Does anyone else see the Texas A&M bonfire as a bad tradition.

I am no tree hugger, but in this day and age when our forest are vanishing, lumber is getting expensive because old growth trees are becoming rare, and pollution is a concern, does it make sense to burn acres of good lumber so a bunch of college kids can have a party?

My small East Texas College, SFASU, had a bonfire, but it was more like a huge trash pile fire. We got drunk and sat around the fire. Sounds like a great reason to have a bonfire, doesn’t it.

We Americans are great at telling countries like Brazil to stop cutting down their trees. And then we do stuff like this, or we chop down acres of forest for a store we do not need. A few years ago, Wal-Mart cut down many acres of pine forest in my area to build a huge store. What I didn’t like was that they made a parking lot so large it has never been full. Now they have decided they don’t like their location and they are moving about half down the road. Once again they are cutting down acres of pine forest. Target has done the same.. Both Target and Wal-Mart have ignored the vacant super k-mart that closed last year.

I see more forest cut down for gas stations and quickie-marts. How many of those do we need? Meanwhile we have vacant shopping strip centers and failed grocery stores all over the neighbor, yet developers continue to cut down the forest. This has caused flooding problem. I will say this, Walgreen’s went in and replaced two failed stores with their own. Kudos to them.

This A&M bonfire seems like such a waste of good lumber and it cause pollution. Saying it is a 90 year old tradition doesn’t make it right (How can something only 90 years in the making be a tradition?) Just because something is called a tradition, does not make it the right thing to do. Maybe it is time for them to find another tradition.