a "show interrupted by a football game" — is where everybody goes to the bathroom before halftime, not during.

By the time the FAMU band takes the field, led by Robert Champion and the five other drum majors, the sky is turning dark as storm clouds move over the stadium.

For the freshmen in the Marching 100, making it to the Florida Classic is all that matters. It's the last performance of the football season, and band members are treated like celebrities.

Their nine buses are escorted by Orlando Police Department motorcycles from the Rosen Plaza hotel to the Citrus Bowl. Bus A, the lead bus where the band staff and section leaders ride, is the most luxurious ride — complete with a sunroof, wood floors and electrical outlets at every seat. Julian White and the drum majors ride to the game in a black limousine.

After the Classic, win or lose, the band rejoices. A collective relief comes with the end of months of practice, the striving for perfection, the precision necessary to master the 360-steps-per-minute re-enactment of a rattlesnake's strike.

Upperclassmen are hugging and congratulating freshmen. They're exchanging gifts and personal items, including band hats and jackets. Hazers and hazees, tormentors and victims, are now good friends.

One freshman was prepared to confront the upperclassmen who had bullied him, but after the Classic, he was greeted "like when a soldier comes back and the family rushes at you."

"My goal was to not change ... , but you can't help it," he said. "After I thought about it, I was kind of like, 'I was being over-dramatic a lot of the times. It really wasn't that bad.' "

In that one moment, the torment is forgotten and forgiven. And sometimes, in that instant, a hazee begins the transition into a hazer, perpetuating the tradition upon the next class of freshmen.

"Abused children become abusers," Felicia Fabre' said. "That is what happens with the band: Abused band members become abusers."

For many of the freshmen in the Marching 100, the Florida Classic is the end of the abuse. But not for those who ride back to the Rosen Plaza hotel aboard Bus C.

Marcus Fabre' knows all about Bus C. In his freshman year, when he was being ostracized for refusing to be hazed, he found his name listed on Bus C after the Classic. He knew he didn't belong on that bus, which carries mostly members of the percussion section. He knew he was being set up.

"They tried to get me on that bus last year," Fabre' said. "I just didn't ride it."

The percussion subgroup, called The Z, has its own initiation ritual that takes place throughout the semester. It's called "Crossing Bus C." And it would cost Robert Champion his life.

After the game, later that night, the charter buses are escorted back to the hotel. Bus C parks in the back of the hotel, the engine running. About 30 FAMU band members are aboard the bus.

A number of students subject themselves to hazing. Some will walk from the front to the back of the bus while being attacked. Sometimes, the hazing victim sits in the "hot seat" at the back of the bus while being slapped and beaten.

Nobody knows why Robert Champion boarded Bus C. The bus he rode from Tallahassee to Orlando was Bus H. Some students speculate that, after years of resisting hazing and warning others not to participate, Champion decided to submit to earn the respect and loyalty of the band before he became head drum major the following year. The Classic would be his last chance at acceptance. Others suggest he might have been lured inside the bus and beaten as his punishment for his stance against hazing.

Tall, heavy-set, with a shaved head and a short-cropped beard and mustache, Robert Champion moves down the narrow aisle between the rows of seats through a gauntlet of fists.

He is struck in the stomach, arms, chest and back. One purplish-gray bruise extends from the top of his back almost to his waist. Beneath those bruises and abrasions, his body is bleeding.

Immediately after the beating, Champion complains of thirst and exhaustion. His vision blurs, he vomits and collapses inside the bus.

Holding Champion as he is dying, an unidentified person calls 911 at 9:46 p.m.

"He is in my hands, ma'am. He's cold. He's in my hands," the male voice says. "His eyes are open, but he's not responding."

About an hour later, Robert Champion dies in Dr. P. Phillips Hospital. Early the next day, Julian White identifies the body.

The cause of death is listed as hemorrhagic shock caused by blunt-force trauma: killed by hazing.

Here is what else died that day: the shiny-brass reputation of a precision college marching band.

The famous FAMU band is suffering from a self-inflicted wound by a cadre of band members who believed they were untouchable, beyond reproach and superior in their conceit that nothing bad would happen.

Until it did.

By Denise-Marie Balona

Former Florida A&M University student Bria Hunter complained to a member of the Marching 100's staff about being hazed and beaten by band members just days before another attack left her with a broken leg and weeks before the killing of drum major Robert Champion, according to campus-police documents.

The documents, provided to the Orlando Sentinel after repeated public-records demands, also show that university police investigated at least 10 complaints of hazing involving the band between August 2007 and Nov. 19, 2011, when Champion was beaten to death during a hazing in Orlando.

Hunter, 18, who has since left FAMU and given up an $82,000 scholarship, told police that she complained to band employee Donald Beckwith, who is a senior equipment manager. She said she told Beckwith about being "battered" earlier in the semester during an initiation by a group affiliated with the band called the Red Dawg Order.

According to police, Beckwith said he "was not aware of the incident concerning Ms. Hunter." It's unclear whether he was referring to the hazing she suffered or the conversation she reportedly had with him. Beckwith, 55, who has been working for the university for 27 years, would not comment for this article.

