The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 6

A6 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21. 1999 THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR 1 1 A ML TU TO fimera is oeCTi lor Amu Crowds fill hospitals in support of survivors; ex-professors say they warned of bonfire flaws. PATEK PHILIPPE GENEVE Begin your own tradition. consciousness Thursday and was told of the loss of life, including three of his friends. "He shed a few tears," Bill Hutchinson said, adding that his son remains committed to the bonfire tradition.

"If they would release him (from the hospital) to build it, he would." Past engineering professors said they tried over the years to warn that the design of the bonfire contained perilous flaws. "You put a pine pole in the center and then lash all these matchsticks together," Swiki Anderson told the Houston Chronicle. "It's an accident that's been waiting to happen." Anderson said he voiced his worries to his department chairman while teaching at in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The bonfire pile is flawed because it consists of a relatively loose bunching of upright logs and because its base is too narrow to hold its looming tower, said Louis Thompson, a professor emeritus. "I kept telling them it was dangerous," said Thompson, who retired in 1991 after 25 years at "What's amazing to me is that it went on as long as it did." Other staff have said the practice is safe and technically sound.

Bill Kibler, assistant vice president for student affairs, said he was unaware of warnings from engineering faculty over the years. Associated Press QUIET TRIBUTE: Texas student Cathlene Nelson visits a makeshift memorial for the dozen people killed while erecting the bonfire stack. The structure collapsed early Thursday. By Mike Crissey ASSOCIATED PRESS COLLEGE STATION, Texas Friends and families began burying their dead and comforted their wounded Saturday as Texas University struggfed to cope with the bonfire 'stack collapse that killed 12 people and injured 27. Hospital waiting rooms were crowded with students offering blood, sympathy and support for the seven people still receiving treatment.

Up to 40 students have maintained a 24-hour vigil at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center. "It has been incredible," Cheryl Davis, mother of hospitalized student William Davis, said of the support. This has been wonderful." Questions have begun to resurface about the safety of the annual bonfire, a venerated tradition on the campus for 90 years. University President Ray Bowen has ordered the formation of a task force of engineers and other experts to look into the disaster "so we'll be able to analyze all the facts and make decisions to see this horror never visits our campus again." The funerals began Saturday in KJRLES JEWELERS te SINCE 1951 KIRI.ES JEWELERS 1466 WEST 86TH STREET INDIANAPOLIS, IN TO INQI IRE: 317-872-S3S9 the Aggie fight song.

Two people Davis, from Bellaire, and John Comstock of Richardson remained in critical condition Saturday, while three were in serious condition: Chad Hutchinson of Houston, J.H. Wash-am of Dallas and Dominic Braus of Hallettsville. Two others were in fair condition. Twenty students had been treated and released from hospitals by Saturday. Hutchinson's father said his son grew emotional when he regained the Houston suburb of Bellaire with services for Nathan Scott West, a 19-year-old sophomore oceanography major who was killed in the Thursday morning collapse.

About 1,000 people attended. "Why does tragedy happen to good people who are going about doing good for others?" asked the Rev. Mark Young. "We live in a world that is not always fair. To suggest it was Scott's time to leave Earth is some kind of cruel joke." At the end of the service, mourners linked arms and sang Risky campus rites are a centuries-old affair This Holiday Season the FOP has teamed up with Shepherd Community Center and Sack Hunger to "ARREST HUNGER '99" We will be purchasing food for families and organizations designed by Sack Hunger.

This new project joins our annual fundraising drives for the IPDFOP Clothe-A-Child program. Our in-house solicitors will be making phone calls and pick-ups. Donations may also be forwarded to: N.Y., mobs of students mark the last day of classes by climbing a hill and getting roaring drunk; so many participate in "Hill Day" that campus police can't stop them. Defenders of the Texas bonfire say it is unfair to put their tradition in the same category. "The bonfire is a serious undertaking," said Sheldon Steinbach of the American Council on Education, a Washington-based group that represents higher education.

"It is as much a lesson in engineering and teamwork as it is a memory to be cherished." Steinbach argued that, with 17 million students in higher education in the United States, accidents are bound to happen. "Things happen on a geology field trip, on the hockey field," he said. This was a terrible tragedy, but it was not a fraternity prank that went wrong. It was an The blaze is a 90-year-old Thanksgiving tradition, so hallowed that students are willing to don hard hats and haul logs so they can be part of something bigger than they've ever been part of before. They want a memory they can cherish for all time.

Students have sought the same for centuries. "College traditions and rituals are about bonding and belonging, about linking students of 1999 with those of 1909 and before," says Hank Nuwer, author of Wrongs of Passage, a study of student rites through the centuries. 'They are about people knowing they can be accepted forever as part of this noble tradition." Nuwer, who teaches journalism at Anderson University in Indiana, traces such "belonging rituals" to the fourth century, when St. Augustine complained about a group called the "Overturners" tormenting new students in Carthage. Despite serious attempts by campus administrators to curb college rituals during the years, traditions persist, often fueled by alcohol and laced with danger.

At Princeton, the annual "Nude Olympics" sophomore sprint through the snow landed 10 people in the hospital last year, mostly for intoxication. The event has been banned by the university this year, although no one is counting on the ban being upheld. At Yellowstone National Park, rangers have tried for years to prevent students from Montana State University in Bozeman from "hot potting" skinny dipping at a spot where hot springs boil up into the icy Yellowstone River. Members of the freshmen class of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, slither up a greased granite monument just before graduation. At Cornell University in Ithaca, By Helen O'Neill ASSOCIATED PRESS In the Middle Ages, freshmen's noses were pressed to grindstones literally as an initiation into college life.

At the turn of the century, mass fistfights were common on campuses throughout the United States. In the 1990s, student rites of passage have included everything from streaking across the first snow in Princeton to skinny dipping in the hot springs of the Yellowstone River in Montana. Tradition and danger always have formed a potent mix on college campuses. Early Thursday, they produced disaster. Twelve people were killed and many more injured by the collapse of a 40-foot pyramid of logs being built for the annual bonfire at Texas that precedes the, football game against the University of Texas.

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