Full blog post included in case it is deleted from the site.
I am posting this for perspective of what was said here vs what is being said elsewhere.
The activities of last summer were a very hot topic and continue to be relevant even today.
https://blog.coreydeanstone.com/a-farm-school-finds-its-way-833f008ea198
A Farm School Finds its Way
A Rebuttal to The Rudder Association
Corey Dean Stone
Author's Note: In this piece, I speak from both my perspective as a higher education professional, as well as from the perspective of someone steeped in the historically predominant culture of Texas A&M former students. At times, I will make references to beliefs or assumptions held by many folks who share many of my identities. I do my best to include quotations or other indicators that the reference is the perspective of others. If you have any question as to my intent or meaning, please don't hesitate to connect and discuss. CDS
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this opinion piece are solely my own and not those of my employer, academic program, Texas A&M University, or the Association of Former Students.
I didn't leave Aggieland for long. I spent four years in College Station, Texas, where I studied business, and after graduation, I made my way to the big city of Dallas. Six months after graduation, I had returned to Texas A&M University to begin a career in higher education. Except for the most involved folks at the MSC or Koldus, I don't find that many see themselves working in higher education coming out of higher education, but I'm lucky to say it did not take me long to connect what I was most passionate about as an undergraduate with this field I have made a career. But this piece isn't about me. Rather, I'm getting to my relevance in this conversation.
Though after a decade in Aggieland I left town to continue my career elsewhere, my work, or perhaps a denial of my age, which fails to pause, has anchored me closely to the pulse of campus. After swearing off the most toxic of social media platforms during the multi-year run-up to the 2020 presidential election, I returned to the bastion of dialogue that is Twitter sometime last year. "Aggie Twitter" means different things to different people. To Gen Xers and Millennials, like myself, it might be most closely associated with Aggie sports and retweeting feel-good maroon-tinted propaganda. Former TexAgs mainstays turned GoodBullHunting writers and/or Twitter sh*t-posters are assuredly a good hang on any tough afternoon in the cubicle. For Gen Z and younger Millennials, Aggie Twitter is a particularly diversified place. It has various branches ranging from K-Pop Stans, "Black Twitter," Latinx Twitter, and Christian Aggie Twitter to "Yee Yee" Aggie Twitter, defeated Aggie Engineer Twitter, and various forms of Ag-tivist Twitter and this is just to name a few subsets. Sometimes there are spats between various Aggie Twitter factions. COVID-19 mask battles positioned the Agtivists opposite a number of Conservative Aggies, amongst those who hadn't blocked each other, more than a couple of times in the past year. Battles notwithstanding, there are many moments of unity, some contrived (those feel-good Maroon Kool-Aid stories sometimes penetrate most sects of Aggie Twitter, when they're particularly uniting and/or calculated) and some naturally occurring. I had to remind myself that AOT was shorthand for Attack on Titan, an anime series, when Aggie Twitter became particularly re-infatuated in recent weeks, assumedly for a new season. And along the way I've learned of the sometimes tongue-in-cheek but often backhanded reference "Farm School," a reference to Texas A&M University, typically when things aren't going well, particularly in relation to the bureaucracy or the many -isms that the school and student body are reckoning with. We'll return to the Farm School in a moment.
Societal observers have been quick to remind Americans in recent years of two assurances we may sometimes forget: the stock market is not the economy, and social media is not real life. These are different comparisons, of course, but those whose written beats I'm surely unconsciously parroting at places like The Atlantic and The New York Times want us to "get" it. At this point, after a year of watching the stock market go up, up, up, while the average American struggled, I'm hard-pressed to deny that the stock market and the national economy are particularly deviated at this moment in time. Meanwhile, we spent quite the past year living life online, while at the same time pressing pause on much of the farce that is the root of that second aforementioned warning. Travel we can't afford, Instagram images of pasteled brunches, little Jimmy's talent show that all was reduced to #tbt territory. At the same time, with little places to go, and a particular social pressure to not post our risks online, when we were willing to take them, we too found ourselves bound in the tentacles of the ever-present screens. There's a meme of a saying that so-and-so "had the time," and throughout 2020, many, if not most, of us who spend any time online indeed "had the time." We had the time to indulge way too much into the intricacies of vote counting and run-off elections. We had the time to track down Capitol rioters, anti-maskers, and even a few front porch package bandits. And we had the time to watch national movements process in response to critical events, such as the passing of George Floyd, largely captured and processed in real-time via social media. Social media is not real life. It never has been, and it never will be. But for millions, it was where we connected in this pandemic. I believe this both reinforced the many echo chambers that exist online, but also it increasingly intersected these chambers, as lines in the sand were drawn online, particularly about who we are humans, Americans, Aggies. Where do you stand on George Floyd? Black Lives Matter? Do you wear a mask? Will you get the vaccine? What of Sully? What of Kellen Mond?
