re: A question for all Ags...

A&M was All Male/All Military until the '50s. Then the military portion became optional. The All Male part went in stages but effectively in the '60s this was done. Interestingly enough a couple years ago the ratio at A&M is actually now majority female by a hair and there are 50k students. There are currently about 2k people in the Corps of Cadets at A&M and they live in special dorms and wear uniforms to class and have a very rigorous/Citadel/VMI type setup though they also are regular college students. About 40% of the people in the Corps actually take military commissions.

A&M is one of just 6 Sr Military ROTC institutions and produces the most officers out of any of them. Virginia Tech is the only other Sr Military institution that is integrated with non Corps students. In WWII A&M actually had more men serving than all of the service academies combined and had 7 MoH winners which are housed in the MSC (and thus that is why Aggies get so worked up about walking on the grass outside the MSC which stands for Memorial Student Center as it is a memorial to those who died in military service). Over 250 Aggies have attained the rank of General or Admiral and over 20,000 Aggies have served in combat for the US Military.

The older classes of Aggies when it was All Male/Majority military are VERY hard core as a rule. To give you an idea, my Dad is a Class of '58 and when he was at A&M there were about 5k students and a little over 1k in his class. I went with him to his 35th Class Reunion many years ago and they had about 300 Class members there. How many places can get 1/3rd of their entire college class to come to a 35th reunion?

So essentially A&M is a mix of many things but has deep military roots that permeate many of the traditions. You can't walk 100 yards on campus without bumping in to another memorial or monument dedicated to everything from the Aggies who died in the Spanish American War to Parks or Streets named after the MoH winners. Of course a lot of the traditions are just fun or cool that are based around the Corps heritage such as Elephant Walk or Silver Taps or Aggie Muster so they are also revered by non corps Aggies. The reason for the Yell Leaders for instance is because A&M was all male for so long and with no women around they created the Yell Leader tradition quite organically. A&M is tradition crazy so even though it is an elected position with more women at A&M than men and Corps members comprising 4% of the student body only a handful of Non Corps Yell Leaders have ever been elected and no females.