Reveillerasure? Mention of ending class if Miss Rev barks removed from Texas A&M traditions website

Mar 7, 2023 - 3:08 PM

There is perhaps no more beloved or pampered mascot in college football than Texas A&M’s collie mascot, Reveille. The tradition started nearly a century ago (we are now on our 10^th Reveille), and former mascots are buried outside of Kyle Field (with a small scoreboard so they can keep track of the game). Just last week, a Reveille statue was added to this very area, in case Aggies’ fondness for our mascot was ever in question.

Miss Rev is the highest-ranking member of A&M’s Corps of Cadets (she wears five diamonds compared to the Corps Commander’s four). If Miss Rev falls asleep in a cadet’s bed, the cadet must find somewhere else to sleep. And tradition dictates that if Reveille is in class and barks, the professor should end class because Miss Rev is bored.

Or does it?

When discussing the recently unveiled Reveille statue, I made my way to www.tamu.edu/traditions to make sure I remembered the history of Reveille accurately. But when I got to the page about Reveille, I realized there was no mention at all of the tradition of ending class if Reveille barks. This seemed odd, because let’s be honest, A&M is not usually prone to underselling our hefty list of traditions, so I consulted the Wayback Machine internet archive to view previous versions of the page. Sure enough, the highlighted sentence below, which had been included in every iteration of the page dating back to its launch in May 2016 through at least December 2022, is no longer included.

Dec. 7, 2022:

March 5, 2023

While Miss Rev barking in class is a relative rarity, it does indeed happen. In fact it was caught on video just last month, to everyone’s enjoyment.

However, there was also a recently publicized incident of a professor not dismissing class when Reveille barked. Reportedly this professor was simply ignorant of the tradition, but with references to it being removed from A&M’s traditions website, it’s worth asking: Is this tradition actually in jeopardy?

Look, nobody’s life is in danger here. The sun will continue to rise and set if Reveille’s classroom barks are rendered irrelevant. This is an admittedly trivial thing. But you’re talking about a school who has essentially built our entire culture around obsessing over and celebrating trivial things. Attending Texas A&M is a unique college experience thanks in no small part to the litany of traditions that are present in virtually every aspect of campus life.

And let’s not pretend that Aggies are alone in celebrating absurdity. Auburn fans TP their own campus after a win. Tennessee students write messages on a big rock. Clemson football players rub a rock and then run down a hill that’s essentially a ticking time bomb waiting to detonate on a player’s rolled ankle before every game. Virginia Tech holds a massive “cadets vs civilians” snowball fight after the first heavy snow each year. Quirky traditions on college campuses help build the sense of community between both students and alumni. These absurdities and the impression they leave on us, more so than any class, are often what students carry with them long after they’ve graduated.

Removing the mention of a tradition centered around a dog barking isn’t going to make the front page of The New York Times. But if there’s one outlet who should probably cover it, it’s one whose logo is literally an illustration of that dog barking. So here we are. Maybe this removal is an oversight, or a simple tightening up of copy. But if it’s not, it’s an attempt to at best minimize, and at worst eliminate, a decades-old tradition involving one of the most beloved mascots in college sports.

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