Sunday, July 12, 2009

Reverence for the Chain of Command

Last week Bud Rudder reminded us:
One of the unique qualities of Texas A&M is a reverence for chain of command.
This goes back through more than a 100 years of A&M history. Keepers of the Spirit gives an example from 1908:
Repeated efforts by the cadets to have their concerns heard at a higher level by either the president or the board were rejected. During a hastily called meeting, the A&M Board of Directors exonerated Harrington of all charges on February 11...

...the junior class of '09 met late into the evening of February 18 and voted to leave the campus en masse. By morning a majority of the seniors, sophomores, and freshmen agreed also to strike.
Dethlof writes that the reasons for the strike are unclear. According to Adams, one grievance was that Pres. Harrington refused to let the Livestock Judging Team to attend a circus in Bryan to view species not available on campus.

As the students went on strike, the parents and former students called for them to get a fair hearing of their grievances. Pres. Harrington was burned in effigy by the Corps.
Unwilling to budge and having lost the confidence of the cadets and the faculty, Harrington resigned at the August, 1908 board meeting to be effective September 1

3 comments:

  1. Wow, Harrington burned in effigy and forced to resign. Now we have an office/classroom complex named after him. Does that mean Murano will get one too? :)

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  2. There are actually three buildings on the A&M campus named Harrington: the two parts of the Education complex and a Corps dorm. We've also had two presidents named Harrington. What is named for whom doesn't seem to be on the web. If someone knows, please leave us a comment.

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  3. Vision 1920 investigated by having one of our minions go look at the Harrington Education tower and look at the plaque by the elevator. It was named for former A&M President Marion Thomas Harrington (President and Chancellor in the 1950s), not Henry Hill Harrington, the subject of this post. Ironically, the Corps dorm is named for the man they drove out in 1908.

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