GRIEVING TEXAS A&M LOOKS TO BONFIRE'S FUTURE

The deaths of 12 students and injuries to many more at Texas A&M University was a tragedy whose pain was magnified by circumstances. For one thing, the 40-foot-high pyramid of logs for a football-game bonfire is a 90-year-old tradition -- nearly a century during which no one has ever before been hurt. And the collapse of the bonfire pyramid came just the week before Thanksgiving, which is a time for happiness, not sorrow.

No one may ever know the real reason the log pyramid fell down. Bad engineering? Bad construction? Failure to use appropriate caution? These are questions A&M officials already have begun to address.

But one thing appears clear: Few A&M students or alumni want to discard 90 years of bonfire tradition.

Student rituals have been around for centuries, according to an interesting Associated Press story that followed the Texas tragedy.

Rites of passage are familiar to most of us, particularly those of us who endured hazing in one form or another. Because of the dangerous and life-threatening outcome of reckless initiation rites, schools have banned hazing. But students still look for ways to indoctrinate the uninitiated.

As noted in the AP story, defenders of the A&M bonfire say it is unfair to put their tradition in the same category as rituals that are likely to cause harm. No one ever intended for anyone to be injured because of the football bonfire. And, until this year, that has been the case.

It would be a shame to see the A&M tradition ended because of an error -- a mistake that very likely can be avoided in the future.

It would be far better to have the bonfire in future years, complete with all the safety precautions needed to guarantee that the huge pyramid of logs will stay in place until they are burned.

If the A&M tradition had ever been intended to make students suffer, there is no doubt whatsoever that it would have been banned long ago.

There are plenty of initiation rituals around that need to be stopped, however, and many of them are perpetuated not by students, but by adults who should know better. Consider the physical abuses of military rites of passage. How is society served by these injurious activities.

The grief in Texas is genuine. So are the ties to a 90-year-old tradition. Don't confuse the two.