Neither Hunter nor her lawyer would comment either.

Hunter told police the conversation took place around Oct. 22, while the school's famed marching band was on a trip to South Carolina.

Chuck Hobbs, an attorney for longtime band director Julian White, said that if Beckwith heard a complaint about hazing, he should have reported it.

"Protocol dictates that band staff, upon receiving reports of hazing, are required to report them to Dr. White, who immediately reports any alleged incidents to FAMU police," said Hobbs, who added that White was not informed of any hazing involving Hunter until her parents contacted him about her injuries in November.

After the band returned from South Carolina, Hunter was repeatedly punched so hard in the thighs during hazing events on Oct. 31 and early November that she went to the hospital with a broken leg, blood clots and bone bruising. In December — after three FAMU students were charged with her hazing — Hunter's attorney announced that she intends to sue the university in Tallahassee.

The previous hazing Hunter reported is among a host of other details included in the police records that FAMU released to the Sentinel this week.

Although some of those documents are vague and many are incomplete, they offer additional insight into the types of hazing that band members reported suffering in the years before Champion was punched, kicked and deprived of oxygen during hazing rituals aboard a charter bus in Orlando after the Florida Classic football game. His death is still under investigation.

On Aug. 25, 2007, for example, a clarinetist's mother complained to police that her daughter was taken to a hospital after being hit with a clothes hanger and other items during band practice. On Aug. 31, 2007, a freshman reported being hit on the elbows with the metal portion of a musical instrument's mouthpiece by two senior band members.

It's unclear whether anyone was disciplined for the Aug. 25 incident, but two seniors were suspended from the band after the Aug. 31 report, records show. Two people also were later arrested in connection with the second hazing.

On Sept. 18, 2007, several freshman band members were pressed by upperclassmen to visit another student's dorm room and tell him to leave the band. One of the young men was arrested and charged with battery after he hit the student twice in the face, called him "soft," used a racial slur and demanded he quit, police records show.

The newly released reports also provide further evidence of FAMU's ongoing struggle with hazing despite repeated injuries, previous lawsuits and school officials' efforts to warn band members that the practice was illegal.

One investigation was prompted by a letter from university President James Ammons' office in late 2007, although the result of that review was not provided by FAMU.

Eric Rombach-Kendall, president of the College Band Directors National Association, said the police reports and White's decision to suspend about 30 students immediately before the Florida Classic because of hazing indicate a lack of control.

"If I had suspended 30 band members because of my concerns about hazing … I would demand that they [top administrators] support me on this," said Rombach-Kendall, band director at the University of New Mexico. "It's not like suspending one or two band members. Thirty suggests there was a culture there that Mr. White was not able to wholly control on his own."

Hobbs, White's attorney, said in a letter to Ammons after Champion's death that hazing had been met with "reckless indifference by White's superior officers who often ignored his requests for assistance."

Some parents, however, suspected members of White's staff of condoning hazing. One parent wrote to Ammons last year that White did not trust some of the people under him to help eliminate hazing because they would expose the identities of students who came forward. "In one conversation with me," the parent wrote, "Dr. White stated that he could not trust the people under him with confidential information ..."

Meanwhile, FAMU administrators have ramped up efforts to ensure students are aware of the dangers and ramifications of the practice.

Just weeks ago, Ammons announced he was canceling FAMU's Summer Band Camp and suspending recruitment and initiation events for all student organizations until the fall 2012 semester. The university recently formed a committee of national experts to help it figure out how to fight hazing.

Hank Nuwer, a journalism professor who has written four books on hazing and spent decades analyzing hazing cases, called the FAMU band "both a sacred cow and cash cow." Schools will take hazing crimes more seriously, he said, if they are required to monitor hazing cases and report them as part of their campus crime statistics.

"Over the years, a number of parents and some students have complained that their complaints have fallen on deaf ears when they go to an administrator. Or nothing is done and the victim is asked to furnish more proof, or led to believe he or she is the problem here, and not the person hazing," Nuwer said.

"Mandatory reporting of hazing, I'm confident, will give the public a clearer idea of how great the problem is and who are the worst offenders."

By Stephen Hudak and Denise-Marie Balona

Aaron Golson, one of the Florida A&M University students charged with hazing clarinetist Bria Hunter so severely that her leg was broken last fall, is one of 13 people now facing charges in the hazing death of FAMU drum major Robert Champion.

Golson, 19, was charged in December with felony hazing in the beating of Hunter, which occurred less than a month before Champion was pummeled to death on a charter bus after the Florida Classic football game in Orlando on Nov. 19.

On Thursday, Golson was among eight of the 13 suspects taken in custody in the Champion case.

How he got on the bus is a mystery to the team representing FAMU band director Julian White.

"He had no business on that bus because he was no longer a member of the Florida A&M band," said Brooke Hobbs, a spokeswoman for the attorney representing White.

He was not allowed to perform with the Marching 100 at the Florida Classic, she said. He did not travel with the band and should not have been aboard any of its buses, she said.