While working at my alma mater, I was lucky to be able to study Higher Education within Texas A&M University's College of Education. In my first semester, perhaps the first lecture, my instructor had us read over the history and importance of the Morrill Land Grant Act. Like the many foundational texts of our nation, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself, the Morrill Land Grant Act has become about something more than perhaps its original conception. Jefferson likely did not intend "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to extend to all Americans, but of course today we embrace that message, regardless of the potentially exclusionary nature of its original beneficiaries. I'm not certain that then-Representative Morrill, one of the founders of the Republican party, intended his legacy to be the liberative proliferation of public higher education for all, but land-grant institutions are now associated with commitment to the public good, through teaching, research, and service. Certainly more than their private peers, but even against other in-state public rivals, the states' land-grant universities bear the weight and pride of being specifically tasked with uplifting their states' people, knowledge, and economies.
It is then doubly disappointing to observe how the dialogue about Texas' land-grant university, the oldest of its publics, has fared in recent months. On one hand, I watched along throughout the ongoing pandemic as many Aggies utilized hashtags and retweets to highlight their helplessness and ongoing frustration with their "farm school." Despite open dialogue about equity and inclusion on campus from high offices, many students spoke out during 2020 and 2021 about their feelings of being abandoned by Texas A&M. First-generation college students lamented crippling lack of access to needed resources and lack of empathy from faculty and staff. Students of color and queer students continued elevating stories of discrimination, isolation, and a campus climate made worse, not better, by the pivot to online education. There was a particular moment when emotions came to a head, when once again an online push was made to highlight the real and valid concerns about the mixed legacy of Lawrence Sullivan "Sully" Ross, whose statue features prominently on campus and in older campus traditions. When a broad coalition of students requested the statue be (re)moved, administration faced a divisive campus issue. Sully was clearly a former Confederate, less-clearly a potential former Klansman, and assuredly someone who would not have appreciated much of what Texas A&M is today. Based on polls and anecdotal evidence, the student body was split 50/50 as to what should become of Sul Ross (note: Texas A&M's total student enrollment is currently at 54.5% White, 22.5% Hispanic, 9% Asian, 3.3% Black, and 7% "International"). Partly due to protest graffiti, partly due to online threats of physical removal, and I would imagine partly intended as a COVID safety measure, campus administration chose a combination of fencing and tarping to protect/isolate the statue of Sul Ross. There was a non-violent but extremely emotional standoff between "Old Ags" (traditional, predominantly White male alumni) and current and younger former students that was widely live-streamed and posted to Twitter and other social media avenues. The visuals of the protest and counter-protest illuminated the issue that extended beyond the statue itself. You have one crowd of largely White, older folks, led particularly by men, with elements of anti-mask, Don't-Tread-on-Me/Come-and-Take-It, anti-Black Lives Matter sentiments implied or chanted, and on the other side, you saw an impassioned group of largely multiracial, female-led, LGBTQIA-inclusive, on the younger side and/or current students. To be frank, it appeared as if a Trump 2020 rally and a Black Lives Matter protest were at an Aggie tailgate next to each other. To be clear, I'm not positing some dualistic, both-sides message of middle-ground finger-wagging. Rather, this is what I, and many on social media, saw and continue to see to this day, now primarily virtually again, in this battle for the soul of our beloved farm school.
