Issue date: 6/8/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Tiffany Tran [Click to enlarge]

For the past 133 years, Texas A&M, as College and University, has shaped its students and our environment. One essential element, one key ingredient in the glue that has held our identity together for more than a century, has been a sense of community.

Today, A&M faces challenges symptomatic of any large institution that is growing into maturity. One of these, and the most important in my mind, is the challenge to the Aggie Spirit presented by several factors, the latest of which is the looming loss of our Memorial Student Center for a period of at least three years.

It may seem silly to us now, but this renovation project presents as much of a challenge to the Aggie Spirit as the dwindling presence of Howdy or any other tradition, and needs to be addressed.

For most of the first century of A&M's existence, Aggies' sense of community had organic support because of the military organization of a student body comprised almost completely of the Corps of Cadets. Paramilitary units from squadron on up shared a hierarchy and a sense of purpose - education and military service. In addition to the organization of authority and progress within the Corps, cadets shared living spaces, dining spaces and activities.

Together they learned, worked, ate, slept, played and went to the womens' schools on the weekend to pick up dates for the football game or dance. They shared the needs of young men at school through four wars and the beginning of a fifth.

When the university was opened to women and non-regs and the military academy atmosphere began to show signs of relaxation, Aggies did not let go of their sense of service. The student body was still small enough that everyone at least had the opportunity to feel like a part of something much larger, in terms of importance if not of numbers.

That has worked well for the past four decades, even as the population has expanded, and the number of interests, organizations and activities has likewise expanded. Up until this year. Part of what kept the various constituent groups of the student body together as it grew and diversified was continued access to a shared space through which most undergraduates passed on some kind of a regular basis.

Continued...

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