Issue date: 1/28/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Jordan Bryan [Click to enlarge]

While there is still time, I think it is appropriate to remind President Elsa A. Murano that the Memorial Student Center belongs to all Aggies. Former students might not have had a chance to vote in the referendum, and that vote might have ended up meaning nothing anyway, but renovations and referenda aside, the MSC belongs to us.

As such a public and widely shared place, there are certain parts of it that should not be treated with as much condescension as was the student voice that authorized funds for its renovation in 2008. One of these, and the most important, is the grass. The University should preserve this vital example of the Aggie Spirit at a safe location while construction goes on at the MSC.

Aggies are known, at least in our minds, for some seemingly weird things - traditions, mannerisms and otherwise foolish behavior - that cannot really be explained to outside observers. I remember jokes about a hearing last year where a few students asked if construction workers would be allowed to wear hard hats in the MSC, or be allowed to walk on the grass during renovations.

My friends chuckled at the thought that some yokels could be so unrefined as to ask such an embarrassing question of the company representative, actually assuming that our traditions might have some relevance to the off-campus world.

I really do not care what the company representative thought or what anyone else in the room thought, either. I like the idea that some things should not be thrown away; that Aggies should keep a part of our past to serve as a continuous link to our future.

It should be common knowledge to Aggies, including Murano, that the MSC grass is a monument, just as the building. The reason people are asked to remove head covers in the building is the same reason you will not find anyone catching sun on the MSC grass; it is a living memorial to Aggies who have died in service to our nation and should be treated as such.

If Kyle Field and the Zone were undergoing renovation and reconstruction similar to that planned for the MSC, workers would not tear down the statue of E. King Gill - Reveille would have a heart attack. If Academic Plaza were being torn up, the administration would make sure Sul Ross found a temporary home, or students would at least make sure the administration had made sure of it.

The MSC is about to undergo some dramatic - well-needed, long-awaited and somewhat legally demanded, but dramatic all the same - changes. I agree that we should preserve a very obvious part of it, one of only two die-hard traditions surrounding the building. A&M is about moving forward while keeping touch with the past that defined us: the past that made us want to come, that kept us here, and that one day, will make us look back with fondness at our time.

The monument we cannot touch, the one that most of us see every day we are on campus and that thousands of former students have known for decades, should not be thrown away by construction workers. I doubt it would be too difficult for the University to find a way of keeping the grass alive for a few years, but more importantly, it is not their turf in the first place.

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