The Aggies are all about traditions. It ranges from the inexplicable (now defunct) burning of a huge pile of wood (fatal accidents notwithstanding), to the nascent excitement of yelling on the midnight before football games, to the poignant homage to the dead through Muster and Silver Taps.
Last month, we lost 6 Aggies. The second Tuesday of this month, they will be honored in the ceremony of the Silver Taps (a solemn ritual that is to be experienced, not explained). This is the first Silver Taps of the year.
The Aggie college newspaper, The Battalion, decided to run an article paying their tribute to the six deceased Aggies. They talked to the students’ friends, family, and compiled a eulogy of all the six students; or did they? The oddest thing was that each student’s eulogy ran from anywhere between 25 lines to 50 lines, except one. Olanrewaju (Lanre) Olusola Sanu’s eulogy was 2 lines long and it read [link]:
The senior chemical engineering major from Houston died on Aug. 2. The Battalion was unable to reach his family for information to compile a story.
Really?!? You couldn’t find out anything about Lanre. Nothing from friends, nothing from Facebook, nothing from his lecturers and professors? Nothing at all? Not even a photograph! Everyone else had their photographs in the article, except Lanre.
This enraged quite a few Aggies. Some of them complained about this on the comments section of the article on the Battalion website. In response to that, the Editors simple disabled comments on the post. Check it out for yourselves, all other articles on www.thebatt.com have comments enabled except for this one!
I wonder why? Does it have anything to do with the fact that he happens to be the only person of color among the six and has an African sounding name? Maybe its ok not to try too hard to find out more about Lanre, and simply ignore when people protest. Maybe this is what politically-correct racism looks like.
For all of you who think I may be over-reacting to the whole thing, Texas A&M (and the surrounding areas) have history of racism. In the past people have attacked international students, charged higher cover charge for non-whites in bars, and made racist videos and posted them online. In fact, multiple assessments have concluded that Texas A&M practices institutional racism [link1, link2].
The world may be changing, but Aggie Racism marches on!
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