To the current students and younger alumni who weren’t alive for or old enough to remember the Bonfire tragedy, I know you have a sense of its importance but it’s hard to fully grasp what it meant to those of us who lived through it. I implore you today to spend some time today reading about it, watching the old news videos from that week and the highlights from the Texas game and halftime show. Most importantly, if you haven’t done so already, take some time this week to visit the Bonfire Memorial, read each of the 12 students’ stories and pay your respects to them. This is a hugely important part of our identity as Aggies and you share it too, regardless of how distant it may feel. Go to burn night and take in the spectacle of the incredible mass of logs felled, carried and stacked by hand. Imagine going to class and seeing it grow log by log, around the clock, right there on campus all through the fall semester. Then imagine showing up one morning and seeing it on its side, with the awful knowledge that an unknown number of your classmates were pinned underneath. It was an unspeakably sad and awful day and it’s hugely important that the memory doesn’t die with the Ags who lived to see it.