James Earl Rudder was a Major General who was a leading figure in World War II's Invasion of Normandy on D-Day. Born in the small town of Eden, Texas, a former student of Texas A&M University, a military hero, and generally as Texan as they come, at least by Old Ag standards, Rudder is the ideal avatar for a historical Texas A&M symbol. His reforms ushered Texas A&M into a new era. He championed the admittance of women and racial minorities, and his shift towards optional Corps of Cadets participation allowed for many Aggies to don maroon and sport their Aggie gold who would not have otherwise been able or chosen this particular school on the Brazos. All this context stated, I find it curious that "The Rudder Association" formed in 2020 as some sort "Make TAMU Great Again" PAC, perusing places such as TexAgs and Facebook for support, sharing Instagram images of "the good old days" when White women took the train from TWU and Baylor to go to football games with White men at the then all-male Texas A&M University. Their website rails against the "dying traditions" of Aggieland, too much investment in students who "don't really want to be Aggies," and a radical embrace of "wokeness" and "critical race theory," particularly at Fish Camp, claims the organization (in fact, the group goes so far as to endorse Impact, the private Christian version). If perhaps the group had veiled their frustrations as related to the massive size of the university, the dedication to the rankings race, or here's a radical one investment of energy into sports programs versus the academic priorities of the university (I know the budgets are technically separate, so don't @ me), then perhaps I could see the organization gaining traction as a movement that mind you, I would still disagree with, but was focused on being an anchored reminder about, yes, the campus traditions, some sort of unified campus culture, and such in that vein. Rather, there is no veil in their messaging. It's a culture war brought to Aggieland. It's the War on Christmas Tucker Carlson Ben Shapiro it's a maroon MAGA Hat. Rather than being ignorant or naive about what making Aggieland "great again" would mean, The Rudder Association knows exactly what it means. This is an organization for those who believe their kid had to accept a Blinn TEAM offer because of a "Black kid." The organization claims protecting First Amendment rights is a pillar of its platform, but I already know where its core tenants stood when Dr. Tommy Curry was left on an island of lonely academic freedom(ish) when he expressed views on race that didn't play well as soundbites on conservative talk shows. TRA members probably go to churches where the bulletin says "You Are Welcome Here," but if you asked them behind closed doors if having a Muslim Student Association or a Pride Center is a good thing, you'll get something they wouldn't want in print. Liberals are "snowflakes," but we have list of triggers we want you to be aware of. We are taking back our public (government-funded) university (governed by a Republican-appointed Board of Regents) from the liberals the liberal provost, liberal president, liberal faculty, liberal staff, liberal students, liberal librarians from the woke Reveille, the CRT-indoctrinating Fish Camp we're taking back our very specific version of Aggieland from sometime after they cured polio but before Garth Brooks was Chris Gaines.
And if it's not fair that I'm making these assumptions about members of The Rudder Association, then I challenge TRA to look inward at its own assumptions, particularly about which students "want to be Aggies" and how they know our growingly diverse student body consists of students all of a sudden who don't actually want to be there (except perhaps in a self-fulfilling prophecy carried out by the TRA's very mission). I spent over a decade in Aggieland, and across that time frame, I met Aggies from Houston (so many Aggies from Houston), Aggies from Dallas (and Aggies who were quick to say "Hey, don't forget about Fort Worth!), Aggies from the Valley, Aggies from Austin ("found their way to the Promised Land"), Aggies from Alaska, from Nigeria, from Pakistan. And it's funny each Aggie has a different story, a different reason for being in College Station, and a different affinity, or lack thereof, for the university. For some, it's been a lifelong dream. For others, it was where the financial aid was. For some Aggies, it was the right decision for them and their family at that specific time. Each journey is different. And as someone who spends a lot of time in the #DEI world, that's a common rebuttal we get to identity-talk ("I am just *me*. What about *me*, the individual?"). And I think that is both missing the point of examining identities and systems, and at the same time I believe it highlights a point we sometimes miss in DEI conversations. We are very much both a collective, intersectional aggregate of discrete identities, and we are uniquely, individually exactly "me."
So let's pivot that individuality and that intersectionality back on each individual Aggie. Each one is in Aggieland because of a complex culmination of factors, inclusive of their identities and the experiences that led them to Bryan-College Station, Texas. At the same time, if you interview each individual Aggie, you're going to get a differing set of feelings and expectations about how it's going being an Aggie and where they're headed. And this all comes back to the original point. Their feelings don't matter. Their Aggieness doesn't matter. Texas A&M University is a land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant institution of higher education. The Aggie institution exists to create and advance knowledge, to raise of leaders prepared to better the world and their communities, and to serve those communities directly through extension agencies, community partnerships, societal advancements, and a myriad other ways. Texas A&M University is Texas' university.