Golson, a percussionist, had been kicked out of the band after the hazing of Hunter, who told authorities Nov. 7 that she was repeatedly punched on the thighs and hit with a metal ruler during initiation rituals to join the "Red Dawg Order," a group within the band made up of students from Georgia.

Christopher Chestnut, a lawyer for Champion's parents, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday that his clients deserve to know how Golson ended up on the bus where their son was killed. He then leveled blame at the university, which he said has paid only lip service to the prevention of hazing.

"This proves exactly what we've been saying: Because [the university] hasn't done anything serious in the past, it emboldens them," Chestnut said of hazing participants. "They know there will be no repercussions, and people are emboldened … so much so that you have one 19-year-old freshman band member who takes part in two events, where one is seriously injured and one is dead."

Golson turned himself in at the Gadsden County Jail west of Tallahassee on Thursday.

Among the other suspects in custody Thursday facing felony hazing charges:

• Shawn Turner, 26, and Rikki Wills, 24. Both were drum majors, leaders of FAMU's famous Marching 100 band.

• Caleb Jackson, 23, a percussionist in the band. Jackson is on probation for aggravated battery in an unrelated case.

• Brian Jones, 23, a percussionist. One of his two Orlando attorneys, Alisia Adamson, called Jones "a good kid" wrongly implicated in Champion's death.

• Jessie Baskin, 20, a percussionist.

• Benjamin McNamee, 21, who plays baritone.

• Harold Finley, 20, a percussionist.

Jackson was denied bail during a court appearance because he was on probation for his role in the beating of a student at Tallahassee Community College in September 2009.

According to a police report of the incident, he and another student teamed up to punch, kick and choke a student who got angry because the pair had cut in line at Enrollment Services. The assault knocked the victim's teeth loose.

Court records show Jackson pleaded no contest to felony battery with great bodily harm, a third-degree felony, and resisting a law-enforcement officer without violence. A judge pronounced him guilty and ordered him to serve 36 months' probation, complete an anger-management class and pay restitution to the victim.

On Thursday, Jones appeared at a news conference in Orlando as his mother, Jacquelin Jones, described how he had grown up in a "strong, bonded family" and had been mentored by religious leaders and military officers.

Jones was a drummer in the FAMU band last fall and plays drums on Sundays at St. Mary's Missionary Baptist Church in Parrish, near Bradenton, where he is also a junior deacon, his attorney Adamson said.

He was a third-year student majoring in criminal justice when he dropped out of FAMU because of financial reasons after the Florida Classic, his attorney said. He was set to enter the military June 12 with plans to be a combat medic.

"We have raised our son to do the right thing," said Jacquelin Jones, who said the family has been "very devastated" by Brian Jones' felony hazing charge. "We ask that you give him that fair opportunity to be heard when the time comes. … We ask that you continue to pray for what is right in the judicial system."

Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said state agents have been in contact with the families or attorneys for the other felony defendants who remain at large. She said those defendants live out of state — two in Georgia, the other in Delaware.

Authorities have not said whether all 13 charged were FAMU students. Chestnut has said that more than 20 band members and alumni were aboard the charter bus on which Champion was beaten.

The band has been under suspension since Champion's death. And his parents, Robert and Pamela Champion, do not want the band to be allowed to perform until sweeping changes are made that include new faculty leaders and strict rules, regulations and enforcement that protect all band members.

"They don't want anyone else to be hurt ever again," he said.

By Denise-Marie Balona

Florida A&M University band director Julian White, who has been under intense criticism since the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion in Orlando last fall, retired unexpectedly Thursday amid more troubling revelations about the embattled Marching 100 band.

White's attorney, Chuck Hobbs, announced the decision late Thursday afternoon. White, 71, chairman of the university's music department and director of bands since 1998, had been fighting for months to keep his job.

Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott and the chancellor of the State University System said Thursday that FAMU's famous band, which is under indefinite suspension, is not ready to take the field again.

White's retirement comes days after FAMU revealed that at least two band members charged in Champion's death — and possibly a third — should not have been in the band, and that nearly 100 others may not have been eligible to join the band.

Percussionists Caleb Jackson and Brian Jones, both charged with felony hazing in Champion's beating Nov. 19, were allowed to travel with the band and be on a parked charter bus where the attack took place.

Alisia Adamson, an attorney for Jones, acknowledged Thursday that Jones was not eligible. But he had been authorized to be in the band, stay with the band at a hotel in Orlando and perform at the FloridaClassic, she told the Orlando Sentinel.

"I don't know if they bend the rules for some students or it's a rule they don't enforce," Adamson said. "The band director knew he was there. He was participating in the Classic because he was allowed to."

The university confirmed Thursday that of the 100-plus band members whose eligibility is in question, about 60 traveled to the Classic and received per-diem payments for the trip.

Those developments led to further criticism that White and other university officials were not in control of the band.

White's retirement also comes two weeks after the forced resignation of two FAMU music professors present at a party in 2010 where the hazing of band members occurred.

Reached by telephone Thursday, White said his retirement would take effect "as soon as possible."

