Still Running Off at the Keyboard

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, April 30, 2008 -- Texas A&M University has a new and sober, but uplifting, tradition.

This year, for the first time, instead of following the two-decades-old tradition of dunking newly acquired Aggie rings in a pitcher of beer, more than 200 students and former students had their rings blessed and dunked in Holy Water after Mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church across the street from campus.

The idea of blessing and dunking Aggie rings into Holy Water began at St. Mary's when the Rev. Father Brian McMaster decided that Holy Water would be more meaningful than the current beer-dunking tradition.

Katy Jackson, manager of the Dixie Chicken restaurant, an Aggie hangout across the street from campus, said the beer-dunking tradition began in the early 1980s during a beer-drinking evening. An Aggie, showing off his new ring, accidentally dropped it into a pitcher of beer. Not knowing any other way to get it out, he chugged the beer, giving birth to a tradition.