Texas public schools are 53% Latino/Hispanic, 13% Black, 5% Asian-American, and only 27% White-only. Within this data exists 5,479,173 individual students. Understanding the racial and ethnic makeup of those students is helpful. It helps us understand systems, cultures, and communities. It also helps us ask important questions, such as Why are the demographics of Texas A&M University, the land-grant university of Texas Texas' university so mismatched with those of the state's designated K12 schooling system? There are of course a myriad of, again, complex reasons, but I can fathom that one reason is that some vocal members of the Aggie Network are more interested in preserving a version of Texas A&M University than advancing and enhancing the current and future versions of our alma mater.
I smile just a bit whenever current students heckle TAMU as "the farm school." Those same students revel in their achievements at Aggie Ring Day, graduation, and beyond. They often become active in former student networks. They mentor. They serve. They give back. But many days it doesn't feel like the institution, or particularly its broader community, are there to mentor them, to serve them, to give back to them. It's the farm school, yes, because it's the Aggie school, because it's the Agricultural & Mechanical school, because it's the yee-haw, Ol' Rock, yee-yee school. But it's also the farm school because too many folks still see this university the oldest public in the state, a top five largest US university, a national leader in research as a farm school a conservative school, a Christian school, an overalls, boots, biscuits and gravy school.
I'll be the first to admit I dabble far too often in the biscuits and gravy. I'm a Christian. I love my boots. I own more than one pair of overalls. I know we far too often talk around culture and identity in Southern White spaces, but let's be clear, what we're talking about here is culture. Billy Graham, Roger Staubach, "Just As I Am", Gunsmoke, BBQ, sweet tea, 42 at the Chicken. I could list more. It's what I grew up hearing about. A few caveats aside, it's not inherently harmful. It's that beautiful mess we call culture. But it's not what Texas A&M University is overwhelmingly about today, nor should it be. The culture has changed. Even replace those references with modern analogs, and it doesn't apply to thousands of Aggies. Matt Chandler, Dak Prescott, "Oceans," Yellowstone, (okay maybe we keep) BBQ, Dr. Pepper, beer pong at Campus Village. For a lot of Aggies, sure, there's lots there to find commonality with. But for a lot of Aggies, that's not their Farm School.
See, I want to reclaim what Farm School means. There's farm school, lower cased, and Farm School. If we're a lower cased "farm school," we're that school that's stuck where we were, but not where we're going. We're a school for the increasingly few, not fulfilling our mission to the people of Texas. But I'm proposing we lean into what we have to offer as the Farm School, capitalized an institution that acknowledges where we come from, how we've changed, and where we're headed. Yep, if you come here, you may end up buying a pair of cowboy boots for fun. You may hee-haw and yee-haw just a bit more, probably tongue-in-cheek, but who knows, maybe you'll find your inner Dolly Parton. But ultimately, we recognize that we are a world-class institution with a state-wide mission we've got country roots, and that keeps us grounded we should remember where we've come from in fact, our rural areas are increasingly underserved and their growing diversity is underacknowledged. By remembering, honoring, and celebrating, however tongue-in-cheek, our roots, we maintain our commitment to the humble individual, in the spirit of those original Aggies. In fact, it was in that spirit of humility and upward mobility that former TAMU President Bob Gates founded the impactful (and currently underfunded) Regents' Scholarship for first-generation college students at Texas A&M University.
We are not a farm school anymore, though, to current students, I know "the farm school" can really be frustrating at times. But if you look at our history, our present, and where we're headed, the Farm School is at a critical moment. And I'll be damned if a bunch of suburbanites want to start a culture war in the name of the great James Earl Rudder because change is too hard to deal with. A wise man once told me the only constants in life were "the Good Lord and change." How about as Aggie former students we focus on investing our time, talents, and treasures into building up our Farm School, rather than trying to reverse terraform it into something it's never going to be again.
With love to all Aggies.
