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Okay so I will go ahead and throw a disclaimer out there for everyone.  This post has very little to do with Abu Dhabi, other than the fact that I happened to be in the country when I noticed an article on ESPN.  But it was something that I wanted to get off my chest so you can read it or wait for my next take on Abu Dhabi.  However, this one is fairly long and I get into my background a little bit so you might get to know me a little better.  

Even though I’m not in the states my love for sports has not diminished.  I’m on ESPN.com a lot, almost daily, to find the updates in the NBA playoffs (go Heat!) and I was surprised to see Florida A & M University as one of the stories on the front page.  Reading the brief article I learned that the band won’t be preforming next year due to the death of the drum major over the hazing incident back in November.  I continued on to another link that gave the full report about everything and it included the video on “Outside the Lines”.  If you haven’t seen it here is the link:

Outside the Lines video 

Now, I had already heard about all of this and of course was disappointed and shocked.  I thought I would like to be able to say I am not surprised, seeing that I was no stranger to all the hazing that went on in the band, which I will get into later, but I was very surprised. 

They finally killed someone with hazing.  And a Drum Major no less.

Back when I marched in the Hundred (1998-1999), and even after, there were incidents where folks were getting hit so hard their organs would shut down (kidneys, rectum, etc), which you would think would be enough to say, “Okay, let’s reevaluate this whole hazing thing”.  But old habits die hard. 

After I read the article I watched the “Outside the Lines” report with Natova and we both felt ashamed of the school, disappointed that FAMU always pops up on the radar because of something so negative.  In fact I told her about a time I was talking with a teacher here in Abu Dhabi, from the states, and the topic of my school came up and he actually asked me about the hazing.  That’s not good.  Natova and I talked, reminisced and I knew I would have to blog about this.  This post may be pretty lengthy so I will split it into two parts.  The first will be my opinion on this particular hazing incident.  The second will be my own personal recollections of some hazing situations I experienced while I marched.  

Hazing: Old Habits Die Hard

When I first heard that a Drum Major from FAMU died as a result of hazing, I immediately knew that it had to have involved other Drum Majors.  If you are a Drum Major you only get hazed by other Drum Majors, because you are at the top.  So I thought there would be a huge scandal about how the Drum Majors killed each other.  It didn’t quite end up that way.  Apparently, he was going over on Bus C. As a freshman in the band, I knew two things about Bus C: one was that it was the percussion bus, the other was that unless you were percussion, entering onto that bus meant you pretty much had a death wish (a sentiment I wish could have remained hyperbole).   Keep in mind that this is when they aren’t even trying to bring anyone over (but I must say this is coming from the perspective of a freshman in the band at the time so it may seem blown out of proportion.  At the time of course, it did not seem that way).    

I should probably explain a few things for those unfamiliar with Greek terminology.  “Crossing” means that you are initiated into a group, and getting “brought over” is the process by which you are initiated.  It usually involves secrecy, rituals, and a lot of pain.  Sadly the best analogy I have for this is when someone gets jumped into a gang.  Like me, you may find it strange that educated college students are performing the same practices of uneducated street thugs.  Sad but true.  

I had heard of Bus C when I was marching, but I was never overly concerned with it.  As I mentioned before, I only thought it was for the percussion section, not Drum Majors.  Guess I was wrong.  In the article (which is a really good article by the way, the best  and most thorough I have read about the FAMU’s band and its “secret societies” as he calls it) its mentioned how the Drum Major was doing it to earn the respect of the band.  From what I remember that was the only reason why people crossed, for respect… and camaraderie I suppose but I never bought into that as you will see as I write more on this post.  