He said recent developments affected his decision to retire.

"I wouldn't say it was forced," he told the Sentinel. "It had something to do with it."

White also mentioned his leaving had more to do with his family, which includes an 8-year-old son and a 2-year-old granddaughter. He has been on paid administrative leave since shortly after Champion's death.

On Thursday evening, FAMU announced that trustees will meet with university President James Ammons via teleconference Monday to discuss the status of the band.

"The board needs — as well as everybody else — information regarding the band," Chairman Solomon Badger said. "We want to hear from the horse's mouth … and then we will have an intelligent discussion."

Ammons said earlier this week that he's talking to faculty, students and others about whether to reinstate the band.

Also on Thursday, University System Chancellor Frank Brogan sent Ammons a letter urging FAMU not to lift the band's suspension yet.

Brogan warned that bringing the band back too soon — before the school's new committee of anti-hazing experts completes its work, for example, and before the Florida Department of Law Enforcement finishes an investigation into financial irregularities related to band operations — could affect its survival.

"Reconciling these and other issues under investigation will ensure that the institution's operational priorities and controls are in place," Brogan wrote, adding that although he and the state's Board of Governors remain committed to FAMU, "our concerns continue to mount regarding the ever-increasing body of issues that harm the institution, its students and, therefore, our State University System as a whole."

Scott said through a spokesman that he thinks the band should not be reinstated until there is assurance that a tragedy such as Champion's death will not happen again.

"The governor does not feel we are at a point where we're comfortable something like this wouldn't happen again," said spokesman Lane Wright. "Until we get to that point, we don't feel like the suspension should be lifted."

Last week, 11 people were charged with felony hazing in Champion's death after a nearly six-month investigation. Two others were charged with misdemeanors in connection with the hazing of two other band members on the same bus that evening.

On Tuesday, Ammons revealed to trustees that many who were allowed to travel with the band that weekend were not FAMU students.

He said 457 people were listed on a roster of band "travelers" at the beginning of the fall 2011 semester. Among those were 331 FAMU students and 25 employees.

Members of the Marching 100 don't have to be FAMU students. Musicians can join the band if they attend Florida State University or Tallahassee Community College and also enroll in a band course at FAMU.

By Jeff Kunerth, Stephen Hudak, Denise-Marie Balona and David Breen

The beatings began well before the Nov. 19 hazing death of Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion, according to more than 2,300 pages of documents and 30 audio files released Wednesday by the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office.

Champion's death after being pummeled by fellow marching-band members aboard a charter known as "Bus C" culminated a string of violent hazing initiations during the weekend of the Florida Classic football game — a major fundraiser for FAMU and its longtime rival, Bethune-Cookman University, that draws tens of thousands of people to Orlando each year.

The day before the Classic, several members of FAMU's famous band took turns submitting to beatings while huddled under a blanket on the ride to their hotel from the annual Battle of the Bands, a Friday night showcase of university- and high-school band talent that kicks off the Classic weekend.

An assistant band director who traveled that night on Bus C — one of a train of charter buses that transport about 400 band members and FAMU employees to games and other events — told investigators that he did not notice anything.

Once the bus parked, many people retired to the hotel. But some — as they would do again Saturday night when Champion was killed — stayed aboard Bus C to deal more blows to young musicians eager for acceptance into this prestigious group.

Percussionist Requesta Harden was supposed to submit to a beating that Friday but got scared, she told investigators. On the way to the Classic on Saturday, one of the band's leaders tapped her on the shoulder and directed her to the back of the bus. There, she submitted to a ritual known as the "hot seat" — being pummeled nonstop for several minutes while seated and covered in a blanket.

Harden said she couldn't perform at the game because she became dizzy and passed out.

After the Classic, in the back parking lot of the Rosen Plaza Hotel, the violence continued, with Champion being the last of three band members hazed in two separate rituals — the "hot seat" and another known as "crossing Bus C."

Those accused of the beatings had been hazed themselves at some point, band members told detectives with the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Some had suffered beatings aboard Bus C during other band trips.

They also told investigators that Champion, who had resisted and spoken out against hazing in the past, willingly underwent the hazing on Bus C after the last game of the football season. In line to become the band's lead drum major the next year, Champion needed the respect bestowed upon those who endure the traditional torment, students said.

"It's tradition. … It's like an acceptance type of thing. So that's where you get respect from," drum major Keon Hollis told investigators, adding that he was hazed along with Champion that Saturday night.

Hollis said the two had discussed the hazing before Champion stepped aboard the bus.

"Yeah, we was talking about it. He really, he really didn't want to do it, but he was kinda like, 'I'm just gonna do it,'" Hollis told investigators. "I told him, I said, 'If you don't want to do it, don't do it. … You don't have to do it.'"

Band members had talked about Champion's plan to participate in the ritual during telephone communications prior to the hazing, some students said.

Head drum major Jonathan Boyce said Champion had wanted to go through the Bus C ritual earlier in the school year, but Boyce would not allow it because he could not afford to lose a drum major to injury. On the night Champion was killed, Boyce was among those who participated in the hazing, according to an 89-page sworn affidavit summarizing the evidence against those charged in the case.