Corey D. Stone '13
I am posting this for perspective of what was said here vs what is being said elsewhere.
The activities of last summer were a very hot topic and continue to be relevant even today.
https://blog.coreydeanstone.com/a-farm-school-finds-its-way-833f008ea198
A Farm School Finds its Way
A Rebuttal to The Rudder Association
Corey Dean Stone
Author's Note: In this piece, I speak from both my perspective as a higher education professional, as well as from the perspective of someone steeped in the historically predominant culture of Texas A&M former students. At times, I will make references to beliefs or assumptions held by many folks who share many of my identities. I do my best to include quotations or other indicators that the reference is the perspective of others. If you have any question as to my intent or meaning, please don't hesitate to connect and discuss. CDS
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this opinion piece are solely my own and not those of my employer, academic program, Texas A&M University, or the Association of Former Students.
I didn't leave Aggieland for long. I spent four years in College Station, Texas, where I studied business, and after graduation, I made my way to the big city of Dallas. Six months after graduation, I had returned to Texas A&M University to begin a career in higher education. Except for the most involved folks at the MSC or Koldus, I don't find that many see themselves working in higher education coming out of higher education, but I'm lucky to say it did not take me long to connect what I was most passionate about as an undergraduate with this field I have made a career. But this piece isn't about me. Rather, I'm getting to my relevance in this conversation.
Though after a decade in Aggieland I left town to continue my career elsewhere, my work, or perhaps a denial of my age, which fails to pause, has anchored me closely to the pulse of campus. After swearing off the most toxic of social media platforms during the multi-year run-up to the 2020 presidential election, I returned to the bastion of dialogue that is Twitter sometime last year. "Aggie Twitter" means different things to different people. To Gen Xers and Millennials, like myself, it might be most closely associated with Aggie sports and retweeting feel-good maroon-tinted propaganda. Former TexAgs mainstays turned GoodBullHunting writers and/or Twitter sh*t-posters are assuredly a good hang on any tough afternoon in the cubicle. For Gen Z and younger Millennials, Aggie Twitter is a particularly diversified place. It has various branches ranging from K-Pop Stans, "Black Twitter," Latinx Twitter, and Christian Aggie Twitter to "Yee Yee" Aggie Twitter, defeated Aggie Engineer Twitter, and various forms of Ag-tivist Twitter and this is just to name a few subsets. Sometimes there are spats between various Aggie Twitter factions. COVID-19 mask battles positioned the Agtivists opposite a number of Conservative Aggies, amongst those who hadn't blocked each other, more than a couple of times in the past year. Battles notwithstanding, there are many moments of unity, some contrived (those feel-good Maroon Kool-Aid stories sometimes penetrate most sects of Aggie Twitter, when they're particularly uniting and/or calculated) and some naturally occurring. I had to remind myself that AOT was shorthand for Attack on Titan, an anime series, when Aggie Twitter became particularly re-infatuated in recent weeks, assumedly for a new season. And along the way I've learned of the sometimes tongue-in-cheek but often backhanded reference "Farm School," a reference to Texas A&M University, typically when things aren't going well, particularly in relation to the bureaucracy or the many -isms that the school and student body are reckoning with. We'll return to the Farm School in a moment.
Societal observers have been quick to remind Americans in recent years of two assurances we may sometimes forget: the stock market is not the economy, and social media is not real life. These are different comparisons, of course, but those whose written beats I'm surely unconsciously parroting at places like The Atlantic and The New York Times want us to "get" it. At this point, after a year of watching the stock market go up, up, up, while the average American struggled, I'm hard-pressed to deny that the stock market and the national economy are particularly deviated at this moment in time. Meanwhile, we spent quite the past year living life online, while at the same time pressing pause on much of the farce that is the root of that second aforementioned warning. Travel we can't afford, Instagram images of pasteled brunches, little Jimmy's talent show that all was reduced to #tbt territory. At the same time, with little places to go, and a particular social pressure to not post our risks online, when we were willing to take them, we too found ourselves bound in the tentacles of the ever-present screens. There's a meme of a saying that so-and-so "had the time," and throughout 2020, many, if not most, of us who spend any time online indeed "had the time." We had the time to indulge way too much into the intricacies of vote counting and run-off elections. We had the time to track down Capitol rioters, anti-maskers, and even a few front porch package bandits. And we had the time to watch national movements process in response to critical events, such as the passing of George Floyd, largely captured and processed in real-time via social media. Social media is not real life. It never has been, and it never will be. But for millions, it was where we connected in this pandemic. I believe this both reinforced the many echo chambers that exist online, but also it increasingly intersected these chambers, as lines in the sand were drawn online, particularly about who we are humans, Americans, Aggies. Where do you stand on George Floyd? Black Lives Matter? Do you wear a mask? Will you get the vaccine? What of Sully? What of Kellen Mond?