Looking back having joined the United States Marine Corps and endured the toughest boot camp in the country a few years after I marched with the Hundred, I kind of get a sense what the hazing was supposed to do for the band.  After boot camp I did feel like those guys were my brothers, and I had never had brothers before, other than my freshman brothers in the band.  The DI’s (Drill Instructors) never hit us (though they would grab so hard they might as well have hit us) but they would make it very uncomfortable for us by “smoking” us (continuous vigorous exercise for one person) between the racks (beds) or our trips to the Quarterdeck (area at the front of the squad bay with enough room for a group smoking session) for ungodly long amounts of time (hours).  They really specialized in mind games though, like making you think that because we messed up we are being punished with the quarterdeck when in actuality they may have had that day planned for exercise long before our platoon was even formed.  There is tons of stuff I could get into but that I can save that for another blog.

The point is when came out on the other side, I had never felt as much pride and accomplishment for anything as I did for getting through that boot camp and holding the title “Marine”.  We had definitely gone through something and come out on the other side.  This is what the hazing tries to do.  In fact, to be honest, I think it did serve its purpose back in the day.  If you want to know why the band performed so well?  It’s because half of the band is scared out of their mind.  The Freshman know that if they mess up, it will come back to them, and they will pay a consequence mentally and/or physically.  The only way this process works though is by the Upperclassmen being responsible enough to administer it, particularly with the latter, which has not been done in the last several years- hence all the press.   Don’t get me wrong, I am not a supporter of hazing.  In fact I hated it as you will read later, but I do understand it a little better now than I did before.  

But the pride I mentioned before is important.   It is what all fraternities and sororities aim to do when they put their pledges through hell.  The same for the Hundred.  They want you to earn it, so their mentality is the more you hurt for it, the more hell you go through to get to the other side, the more you will value it when you’re in.  They need to know that you will take care of it when you are in charge once they go on to do other things.  They need to know the band is in good hands.  And with this I can’t argue.  I think it was Thomas Paine who said “That which we attain too easily is esteemed to lightly” (By the way, never has a quote ever embodied a culture like it does the U.A.E.). 

Make no mistake about it, those band members that are hazing in the Hundred, they love that band.  I mean really love the band, and not just any band, but that band: The Marching 100.  For most of them, and this does sound cliché I admit but it is true, it’s the only family they have.  For a long time, the band has always been their family since they were in Middle School and being a part of something as great as the Hundred is just the best thing that has ever happened in their lives.  Literally.  So when Joe Freshman says he wants to be a part of it, they aren’t going to let him in just because he says he wants to be there.  Just because he saw FAMU perform at Battle of the Bands and he thought it would be cool to rattle.  No, he has to earn this.

And here is where things go wrong.  There are a number of factors that contribute to how the simple idea of earning your way into something special gets distorted.  The first is how the mentality of the hazers has escalated and even transformed into a very dangerous philosophy.  The mindset has become “the beatings I give needs to be proportionate to my love for the band”.   And things get out of control.   I have already told you how strong their feelings are for the Hundred so you can imagine all that bottled up, shaken, and erupted through a wooden paddle.  

The other insidious element is the young mindsets of the people in charge.  Back when hazing was the norm and accepted in all black college bands, especially the sixties, seventies, and eighties, the students were the same age but in my opinion there was a different mentality.  Maybe they just built kids tougher back then but I don’t ever remember band members losing organ function or being beaten to death as a result of the hazing.  And from the stories I hear, hazing was very much rampant and everyone knew about it.  So even though they were the same ages as the students doing it nowadays, their minds weren’t the same.  Now, kids have Mr. Tough Guy, Gangsta, thug, goon, mentalities, and so they try to do Gangsta, thug, goon hazing.  And everyone wants to give it to the freshman as bad as they got it themselves.  They never do, though.  No, they always end up giving it to them worse, and then it just gets passed on.  So over the years, the band itself has developed a fatally inflated understanding of what a proper beating should be (sounds crazy writing that phrase: “proper beating”).   To get a better understanding, it’s like when you are beaten by your parents.  They beat you hard, you pass it on to your children, who beat their kids harder.  By the time five or six generations come and go, it has gotten to the point where a kid loses a finger every time he acts up.  Crazy right.  This example may be exaggerated, but I think this is a lot of what is going on with FAM’s band.  Also, it doesn’t help when they are all drinking, which brings me to the next factor.

