I write this not with nostalgia, but with profound disappointment. 

As a member of the Texas A&M Class of 1993, I once celebrated Midnight Yell, greeted strangers with “Howdy” and proudly embraced all things maroon and white. These traditions fostered belonging, loyalty and a shared identity that felt larger than any one student. They were symbols of a university that valued community, discipline and shared purpose. 

But the A&M I remember — the university that taught me to wrestle with ideas, to question assumptions and to seek truth even when it discomforts us — feels increasingly distant.

Recent headlines paint a disturbing portrait of my alma mater, including reports titled “Texas A&M Bans Plato Excerpt From a Philosophy Course,” “Plato Censored as Texas A&M Carries Out Course Review,” “About 200 Texas A&M courses could change due to new restrictions on teaching gender, race” and “Texas A&M blocks readings on gender ideology in philosophy class: ‘Plato has been censored’.”

Each of these accounts lays bare a troubling reality: The A&M System Board of Regents is moving to curb academic engagement with topics such as race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. 

These are not fringe or optional subjects; they are central to history, philosophy, politics, sociology and the lived experience of millions of people. To wall them off from serious academic examination is to hollow out the mission of a university and reduce education to something safe, sanitized and ultimately dishonest.

What once distinguished higher education was not its ability to shelter students from discomfort but its commitment to intellectual courage. Encountering ideas we find unfamiliar — or even unsettling — is not indoctrination, it is education. It’s the only way individuals learn why they believe what they believe rather than merely inheriting convictions by habit or authority. Beliefs that have never been tested are not strong; they are simply unexamined. A university that avoids challenge does not produce thinkers, it produces conformists.

The free exchange of ideas is the hallmark of higher education; it’s how students learn to analyze arguments, recognize weaknesses in their reasoning and develop informed, independent judgments. When a governing board dictates which topics are acceptable and which are forbidden, it replaces education with insulation. That does not protect students, it impoverishes them — intellectually, morally and civically.

I didn’t choose to attend A&M to have my worldview curated or my questions prescreened. I went to A&M to be challenged — to encounter perspectives that complicated my assumptions and forced me to think more deeply. That process didn’t weaken my beliefs; it strengthened them. It taught me how to reason, how to defend ideas with evidence and how to revise them when necessary. 

In short, it taught me how to think, not merely what to repeat.

Now, a new “tradition” seems to be taking hold. Not one of open inquiry. Not one of spirited debate. But, rather, one of closed-minded censorship. This newest tradition is not something to be passed down with pride or celebrated at halftime — it’s something that should alarm every Aggie who cares about what a university is supposed to be.

Plato has become a casualty of this campaign, and it’s an irony too heavy to ignore. His work has endured for centuries precisely because it invites dispute, discourse and discomfort. Plato’s dialogues are exercises in inquiry, not dogma. A university that finds Plato too dangerous for the classroom isn’t defending students; it’s advertising its own fear of ideas.

We tell Aggies that they are being prepared to lead — to confront complex problems and navigate a diverse, complicated world — to “stand as a force for good.” That promise rings hollow if students are denied the opportunity to engage seriously with complexity itself. Leadership requires exposure to disagreement, moral ambiguity and competing values; you cannot prepare students for reality by shielding them from it.

A&M can still choose a different path. It can reaffirm that the role of a university is not to dictate thought, but to cultivate it — not to narrow inquiry, but to expand it. A school worthy of its traditions does not fear questions; it welcomes them.

Until that happens, many of us who once wore maroon and white with pride will continue to watch these headlines with disappointment — and with growing embarrassment over what our alma mater is becoming.

Lee (Berlet) Benjamins, Ph.D., ‘93 is a guest contributor to The Battalion.