If one is going to x-ray one’s cannon - presumably to make sure that it is safe, it is the height of litigeous irresponsibility to continue to use the cannon when the x-ray does not come out clean.
Had they had the idea “Let’s x-ray the cannon” and said “heck, no! What happens if we find out its not safe” - preferably all in back room conversations that were never recorded - at least they’d have some sort of plausible deniability.
Because why would anyone x-ray a cannon if you weren’t going to retire it if the x-ray showed problems?
Townsfolk are trying to save their football cannon tradition by threatening a kid? This kid could sue the district to the point where they will not have any money left for extracuricular activities, like say football or shop. What a bunch of calous idiots!
The really sick part is that he and his family will likely cave in the long run and let it all go. Or leave town.
While lots of folks are outraged at this ( hell, I am ), I don’t see anyone offering to pay to pull up to their house with a Mayflower truck and move them to a new home far away.
Barring that, the family lives where they live and have to deal with very real threats. They’ll cave.
Tons of folks would love to think that they’d be strong and angry and sue people and threaten people back but the real truth is that you pick your battles and if enough people in a small town want to wreak havoc on you, your children, property and livelihood by god you’ll cave. Your son won’t be able to attend school because of incessant verbal and physical assaults- which won’t be properly investigated because the Chief of Police played fullback and is pretty pissed off at this family and their pesky little boy, the school won’t view anything the kid does favorably and will suspend/expel him as fast as they can.
Who is gonna stay up all night to make sure the family’s home is not vandalized night in and night out? Other neighbors? Hell no, they’re not going to step in this shit. The family? How many slashed tires and punctured gas tanks can one family afford to replace?
If the population in this town is that adamant and angry, the family won’t last till March there.
I have news for the town. It won’t be the principal or the school board who will stop the tradition. It will be their insurance company. Whether the family goes ahead with a lawsuit to get pain and suffering compensation, which could be substantial, the medical bills alone are undoubtedly in the tens of thousands of dollars. And now that there’s an incident on record, it would make the school (or rather their their underwriters) vulnerable for punitive damages (which could be in the millions), should another person get hurt by a subsequent cannon blast.
Nope this tradition is toast.
If I were the insurance agent for the school, I’d be packing my bags.
Of course you meant to say they started the tradition AGAIN in 2002, after, I presume, a three-year hiatus. Not that it wouldn’t be fun to pick at this a little longer.
If there is a God in heaven! These people need a reality check, in a major way. This incident is exactly why there are laws against explosive ordnance on the books pretty much everywhere. I’ll bet if the guy in the story who claimed the school’s use was “grandfathered in” had to prove what they were doing is actually legal, he couldn’t do it. Even military cannons don’t get fired as much as this one probably did over the course of 30 years, and those aren’t made in a high school shop class! The x-rays and the decision to keep firing the thing, the behavior by local people afterword, all indicate a community with some (literally) dangerous ignorance. I love football, but things like this make me disappointed with the culture that surrounds the sport in some places. The people of this community should be embarrassed, and ashamed.
Provided that it’s really the whole town that is up in arms and not just a couple-few really irate people. A handful of people can do a good job of making a family feel like everyone is against them.
Is it possible that the majority of the people in the town are more concerned with the tradition that with the kid? Sure. But it seems as likely to me that it isn’t that widespread and that others in the town will rally in support.
They should just build another cannon with an MP3 player inside. On most occasions, they just click on the “Cannon_Blast” file. On special occasions, they can click on the “Cannon_Blast+Screams_Of_Injured_Student” file.
[continuing hijack]
Actually, Bonfire has not returned to the Texas A&M campus since the tragedy in 1999. I have heard of (but haven’t attended) an ‘alternative bonfire’ that is held each year on private property outside of the Bryan/College Station area. But it is not school-sanctioned and is apparently nowhere near as big or as well-attended as the real Bonfire used to be. At this point, I will be very surprised if Bonfire ever returns to A&M again. There was an annual ‘momentum’ to the thing, with new students learning the traditions each year and passing them on in the following years. That’s gone now.