Liquor is no stranger to any college campus, or fraternity.  I don’t think it has ever helped any situation anywhere, ever, and this is no different.  No one knows how far is too far when you they have too much Grey Goose in them.  By the way I haven’t heard of alcohol being involved in this particular incident.  But I do know that “check- up sessions” (routine and ritualistic beatings and paddling during the process of crossing- wow, it sounds even worse when you put it on paper) are a social event for upperclassmen, and the liquor is always flowing.  The detrimental combination of all of these together should be pretty obvious, so no need for me to spend much time talking about it. 

This last incident takes the cake though.  It would only be in the back of my mind that someone might  die from hazing, but if you pressed me on it I probably would not have thought  it was really possible.  I mean, do you know how hard someone would have to beat someone, particularly an athletic, physically fit, twenty something year old drum major to actually kill him? Well, unfortunately we found out. 

The only good thing that could come of this is that hazing, that is hazing at this magnitude in the band, and probably on campus, will stop.  And yes, I do think that it had to take someone to die for it to actually happen. 

 Knowing this is more than unfortunate.  It’s sad.    

My Personal Hell of Hazing and Harassment in the Hundred: A Love Story

I thought I would give another perspective of hazing from my own experience. I got to FAMU in the Fall of 1998.  I was fresh out of high school and eager to march, ready for the challenge.  I figure if there is anyone I know that can do it, it’s me (that what I used to tell myself, and still do, when times get tough).   So Predrill, or band tryouts if you will, lasted two weeks and yes it was hard.  We were on the field almost 6 or 7 hours a day.  The sun was hot and you felt like you were in Hell, in every respect.  That I expected.  What I did not expect was all the extra-curricular stuff that was “expected” of me.  

As the article points out, every section has its own frat (or “secret society”-using that term is hilarious to me because it has a connotation of sophistication that I would never attribute to the guys in this organization, and neither would you if you saw them. But I must admit, as far as the secret part goes, it is fairly accurate).  The trumpet section has the Screamin’ Demons and the Hollywood Hoods.  If I am not mistaken, it’s the only section that you have to cross twice.  Why you might ask? As far as I can tell it’s just another reason to beat the crap out of you, but I’m only speculating.  The more I look back on it the more I see it as the inevitable logical result ofa bunch of little boys making stuff up as they go.  But I digress.  

So apparently all of my other Freshman brothers in the section were familiar with the sectional frats but me.  There were three that decided not to participate from the very beginning.  The first was a strong Muslim guy; he was vehemently against subjecting himself to hazing.  Another was, well…gay, although he was not yet out of the closet, that would come a his Junior year (though it was one of those situations where he didn’t even have to come out of the closet because everyone could clearly see him already in it).  And the last guy was just plain corny and weird.  These descriptions may seem harsh but I love the heck out these guys, they are my brothers.   This group became known as the “Outcasts”.  And I did not want to join them.  

My strategy was always to blend and not stand out, do what everyone else does, to not make waves.  I was not a big fan of attention, unless I am performing.   So I couldn’t be a part of that group of guys because they were all clearly….”strange” in one way or another, and I did not think I was any of them.   So I stayed in the fold and stayed on track to cross my section.  

That lasted up until around the second game of the season, at Norfolk State in Virginia, and keep in mind at this point I am kind of going through the motions just doing what everyone else is doing.  We finally make it to Norfolk after a 13 hour bus ride, maybe 14 or 15, with the stops, and we are just exhausted from travelling.  All I was looking forward to doing was collapsing onto my bed.  Since this was my first road trip, I was unfamiliar with all the perks, one of which was “per dium”. Each band member was given $72 to live off of for the next few days while we were here.  Nice, especially for a broke Freshman.   

