Elephant Walk
through the decades

As freshmen in fall 1922, they had done similar parades after football games; those events have also been celebrated as the start of Elephant Walk. As seniors, they formed their line for a last time, and “tears flowed like water that day as those cherished memories floated back to us,” according to their senior yearbook.

A Tradition Was Born.

The Battalion wrote in November 1927 that “the Elephant Walk has now become a tradition to the Senior classes, and is held every year just before the Turkey Day game.”

Descriptions said the ceremony drew upon centuries-old legends of elephant graveyards. From the Arabian Nights to The Lion King, stories have recounted the myth that elephants nearing the end of their life will wander away from the herd to die in a specific place.

College students — including those at Texas A&M — often did these long, single-file lines at football-related events, halftimes and homecomings. Picture a conga line, but without the kick-steps. The name “shirt-tail parades” indicated that the men in the line would untuck their shirttails to let them flap loose.

At Texas A&M, examples included students celebrating a football win with a “snake drill” in 1910; holding shirt-tail parades for a 1914 yell practice and the 1920 Thanksgiving dance; and planning some “yelling and snake-dancing” around the 1929 Bonfire. The Class of 1927 recalled that shirt-tail parades were a feature of their freshman year, 1923-24.

What the Class of 1926 added in was the sentimental idea of seniors reminiscing before the end of their final football season. That emotional tie is likely what forged Elephant Walk into an enduring Aggie tradition.

Traditionally, they were led by basses and a piccolo from the Aggie Band playing “The Hearse Song,” also known to schoolchildren as “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.” (Listen at tx.ag/HearseSong)

At first, the path of Elephant Walk was along Military Walk, one of Texas A&M’s oldest streets, which today is a brick walkway between Sbisa Dining Hall and Rudder Tower. As campus grew, more sites were added. In 1956 and other years, the walk ended with a yell practice at the site of the Bonfire stack, which would become a recurring location.

Also in the 1950s, the seniors’ attire became goofier — mismatched hats, shorts and seemingly any odd attire they could find. That brought on some of the first calls for Aggies to cut out the silliness and return to the “Old Army” way. The Class of ’59 voted to wear uniforms again, with shirttails pulled out, and return solemnity to the tradition.

It worked — for a little while.

Also in the ’70s and early ’80s, juniors began waylaying the seniors — sometimes attacking them with toy guns, eggs and so on — and tackling each other in the mud became part of the event. Not content with letting the seniors wander off to “die,” Aggie juniors leaned into the idea of “hunting” the walking dead to hurry them along their way.

This trend kept going as the 1980s progressed. Texas A&M’s population was rocketing, and at Elephant Walk, thousands of Aggies had a merry time hunting each other with shaving cream, water balloons, sometimes even a fire hose. Crowds were huge, and bands of seniors would march through the campus fountains, sporting elephant-nose masks and elephant hats.

The Class of 1980 printed the first known Elephant Walk shirts, which became an annual tradition.

In 1982, the Class of ’83 rented elephants for seniors to take their pictures with, a feature that would stay with Elephant Walk through 2014. There were periodic objections to campus grounds being “trashed” or students being injured, and in 1987, the junior class held its own yell practice to distract the hunters.

On into the 1990s, crowds continued to be large and chaotic. The event was taking a toll on campus, and steps would soon be taken to dial it back — at risk of having the tradition canceled.

Class Councils urged their classmates to make the event safer and “preserve the tradition — keep it clean.” Counterprogramming to keep the juniors busy was ramped up by student leaders.

In 1990, not only was a separate yell practice held for the juniors, but a baby elephant was brought to campus for them to take their own photos with. For 1992, the Class of ’94 juniors organized a class photo on Kyle Field following the yell practice and elephant photos at the Bonfire stack site — effectively moving the juniors in the opposite direction from the seniors.

This was continued, and by 1997 it was being called “Junior E-Walk” — “shortened and hyphenated,” The Battalion reported, “because it is a senior privilege at A&M to say the word ‘elephant.’” (The Class of ’94 junior event had referred to photo opportunities with a “large gray field mouse from Africa.”)

“E-Walk” had been used in the past as an abbreviation for the senior walk, but became the official name of the junior event in 1997.

Meanwhile, Aggie students at Texas A&M University at Galveston held their first known Elephant Walk in 1995, according to Shelly Fordyce ’99, director of student activities for the campus. By 1997, it was a full-scale tradition, and today’s Galveston seniors revisit meaningful campus locations such as Shell Beach and Senior Knoll, while juniors are led on an E-Walk along the same route but in the opposite direction.

In College Station, the push to return to “Old Army style” was met with a fair amount of success as the 1990s progressed. Even though things were getting cleaned up, turnout remained high, with 5,000-6,000 seniors taking part in 1998 — around two-thirds of the Class of ’99.

Then, truly somber times came to Aggieland.

In 1999, Elephant Walk and Junior E-Walk were rescheduled three times after the deadly Bonfire collapse, but still an estimated crowd of 3,500 seniors — about 40% of the Class of 2000 — came out to walk together in what was called a “positive” event with “lots of smiles and hugs.”

But attendance declined through the 2000s, even as class sizes continued to increase. Entertainment was added, including fajita lunches and live music, in efforts to bring more seniors out.

Finally, in 2013, Class Councils moved Elephant Walk to the evening — thus not conflicting with most students’ class hours. Numbers rebounded. The 2015 Elephant Walk was the largest in years, with more than 1,300 seniors.

The push to “keep it clean” was so successful that soon, there was no need for an event to distract the juniors. 2018 was the last year Junior E-Walk was held. By fall 2021, Elephant Walk was ending with a senior yell practice inside Kyle Field, which proved to be a popular choice, and growth continued.

“I believe in 2022, we were right around 1,800 [attendees],” said Kayla Young, Texas A&M’s program manager for campus engagement and traditions.

“In terms of the health of the tradition, we have seen it really grow in the last three years,” Young said. The fall 2023 Elephant Walk brought out 2,100 seniors. Fall 2024 saw 2,500 members of the Class of ’25 walking together.

“We are seeing a much higher social media presence with it, and more high-profile speakers from around campus,” Young said. “We are seeing more students post photos and engage with the Elephant Walk Instagram account. The students have been able to grow the following for that throughout the last two years.”