The decision to enroll at Texas A&M University can never be made lightly, for it means far more than choosing a school. It means choosing an identity.
Being an Aggie forever defines you. It confers a certain social standing, authorizes entry into a certain business network, and guarantees that despite the school’s high academic reputation you will serve as the butt of withering jokes. (Why does it take two Aggies to eat a bowl of soup? One has to hold his hand under the fork to catch the drippings.)
Texas Aggies are prone to idiosyncratic vocabulary, phrases like “Gig ‘Em Aggies!” which roughly translates as “Go, team!” They revere acts of tradition, drama and symbolism, as made obvious at home football games, elaborate pageants whose rituals bring out the essence of Texas A&M. In a legendary 1922 football game, student E. King Gill came out of the stands, donned a uniform and stood ready to be his rapidly depleting team’s “12th Man.”
Ever since, in observance of the faithful 12th Man, students have stood for the duration of every game, symbolically at the ready.
“I always knew I was going to A&M no matter what,” said Rachel McDow, a sophomore who didn’t apply to any other school, and now wears the same khaki uniform worn 25 years earlier by her father, who raised her on A&M tales. “That’s how it starts,” she said, thinking back on his stories, “and then it’s in your blood.”
To outsiders, particularly anyone beyond the Lone Star State’s borders, Aggies struggle to explain this distinct culture, and they generally give up with the exasperated observation of the obvious: “You’re not an Aggie.”
Last week, the world glimpsed what it means to be an Aggie, when revered tradition and unprecedented tragedy collided. Shortly before 3 a.m. Thursday, the university’s famed bonfire stack–a towering mass of logs and object of student passion–collapsed, killing 11 students and one recent graduate, and injuring 27 others.
Funerals began Saturday, with services in the Houston suburb of Bellaire for Nathan Scott West, a sophomore oceanography major.
Two victims remained in critical condition while three were in serious condition.
Waiting rooms near the campus were crowded with students Saturday as they offered blood, sympathy and support for those still hospitalized. Up to 40 students have maintained a 24-hour vigil at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center.
At Thursday evening’s memorial, conducted while two victims still lay trapped beneath the massive pile of logs, students spontaneously closed the service by singing “Amazing Grace.” As the wind-whipped night wore on, with cranes painstakingly plucking away logs stacked on the flat grassy plain called the polo fields, sorority women passed through the vigil of several thousand students and townspeople, offering sandwiches, fried chicken, cookies and solace. One teary-eyed student stopped here and there offering sweaters and sweatshirts to strangers, explaining by saying, “I just raided my closet.”
“People ask, `What is an Aggie?’ This is what an Aggie is,” said Owen Young, an A&M junior. “You see how people are here.”
The grief was compounded because the source of death and injury is one of the most revered symbols in the history of Texas A&M, founded in 1876 as an all-male military institution. The bonfire has been a fixture since it began in 1909, growing to such a size that the Guinness Book of World Records took note, and university officials imposed a strict height limit of 55 feet.
“Bonfire is not a stack of wood,” said Kyle Foster, a 36-year-old A&M graduate who lives in Bryan, College Station’s twin city. “Bonfire is a concept.” Bonfire, he noted, never uses “the” as a qualifier. “The bonfire is what other schools build,” he said. “Bonfire is ours.”
L.E. Sheppard, a 63-year-old retired businessman from Crockett, Texas, graduated from the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, as it was then called in 1957, when it was still an all-male military institution, with participation in its famed Corps required. To this day, when he meets a fellow Aggie, he feels instant kinship and trust. “I know where they’ve come from and the rigors they’ve been through,” he said.
In his day, in order to be allowed dessert (“cush” in Aggie-speak), freshmen (“fish”) would have to answer questions from upperclassmen, and one of the questions one could expect would be, “What does Bonfire symbolize?” The correct answer, which Sheppard can still recite word for word, is: “Sir, Bonfire symbolizes the flame of love in the heart of every Aggie for his school and a burning desire to beat the hell out of t.u. (the lower-case Aggie put-down for the University of Texas).”
Bonfire is part of the large lore that surrounds one of the nation’s most famed football rivalries, the source of irreverent pranks that have become Texas lore. The most famous of the pranks led to the naming of the longhorn that is the University of Texas mascot, BEVO. In 1915, when A&M beat Texas 13-0, some pranksters branded the score into the longhorn’s hide. Texans then altered the brand, turning the 13 into a B, the hyphen into an E, and inserting a V before the O.
Sheppard, who says he can still spot an Aggie ring on someone’s hand from 10 paces, recalled with joy the night he and an A&M pal literally sowed wild oats into the Bermuda grass at the Texas stadium. By the time of the great game, the letters AMC, for A&M College, were growing green amid the dying grass of the field, the effect only somewhat diminished by the groundskeeper’s chickens, which had eaten some of the seed.
Over the years, Texas fans have tried to set Bonfire afire early. Attempts have included fire bombs from planes (1933 and 1948) and explosives (1956), according to A&M university records. In 1957 and 1994, Bonfire had to be rebuilt in a few days because of collapses, but only the death of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 stopped the lighting of the bonfire.
This year, there will be no bonfire. Investigators from the university and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration are continuing their work to determine what caused the collapse of the structure, built of large logs wired together around a center pole, created by splicing two telephone poles together.
In a place so steeped in tradition, no one seems to want Bonfire to come to an end as a result of the accident. “I think that’s in the heart of everybody, that we want (Bonfire) to continue,” Texas A&M University President Ray Bower said Friday. But, he added, ending Bonfire must remain an option.
One tradition will certainly continue, quite poignantly on Dec. 7. Silver Taps, as it is called, is described as one of A&M’s most sacred and solemn traditions–and one Aggies hope never to have reason to attend. Dating to 1898, Silver Taps ceremonies are held on the first Tuesday of the month. With chimes from Albritton Tower and a 21-gun salute, Aggies pay respect to the memory of any students or faculty who have died within the previous month.
“And this is my favorite part,” explained Jackie Gold, a Corps member from Wimberley, Texas, who is “the first Ag in my family.” “The bugler plays taps to the north, south and west but not to the east, because the sun will never rise on those Aggies again.”
