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Traditions. They're hard to come by. You don't create 'em overnight. Anytime you hear "the first annual", that means "Hey, we're doing this the first time. We hope this becomes something really important many, many years down the road." You see a big, beautiful oak spread out, quite a canopy, and think to yourself "How long ago did somebody have to plant that?" Somebody's great-great-grandfather planted that tree. That's a famous line, "Plant a tree whose shade you'll never enjoy." It took how long for that to happen? Tradition.

I didn't go to Texas A&M University. I went to the University of Houston undergrad, and went to UT Law School. Both of which to varying degrees are competitors with Texas A&M. I didn't enjoy the A&M traditions, I'm not part of it, not benefited from it, I have no personal interest in continuing it or sustaining it or promoting it.

But I do see a bigger problem in society today. A namby-pamby nation that's more afraid of getting sued than having fun. People that worry more about the bad things that happen than the good things that will be prevented if all you do is worry about bad things. I wouldn't wanna grow up a child in today's world. Because between wearing a helmet every time you get on your bicycle, to being buckled into everything in life, to fences around anything fun, my goodness alive! The world must be a frightening place to live in. Or maybe the world's a heck of a lot safer and we don't need all those safeguards, but we let the headline story frighten us into not having any fun anymore. I can't tell you how many people I know whose kids don't trick-or-treat anymore because there might be a razor blade in the candy. My goodness! What? Three kids out of three billion have swallowed candy in history? It's nuts! It's absolutely nuts!

And what we lose is not harmless. What you lose is the ability to bond. What you lose is the ability to have fun. What you lose are the things that make life worth living. What you lose is what gives life meaning. Fun stuff! I mean, do you really want to live a life in a bubble where nothing bad could ever happen?

Take a moment, in your car, at your desk. Close your eyes. Well, okay, maybe don't do that. I was getting carried away...sorry. Um, in your mind, transport yourself to your funnest moment at college. Your funnest moment. You don't have to say it out loud, 'cause it's probably embarrassing if the kids are there. Your funnest moment, I mean, by golly, if I got together with my old college buddies, this is the story. Oh man, we would laugh about that. It's generally going to involve something dangerous, illicit, illegal, or stupid that you would never do today. You wouldn't dare do that today. Doesn't it put a smile on your face to think "There was a time back in the day I was wild and crazy! I had fun! Man, we were streaking down the street! Man, we were doing this!"? Now, imagine if that experience were carved out of your memory. You never had that experience, you never did that again. You turned out okay.

Well, 10 years ago today, a stack of logs, not a fire, a stack of logs fell, killing 12 and injuring 27 more. I feel bad for those 12 young people...well, 11 students and one alumnus. I feel terrible for their families. It's a terrible, terrible, terrible thing. Sad. I'm sure they wanted them to grow into the wonderful human beings that they planned on. And it's unfortunate to lose a young one.

However, to shut down a tradition that goes back to 1907, to shut down certainly the greatest tradition in Texas university history, and one of the greatest traditions in American university tradition, because of an unfortunate accident, is to me to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Is to me ill-advised. Is to me to let fear overtake fun. There are things in life you do that may not make any sense. Cutting down a bunch of trees, piling them as high as you can, setting them on fire, and standing around singing a school song that "we're gonna beat UT", that's the most idiotic, primitive, stupid thing in the world, but you know what? It's pretty super cool as a memory-builder. It's pretty super cool as a bonding element for a university class.

Oh yeah, people skip class, their GPAs dropped, they drank too much and spent too much time cutting, hauling, and stacking trees, to set on fire for no good reason. But I'll tell you this. You talk about school spirit. You talk about putting a ring on your finger with the university's name on it and it having meaning. You can't beat it. I'd trade that experience, that school spirit, that connection to the alma mater, I'd trade that with any other school in the country. It's as good or better than any other school in the country. People that went to A&M are more proud of their university than people that went to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Chicago, Miami, Ohio State, Iowa, you name it. People that went to Texas A&M think that's the beginning and the end, and I'm telling you this, if you're a university president, that's kind of important. When you go walking into an office and you've got that A&M ring and someone else sees it and that has meaning, that is important as anything that you learn in a class, 'cause this is a vocational school. You're not learning, you're not getting a degree.

This is what's so wrong with what people don't understand about a university experience. It's not about getting a degree so you can get a job. It's about a point in your life when you make memories. When you're passing from being a child to being an adult. It's that awkward, fun, weird phase that your mind is wide open to try things, to do things, to meet people. That's why people will go back to reunions and they feel closer to somebody they haven't seen in 30 years than somebody they've worked with since the day they got out of college, 'cause those are memorable times. That's such a neat part of one's life.

And a tradition like Bonfire, silly as you may think it is if you didn't go there, that was at the heart of the experience. Needless to say, I think they should bring it back. I've never even been to it. But I know that because of an unfortunate accident, to kill it for that reason, is to me irrational, illogical, and part of a bigger problem. And that is throwing away traditions and letting fear rule the day. That's no good.

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