Aggieland
(Page 2 of 2)
texasmonthly.com: It seems like you contacted a lot of people connected to the school. How many faculty, alumni, administrators, and students did you interview, and how did you choose them?
PB: I have been fortunate enough to make some good friends at A&M over the years—everybody knows Lane Stephenson in Marketing and Communications—and the first thing I did was call them and get advice about people to talk to. I also knew some names from my “Aggie Hell” feature who had been on the side of change when I researched that story. And then it developed that I needed to talk to people in admissions, in agriculture, and in various other areas of the university. I probably talked to twenty faculty members, half a dozen administrators, and Gates and Steve Moore. I didn’t see much point in talking to students and alumni. The rebranding effort is not really on their radar screens.
texasmonthly.com: How long did you work on this story?
PB: In one sense, nine years, going back to that first story in 1997. My first interview was with Gates and Steve Moore on July 28. Then came a monthlong hiatus, followed by a couple of pretty intense weeks of interviewing. I made six or seven day-trips to College Station. My last interview with Gates was in mid-September. After that, I had to read Gates’s book—an excellent history of the Cold War told from the CIA’s perspective—and write the story. So the actual time spent on the story was around four weeks.
texasmonthly.com: You mention that Aggies can seem cultish to outsiders. What was the most conspicuous act of Aggie-ism that you saw while working on this article?
PB: Aggies are normal people. They don’t go around acting “Aggie-ish.” I’m an avid reader of The Battalion, the school newspaper. Its opinion page fascinates me, because the letters to the editor reveal just how seriously Aggies take the values of spirit and character that A&M cherishes. I quote several of these letters in my article.
texasmonthly.com: The story mentions the reinvigorated condition of the Corps of Cadets. For the reader who doesn’t fully understand the Corps, can you further explain its significance at A&M?
PB: Do we have any readers who don’t fully understand the Corps? Or perhaps I should ask, Do we have any readers who do fully understand the Corps? The Corps has an ROTC program that can lead to a military commission. Until the mid-sixties, membership in the Corps was mandatory. Then it became voluntary after the first two years. Today, the Corps is strictly voluntary. Only 1,800 students of A&M’s total enrollment of around 45,000 are members of the Corps, and yet it is impossible to imagine A&M without a Corps. The Corps is the keeper of the flame, the fount of what makes A&M unique. Corps members know and carry out the traditions that mean so much to the university. When I wrote my previous story, in 2004, Corps membership had been declining for years, in part due to an overemphasis on spirit and an underemphasis on grades. This has turned around, and membership—and grades—are improving. I still hear of instances in which members of the Corps act as if they are more important than anybody else (for example, shoving “non-regs”—Aggiespeak for non-Corps students—out of the way so that they can get the prime positions in the lines between which Aggie football players run to get onto Kyle Field).
texasmonthly.com: You’ve written about A&M’s need to evolve before. This time around, will Bob Gates actually accomplish his ambitious plans for change?
PB: As CIA director, he made decisions that helped win the Cold War. If the Soviets couldn’t slow him down, neither will Aggies.
texasmonthly.com: The university faculty seems to appreciate Gates, but is Gates generally popular throughout the rest of Aggieland?
PB: I rode with him in the golf cart he uses to navigate around campus. Students knew who he was and greeted him as we passed, and he would respond. When we got to our destination, I noticed that in the back of the cart (where golf clubs would go) was a set of cattle horns whose tips had been severed and dangled from chains, bringing to life the line from the Aggie War Hymn”: “Saw Varsity’s horns off.” All of the faculty and administrators I talked to thought he hung the moon. And why not? He has brought in outstanding new professors by the hundreds, raised salaries, and provided money for graduate students.
texasmonthly.com: How did Gates’s CIA-influenced personality—which you describe in detail—affect your talks with him?
PB: For a man who led a super secret organization, Gates is not a secretive person. At CIA, he declassified the Cold War archives because he felt that the agency had done a great job and he thought that the public should know about it. (After he left, the archives were reclassified.) He has the same attitude about Texas A&M. He thinks that it is much, much better than its reputation and its clannishness has hidden that fact from the public. The branding campaign is all about explaining A&M to the rest of Texas in the way he wants A&M to be explained. He is forthcoming in interviews, but he knows how to stay on message. I tried to pry a couple of state secrets out of him about his recent trip to Iraq on behalf of President Bush and got only that the conditions American servicemen were living in were deplorable. But if he ever said “no comment” to me, I can’t recall it.
Pages: 1 2
My Library
