 Students who die while enrolled at Texas A & M are also honored at Silver Taps , a ceremony held , when necessary , on the first Tuesday of the month . This tradition began as a memorial for former Texas A & M president Lawrence Sullivan Ross . On the day of the ceremony , flags fly half @-@ staff and notices are posted throughout campus . At 10 : 15 pm the lights around campus are extinguished and hymns chime from Albritton Tower while students and faculty collect in the Academic Plaza . Following a 21 @-@ gun salute by the Ross Volunteer Firing Squad , six buglers play an A & M version of the song Taps , Silver Taps , three times from the dome of the school 's Academic Building : once to the north , the south and to the west . The song is not played to the east symbolizing that the sun will never rise on that Aggie again . 
