Jaguars Remembered

Jaguars Remembered was established in 2017 through the combined efforts of the Student Government Association (SGA), Dean of Students Office, and Alumni Affairs. We come together as a Jaguar community to remember and honor students, alums, and campus community members who have passed in the last academic year. In late April, we gathered in the President’s Rose Garden, behind the Frank L. Madla Building, to hold the ceremony to memorialize each Jaguar.

The inaugural ceremony honored nineteen students and alums who had passed away as early as 2000 when Texas A&M University-San Antonio was still known as the Texas A&M University-Kingsville System Center. Keeping the original nineteen in our memory, we observe a silence lasting nineteen seconds at each ceremony.

Throughout the somber ceremony, volunteers wear the yellow rose of Texas to capture the beauty, warmth, and symbolism of friendship and lift the spirits of all attending. We chose to use the yellow rose of Texas for this event because it has a rich history tied to A&M-San Antonio and the state we call home. During the ceremony, an SGA representative calls each honoree's name while friends and family of the remembered Jaguar light a candle. Concurrently, a student volunteer holds a single yellow rose and a ceremonial coin to be received by the family. The coin is an everlasting token inscribed with a wreath of yellow roses, symbolizing each honoree's permanence in our hearts at A&M-San Antonio. If an honoree were an alumna/us when they passed, an alum volunteer would join the student volunteer in the procession.

Through this ceremony, our community pays tribute to those who are gone but never forgotten, embodying the sentiment: Once a Jaguar, Always a Jaguar.