Orlando Sentinel editorial board rips Scott for "nosing in" at FAMU

The Orlando Sentinel's editorial board slammed Gov. Rick Scott's actions against FAMU with the strongest language that has appeared in any statewide newspaper. Its position is a 100 percent contrast to that of the St. Petersburg Times' editorial board, which cheered on the governor's attempt to strong-arm FAMU trustees into suspending the university president (without regard for the potential harm to FAMU's accreditation).

Make sure to vote on the quality of what the Sentinel wrote here.

From the editorial "Gov. Scott should nose out of school business:"

With a probe under way into the alleged hazing-related death of Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion, Gov. Rick Scott last week stuck his gubernatorial nose where it didn't belong.

Supposedly concerned over the probe's transparency, Scott called for FAMU President James Ammons' temporary ouster.


Wisdom prevailed Monday when FAMU's board of trustees slammed the door on Scott's intrusion. As Tommy Mitchell, president of the FAMU National Alumni Association, put it: "How do you make a determination before all the evidence is in?"

Precisely. Board chairman Solomon Badger generously allowed that Scott likely was "well intended," given Champion's death and FAMU's history of hazing.

But Scott's butting into the business of FAMU's is reminiscent of other over-reaches this year, such as moving unilaterally to sell state-owned aircraft and breaching the separation of powers by holding up hundreds of proposed state rules.

The governor's ham-handed call to oust Ammons — who leads one of Florida's four historically black colleges and universities — also inadvertently created an unneeded racial distraction from the core issue: eradicating college hazing.

Scott's intervention had critics noting that serious hazing incidents at largely white Florida universities — including the University of Miami, where Chad Meredith's death in 2002 inspired a 2005 hazing law — never drew such gubernatorial intervention from Tallahassee.

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