Boyce and 10 other band members were charged earlier this month with felony hazing in connection with Champion's death. Two other band members were charged with misdemeanors for their roles in hazing the two band members who went through the gantlet before Champion.

Champion's initiation began with the "hot seat." Like those before him, he was told to take a seat at the back of the bus.

A fellow band member instructed him in how to protect himself by assuming the "crash position" — sitting with his knees pulled toward his upper torso and using his forearms to cover his face and torso. A blanket was pulled over him while members kicked him and beat him with drum sticks and bass-drum mallets.

Champion was also hit and kicked while "crossing Bus C," the goal of which was to make it from the front of the bus to the back while other band members beat him, tried to knock him down and pulled him back toward the front.

One of those accused of kicking Champion was Benjamin McNamee, who told investigators he quit the band in 2010 because of hazing but then returned two weeks before the Classic so he could get his scholarship.

Authorities have said about 60 band members — including at least two of those charged in Champion's death — did not meet the requirements to be in the band but were still allowed to travel with the band to Orlando and also were given per diem payments to cover their trip expenses.

Caleb Jackson, charged with felony hazing in Champion's death, told investigators he was ineligible to be in the band but was allowed by FAMU to march in the Classic. An attorney for Brian Jones, also charged in Champion's death, told the Orlando Sentinel that he, too, was ineligible but given permission to come to Orlando.

Band member April Tarpley of Orlando told investigators she thought McNamee and others went overboard while kicking Champion.

Tarpley said she thought Champion's hazers were more aggressive with him because drum majors have to endure only one "hot seat" while others are subjected to two or more. Another band member, Marc Baron, said he had undergone four "hot seats" before "crossing over" Bus C, according to the documents released Wednesday.

The "hot seat" beatings, which Baron said can last three or four minutes, end when the "bus president" decides so.

After the "hot seat" pummeling, Champion was to complete his initiation by "crossing over" Bus C, as fellow band members Lissette Sanchez and Keon Hollis had done before him. All three were hit with "straps, hands, sticks and a big orange traffic cone," Hollis told investigators.

Sanchez, of Orlando, said she briefly lost consciousness after she made it to the back of the bus.

"I couldn't do nothing," she said. "I just had to lay there until everybody got off the bus."

Hollis said he was pushed toward the back of the bus by some band members and pulled in the opposite direction by others. At one point, he fell to the floor.

"Once you get on the ground, anything can happen," he told investigators.

Drum major Rikki Wills claims he was one of those trying to help Champion through the ordeal of punches and kicks.

"I'm Robert's roommate so I decided I was going to help him get through, so I pushed him through ... and when we got to the end, Robert said, 'Oh my God, uh, I'm having trouble breathing,'" Wills said.

Champion then passed out. Medical examiner's records show he was suffering from hemorrhagic shock cause by blunt-force blows to his body.

His body was bleeding on the inside. He was feeling fatigue, thirst, weakness and a loss of vision. His body temperature was 102 degrees.

Band member Darryl Cearnel told investigators he found Champion sitting at the front of the bus with two or three other people when he returned from a trip to the bathroom. He said Champion was unresponsive and having trouble breathing.

Somebody called 911 while Cearnel began performing mouth to mouth and chest compressions.

Champion then began vomiting while Cearnel was trying to revive him.

Band director Julian White arrived before Champion was lifted into the ambulance.

"I'm not a doctor, but I saw death," White told investigators. "I assumed Robert was dead. I became distraught. I'm walking around saying, 'Oh my God, oh my God, I lost, I lost, I lost …"

White said he persuaded paramedics to let him ride in the passenger seat of the ambulance that transported Champion to the hospital.

Champion, 26, died at Dr. P. Phillips Hospital.

During the series of hazing initiations that Friday and Saturday — with students being beaten, kicked and passing out — the university's percussion director Shaylor James was seated at the front of the bus when it was traveling, according to the documents.

Shaylor told investigators he saw nothing and heard nothing that he would consider hazing.

Band member Harold Finley said it was common for "hot seat" beatings to occur with James and photographer Tony Leavell aboard and oblivious to what was going on at the back of the bus. Members told investigators they try to keep the initiation ritual as quiet as possible.

Following release of the evidence Wednesday, the attorney for Robert Champion's parents continued his months-long criticism of the university, which he said turned a blind eye to the violence for years.

"If the administration had the capacity or the desire to clean up this band, it would have been cleaned up," said attorney Christopher Chestnut during a news conference in Atlanta.

Referring to FAMU President James Ammons, he said: "This president has demonstrated a lack of interest or ability to clean up this band. Nothing has happened. … A young man was murdered, and nothing has happened. No change."

Parents of other students also had pressed White and Ammons for years to be more aggressive in the effort to stop hazing. One parent even warned White that someone would be killed, according to documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel in January.

Torey Alston, a member of the school's board of trustees, said Wednesday that the university has been working hard to get rid of hazing.

