The Florida Board of Governors (BOG) and Rufus Montgomery, Gov. Rick Scott’s go-to trustee at FAMU, both jumped on Julian E. White’s bandwagon shortly after the university announced his termination on November 23. They seemed to think that he could give them enough fire power to finally take down FAMU President James H. Ammons. The ex-band director had a large number of FAMU supporters who wanted revenge on the senior administration that fired him.
White gained some momentum early on when the CBS Evening News and other media organizations gave him a soap box to use against his former boss. He looked even stronger when Willie Gary signed on as his co-counsel. But the recent bombshells about misconduct and suspected financial mismanagement inside the program he led were just too much for White or his followers to explain away.
The BOG and Rufus now have to draw up a new plan to try and rally Rattlers against Ammons. White is no longer in any position to help them.
On Nov. 29, then-BOG Chairwoman Ava Parker sent FAMU stating that the board was going to investigate White’s allegations that "he received little support despite repeatedly advising current and former university administrators of hazing activities within the Marching 100 band." It did not specifically mention any intent to examine Ammons’ claim about a lack of competence on White’s part.
Scott made no effort to criticize the one-sided focus of the BOG investigation. Rather than call for a fair investigation into the disagreement between Ammons and White, his office said that it wanted the governor’s inspector general and the BOG inspector general to work together to review FAMU’s hazing problem.
Rufus expressed anger at a Dec. 8 Board of Trustees meeting about how White was instructed to clear out his desk. He used it as one of the justifications behind his unsuccessful motion to suspend Ammons. Seven days after Montgomery dropped the ball, Scott finally went public to show that he was the real leader behind the push to remove Ammons from office. The "suspend Ammons" campaign broke down after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools scolded Scott for jeopardizing FAMU’s accreditation.
The Dec. 8 Board of Trustees turned out to be the high point for those who thought White’s allegations could bring an end to the Ammons administration. White’s claim that he did all he could to stop hazing ultimately failed to withstand media scrutiny.
Many FAMUans could not believe their ears when White told ESPN that he’d never heard of the "Crossing Bus C" ritual before Nov. 19, 2011. Another embarrassment came when two Marching 100 staffers resigned after being linked a hazing incident involving the university’s Kappa Kappa Psi chapter.
By the time Ammons reported that 101 ineligible individuals were on White’s Fall 2012 roster, the writing was on the wall. White finally stopped fighting and resigned.
The bias that the BOG and Scott's top crony on the FAMU board displayed by siding with White before all the facts were even known shows that they were never objective and were never committed to finding the truth.