We got off the bus and immediately things went bad.  Apparently one of my Freshman brothers had shown the Upperclassmen in our section his room number.  I remember thinking “so what, just don’t open the door.”  Don’t ask me how this happened, but the result was all 14 of us ended up piling into hotel room, essentially hiding out so that the Upperclassmen doesn’t find out where we are.  We also ended up having our Freshman Sec (freshman section leader) have a secret meet with one of them where he was required to give them our “per dium.”  Yes, all of our money (14 *72= $1008).  So in the course of one hour, I went from having a nice comfortable bed and a pocket full of money, to sleeping on the floor, huddled next to the side table with someone’s feet in my face, asking myself what the hell are we doing right now?  We didn’t have food, or any money to buy it with.  But someone had some crackers and that we passed around for dinner.  

I think that might have been it.  I know it happened sometime that night, but if there was one thing that might have pushed me to making a decision to quit trying to cross the section, I think it was that: literally, having to share a pack of crackers between 14 guys.  What impacted me the most about it was that it was not even an upperclassmen hazing ritual.  We really didn’t have enough food to eat and had to share a pack of crackers huddled in a corner of a packed room, hiding from the stupid upperclassmen who I didn’t even like, licking the crumbs from our fingers hoping it will fill our hungry stomachs, but knowing that it wouldn’t.  Though I may reflect on this with light words, I will say now as seriously as I possibly can convey that not even with boot camp with the Marines, have I ever before or since come close to feeling as degraded, empty, and ashamed as I had at that moment sitting on the floor in that corner.  I can’t stress enough how horrible it was sitting there.  I was hungry, exhausted and had no idea any of this was coming.  I remember thinking this is what slaves must have felt like (though I admit that may have been dramatic, but at the time it seemed an appropriate analogy).  Maybe it just brought back some uncomfortable memories when times were tough when I was little, when my parents tried to make ends meet (though I must say it never got so bad that we were sharing crackers).  I swear, I just wanted to play in the damn band.  That’s it.  I was willing to put in the work on the field and in the practice room but this…

So that was it.  It was clear to me that I would not be “doing the section” but I had to muster the guts to say it.  At the time I was still very shy and not outspoken at all.  I found some hope in my freshman brothers because as we sat cramped in the room, we pretty much began talk of what we wouldn’t allow them to do to us.  I began to feel inspired and I was ready for a revolt.  So when the upperclassmen gave us instruction to go up their room, I was ready for an all out brawl.  It’s funny because I had never been a fight before except for the occasion scrap between my best friend.   But you know what, I was ready to fight that day.  I just needed someone to throw the first punch.  I just needed someone to initiate and I was itching to launch myself into all of them as the madness ensued.  But to my dismay, when we got up to their room, the Freshman Sec immediately folded and we all followed suit.  I was beyond disappointed.  They opened the door and we all filed in heads down and lined up around the room waiting to be paddled, which sounds innocent, almost funny, but it’s not at all.  It’s probably more accurate to say we all lined up around the room to be summarily beaten with a thick 2 foot long wooden paddle by strong, angry black men, some of which was about to have their first opportunity to beat other people since they had crossed last year.  After I received my turn (yes it hurt) I was actually pulled onto spat duty (sounds gross, but spats are the white coving that goes onto the shoes.  I was in the bathroom cleaning all the upperclassman’s spats). 

I grew impatient and angry as I heard the agony of my brothers receiving swats and I suppose I still had rebellion on my mind.  It was building for a little while and then I heard a cry of pain that sent me over the edge.  Before I knew it I threw down the spats in disgust in the sink, turned to the supervising upperclassman and asked him “Do you do this every year!?” 