"The board has been very aggressive approving policing, reviewing current procedures and asking tough questions of the administration," Alston said in an e-mail to the Orlando Sentinel.

Champion's mother, Pam Champion, refused to believe students who contend her son wanted to "Cross Bus C," saying that they were just trying to "save themselves."

"He was murdered on that bus, and no one signs up for that," she said. "No one."

By Denise-Marie Balona

Florida A&M University hired President James Ammons five years ago to turn around the school that was struggling with accreditation problems and financial mismanagement.

But academic performance at Florida's only public, historically black university has suffered or remained stagnant in some key areas under his leadership, public records show.

State education leaders say part of the problem lies with a controversial policy the Ammons administration has embraced. In recent years, FAMU has opened its doors to a skyrocketing number of students who did not meet the most basic admissions criteria.

Thousands of students enter FAMU despite being ill-equipped for the rigors of university course work. Only 12 percent of those who start as freshmen finish in four years. Only 39 percent graduate within six. And those who eventually earn bachelor's degrees leave with the highest debt load, about $29,000, of any state university.

Not only is the low graduation rate hurting students' pockets, but the state also loses money when students must retake classes or when they take additional classes after changing majors because the work gets too tough.

It is a problem that has been discussed with concern in recent years by some faculty, members of the university's board of trustees and State University Chancellor Frank Brogan.

Yet over the past several years, FAMU has hiked up its percentage of so-called "profile admits," students whose grades or SAT scores fell short, who did not take enough math in high school or who failed to meet other requirements.

Historically, FAMU has had a much higher percentage of profile admits compared with the state's other public universities, most of which limit these admissions to less than 1 percent of undergraduate enrollment. But last year, more than half of FAMU's 11,022 undergraduates were profile admits — up from 14 percent in fall 2006, the year before Ammons was hired,

Both Ammons and Solomon Badger, chairman of the school's trustees, defended FAMU's profile admits, saying that the university's historic mission has been to provide opportunities to students turned away by other institutions.

Although the state sets minimum standards for admission to the university system, Badger explained, schools have the authority to consider other factors, including students' special talents and their socioeconomic status and family educational background.

Badger and other university officials pointed out last week that the rise in profile admits is likely related, at least in part, to tougher state-level admissions standards adopted in recent years and the fact that students were not labeled as profile admits and tracked before 2000.

It makes no sense, Badger said, to reject bright students simply because they do not do well on college-entrance exams or miss a few foreign-language credits. "Sometimes, a student has to have an opportunity to go to school," he said.

Some education leaders, including members of the Board of Governors of the State University System, have sharply criticized FAMU for its slipping four-year graduation rate, low six-year graduation rate, faltering freshmen-retention rate, rising number of profile admits and accreditation troubles.

Late last month, board Chairman Dean Colson said it is "almost immoral" for FAMU to knowingly take in so many students who will struggle, allowing them to rack up heaps of loan debt trying to get through school and, in most cases, never graduate.

FAMU students are not wealthy. Nearly 70 percent of its Florida students come from families that make less than $40,000 a year.

"It's perfectly appropriate for your mission to include young people who aren't quite ready for college," Colson told the Orlando Sentinel. "But if you're going to do that, then you must provide the support these young people need to succeed."

Ammons noted during a recent Board of Governors meeting that FAMU's six-year graduation rate is not much lower than some other universities' — Florida International and Florida Atlantic Universities, for example — despite admitting a higher number of students who do not meet state admissions criteria. He stressed that FAMU is a national leader in helping black students earn bachelor's degrees. "Even though we are concerned about the rate of graduation, FAMU is an important institution for the graduation of African-Americans for this nation," he told the board.

State Sen. Evelyn Lynn, who heads the Senate's higher-education budget committee, predicts that FAMU and other schools might start choosing applicants more carefully if Florida moves to a system that fundsschools based on their success in areas such as graduation rates.

FAMU, among the state's lowest-performing universities, received the second-highest amount of state funding per student — $8,380 — during the 2011-12 school year. The University of Florida, a top performer, received $6,482 per student.

Although FAMU officials said they have not grown their "profile admit" numbers to bolster wavering enrollment, doing so has helped. When Ammons took over in 2007, enrollment was falling. It then rose for several years, but dropped again last year.

FAMU faculty members have pressed the university to provide more assistance for struggling students. Budget cuts, however, have forced the school to cut back on tutorial programs and instructors. The closing of the School of General Studies hurt the university's efforts because its staff provided a lot of additional support for profile admits.

Although some of them transition easily to college, many need remedial help in reading, writing or math before they can start delving into college-level subjects. And university officials know these students take longer to complete their studies, one reason they are often at risk of dropping out.

Of the 1,667 high-school students who graduated in 2009 and entered FAMU with low scores on college-entrance tests, 62 percent needed remediation. That's up from 46 percent for the class of 2007, according to an annual report released last year.

In that report, officials also predicted that the surge in profile-admit students would hurt FAMU's graduation rate. They noted that the six-year graduation rate for this group of students was 17 percentage points lower than the rate for regular students.

"Given these trends and all else being equal, one might expect FAMU's 6-year graduation rate … to drop down to about 33% in another four years," the 2011 report stated.

