Gov. Rick Perry has said bonfire would return to Texas A&M University, though there is no student- or university-level push to bring it back.
The Aggie tradition hasn't burned on campus since November 1999, when the 59-foot stack of logs collapsed, killing 12 and injuring 27 others. Students have since held the event at off-campus sites in Robertson County.
The governor commented on the future of the tradition -- which symbolized Aggies' "burning desire" to beat the University of Texas football team each November -- during an interview with Texas Monthly for a 10-year anniversary story. The magazine posted the item in a blog Tuesday night.
"It's really going to be interesting when Bonfire is reintroduced on the campus again, and it will be," the governor told the magazine. "I will not be surprised if it happens by 2011, maybe even 2010. I think Bonfire will be back on campus. The kids will have the experience again."
When asked how the tradition would come back, he said, "I'd leave that up to the board and the current administration to sit down and decide the safety parameters, the oversight, et cetera. ... They are very capable men and women, and I trust their judgment."
Allison Castle, a Perry spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that she had nothing to add to the governor's comments.
It's not the first time Perry -- a former Aggie yell leader -- has made such comments. He made the same suggestion, but without a timeline, during the dedication of the Bonfire Memorial in 2004.
'No scheduled discussions'
Rod Davis, a Texas A&M System spokesman, said in an e-mail that "there are no scheduled discussions of any kind, or agenda items of any kind, pending before the board on bonfire."
Elsa Murano -- who resigned as Texas A&M president in June amid a public clash with Mike McKinney, chief of the A&M System, over governance of the university -- said the decision to bring back bonfire should rest with the university's president.
"It should not be [the governor's] call. It should not be the call of the Board of Regents. In my opinion, it should be the Texas A&M president who makes this decision," said Murano, the 23rd head of the 132-year-old university.
"After all, if one examines the history of bonfire, who was the defendant [in the bonfire lawsuits]? It was Ray Bowen, the president at the time, and the other officials at the university involved with it. Nobody sued the regents. They sued the university and its CEO."
Bowen, a 1958 Aggie graduate, placed a moratorium on bonfire after the collapse and in 2000 appointed a task force made up of students, faculty and staff to examine its future.
The concerns about legal liability proved to be too much, Bowen said. Additionally, the estimated cost of building the bonfire neared $2.5 million, including insurance and consultant fees.
"In 2002, the study that was conducted caused me to conclude that the costs were too great even if we had been able to hire the required safety consultants and been able to acquire the required insurance," Bowen said on Wednesday. "Because we could not hire the consultants and obtain the insurance, we could not proceed, even if we were willing to spend the money. Thus, we were stopped on several fronts."
Bowen said he initially hoped bonfire would return to campus but changed his mind after reading depositions taken in connection with various lawsuits in 2004.
"I was no longer disappointed," he said of the tradition's absence. "The barriers present in 2002 were still present, so in my view it was still not possible to have a bonfire."
Robert Gates, named president following Bowen, didn't want to discuss bonfire's possible return to campus until lawsuits were resolved.
Final suit settled
Last October, Texas A&M agreed to a $2.1 million settlement with some of the families of victims, clearing the final lawsuit against the university related to the collapse. By that time, Murano had been president less than a year.
Later that winter, Murano and Mark Gold, last year's student body president, met with most of the families of the 12 who were killed.
Murano said Wednesday that Perry's remarks seemed careless.
"When one sees a comment like that in print, one can only wonder whether it was made with full consideration of the people who suffered the most, that is the families of the bonfire victims," she said. "No matter how much we mourn the tradition of bonfire, that loss does not begin to compare to what the families lost on that tragic day."
John Breen -- father of Chris Breen, the only former student killed in the collapse -- had not heard about Perry's remarks until contacted by a reporter. He said he wasn't surprised.
"He's been involved in this from the get-go," said Breen, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who was the chairman of the civil engineering department there in 1999.
