Tuesday, February 26, 2002
For immediate release.

Contact:
Marc Barringer, Co-Chair, the Bonfire Coalition
979-694-9053
lsullyr@tamu.edu

The Bonfire Coalition has finalized their board of directors over the past several days. The Coalition, dedicated to safely returning Aggie Bonfire to the Texas A&M campus in a timely manner, has managed to put together a diverse group of Aggies to run the organization.

The organization was inundated with many more applications that there were spaces for, but the initial leadership managed to limit the board’s number of voting positions to a symbolic twelve.

The board is made up of five executive positions, seven representative positions, and a Webmaster. The executive officers consist of the Co-Chairs, and founders of the group Marc Barringer ’92 and David Rushing ‘02. In addition, the Vice Chair is Kristin West ‘04, is the sister of Nathan Scott West ‘02, who lost his life in the 1999 Bonfire collapse. The treasurer of the group is Robin Brown ‘03, the secretary is Rebecca Innerarity ‘04, and the Sergeant at Arms is graduate student David Nelson ‘00.

Other board members include Mark Lloyd ‘04, Scott Scherer ‘04, former student Andy Townend ‘88, Alyssa Mervine ‘05, Brad Shipman ’05, and graduate students Danyelle Garrett ’03 and Ryan Kirkpatrick ’99. The board also includes webmaster Marc Mojica ’03.

Marc Barringer, Co-Chair of the Bonfire Coalition said, “We have a very diverse group of individuals on the board, not only in gender, but in age brackets as well. We have undergraduate students, graduate students and former students. The board is comprised of some of the brightest minds this campus has to offer and I have no doubt that our professional and responsible approach to this issue will lead us to success.”

The Bonfire Coalition began as a spur of the moment rally on Tuesday, February 6, in response to the decision to postpone Aggie Bonfire further. From that point, the organization has grown, formed a purpose, a mission, and will move forward optimistically to work with the new administration to safely bring Aggie Bonfire back to the Texas A&M campus.

Mr. Barringer encourages all interested parties to get involved. “We have a lot of work to do to prepare ourselves for this movement,” said Mr. Barringer. “We encourage anyone interested in returning a safe Bonfire to campus to visit our website, sign up for a listserv and volunteer for a committee.”

Further information about the Bonfire Coalition can be found at http://bonfire2003.com