Some education leaders have suggested that FAMU divert more applicants to community colleges, which specialize in helping students bolster skills and prepare for university work.

At those schools, academic advisors are aggressive about monitoring students' progress, sometimes visiting them in class and also calling them at home, said Gary Sligh, president of the Association of Florida Colleges.

"It's a lot of hand-holding," he said. "It's something community colleges have always done very well."

The whole issue is one that has been much debated at FAMU. University officials also pointed out that the school did accept fewer new profile admits during the past two years. Still, the total number spiked in late 2010. It fell by only five students in fall 2011 — one indication that these students might not be graduating or leaving the school as quickly as they had in previous years.

Criticism over enrollment and graduation rates comes at a bad time for Ammons, who recently received a vote of no confidence from the school's board of trustees amid the fallout over the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion. The scandal, some university officials said, is likely one cause of the expected drop in new-student enrollment this fall.

Joyce Smith, chief executive officer of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said a good way to build enrollment is to seek more out-of-state and international students, who also pay higher tuition. That is a national trend among higher-education institutions that have lost enrollment.

"Most of these institutions are not compromising quality to get those student numbers in," she said.

FAMU presented a plan to the Board of Governors recently indicating it expects to cut its total number of profile admits by several dozen students in 2012-13 and then by 57 students the following year.

Last week, FAMU submitted a plan for how it will use new tuition money to improve graduation rates and reduce student debt. The Board of Governors had ordered FAMU to develop a detailed proposal.

FAMU vowed to use most of the money to make changes such as hiring more professors, academic advisers and other staff to help students move through school more quickly.

Programs will be enhanced, FAMU officials said, and profile admits will be required to get 10 hours of tutoring a week.

Three days before the hazing death of FAMU drum major Robert Champion, the university's dean of students urged top administrators to impose a long-term suspension of the school's famous marching band because of concerns about hazing.

The recommendation from Florida A&M University Dean Henry Kirby is outlined in notes he took about a critical meeting that was held on Nov. 16 specifically to discuss hazing within the band.

Those notes, requested by the Orlando Sentinel nearly a month ago, support former FAMU police chief Calvin Ross' recollection of the meeting of four university administrators and two FAMU police department employees.

Ross told the Sentinel several weeks ago that neither he nor Kirby wanted the band to travel to Orlando to perform at the Florida Classic football game on Nov. 19, when Champion was beaten to death by fellow band members.

While Kirby has refused to comment about the meeting, he wrote in his notes that he repeatedly recommended that FAMU "impose the 'KAPPA' effect" — or suspend the band long-term, as the university had done with the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity years earlier.

In 2006, FAMU suspended the university's chapter of the fraternity after five members were charged with using wooden canes to beat a pledge during an initiation ritual.

The chapter's charter was revoked in 2007, according to Kappa Alpha Psi's national office.

"I explained that if we suspend the band like we did the KAPPAS that it would effectively stop all of this hazing," Kirby wrote.

Kirby's notes also offer details about events that happened before and after the critical Nov. 16 meeting.

According to the dean's notes, police chief Ross had also recommended the band be suspended. As an alternative, Ross had suggested that the senior members of the band be suspended since it appeared that the freshmen were the targets of hazing.

Kirby mentions that longtime band director Julian White, who has since retired, had wondered during the meeting whether it would help to tell band members that his job might be in jeopardy.

William Hudson Jr., FAMU's vice president for student affairs, had suggested holding a mock arrest of White in front of the band "to show them that we are serious about stopping hazing."

Kirby's notes do not indicate that a decision was made at the meeting, which was held in the office of then-provost Cynthia Hughes Harris. He does write that he assumed his recommendation would be shared with university President James Ammons "in a timely manner."

Ross has said he expected one of the higher-level administrators who attended the meeting to tell Ammons about his recommendation prior to the Classic.

On Friday, however, university spokeswoman Sharon Saunders said Ammons did not learn of their recommendations until after the Classic.

It was not until January that Ammons received a "briefing" from four of the six people who had attended the Nov. 16 meeting, Saunders said.

"He learned that several options were discussed during the Nov. 16 meeting, but the general consensus was that they would call together the entire band to underscore their written Anti-Hazing Agreements and the fact that hazing is against FAMU policies and a felony crime under Florida law," said Saunders.

It was January 4, Ross told the Sentinel almost four weeks ago, that he and Kirby met with Ammons to express disappointment that he had not acted on their earlier recommendation to take harsher action against the band.

Eleven band members have been charged with felony hazing in Champion's death. Three other band members have been charged with misdemeanor hazing for their roles in the beating of three other FAMU students during the Classic weekend.

University trustees Torey Alston expressed frustration Friday about the information he and other trustees have received.

"I am troubled we are still getting conflicting information on who knew what and when and everyone is pointing at someone else," Alston said.

In his notes, Kirby also mentions that he had, years earlier, recommended that both the band and White be suspended. But it is not clear whether that recommendation also was made as a result of hazing activities.

