BoerneGator said:
I matriculated 57 years ago, which was only 22 years after the end of WWII, and at the height of Viet Nam, where (too) many Aggies ended up (dead). We never saw bulls on the Quad, except for Mother's Day weekend! In retrospect, the fact that such a student-lead organization was allowed to exist and operate almost autonomously was remarkable, and virtually problem free! Not sure when/how we lost our way, but the amount of "supervision" (read micromanaging) is both stifling and counterproductive, if not fatal.
We'll never return to the autonomy of "my era", but a few steps in that direction are long overdue and called for I feel certain. Let's return to our roots! Less is more!
When I went to school, and the Commandant and I were in the same Class but different outfits and branches in the Corps, we very rarely saw Bulls on the Quad coming by the outfit. Maybe a couple times a Semester and it was more of a check in so long as there wasn't a glaring issue. I was also on Group Staff Junior Year and had very little interaction with Bulls in that capacity. They let the students run the show so long as there weren't big problems or something that we needed help with.
Not sure why Pat decided he wants everything to be completely different than what he experienced but certainly this would be if he was in E-1 which was I believe the largest Army outfit at the time with tremendous recruiting and outfit identity as the "Jocks" and an all male outfit.
I heard that they were starting to have more of the Bull involvement under Hopgood as Darling was pretty hands off.
Integration did begin while I was in school but my understanding was Koldus was pushing a lot of that. Koldus was always super friendly but he seemed to dislike the special status the Corps had as an organization and numbers were tanking hard in the '90s (part of that was the end of the Cold War and budget cuts). The University saw some big donor warning signs as they realized that the percentage of alumni that were in the Corps gave back at a rate about 10x the rest of the student body (I know this from multiple connections). So they realized they were going to have a big University but the money was really coming from an aging group of old Ags that gave almost like a tithe to the school like when my Dad was there in the '50s. So they built the Corps Center, they did a huge push for Sul Ross and other Corps scholarships, they did more funding for uniforms, and essentially put a ton of money into the Corps and started publicizing it more as they realized that without it the fundraising was going to spiral.
Now the school is much bigger with far more alumni and the old Ags from the 50s and before who were here in the All Corps days have sadly mostly passed away or are doing so at a rapid rate. Now the main big donor base is from the late '60s to early 90s. Always follow the money, it drives the boat in the end.
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Ronald Reagan