Now, I have no idea why I asked him that particular question.  Maybe in a way I really wanted to know the answer, in other words is it normal that you beat the crap out your freshman?  But what made the impact was the way I said it, which was more like “I’m tired of this (insert expletive here)!”  Besides the upperclassmen, I was in there with another freshman brother and all three of us just stopped, as did time.  I remember that moment as distinctly as I do eating the crackers on the floor in a dark room.  No one really knew what to do because it was a shock to them, and to me too.  Finally, as amused as he could be, the upperclassmen grabbed me and brought me into the center of the room where everyone was getting their swats.  With the glee of a man that just struck gold, he asked me to repeat to the trumpet section leader, who presided over the entire check-up session, what I had just said.  And I did, though more slowly and quieter than before.  This time, even to me, it sounded like the stupidest question ever formed in human history.  My freshman brothers were still lined around the room and I saw a couple of heads drop in despair at my mistake.  The section leader smiled and nodded, looking vaguely off into the room thinking of some special punishment to give me.  I had probably surprised him, he didn’t expect to have to get creative so early in the process, but I could tell he welcomed the challenge.  He had me stand behind him while he finished up with the rest of the Freshman.  Long story short, we had to leave before for the game before he got a chance to do anything.  

When we got back to Tallahassee, during one of the practices on the patch, while we were at the benches, Doc (Dr. White) gave us a lecture on hazing.  Apparently someone had “leaked” the trumpet section’s exploits in Norfolk.  It kind of hard to explain but for some reason the lecture actually added a heavier, more somber tone to the band at that moment.  I can’t recall what Doc said but it seemed to have quieted us.  And as you will see shortly, it’s the silence that I remember most about this particular incident.  

The trumpet section leader was sitting next to me and we both listened to Doc.  When Doc had either moved onto doing something else or maybe gave an extended pause, the section leader started speaking with a surprisingly honest tone about the hazing situation.  The last thing I remember him saying was, “You don’t have to do it. It ain’t for everybody.  All they gotta say is it ain’t for me.”  It wasn’t really clear who he was talking to.  He didn’t look at anyone but you could tell he wasn’t talking to himself.  I think he had freshman on either side of him so it may have been intended for both us.  

I didn’t think about what I wanted to say because I already knew that, but I still found myself struggling to get the words out.  Finally, I turned my head to him, to look him in the eye and I said gently, with complete sincerity, “It ain’t for me.”  Again that silence seemed deafening and incredibly long.  I waited for a reaction. He never turned to look at me, just slowly nodded his head looking forward.  His face seemed regrettable as if to say “sorry to lose you” and there was empathy there too.   It’s like he understood and accepted my resignation.   Later one of my freshman brothers had who overheard everything told me he was proud of me.  

The rest of that day as you would expect I felt I had a load lifted off my back.  I felt free again, as if I had my life back.  I understood that I would be a part of the “outcasts” but it was okay because I preferred that to the alternative.  Unfortunately my happiness was short lived because the whole hazing thing kind of blew up.  There became speculation as to who was leaking all this information and naming names and guess who’s name got tied to it?  Yup, the guy that just conveniently decided to leave the line and not cross his section right when all of this stuff exploded.  They thought I was feeding Doc and other officials info.  This, of course, was not the case.  I just wanted out.  Ironically all the outcasts became even more ostracized because of it, drawing even more attention to us, most notably me.

Eventually the university started its own investigations into the incident in Norfolk, which by this time had become public knowledge.  Several freshman trumpet players, including me, received summons to show up in front of a board of FAMU officials.  I was pretty scared about that because I didn’t know how any of this stuff worked.  I wasn’t sure if I would get kicked out of school just for participating in hazing, as it had been rumored.  What I did know is that I wasn’t going to get caught in a lie, which the summons stated would be a serious violation and strongly urged us to tell the truth.  So I decided to tell the truth, and answer their questions honestly.  My strategy was to tell the truth, and plead freshman stupidity as the reason why I participated and to tell them I will never do it again.  All I knew is that I didn’t know how I was going to call my mother and tell her how I got kicked out of college after only being there a couple of months for doing something so stupid, something I didn’t even like doing while I was doing it or even wanted to do in the first place. 