Ammons did not know about that recommendation either, Saunders said.

"I also stated that my comments were not well received and that administrators, in the past, in my opinion, did not take a firm stand on suspending the band," wrote Kirby, who was appointed as FAMU's dean of students in 1989. In 1995, he was promoted to become the associate vice president for student affairs and dean of students.

In his notes regarding the Nov. 16 meeting, Kirby wrote that White did not want to suspend the entire band before the Classic. Ross, too, had remembered that White opposed the idea of suspending the band.

But Brooke Hobbs, a spokeswoman for White's attorney, repeated Friday that White had agreed with the recommendation to keep the whole band from going to the Classic. Hobbs stressed that no one at the Nov. 16 meeting had the authority to suspend the band.

Immediately after that meeting, Ross and Kirby went to the practice field to speak to band members about hazing.

Kirby said in his notes that he used "very strong" language and even cursed during his lecture, perhaps to make sure band members took him seriously.

"I intended to be clear, to the point and did not pull any punches," he noted. "I strongly admonished them on the consequences of participating in hazing activities. Likewise, Chief Ross was very strong and firm with his message but absent the salty language that I used."

Alston expressed concern about Kirby's profanity, calling it "unprofessional and totally inappropriate by any university employee dealing with students."

"This entire situation just looks bad," Alston said.

By Denise-Marie Balona

Florida A&M University President James Ammons resigned Wednesday amid a growing scandal over the hazing death of drum major Robert Champion and widespread criticism over management of the university.

Ammons, who just completed his fifth year as FAMU's 10th president, submitted his resignation to the university's board of trustees on the same day that Champion's parents filed a lawsuit in Orlando blaming the school, in part, for their son's beating death.

Ammons' decision also comes a month after trustees gave him a vote of no confidence and days after incoming state Senate President Don Gaetz said he wanted a joint legislative review of the financial, academic and other problems uncovered by the Orlando Sentinel since Champion's hazing in Orlando last fall.

In his resignation letter, Ammons said he plans to retire Oct. 11 and, at some point, to take a faculty position at FAMU, his alma mater.

But some trustees, during a teleconference held to discuss budget issues on Wednesday, questioned whether Ammons should remain president that long.

"I don't think that having a lame duck administration — a lame duck leader — is a way to go into the fall term," said trustee Bill Jennings of Orlando, the board's longest serving member.

Trustees agreed to meet Monday morning to discuss Ammons' departure and a process for selecting a new leader.

Some of Ammons' closest staff members in Tallahassee said his decision came as a surprise, despite the intense scrutiny he has faced lately.

Just weeks ago, he told the Sentinel he would not leave his job "until the final bell rings." After the vote of no confidence, he repeated his commitment to FAMU and insisted he would "fix things."

"We met with the president in this very room at 1 o'clock today and it was a sober environment," Provost Larry Robinson said after Wednesday's teleconference, for which key administrators had gathered in the president's conference room.

Ammons was not present for the trustees' conference-call meeting and could not be reached for an interview. Robinson would not say whether he might accept the role as interim president if offered.

In his short resignation letter, Ammons did not mention hazing. But he did say he intended to help the university move past its "challenges."

"I am determined to move all of the major challenges toward resolution and move our university toward success," he wrote. "When the next president experiences her or his transition in, she or he will very likely find additional challenges, albeit not nearly to the extent of that which I faced at the outset, or those I am now facing."

Ammons' departure as president follows the recent retirements of longtime band director Julian White and veteran police chief Calvin Ross.

Two music professors also were forced to quit about two months ago after it was discovered that they were present at a hazing event held at the home of one of the professors in 2010.

Champion's mother, Pamela Champion, and the family's attorney applauded Ammons' decision to resign.

"As I've always stated," Pamela Champion said, "for this university to move forward, they have to do house-cleaning and that means taking care of the entities that are there in order to prevent something like this from happening again."

Dean Colson, chairman of the Board of Governors of the State University System, said the board is ready to help FAMU trustees "in order to fully resolve these challenges and ensure FAMU's future success."

Colson had sent trustees a letter just days before Ammons' vote of no confidence, urging them to hold him accountable.

"I realize that this must have been a very difficult decision for President Ammons and his family," he said in a prepared statement. "As the President candidly and correctly noted in his letter, there are challenges remaining at FAMU that 'must be met head-on.' "

Trustee Chairman Solomon Badger, among Ammons' staunch supporters, expressed disappointment.

"I am saddened by President Ammons' decision to resign, but it is his choice to do so," he said in a prepared statement. "Given all that has transpired, it seems to be in the best interest of the University and I applaud him for putting FAMU ahead of his personal goals."

Ammons was hired in July, 2007 to turn around the school that was struggling with accreditation problems and financial mismanagement. But over the past year, the university has wrestled with a string of financial issues related to, among other things, submitting more than a dozen faulty internal audits to the state and spending money on marching band members who were not FAMU students and did not qualify to be in the famous ensemble.

Three of those ineligible members were among the 11 people charged in connection with Champion's beating death after performing at the Florida Classic football game in Orlando on Nov. 19.