Tragedy Forces Texas A&M; to Reexamine Tradition

With the last victims recovered from under a collapsed tower of logs, stunned members of Texas A&M; University are now assessing how a beloved campus tradition went fatally wrong and whether it should survive.

Eleven students and a recent graduate were fatally crushed in the accident early Thursday, and 27 others were injured, including three still in critical condition. The final two bodies--both of young women--were removed from the log heap at 2:05 a.m. Friday, almost 24 hours after the structure crashed down.

Tim Kerlee Jr., a freshman from Germantown, Tenn., died in a hospital Friday, bringing the death toll to 12.

All the victims had been helping to build a 40-foot, tiered bonfire pile, created by students yearly since 1909 to burn before the football game with its archrival, the University of Texas. Although it is a student-run project, the bonfire is famous for its meticulous, almost paramilitary organization of volunteers and was overseen by faculty and professional engineers.

On Friday, university President Ray Bowen announced the creation of a task force, including members of the engineering school faculty, to analyze how the structure collapsed. The investigation will likely focus on the bonfire’s center pole, which is actually two telephone poles spliced together with wire and bolts.

Witnesses said they heard a loud snap seconds before the bonfire collapsed, and some students said they believe the sound came from the center.

“We’re still trying to understand it,” Bowen said of the tragedy. “We don’t have the answers to all the questions. We’re still trying to deal with the shock.”

On Thursday night, an estimated 14,000 students, family members and friends gathered on campus to grieve together. Former President Bush and Texas Lt. Gov. Rick Perry were among the stricken-looking dignitaries in attendance, and Bush returned Friday to tour the dusty field where the bonfire structure collapsed.

A symbol of A&M;’s identity for many at this ritual-loving university, the elaborate bonfire ceremony was something of a mystery to many before the tragedy thrust its details into view. Now, under the glare of intense media interest, virtually every student can recite the bonfire’s lore, plus dozens of other Aggie traditions.

Although the first bonfire was a mere trash heap, the project over the decades became a cherished way for students to bond through meticulously organized manual labor. For weeks before the towers went up in flames, Aggies cut lumber, stripped it and slowly built a birthday-cake structure with the wood.

At the top they placed an outhouse, marked “TU”--Aggies’ mischievously reversed initials for their UT football rival. When the bonfire was lit by a cadre of specially designated students in the upper classes, the heavily attended spectacle was meant to represent Aggies’ “burning desire to beat the hell” out of UT.

Now, members of the entire “Aggie community,” including its famously active alumni, are reviewing the bonfire tradition. Though Bowen has canceled the 90-year-old event this year, many students--and some parents of victims--hope it will be reinstated next year.

“I just think the next year, they should just build a bonfire, and build it in the [victims’] memory,” said freshman Steve Seil, who worked on the project this year.

After spending much of Thursday at the disaster site, he returned to classes but said they were half empty and the students distracted. “Everyone’s kind of introspective.”

To Seil and others, there is no paradox in being preoccupied both with grieving and with the future of the bonfire tradition. “People are worried about the bonfire tradition. They’re worried that radicals might take [the assessment process] too far and use this as an excuse to . . . get rid of it.”

In fact, A&M; community members who have quietly opposed the bonfire for years found themselves voicing their opinions for the first time to national media this week.

Danny Yeager, the editor of the Touchstone, a local alternative journal, called the bonfire “an outmoded tradition.” The project, which involves about 5,000 students every year, is an environmental nightmare that spews pollutants into the air and occupies an inordinate amount of students’ time, he said.

A small group of faculty members and students has complained publicly about environmental concerns--and allegations of aggressive behavior during the building process--over the years.

But Sallie Turner, editor of the student-run Battalion newspaper, said that while, in the first horrified hours after the crash, students told her the bonfire should end, they now passionately want to save it.

“Hundreds of people have called, and we’ve gotten close to 1,000 e-mails,” she said. “People are saying that this is a tradition that should continue.”

Others, meanwhile, are concerned about what should become of the thousands of logs now littering the bonfire site.

Monitoring the events from Los Angeles, restaurant designer Dodd Mitchell shared an idea voiced by some A&M; community members: that perhaps building houses for Habitat for Humanity could replace the bonfire as a group project. Mitchell said he promised university leaders that he would organize students and arrange for the wood from the bonfire to be milled for housing lumber. The first houses built could memorialize this week’s victims, he said.

Vance Beaudreau, a College Station office manager with four children who graduated from A&M;, said he understands the conflict between good taste and love for tradition, and he has an idea.

The university should quickly form 12 small, simple bonfires on the site, one for each victim, and set them afire as a memorial on the night next week when the traditional bonfire was supposed to occur.

“As far as the families and the student body is concerned, they’re left with an emptiness,” Beaudreau explained.