Texas A&M University will hold its solemn Silver Taps ceremony Tuesday (Nov. 3) to honor the memory of Robert (Bobby) Davis Briggs, a freshman environmental design major from Maple Valley, Wash., who died Sept. 19.

Silver Taps is held on the first Tuesday of any month during the regular school year when there have been one or more student deaths during the preceding month. Held in the plaza area in front of the Academic Building, the ceremony is one of the university’s most solemn traditions.

To honor the memory of Briggs, the campus will be darkened at 10:20 p.m. In the darkness, students, family and friends will silently gather in the plaza. At 10:30 p.m. an honor guard from the Ross Volunteer Company of the Corps of Cadets will march to the plaza, where the cadets will fire three rifle volleys. Buglers from the Aggie Band, unseen in the darkness, will play a special arrangement of “Taps.” The tolling of Albritton Tower bells will signal the end of the ceremony.

In case of rain or dangerous lightning, the ceremony will be moved to Duncan Dining Hall. Free parking in the University Center garage will be available between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. For more information, go to http://studentlife.tamu.edu.

The first Silver Taps was held in 1898 upon the death of the university’s president, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, and has changed little from that time. For more on the Silver Taps tradition, go to http://aggietraditions.tamu.edu/silvertaps.shtml.

For more information, contact Otis McGresham at (979) 845-5199 or Tura King at (979) 845-4670 or tura-king@tamu.edu.

For more news about Texas A&M University, go to http://tamunews.tamu.edu.

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