re: Tonight, Texas A&M's campus will darken for Silver Taps

An intention by whom though? The school was run exclusively by former or currently serving military officers and NCOs for a long portion of its early history. When tasked with running a military college designed to build young officers they naturally designed campus life to mimic military life at the time. Over time, the military's traditions have changed a bit, and so have A&M's, which explains the slight disparity. Practicality can have a large part to do with it, in the case of uniforms and general customs. Other traditions were started in the military by Former Students (Muster) and then transferred to A&M as a whole after the fact. Some traditions have entirely been lost, such as the pipeline A&M grads had for certain branches of the military (Artillery) (Other SMCs had their own as well, West Pointers generally, and still do, got the lions share of Infantry and Engineering slots) Its really a patchwork.

I can say that there are some 'forced' traditions on campus, and they were pushed by either civilian students looking to boost their resumes (Big Event) or the school administration attempting to make some kind of safety initiative a 'tradition'. None of those have gone over well and are generally looked on with disdain.