The Aggie Bonfire Tragedy
A tradition is in trouble: twelve Aggies are dead, the campus is still in mourning, and experts are questioning whether the bonfire collapse was just a freak accident. Now A&M officials must decide whether keeping an Aggie icon is worth the risks.
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•The center pole was flawed. A day before the collapse, a crane hit a crosstie — a piece of lumber that was nailed to the pole to help guide logs — and sent a jolt through the stack that was noticeable to students. The incident may have inflicted damage to the pole.
On the afternoon before the collapse, a surveying class reported that the pole seemed to be leaning to the southeast. By manipulating two sets of four guy ropes, Bonfire workers tried to straighten it. But the force of the logs on the pole was so great, Teddy Hirsch has concluded from an examination of the pole, that instead of correcting the original bend, the students only succeeded in creating a second bend in the opposite direction, higher up the pole. That night, a few hours before the end, workers removed the lower set of guy ropes, which were interfering with the addition of logs to the stack — a normal decision made at the normal time in the construction process, and in a normal year it would have had no effect. But on this night it may have deprived the center pole of much-needed support.
During the first part of the midnight shift, nothing unusual occurred. Just before the collapse, a crane delivered a large log to the first tier — a process known as "slamming." Was this the trigger? Compared with the mass of the stack, the log was barely more than a twig — but something had to start the logs in motion. Or did the addition of one more log at the wrong place overload the center pole? Suddenly, the pole bent sharply to the southeast. Still hemmed in by logs on all sides, it snapped in three places — at ground level, just above the first stack, and near the top. The west guy rope also snapped near its connection to the center pole. Whether this caused the pole to break or was a result of the pole failing is still unknown. The fractured pole released its energy into the stack, disrupting it from within. The bottom tier fell toward the downhill side, the second tier wedged into it, and the upper levels dropped down into the chaos.
The death of twelve students in a university activity would be a terrible blow to any school, but at Texas A&M the pain was even more acute because the bonfire's collapse tests one of the core beliefs about what A&M's mission should be. Known as "the other education," it holds that students learn as much from participating in activities as they do in the classroom, and specifically what they learn is leadership. This philosophy originated with the school's third president, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, who wanted the military side of student life emphasized above the academic side. In recent years, as A&M has become a flagship academic institution, "the other education" — a term that was coined in the seventies — has come to mean that an essential part of being an Aggie is to join campus service organizations, to create your own organization if you wish, to participate in traditional activities like Bonfire, and to develop an ability to lead. So strong is this culture that those who don't buy in, especially to A&M's fabled traditions, have long been dismissed as "two-percenters" (designating how tiny the minority of dissidents is) or, more recently, "skim" (less widely used, referring to those who are only interested in academics and hence are just skimming the surface of being an Aggie). Central to the idea of the other education is the need for students to be truly in charge. Thus, the absence of professional oversight of Bonfire — by, say, a structural engineer — occurred not by neglect but by design, with the best of intentions but with the worst of results.
Student body president Will Hurd, 22, is an example of why the other education means so much at Texas A&M. "It got me here," he says. "I was planning to go to Stanford. I wanted to go there, and I had a lot of financial aid. Then my high school counselor in San Antonio said I should apply to A&M. I came up here and saw the opportunities to develop as a whole person." Very lean, with a long, narrow face, Hurd is an imposing figure in his black slacks, white dress shirt, solid yellow tie, boots, and suspenders. Just the way he sits in a chair communicates gravitas; he seems to be propping up its back instead of the other way around. A placard in his windowless office reads "People don't come to A&M to become Aggies . . . They come to perfect the Aggie that is already within them."
Hurd, who is majoring in computer science and minoring in international studies, talks about having studied in Mexico City, interned for a microchip manufacturing company in Manila, and served as a counselor at an A&M leadership program in Italy for thirty incoming freshmen. Because A&M gives students so much responsibility, he says, he had the opportunity to manage a $5.6 million budget as head of the Memorial Student Center and, in his current office, to be what he calls "the mayor of a moderate-sized town." He is also media-savvy, perhaps as a result of the recent tragedy; he answers questions about Bonfire in an effortless manner but with careful words. When I asked him whether the idea of the other education — delegating nearly all authority and decision making to students — was compatible with safety in such a technical and high-risk activity as Bonfire, he said, "To say that the students in charge of Bonfire weren't experienced enough is not accurate. Just because these were students doesn't mean it was unsafe. I think documentation and planning need to be improved, and the selection of leadership needs to be based on an understanding of technical details as well as a person's ability to manage a group of people." At first I thought that he was advocating change, at least in the way that redpots are chosen — currently, each group of redpots chooses its successors — but then I realized the international studies student had given a diplomat's response that was totally, brilliantly, ambiguous. "How should it be done?" I asked. "We'll see, after the commission has completed its report," said Will Hurd. "To be continued."
The purpose of bonfire, wrote a redpot back in 1992, "is to promote and maintain the Aggie Spirit among students and former students . . . and to symbolize the burning desire of all Aggies to beat the hell outta t.u." Over the years, the second function has become subordinated to the first. There are a lot of things to dislike about Bonfire: It is dangerous, harmful to academic standing, rife with drinking and hazing, and prone to occasional public displays of racism and other forms of inexcusable behavior. The night that it burns is the biggest party night of the year in College Station, not just for students but for residents and even high school kids. Bonfire has become a tourist attraction, bringing former students and their families back to the campus by the thousands; attendance estimates in recent years range up to 70,000. Think of Bonfire as the Aggie Mardi Gras: part hard work and preparation, part celebration, part public drunk. Like Mardi Gras, Bonfire originated in beliefs that Aggies hold sacred; like Mardi Gras, the sacred has often been overwhelmed by the profane. And yet, it is hard to imagine A&M without it.
Bonfire gets fish — campus nomenclature for "freshmen" — involved in becoming Aggies. Very involved. Participation is voluntary, but because students always work with those who live in their residence hall, the peer pressure to join in is substantial. Fish show their spirit by volunteering to become "letterheads": They shave their heads to display a letter of the alphabet, and together they spell out a message such as "Aston [Hall] Fighting Texas Aggies." The tradition is a metaphor for the Aggie family: Separately the letterheads have no meaning, only together. Each hall has its own traditions — in Hart, the letterhead with the "R" shaves it backward — and a distinctive decor for its pots. To stimulate enthusiasm, special recognition goes to fish who are exceptionally "red-ass" — a term of honor at A&M that means gung-ho Aggie.
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