September 28, 2025
Hazing, particularly at HBCUs, has received more attention in recent years due in part to incidents like the one that happened to Southern University student Caleb Wilson.
Fort Valley State University has suspended its Blue Marching Band amid hazing allegations. FVSU’s Executive Director of Marketing and Communications, Britney Smith, told WGXA that the university directed the band to “suspend all activity due to allegations of hazing” on Sept. 25, just before the school’s Homecoming Week.
According to their report, the announcement came just before Fort Valley State’s contest against Tuskegee University, which the team won 27-20. The victory marked the first under new head coach Marlon Watson, who previously served on Prairie View A&M’s coaching staff and was named Fort Valley State’s head coach in February 2025.
Smith continued, “FVSU takes acts of hazing and allegations of hazing seriously and the matter is being investigated. The safety and well-being of our students and Wildcat community are always our top priority. At this time, no further details are available.”
Fort Valley State was recently ranked as the number one public HBCU in Georgia by U.S. News and World Report.
The news comes only a few months after the BBC reported that Caleb McCray, a 23-year-old member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, and bandmate of slain Southern University A&M student Caleb Wilson was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of Wilson in February 2025.
Hazing, particularly at HBCUs, has received more attention in recent years due in part to incidents like the one that happened to Wilson.
Although Southern University appeared not to take action against its band, it did, however, expel the Beta Sigma chapter of its Omega Psi Psi fraternity from participating in Greek life on campus after its investigation of the hazing incident.
The investigation determined ultimately that the fraternity, not the band, was at fault for the off-campus hazing that occurred during the attempt to pledge Wilson into the fraternity that tragically concluded with his death.
In the 2017 Netflix film “Burning Sands,” an account of hazing at the fictional Frederick Douglass University is depicted by Gerald McMurray, the film’s co-writer and director, who is also a member of the Omega Psi Psi fraternity.
According to Andscape, McMurray was inspired to create the film by the 2011 death of Robert Champion, a Florida A&M University drum major who was killed in a hazing ritual and whose family was later paid $1.1 million by the university in a settlement.
Unlike Wilson’s death, however, Champion died during a band initiation, not a fraternity pledging incident gone tragically wrong.
McMurray, a Howard University alum, told Rotten Tomatoes, he wanted to create dialogue through his film.
“I wanted to tell a story to create a dialogue,” McMurray noted. “I wanted to show young black men at a Black college and the challenges they go through on the path to manhood. If you haven’t seen the whole movie, don’t pass judgment. There is more to this movie than hazing. The brotherhood and the family I acquired made me who I am but that’s what separates pledging from hazing.”
RELATED CONTENT: Southern University Expels Omega Psi Phi Fraternity After Hazing Death Of Student Caleb Wilson