While working at my alma mater, I was lucky to be able to study Higher Education within Texas A&M University's College of Education. In my first semester, perhaps the first lecture, my instructor had us read over the history and importance of the Morrill Land Grant Act. Like the many foundational texts of our nation, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself, the Morrill Land Grant Act has become about something more than perhaps its original conception. Jefferson likely did not intend "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to extend to all Americans, but of course today we embrace that message, regardless of the potentially exclusionary nature of its original beneficiaries. I'm not certain that then-Representative Morrill, one of the founders of the Republican party, intended his legacy to be the liberative proliferation of public higher education for all, but land-grant institutions are now associated with commitment to the public good, through teaching, research, and service. Certainly more than their private peers, but even against other in-state public rivals, the states' land-grant universities bear the weight and pride of being specifically tasked with uplifting their states' people, knowledge, and economies.
It is then doubly disappointing to observe how the dialogue about Texas' land-grant university, the oldest of its publics, has fared in recent months. On one hand, I watched along throughout the ongoing pandemic as many Aggies utilized hashtags and retweets to highlight their helplessness and ongoing frustration with their "farm school." Despite open dialogue about equity and inclusion on campus from high offices, many students spoke out during 2020 and 2021 about their feelings of being abandoned by Texas A&M. First-generation college students lamented crippling lack of access to needed resources and lack of empathy from faculty and staff. Students of color and queer students continued elevating stories of discrimination, isolation, and a campus climate made worse, not better, by the pivot to online education. There was a particular moment when emotions came to a head, when once again an online push was made to highlight the real and valid concerns about the mixed legacy of Lawrence Sullivan "Sully" Ross, whose statue features prominently on campus and in older campus traditions. When a broad coalition of students requested the statue be (re)moved, administration faced a divisive campus issue. Sully was clearly a former Confederate, less-clearly a potential former Klansman, and assuredly someone who would not have appreciated much of what Texas A&M is today. Based on polls and anecdotal evidence, the student body was split 50/50 as to what should become of Sul Ross (note: Texas A&M's total student enrollment is currently at 54.5% White, 22.5% Hispanic, 9% Asian, 3.3% Black, and 7% "International"). Partly due to protest graffiti, partly due to online threats of physical removal, and I would imagine partly intended as a COVID safety measure, campus administration chose a combination of fencing and tarping to protect/isolate the statue of Sul Ross. There was a non-violent but extremely emotional standoff between "Old Ags" (traditional, predominantly White male alumni) and current and younger former students that was widely live-streamed and posted to Twitter and other social media avenues. The visuals of the protest and counter-protest illuminated the issue that extended beyond the statue itself. You have one crowd of largely White, older folks, led particularly by men, with elements of anti-mask, Don't-Tread-on-Me/Come-and-Take-It, anti-Black Lives Matter sentiments implied or chanted, and on the other side, you saw an impassioned group of largely multiracial, female-led, LGBTQIA-inclusive, on the younger side and/or current students. To be frank, it appeared as if a Trump 2020 rally and a Black Lives Matter protest were at an Aggie tailgate next to each other. To be clear, I'm not positing some dualistic, both-sides message of middle-ground finger-wagging. Rather, this is what I, and many on social media, saw and continue to see to this day, now primarily virtually again, in this battle for the soul of our beloved farm school.
