Opinion: A blatant disregard of tradition

John Bellinger and the rest of the Board of Regents, this one’s for you.

“Restoring” Bonfire to campus just might be the worst idea you’ve had yet.

Some context is in order. In advance of the upcoming football game with the University of Texas, President Welsh formed a “rivalry committee” of 14 people headed by Regent John Bellinger and Vice President for Student Affairs Joe Ramirez. It includes a whole cast of who’s who in A&M politics: Student Body President Andrew Applewhite, Corps of Cadets Commander Caitlyn Walsh, Head Yell Leader Trevor Yelton and various other relevant personages.

On Jan. 11, Bellinger sent letters to the families of the 12 lost in the collapse asking permission to bring the tradition back to campus. He expressed his condolences for their loss before expounding on the “minimal oversight” and lack of safety measures used by the current off-campus Bonfire. 

Following the collapse in 1999, A&M toyed with the idea of reinstating Bonfire with renewed safety measures and oversight, as Bellinger is now suggesting. The plan fell apart in 2002 when it was discovered that liability insurance for the program would exceed $2 million per year and the university officially canceled the tradition.

Anyone who’s been in Bonfire knows the Aggie Spirit is stronger than that. A group of Aggies got together later that year and started the unsanctioned off-campus Bonfire, which has been going strong every year since. It’s now a registered nonprofit organization under the name Bonfire, LLC. This is the group — the students — that have kept the tradition alive since the university gave up on it.

Despite this, and despite the fact that the collapse occurred not when the rogue off-campus group with “minimal oversight” was building it but when the university itself was in charge, Bellinger evidently decided that now was the time to establish what I like to call his New Army Bonfire.

Bellinger’s guise of condolence and professionalism fell away during in-person meetings with the families, an anonymous committee member told the Texas Tribune.

“‘He strongly implied, if not said, that the families who didn’t agree with bringing back Bonfire … they didn’t understand the spirit of the tradition and what it means to Aggies,’” the committee member said, according to the Tribune. “‘It felt like it was just a box to check in saying that, ‘Hey, we tried,’ before creating this tradition that he [Bellinger] wants to bring back.’”

I’ve come to expect some slimy behaviors from our Board of Regents, but even for me, this is a new one. To look a parent in the eyes and suggest that opposing a program that defeats the entire purpose of a tradition — the tradition their child died for — is a new low.

But it doesn’t end there.

“The committee is in the preliminary stages of considering ways to have official oversight of the bonfire,” Bellinger wrote in his letter. 

The off-campus “bonfire,” to adopt the derogatory lowercase used by Bellinger, would be consumed by the university’s heavy-handed supervision. Worse, according to a Texas Tribune source, student involvement in this new bonfire would be minimal as they’re proposing hiring a construction company to build it.

Currently, Bonfire is entirely student-built. Students use axes to chop down and trim the trees; students hoist massive logs onto their shoulders to transport them from the woods to the trailer; students use pulley systems and brute strength to lift these logs and hold them in place while other students use baling wire to secure them to the stack.

Can you guess which keyword would be missing from those sentences if the university hires a construction company to put this thing together?

Here’s a hot take the Regents have apparently never heard before: it’s not about the pile of logs, and it never was. Why do I feel like I’m trying to explain the concept of Christmas to Ebenezer Scrooge here?

Burn is meant to be a fantastic culmination of an entire semester of hard work and dedication. Students dedicate entire weekends and hours upon hours of their weekdays to putting Bonfire together. 

Yes, it’s about beating the hell outta t.u. But it’s also about calluses and ant bites and shooting the breeze with your buddies while waiting for your turn to swing on the tree.

What would be the point of just showing up to a premade stack of logs slapped together by power tools and cranes? That’s not Aggie Spirit. That’s not Bonfire.

I’ll tell you exactly what it is. This is the Regents’ idea of a moneymaker. They want to take our tradition — our Bonfire — and turn it into something profitable for the university. With the UT game coming up, they’ve realized the mistake they made back in 2002: the revenue coming in from the game will vastly outweigh any construction or revenue costs associated with their New Army Bonfire.

Not only is this a blatant slap in the face to the memory of the 12 we lost — not to mention their families, who are likely being bullied into accepting — it’s completely disregarding the point of the tradition.

So, Mr. Bellinger, I hope you’re listening. I address this to you because I hope to God the current students serving on the rivalry committee at least possess the presence of mind and understanding of their fellow Aggies to know that this goes against the spirit of Bonfire itself.

I hope you come to your senses and realize that Bonfire is not just another tradition you can extort to drum up funds in advance of the UT game. It may be too much to ask, but I hope you can recognize that the point of Bonfire is bringing together students of all makes, majors and walks of life to create something beautiful, something that keeps the Spirit of Aggieland alive and honors the lives of the 12 we lost.

Maybe if you dirtied your dress shoes by standing outside at 2:42 am on Nov. 18 every year with the students you’re purporting to represent, you would understand.

Charis Adkins is an English junior and opinion columnist for The Battalion.