A complaint filed by his family with the Texas Board of Engineers led to a 2002 agreement with Texas A&M. It requires that any future bonfires be supervised by the university and that a licensed professional engineer oversee design and construction. He said he hoped A&M would honor the commitment made seven years ago.
"If bonfire was done safely and with controls, including following the agreement made with the Texas Board of Engineers, then I'd be OK with it coming back," said Breen, quickly adding: "This is not the universal opinion for my family, and I won't be overjoyed if it comes back, but I'd certainly understand it. Chris loved bonfire and what it stood for, so he'd probably have wanted it to come back under safe conditions."
Texas A&M Interim President R. Bowen Loftin was unavailable for comment, a university spokesman said. But he referred reporters to Loftin's comments published in Sunday's Eagle. He said he had read the reports and had no intention of considering bringing back bonfire.
"I think it would take an extraordinarily large amount of interest on the part of our students here for us to get back to look at that again. ... I don't hear the students rising up and demanding it," he said. "To have it happen to you one time is something that you can get past. If you did it again, and it happened again, you have no way to excuse yourself."
Fading interest on campus
Several students interviewed Tuesday said that though the issue was of interest to students, there was no movement to bring bonfire back.
"There are some students who are passionate about bringing it back, and there are some students who are passionate about it not coming back," said Kolin Loveless, student body president. "As far as a massive student outcry to bring it back, it's not something I've perceived yet."
Jeremy Stark, one of the students in charge of Student Bonfire, the off-campus event, said students remained interested in the tradition. He said about 1,300 signed up to take part in building the 45-foot stack last year, and about 9,000 attended the burn. While on campus, it sometimes drew a crowd upward of 70,000.
The senior political science major said he was happy with the 45-foot off-campus bonfire.
"I feel like the off-campus bonfire is a great thing going on right now," he said. "The bonfire tradition has been continuing since 2002 and will continue pending any decisions by the university to change the status quo."
A student group that advocated for the return of an on-campus bonfire disbanded last year, its president saying that there simply wasn't enough student support. Erik Gnaedinger said he had seen a gradual decline of interest among his peers for bringing it back.
"In my freshman year, in '05, you still had some of the old people who were involved, whether they were going to grad school or whatever," the senior industrial engineering major said. "There's no one here talking about it now, aside from alumni. There was more talk today about that kid who died on the motorcycle than Perry's comments and all that jazz."
McKinney, in an interview Wednesday, said he agreed with Loftin's view that the process to bring bonfire back to campus would have to be instigated by current students.
"It was a great tradition, but kind of like some other things, its time may have passed," he said. "If bonfire comes back, it will be at the insistence of the students -- not at the insistence of the president or chancellor. It won't be because of the old people that it's brought back."
Perry's involvement
The chancellor also said that Perry was not involved in the day-to-day operations of Texas A&M, "certainly not any more than he is at the University of Texas."
"It's not my role to give him PR lessons, or press lessons, or speech lessons," McKinney said. "If you're asking me whether he told anyone to bring [bonfire] back: no."
Many at Texas A&M University -- from current and former students to faculty and administrators -- have lamented Perry's influence at the A&M System, especially its flagship College Station campus.
McKinney is Perry's former chief of staff. Another of the governor's ex-chiefs of staff, Jay Kimbrough, is serving in the newly created $260,000-a-year position of adviser to the Board of Regents, the A&M System's ultimate governing authority.
At least seven of nine regents have donated money to the governor's campaign fund. Some have given large sums, such as Bryan businessman Phil Adams, who has donated more than $300,000, according to Texas Ethics Commission data. Regents are appointed by Perry.
"Bonfire is yet another illustration where the governor can't avoid telling us how much he controls the situation," said Jon Hagler, who has been named a Distinguished Alumnus and is a major financial contributor to Texas A&M.
"Note his words: when bonfire is introduced again. And just for added emphasis, and it will be."
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