Memories of an Aggie Bonfire boy

Wed, 08 Dec 1999 17:00:00 +0000

It's an image I'll never forget: My roommate, a 6-foot-6 good old boy from East Texas, stood 40 feet up on the third tier, pissing on the back of one of our chief tormentors during "push," the height of bonfire building season. The junior, who was on the second tier and trapped 30 feet off the ground, could do little but endure the steady stream of my roommate's righteous piss and inspired obscenities.

It was one of the hundreds of Byzantine traditions governing life in the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets -- up on stack, anything goes. Translucent against the Friday-night lights, the urine cascaded 10 feet and bounced off the back of the hated junior, forming a perverse golden halo around his hunched body.

This pinnacle of Sedgwickian (as in queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick) homo-sociality typified the course of my four fall semesters at Texas A&M University. It was a rite of passage for the hundreds who participated; as each log was added, another second of our extended childhood was gone. Unfortunately for Aggies everywhere, this childhood came to an end on Nov. 18 as the 60-foot stack collapsed, trapping 28 students in the falling oak and killing 12. An unprecedented "unity rally" followed the next week on the steps of the capitol in Austin. Thousands of University of Texas students and Aggies attended, their grief eclipsing a notoriously bitter rivalry that extends beyond the football field, as alumni compete in the workplace and boardrooms.

Salon.com > Dave Morris

Memories of an Aggie Bonfire boy