Opinion: I Love My Two-Percenter Friends Despite Their Sinful Alternative Lifestyle
The first time I learned what a two-percenter was, I was ten years old. I was at my family’s tailgate, and my cousin (then a current student) was talking about her friend. Innocently, I asked her where her friend was, and she said he was studying in his dorm because he didn’t like coming to games or anything else relating to Aggie traditions.
My little mind couldn’t understand. “He doesn’t go to Midnight Yell?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Student Bonfire?”
“Nope.”
“Not even Muster?”
“Not even that,” she sighed.
My dad pulled me aside and explained that my cousin’s friend was a two-percenter. He chose a lifestyle antithetical to E. King Gill’s gospel. I still didn’t understand, and questions ran through my head for years. How can that be? Has no one told him about the spirit that can ne’er be told? Why come to Texas A&M if you’re just going to focus on school?
That was in 2007. Times have changed since then. Today, someone identifying as a two-percenter is nothing special. As Texas A&M grows and changes with the times, so do its students and their attitudes toward abstaining from its beloved traditions. However, the few that recognize two-percenterism for the sinful choice it is so often choose hatred and vitriol to spread Jimbo’s message. No matter that this hate flies in the face of what being an Aggie is about, who are we to condemn others? Who among us has lived without lapsing into two-percenter behavior?
I will be the first to confess. I’ve left games before the end of the fourth quarter. I’ve stayed at home before Midnight Yell when the weather got “too cold.” In dark hours on long drives back from Baton Rouge, I’ve looked to the stars and questioned my very own faith. Believing in the Aggie Spirit isn’t about perfection, it’s about holding to something much bigger than oneself through the ups and downs.
Two-percenters are simply lost. Lost in sin, lost in delusion, lost in a lying culture that tells them their lifestyle is “healthy” and “natural” despite what E.J. Kyle clearly outlined as our purpose here in College Station. Though we cannot accept their choice, we can embrace the spirit within them. We can give them the same kindness we expect from each other and the same forgiveness we were taught to give to St. Johnathan of Football.
—Hullakazoo
If you have ever attended Midnight Yell, you have unknowingly seen Hullakazoo. He marches in amongst the band wearing a Walmart army man Halloween costume whilst blasting his shrill kazoo into the midnight sky over Aggieland. You may hear his kazoo echoing down the halls of Evans library late at night, but you will never find him. Thankfully we are the only ones who could corner him and got him to join us and say some funny stuff every so often. The kazoo playing is really starting to bug us though.