I was nervous at first when I got there.  There was a panel of suited men and women sitting around a conference table along with some of my freshman brothers.  I sat down too and we began.  Now, I probably would have been more conflicted about telling it like it was if it was my freshman brothers who were in the hot seat, but it became clear based on the questioning that the focus was on the upperclassmen.  Now, at this point I’m fairly relieved and I couldn’t care less about the upperclassmen.  And of course still I did not want to risk lying in front of these people to give them any excuse to kick me out of school. 

When all the investigations were done, 4 upperclass trumpet players were kicked out of the band and expelled from school.  Two of which I and the rest of my freshman bros identified, one the section leader, the other was from Jacksonville and went to my high school.  He was the only upperclassmen I respected or even remotely liked, but my fear of getting caught lying was stronger than my allegiance to him at the time.  Though, ‘till this day I don’t know if that was a mistake and sometimes wish I could have lied about it.    

So to wrap it up, our entire freshman class was pretty much despised the rest of the year by the upperclassmen.  For me it actually bled over into my Neo-Fight year (Sophomore), as I was literally hated by the Section leader, whose close friend was one of those expelled.  The guy, I’m sure, hates me to this day.  It was later in the season, in Jacksonville actually if I’m not mistaken, that the saxophones went through a similar scandal, and finally the clarinets had their issues, to say the least, when my freshman brother lost his kidney function from all the paddling (mentioned in the “Outside the Lines” article).  

Funny thing about all of this is that when I think back to my days in the Hundred, I don’t think about any of that stuff.  I don’t think about all the bouts I had my following year with the section leader, my struggle almost daily to just to retain my position so I can march, the harassment, how if I was late even once the section leader would use that as an excuse to fill my position and sometimes I would not march in the game as a result even though I had been to practice the whole week.  I just don’t think about that much.  Hell, besides Norfolk, I barely remember it.  But what I do remember and what I do think about is all the great music we got to play, and the power and sound of the band.  And of being a part of that power, that sound.  It’s one thing to just listen to it but another to be immersed into the depths of it.  The sound becomes tangible, you can feel it on your skin and in your body.  When we move, specifically when we rattle, it’s almost like a ritual.  It makes the performance complete, it takes on a life of its own, and you as a performer become a part of it.  Yes, we are creating it, but at the same time it is creating you.  That beat, the one we rattle to, if you have ever heard it, it can become catchy after a game or two.  When you heard it a whole season, you grow to love it.  When you hear it every day, every practice, every session, all the time, you grow to need it.  It is a part of your very soul, and is very hard to let go.

I don’t mean to make this sound spooky or cult-ish because it is a very beautiful experience, nor do I want to make it sound like a religion, it is not (though there are some in the band that may interpret this experience of what I’m describing here a little too dogmatically and can try to make the band into something religious, i.e. worshiping the band;  that is not my intent here).  But I would bet there is something spiritual there.  Not in a religious way, but in a way that involves a genuine, authentic love for something, like a family made of up of people you don’t like and others you do.  In the end, neither is important, because we all agree that the music and the performance is what matters.  Everyone becomes connected, moving together but different, each section unique making up a huge moving line of energy that is impossible not to become engrossed in once you see it.  As a band member, I would dare say it is our chance to really experience life in one of its greatest, most exuberant expressions, to experience a piece of perfection, even if only for the 10 minutes we are on field for the show during halftime or the 4 minutes it takes to play a song in the stands.  For a few moments you get to become a part of something wonderful, or more specifically become something wonderful, even if nothing makes sense for you outside of having those drumsticks in your hands or that instrument to your mouth.  

And that is what I remember about the band.  That is what I will always take from those two years I got a chance to play with World Renowned Marching 100.  I guess they will take a year off but I hope get to be in the stands when they come back.  It’s going to be something to experience.