Ohio State band director wants job back after scandal

Ohio State University's former band leader wants his job back.

Jon Waters was fired in late July after an investigation revealed an alleged sexualized culture within the marching band. Waters maintains that while certain inappropriate behavior existed at some point in the band's history, he was working to end it.

The school is standing firm in its accusations, CBS News' Vinita Nair reports.

Waters insists that the 23-page report that led Ohio State to fire him as director of the OSU marching band is deeply flawed.

"The things that were written about in the report seemed incomplete to me. They seemed in fact to be things that were vestiges of the past, and they seemed to me to be really inaccurate," Waters told CBS News.

The report outlines accusations of a sexualized culture within the band, including sexually explicit nicknames and rituals. The report claims Waters knew of the behavior and failed to stop it.

But Waters argues that's just not the case.

"We are given this culture, and we feel the need to reform it, and we take the steps to reform it, and yet unfortunately this report doesn't talk about any of the reformation that we did on the culture," Waters said.

In the weeks since his removal, current and former band members have stepped forward disputing the allegations, and more than 12,000 people have signed a petition for his reinstatement.

But earlier this week President Michael Drake stood by his decision.

"I was personally profoundly disappointed to see that the report found cultural problems in the band that needed to be addressed in the forthright fashion because we needed to move forward," Drake said.

Waters' lawyer released a formal request for his reinstatement, writing his firing was a "rush to judgment" based on a "report that is now obvious was replete with ... error."

Waters hopes Drake and the Board of Trustees will at least consider his return to the band.

"They owe it to the community to not let some report that came out of nowhere and was dropped like a bomb on the band. We can't let that take down all of these years of tradition," Waters said.

In a letter released Thursday, Waters and his lawyer asked that Ohio State University's Board of Trustees consider his reinstatement when they meet in late August.

Waters said he's not only looking forward to being director again; he's hoping to restore what he sees as the marred reputation of the OSU marching band.