Maggies

Almost from its beginnings, women attended A&M. But, until about 1961, they were allowed to attend only as wives or daughters of faculty or students. When we left in 1972, there were 14,000 students, only 1,000 of which were women. Still, the first women's dorm wasn't built on the campus until our Zip year.

A&M, being the conservative institution it was, had a large number of students who resented women being on campus. A great percentage of those students lived in the quad. The pejorative name they gave women students was "Maggies".

One of our Seniors when we were fish was Clarence T. (Lurch) Gore. I doubt if there was a person on campus who hated Maggies more than Lurch did. One day I was walking down the stairs in the Academic Building when Lurch came up beside me. As we went down, a Maggie was coming up. This being 1968, she was wearing a black velvet choker. In a rather loud voice, Lurch turned to me and said, "Looky there, fish Yantis - the Maggies have started wearin' flea collars!" Buzzy and Animal found out the hard way how much Lurch hated Maggies - one weekend he asked them what they had planned. Without thinking, they blurted out, "We're going out with some Mag…" That's all it took. Lurch got out his paddle, and walloped Buzzy's and Animal's backsides until they were purple. It wasn't very funny at the time.

But the women on campus started making themselves known. They became active in student government, MSC committees, and athletics. Notably, taking a cue from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, they formed a pep squad that assisted the Aggie Baseball Team - the Diamond Darlings. Shortly after we left, a "Maggie" became Miss Texas, and represented the state in the Miss America contest (Kim Tomes, from McKinney). Now, women make up at least 50% of the student body, and there are both women's and coed dorms on campus. Somewhere, Lurch Gore is probably cursing.

John (Yankus) Yantis