James Earl Rudder was a Major General who was a leading figure in World War II's Invasion of Normandy on D-Day. Born in the small town of Eden, Texas, a former student of Texas A&M University, a military hero, and generally as Texan as they come, at least by Old Ag standards, Rudder is the ideal avatar for a historical Texas A&M symbol. His reforms ushered Texas A&M into a new era. He championed the admittance of women and racial minorities, and his shift towards optional Corps of Cadets participation allowed for many Aggies to don maroon and sport their Aggie gold who would not have otherwise been able or chosen this particular school on the Brazos. All this context stated, I find it curious that "The Rudder Association" formed in 2020 as some sort "Make TAMU Great Again" PAC, perusing places such as TexAgs and Facebook for support, sharing Instagram images of "the good old days" when White women took the train from TWU and Baylor to go to football games with White men at the then all-male Texas A&M University. Their website rails against the "dying traditions" of Aggieland, too much investment in students who "don't really want to be Aggies," and a radical embrace of "wokeness" and "critical race theory," particularly at Fish Camp, claims the organization (in fact, the group goes so far as to endorse Impact, the private Christian version). If perhaps the group had veiled their frustrations as related to the massive size of the university, the dedication to the rankings race, or here's a radical one investment of energy into sports programs versus the academic priorities of the university (I know the budgets are technically separate, so don't @ me), then perhaps I could see the organization gaining traction as a movement that mind you, I would still disagree with, but was focused on being an anchored reminder about, yes, the campus traditions, some sort of unified campus culture, and such in that vein. Rather, there is no veil in their messaging. It's a culture war brought to Aggieland. It's the War on Christmas Tucker Carlson Ben Shapiro it's a maroon MAGA Hat. Rather than being ignorant or naive about what making Aggieland "great again" would mean, The Rudder Association knows exactly what it means. This is an organization for those who believe their kid had to accept a Blinn TEAM offer because of a "Black kid." The organization claims protecting First Amendment rights is a pillar of its platform, but I already know where its core tenants stood when Dr. Tommy Curry was left on an island of lonely academic freedom(ish) when he expressed views on race that didn't play well as soundbites on conservative talk shows. TRA members probably go to churches where the bulletin says "You Are Welcome Here," but if you asked them behind closed doors if having a Muslim Student Association or a Pride Center is a good thing, you'll get something they wouldn't want in print. Liberals are "snowflakes," but we have list of triggers we want you to be aware of. We are taking back our public (government-funded) university (governed by a Republican-appointed Board of Regents) from the liberals the liberal provost, liberal president, liberal faculty, liberal staff, liberal students, liberal librarians from the woke Reveille, the CRT-indoctrinating Fish Camp we're taking back our very specific version of Aggieland from sometime after they cured polio but before Garth Brooks was Chris Gaines.
And if it's not fair that I'm making these assumptions about members of The Rudder Association, then I challenge TRA to look inward at its own assumptions, particularly about which students "want to be Aggies" and how they know our growingly diverse student body consists of students all of a sudden who don't actually want to be there (except perhaps in a self-fulfilling prophecy carried out by the TRA's very mission). I spent over a decade in Aggieland, and across that time frame, I met Aggies from Houston (so many Aggies from Houston), Aggies from Dallas (and Aggies who were quick to say "Hey, don't forget about Fort Worth!), Aggies from the Valley, Aggies from Austin ("found their way to the Promised Land"), Aggies from Alaska, from Nigeria, from Pakistan. And it's funny each Aggie has a different story, a different reason for being in College Station, and a different affinity, or lack thereof, for the university. For some, it's been a lifelong dream. For others, it was where the financial aid was. For some Aggies, it was the right decision for them and their family at that specific time. Each journey is different. And as someone who spends a lot of time in the #DEI world, that's a common rebuttal we get to identity-talk ("I am just *me*. What about *me*, the individual?"). And I think that is both missing the point of examining identities and systems, and at the same time I believe it highlights a point we sometimes miss in DEI conversations. We are very much both a collective, intersectional aggregate of discrete identities, and we are uniquely, individually exactly "me."
So let's pivot that individuality and that intersectionality back on each individual Aggie. Each one is in Aggieland because of a complex culmination of factors, inclusive of their identities and the experiences that led them to Bryan-College Station, Texas. At the same time, if you interview each individual Aggie, you're going to get a differing set of feelings and expectations about how it's going being an Aggie and where they're headed. And this all comes back to the original point. Their feelings don't matter. Their Aggieness doesn't matter. Texas A&M University is a land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant institution of higher education. The Aggie institution exists to create and advance knowledge, to raise of leaders prepared to better the world and their communities, and to serve those communities directly through extension agencies, community partnerships, societal advancements, and a myriad other ways. Texas A&M University is Texas' university.
