Aggie Cowboy History
Back in the late 70s to early 80s – fraternities were not recognized by the university and Greeks were made fun of (and hated) by most of the student body. Today there may be some remnants left of the conflict, but back then it was hate. The sororities had just begun building their first houses and it was a real trailblazing time for Greek Life.
One night in the fall of 1979, seven of us sat down – I recall the first guys were Joey Davis, Scott Cone, Rex Lucas, Bubba Copeland, Eugene Alford, Park Fielder and me - and we came up with the idea of a Non-Greek Fraternity. We would put up the money for the rush parties, got some of our girlfriends and dates to be the first little sisters and just started our own group from scratch. The name we thought would be most accepted on campus was Aggie Cowboys. Nobody should have a problem with Aggie or Cowboy and together it just made sense. It had nothing to do with the Cowboys frat at The University of Texas and that never was discussed or even entered our minds.
The Battalion would not let us advertise a fraternity party because Greek organizations were not recognized by the University at the time, so we put up flyers around campus and drew on sidewalks with chalk to get the word out. Incredibly, we had more than 800 guys come to the 4 rush parties! A few of the younger founders talked about how it would make a statement to take 200 members right off the bat. However, if we were going to build a brotherhood, that made no sense at all. Seniority ruled as we decided to take what we saw as the top 25 guys out of the group. We made a lot of people upset, but it made for a great foundational pledge class. From there we wrote our own charter, met in apartment party rooms, developed our own logo, started our signature white embroidered Cowboy shirts, risked our financial net worth to hold the first Bourbon Street Bash party for charity, and it just grew from there. I remember a fraternity from Baylor coming down to try to get our group to colonize with there organization, but we agreed that they were jerks and laughed it off. We were really happy just being Aggie Cowboys.
After I got out of school I was working in banking in Houston and a guy named Mark Peppercorn (who was the president of the Cowboys at the time) came to interview at the bank – in 1985. He didn’t know I was Cowboy alumni. I told him that unless fraternities built leadership skills they were a waste of time as far as getting a job with my bank. He proceeded to tell me the story of the Cowboys and what his involvement with that group had done to make him a leader. I asked him if he knew who the founders were and the proceeded to rattle them off. When he spouted off my name, he sort of turned pale. It was pretty funny.
Mark and I had a great visit reminiscing about the Cowboys. He mentioned the Cowboys had been approached by national Greek organizations to colonize and recolonize chapters at Texas A&M, but felt that they were not the ties the Cowboys were looking for. Although he had rejected these offers, Mark talked about the need for a national tie saying; it would improve relations with the University, allow us to buy a house and continue to grow as a group. I mentioned, from guys I had met in the business world, I felt that the best national fraternity was Beta Theta Pi. They had strong chapters at SMU and Texas and were very picky about where they colonized. I didn’t hear anything else until I got an alumni letter a year later saying the Cowboys were becoming Betas. I don’t know if I had anything to do with the decision to go Beta, but if I did I feel great about it.
Adapted from Miles Marks’ Personal History of the Aggie Cowboys
