Opinion: It’s Time to Empower the Corps of Cadets

This article originally appeared in The Mugdown’s Fall 2020 print edition. To view a digital copy of the print edition, click here.

With all that has been going on in our nation and university community alike, it’s time to look to the Keepers of the Spirit, our very own Corps of Cadets. Once our university’s greatest and only asset, the Corps has a long history of stepping up when we need them. Now, due to changing culture and ideals at our university, the Corps is but a shadow of its former self. However, by empowering the Corps in its mission to uphold the traditions of Texas A&M, the Corps will be able to better protect its legacy and serve the institution that we all hold dear.

We need to dominate the moral and physical battlefields that surround our most cherished traditions and ramp up efforts to better our university’s image. One first concrete step in the right direction would be allowing the Corps to serve as a quick response force to instances of civil unrest or narrative rejection. This initiative would require a two-fold strategy involving both active protest countermeasures and more indirect suppression of dissenting voices.

As far as countering intense protests or riots on campus, we would need to outfit our cadets with equipment for dispersing crowds, such as bull horns to lead impromptu yell practices or faux campus tours. If this is not enough, it may be necessary to take a more physical approach, which could mean outfitting Corps training weapons to fire rubber, less-lethal rounds as a means of controlling crowds. When it comes to defending the ideals and traditions that this institution was founded upon and that are embodied in statues and buildings on campus, no cost is too great.

As impressive as those measures are, though, they would do nothing to address some of the most dangerous assaults on our traditions: academic classes. This is why we need to pack our classes full of cadets to redirect class discussions should they go in a radical and potentially damaging direction. This may look like a group of cadets asking course-related but unimportant questions until class time runs out, or even outright talking over malicious instructors or confused students.

Our university is under attack, and if we don’t act swiftly, we may see irreversible changes befall our beloved Aggie life. Our history makes us who we are, and that is something to be proud of. We need to remember that the vandalization of the mind is equally as dangerous as the vandalization of statues. We must do everything we can to protect it from counterproductive and false narratives that do not portray our university as it is — perfect and without equal, supreme to all who are different.

— CTE-Walk