Because many of us older guys give up our weekends, and evenings to recruit for the University that we love.
Forty-one years ago, when I first stepped on campus, the difference between A&M and other schools was massive. Many of those who went thru those years on the A&M campus succeeded as individuals and leaders, including Rick Perry, the current commanding general of the Air Force, the head ranger of the largest Federal Park in California, and others too numerous to name. The glue that made us one was Bonfire. We built it not just to the probably safer 45-60 feet tall that it is now, but we topped out at 101 feet, five tiers into the sky. We built with logs, large ones, and used cables, not bailing wire. We had a compact surface that had been used for over thirty years not a new site with a sloping angle to it. We had the support of the administration, not its opposition.
This university just raised over a billion dollars for new construction in less than three years. We could well afford to have a consulting engineering firm to be the safety officers, and use a concrete basin to stack the logs. We could have an engineering plan that specified the materials to be used, size of logs, cables, and set up.
But the Bonfire needs to be cut and loaded and stacked and built by students because it represents the students burning desire as a unit, a group, a university to excel. Yes to beat tu, but looking back, what it built was Aggie Spirit.
Yes, the off-campus group is great, and I applaud them for their continuation of the tradition.
But every student that wants to be part of this University and to be one of those unique people, a dyed in the wool never say die Aggie would support a Bonfire, even if it required insurance, legal waivers, engineering plans, and professional safety officers who could remove any person acting in an unsafe manner.
Did the University fail to properly supervise the Bonfire. Yes, that is clear. Could we end up paying money for that oversite, yes indeed.
But no amount of money is worth killing the university to replace it with a cookie cutter clone of tu, Berkley, Wisconsin, or any other liberal habitate of hippydome. We have a purpose, a reason, a calling to build leaders, in business, and for the military.
If we can and have raised a billion dollars, then by God, we can raise whatever it takes to settle these piss ant suits, and move on and build us the best built, engineered, and safe Bonfires that have ever been built. It requires three things.
Desire. Determination. Money.
We have all three. What are we waiting for.
