And then they start beating me," Requesta Harden, a year-old percussionist who was beaten that day on the way to the game, told to detectives from the Orange County Sheriff's Office. And then I ran to the front. Champion had not had a hot seat before, so Martin told some others to take care of him.
They did, punching him, kicking him, and hitting him with sticks as he covered his head and tried not to move. As they beat Champion, the first crossing began. Lissette Sanchez, 19, had bad kidneys and asked if they could avoid hitting her there. When she made it to the back of the bus, she was struggling to breathe and blacked out, she told detectives. The men had faced up to 20 years in prison after being convicted in April of manslaughter and hazing in the November death of Champion, who was from Decatur, Georgia.
Roche said she chose to deviate from that recommendation because of evidence introduced at trial that Champion willingly participated in the hazing ritual. Champion collapsed and died after being pummeled by other members of FAMU's famed Marching band with fists and instruments during a brutal ritual known as "crossing Bus C.
And this is one of them," Roche said before imposing her sentence. Fifteen former FAMU band members were charged in the case. Most were sentenced to combinations of community service and probation for what the former judge in the case deemed to be minor roles. The police called it hazing. State law called it a felony. The marching band called it Crossing Bus C. Touch the back wall and it's over. Two people had crossed already. Two people survived.
Now it was Robert Champion's turn. The final score of the Florida Classic on Nov. But who remembers that? But that halftime show. Just before the Marching took the field, before announcer Joe Bullard belted, "From the highest of seven hills in Tallahassee, Florida, welcome to what has not only become known as America's band, but also one of the most exciting bands in the world," a rainbow formed over the Florida Citrus Bowl, as if the heavens were watching.
And the band was something to behold. Musicians formed a boat, and an airplane, and the United States of America, and the Eiffel Tower, and the word PARIS, all while dancing and marching and booming music for 15 minutes as the crowd cheered.
The style, the moves, the swagger, all of it was invented six decades before when a man named William Foster began choreographing performances no one had ever seen before. He invented some 30 different trademark moves like "the rattler" and "the death march" that made people forget the rigid routines of the white bands of the era. The popularity of the band grew and the style spread to other colleges and high schools, prompting the Marching 's unofficial motto: "Always imitated, never duplicated.
Foster also had instilled in the program a code of conduct that encouraged the "highest quality of character. Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Out in front that day was Champion, 26, of Decatur, Ga. He had made the squad that spring, after two intense auditions, and earned a leadership role in a band with a proud tradition.
But there was a sentiment among some band members that drum majors abused their authority. They doled out discipline, like laps around the field or pushups, in a unit of hundreds of musicians who practiced for two hours each day, who had to stick to a training regimen not all that different from athletics.
Drum majors were the police commissioners of the band. They were special, the director's confidants, and they rode to the Florida Classic in a stretch limousine while the others took charter buses. Even though 6-foot-1, pound Champion, with a shaved head and warm smile, was liked by most he'd occasionally let someone slip into the cafeteria where he worked without paying , he had been catching grief from some members of the band.
They challenged his newfound authority and openly disrespected him. Hollis and Champion were close. They were "Squad Dogs" since they'd made drum major together. Hollis was dealing with the same issues as Champion. He knew one way to earn the band's respect. Champion's parents have said he opposed hazing, but, according to Hollis, the two talked about crossing Bus C often.
Champion had planned to do it earlier in the season, but another drum major talked him out of it. They aimed to change that. It's hard to pinpoint when hazing started in the FAMU marching band, but plenty of alumni have stories about the initiations into secret societies like the Clones, for clarinetists, or Red Dawg Order, band members from Georgia.
Some still participated in the beatings, or urged young musicians to engage. Julian White, the band director since , called out the alumni in an email before the Florida Classic, asking them to "not return and look down on people who follow university regulations by not participating.
White had worried about hazing. But his efforts — making members sign pledges and attend workshops and lectures from the campus police — were futile.
In , a band member had kidney failure after he was paddled some times. Journalist Hank Nuwer has counted nearly hazing-related deaths at American colleges and universities since And if you look at Mr. And it goes all the way back to the birth of American higher education. At institutions like Harvard and Yale, sophomores visited a host of terrors on freshmen. Freshmen were also required to doff their caps to upperclassmen and to run errands for them.
After the Civil War, as more and more universities began to admit women, the routine hazing of freshmen began to decline.
By the early 20th century, hazing had relocated into an explicitly all-male institution: the fraternity. And the goal was explicit, too: to defend a rough-hewn masculinity from the feminizing forces of modern American society. Universities struck back with anti-hazing regulations; in statehouses, hazing was banned as well. Today, 44 states have laws prohibiting the practice. From the very start, however, these rules were always observed in the breach.
Boys would be boys, hazing advocates said, and no bureaucrat or legislator could stop them. Young men of talent and energy will not go to a school which bears so close a resemblance to a female seminary. They did keep going to universities, of course — and they kept hazing each other. The question remains.
0コメント