A member of TCU’s athletic department issued an apology Friday after posting some controversial remarks relating to the Texas A&M bonfire tragedy that took the lives of 12 A&M students in 1999.
Greg Featherston, an assistant athletic director who works in the compliance department, shared a story on Facebook Wednesday about A&M’s renovations to Kyle Field including 12 empty seats in honor of the 12 students who passed away in the accident.
Featherston posted the following message along with the link:
“A&M to leave 12 seats empty to honor the 12 students who died in bonfire collapse. I didn’t write the response below… but I could have:
That makes good Aggy sense. If the number of students that were victims of what amounted to drunken, negligent homicide on part of that cow college didn't match so perfectly with the cult’s favorite number, I doubt you would have seen anything like this done. Same thing with their campus “memorial.” This allows the Aggy admin to continue martyring them in an effort to cover their part in those people all being crushed to death by a big pile of logs that should been either, a) never built, or b) built by professionals. See, this way it’s a passive tragedy that “happened” rather than an active atrocity that was committed. This fits into the real aggy honor code of lying, cheating, and stealing.”
After the post caught the attention of the Texas A&M fan base, Featherston posted an apology to his Facebook on Friday. According to the Star-Telegram, Featherston said his remark was in bad taste.
“I was on campus in Austin at the time of the tragedy, attended every vigil held on campus with UT students and A&M students who drove over from College Station. A very sad time for both institutions,” Featherston wrote. “It was not my intention to disrespect the fallen students or minimize the magnitude of the disaster. I sincerely apologize for the lapse in judgment with regard to the re-post.”
The TCU administration were not pleased with Featherston’s comments and released a statement.
“Comments made by TCU employees on their personal social media accounts do not represent the University,” the release states. “Greg has apologized for this post on his personal Facebook page. We expect our employees to behave in an appropriate manner. This behavior clearly does not live up to our standards.”
TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte said he “personally apologizes to anyone who may have been hurt or offended by these comments. They don’t reflect TCU or our athletic program.”
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