 In 1998 , activists on campus ( including Professor Patrick Slattery ) suggested the statue of Lawrence Sullivan Ross should be removed on the basis that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan . Instead , Slattery and others wanted to create a " diversity plaza " , with a statue of Matthew Gaines , an African @-@ American politician . The project was abandoned in the wake of the Aggie Bonfire tragedy , in 1999 . 
