To Chris Bellamy and the Daily Utah Chronicle,
Let me open by saying, thank you for coming to College Station, Texas to watch a football game and to experience Midnight Yell for what appears to be your first time. HAHA!! We welcome you back any time to experience it again should you have a strange feeling swelling up inside you which could only be love and respect for this outpost of Texas called Aggieland, or God’s country.
On the subject of Midnight Yell, I went to my first one in the middle of downtown Dallas in the fall of ’91. I was a student at another school working on my bachelor’s of Architecture at the time and had no idea what Texas A&M was all about. I went to Yell with a friend of mine from high school. She tried to describe it to me on the way there, but I didn’t understand. It was midinght before the A&M/SMU game and I found myself standing in the middle of the West End (a historic district with shops and restaurants) surrounded by thousands of Aggie faithful and onlookers. The experience will be forever burned into my mind. Four guys, dressed in overalls (they wear overalls sometimes at Yell instead of their dress whites) leaped up on a ledge and led the mob in perfect unison chants. When it was all over, everyone cheered, laughed and peacefully walked away. I thought they were building up the crowd to rape, pillage and burn downtown Dallas, but it never happened. I was amazed, shocked and exhilirated all at the same time.
Then a few years later I went to my first Midnight Yell in Kyle Field as a student of Texas A&M working on my Master’s of Architecture. I was again blown away by what I saw and experienced. It was exactly like Chris said. Well, not exactly. Your description was colorful and funny, but as a journalist reporting the news it was anything but journalism. It was slanderous and sensationalistic. I know the students of Utah read your article and got their first impression of our great school from it and I don’t appreciate what you wrote in the least.
Are we a Cult? If you consider a group of people gathered in some remote location to worship gods, deities, or inanimate objects a cult then you might think we are. Given your background, I can see why you are quick to call what goes on at Texas A&M a cult. I mean, didn’t your forefathers WALK, not ride wagons, across the country pulling carts and following one man, Brigham Young, to some remote location in the middle of nowhere to do and worship as he saw fit? Didn’t this man denounce the Bible and wrote his OWN bible, where men were free to take as many wives as they desired and do as they please as long as they obided by the rules and restrictions of this man? If you recall in more recent history, there was another man who led his “flock” down a self-righteous path. His name was David Koresh and he labeled his following the Branch Davidians. So, I ask you, isn’t Salt Lake City nothing more than a glorified, peaceful cult as well? Now granted, there are those who are there who aren’t Mormons, but those are the minority I’m sure.
Texas A&M University is just that. It’s a University. There are people from all walks of life and all religions, including Mormons, who come to this school to get an education. However they get much more than just a piece of paper. No, Texas A&M is not a cult. It’s a family. Do you know what a family is? We don’t dress up like Nazis, preach Episcopal sermons, rape people who don’t get the yells right, worship false idols or chant satanic rituals, you close-minded moron. We don’t chant Masonic rituals either. Are you a Mason? I am. Do you know what Masonry is all about? If you did, I don’t think you would have written what you did, you idiot.
We simply have a passion and a love for our school that no other university on this planet will ever have! We show this by having Yell Leaders instead of bimbo slut cheerleaders. How many football games have you gone to where the cheerleaders actually rallied the support of the entire stadium? And it’s not because our yell leaders are pretty! Then, after the game is over we go home and continue our everyday lives, because we are not a cult. We are a family. We respect each other and have a good time doing it. We show our pride by wearing our maroon-and-white on everything, even when our football team doesn’t make a national title or a bowl game victory.
Midnight Yell is just another tradition at Texas A&M that will cause you to either love or hate this school. If you hate it, then there is a good chance that you are simply jealous of it because you want to be apart of it. IF you love it, then come on back. The door is always open. But if you live in a glass house, it would be wise not to throw any stones.
Oh, and if you would have done half an hour’s worth of research. You would have found out that “Hullabaloo canek canek..” is representative of the sound the steam train made as it rolled into College Station, not some speaking of tonges to raise the dead or something. Your article sounded like a fifth grader telling the class what he did at summer camp instead of journalistic reporting. Stay in school!!
Sean EubanksFightin’ Texas Aggie Class of ’97WHOOP!! (another satanic ritualistic saying) HAHA!