Texas public schools are 53% Latino/Hispanic, 13% Black, 5% Asian-American, and only 27% White-only. Within this data exists 5,479,173 individual students. Understanding the racial and ethnic makeup of those students is helpful. It helps us understand systems, cultures, and communities. It also helps us ask important questions, such as Why are the demographics of Texas A&M University, the land-grant university of Texas Texas' university so mismatched with those of the state's designated K12 schooling system? There are of course a myriad of, again, complex reasons, but I can fathom that one reason is that some vocal members of the Aggie Network are more interested in preserving a version of Texas A&M University than advancing and enhancing the current and future versions of our alma mater.
I smile just a bit whenever current students heckle TAMU as "the farm school." Those same students revel in their achievements at Aggie Ring Day, graduation, and beyond. They often become active in former student networks. They mentor. They serve. They give back. But many days it doesn't feel like the institution, or particularly its broader community, are there to mentor them, to serve them, to give back to them. It's the farm school, yes, because it's the Aggie school, because it's the Agricultural & Mechanical school, because it's the yee-haw, Ol' Rock, yee-yee school. But it's also the farm school because too many folks still see this university the oldest public in the state, a top five largest US university, a national leader in research as a farm school a conservative school, a Christian school, an overalls, boots, biscuits and gravy school.
I'll be the first to admit I dabble far too often in the biscuits and gravy. I'm a Christian. I love my boots. I own more than one pair of overalls. I know we far too often talk around culture and identity in Southern White spaces, but let's be clear, what we're talking about here is culture. Billy Graham, Roger Staubach, "Just As I Am", Gunsmoke, BBQ, sweet tea, 42 at the Chicken. I could list more. It's what I grew up hearing about. A few caveats aside, it's not inherently harmful. It's that beautiful mess we call culture. But it's not what Texas A&M University is overwhelmingly about today, nor should it be. The culture has changed. Even replace those references with modern analogs, and it doesn't apply to thousands of Aggies. Matt Chandler, Dak Prescott, "Oceans," Yellowstone, (okay maybe we keep) BBQ, Dr. Pepper, beer pong at Campus Village. For a lot of Aggies, sure, there's lots there to find commonality with. But for a lot of Aggies, that's not their Farm School.
See, I want to reclaim what Farm School means. There's farm school, lower cased, and Farm School. If we're a lower cased "farm school," we're that school that's stuck where we were, but not where we're going. We're a school for the increasingly few, not fulfilling our mission to the people of Texas. But I'm proposing we lean into what we have to offer as the Farm School, capitalized an institution that acknowledges where we come from, how we've changed, and where we're headed. Yep, if you come here, you may end up buying a pair of cowboy boots for fun. You may hee-haw and yee-haw just a bit more, probably tongue-in-cheek, but who knows, maybe you'll find your inner Dolly Parton. But ultimately, we recognize that we are a world-class institution with a state-wide mission we've got country roots, and that keeps us grounded we should remember where we've come from in fact, our rural areas are increasingly underserved and their growing diversity is underacknowledged. By remembering, honoring, and celebrating, however tongue-in-cheek, our roots, we maintain our commitment to the humble individual, in the spirit of those original Aggies. In fact, it was in that spirit of humility and upward mobility that former TAMU President Bob Gates founded the impactful (and currently underfunded) Regents' Scholarship for first-generation college students at Texas A&M University.
We are not a farm school anymore, though, to current students, I know "the farm school" can really be frustrating at times. But if you look at our history, our present, and where we're headed, the Farm School is at a critical moment. And I'll be damned if a bunch of suburbanites want to start a culture war in the name of the great James Earl Rudder because change is too hard to deal with. A wise man once told me the only constants in life were "the Good Lord and change." How about as Aggie former students we focus on investing our time, talents, and treasures into building up our Farm School, rather than trying to reverse terraform it into something it's never going to be again.
With love to all Aggies.
Corey D. Stone '13
