The Southern University marching band, one of the nation's premier college marching bands, has been temporarily disbanded as the East Baton Rouge district attorney investigates a hazing incident that led to several band members being hospitalized over the Bayou Classic weekend the arrest of seven band members alleged hazing violations last fall.
East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore told The (Baton Rouge) Advocate last week that he is moving forward with prosecution of seven Southern University band members arrested for hazing late last year.
Moore said the process is taking longer than expected because the two primary victims do not live in Louisiana.
Southern University Chancellor Kofi Lomotey said last week that the marching band has been temporarily "disbanded" for the semester. With the exception of an occasional parade, the SU Human Jukebox performs less often during the spring semester because football season has ended.
"The band has been disbanded and students are having to reapply, in a sense," Lomotey said.
Such actions are important to "increase expectations" and highlight the seriousness of the matter, he said. "That kind of behavior is not to be accepted," Lomotey said of hazing concerns.
The prosecution of the seven band members stems from a recent alleged hazing incident that was part of a Nov. 25 initiation into the marching band's unofficial French horn fraternity - "Mellow Phi Fellow" - prior to the 2008 State Farm Bayou Classic football game, according to arrest records. The hazing occurred at a home north of Baton Rouge.
According to police reports, the three victims were allegedly beaten with a 2-by-4-inch wooden board.
Two of the three victims were hospitalized with injuries that could have led to possible organ failure, authorities said.
Since being released from the hospital, the two band members have returned to their homes in Mississippi and Georgia, Moore said, as did five of the alleged perpetrators.
East Baton Rouge authorities and university officials have refused to release the names of the victims.
Moore told The Advocate that his office recently received all of the reports and photographs taken by sheriff's deputies.
The district attorney's office is in the process of scheduling meetings with the victims to gather additional information, Moore said.
The district attorney's office has not yet determined whether it will proceed with charges against all seven who were arrested through a grand jury investigation or by charging each defendant through a bill of information, which is a not a grand jury indictment but a formal charge of the crime.
"Any time a student is injured on campus or at any campus-related event, it's serious," Moore told The Advocate. "And hazing is taken very seriously."
Some students dream of being in Southern's Human Jukebox marching band, Moore said, "only to have to be beaten" for initiation.
Dr. Lomotey said that the seven students who were arrested - all of whom were released on bail - remain indefinitely suspended by the university.
The seven undergraduate students are accused of "ritualistic torture" and were booked with aggravated second-degree battery and ritualistic acts, which carries a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.
While some band students are still practicing together on their own time, Lomotey told The Advocate that the university does not plan to "reconstitute" the band during the spring 2009 semester.
Southern spokesman Ed Pratt said that while some freshman band members have been performing at Southern home basketball games at the Felton G. Clark Activity Center, they are not considered the full marching band.
Southern's band director Lawrence Jackson, refused to comment when he returned a phone call to The Advocate, saying only that he was not authorized by the university to discuss the matter.
"I'm not at liberty to say anything," Jackson said.
This article was originally published in the February 09, 2009 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper |
