By Hannah Webb | Focus Editor
Every fall, Baylor Homecoming begins in the heart of campus, where the glow of the Eternal Flame stretches across Fountain Mall. The Ten at Ten: A Mass Meeting Experience marks the start of the weekend as a moment when the Baylor Family gathers to celebrate tradition, renew community and reflect on the university’s motto: “Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana, Pro Mundo” — “For the Church, for Texas, for the World.”
The ceremony traces its roots to the story of the Immortal Ten — Baylor basketball players who lost their lives in a 1927 bus-train accident. What began as the Freshman Mass Meeting has evolved into a shared tradition for all students, symbolizing how Baylor’s spirit passes from one generation to the next beneath the steady flame of remembrance.
In 2009, the ritual took on a new form. The smudge pot once carried by freshmen was replaced with a torch, echoing the words of former Baylor President Samuel Palmer Brooks: “To you seniors of the past, of the present, of the future, I entrust the care of Baylor University. To you I hand the torch.”
Six years later, the Baylor Chamber of Commerce and the university installed the Eternal Flame monument on Fountain Mall — a permanent reminder of the light students are called to carry forward.
This year, that light will shine a little brighter. For the first time in Baylor’s long Homecoming history, a graduate student has been selected as a torchbearer — one of the students chosen to represent their class and embody Baylor’s values.
McKinney graduate student Katie Cox said being chosen to represent Baylor’s growing graduate community feels like both an honor and a homecoming of her own. She began her time at Baylor in 2020, when the pandemic dimmed many of the traditions that define campus life.
“It feels like the perfect way to close my time at Baylor,” Cox said. “When I started in 2020, so many traditions didn’t happen. Now being able to take part in one of the oldest ones feels like passing the torch — literally and figuratively — to the next generation.”
Cox said she also sees the recognition as a reflection of how much Baylor’s graduate programs have grown in recent years.
“Graduate students are such a growing part of Baylor,” she said. “To be the first one representing them is really special. I want to be a shining light for my friends, for future grad students — for anyone who’s part of this community.”
That expansion in representation mirrors changes to the torchbearer selection process. Grand Junction, Colo., junior Brian Segers, a member of Chamber and coordinator for Ten at Ten, said this year’s process opened the application to all students for the first time, rather than relying on nominations.
“This year we wanted to make sure every student had a chance to apply,” Segers said. “Applicants wrote essays about how they live out Baylor’s motto — how their faith, service and sense of purpose reflect being ‘for the Church, for Texas, for the world.’”
The essays were reviewed anonymously, ensuring sincerity over status.
“We wanted people who truly cared about the idea of this — not just the recognition,” Segers said. “It’s about living Baylor’s mission every day, wherever you are.”
Among those chosen this year is Wayland, Iowa, freshman Tanner Egli, who represents the Class of 2029. Egli said the application’s focus on Baylor’s three pillars immediately caught his attention.
“The pillar that stood out to me most was ‘for the Church,’” Egli said. “That’s what drives me. To get to represent that as a freshman feels like being a trailblazer. I’m already a first-generation student, and now I get to blaze my own path here too.”
Egli said his first semester has been filled with tradition and energy, which is the heartbeat of campus.
“There are so many traditions, it’s hard to keep track of them all,” he said. “But that’s how you can tell how alive a campus is — by how many traditions it’s kept alive.”
Representing the freshman class, Egli said he hopes to inspire his peers to live with intention and faith.
“Our generation sometimes thinks it’s cool not to care,” he said. “But I’d tell my class it’s OK to care — to find what you’re passionate about and go all in, especially with your faith. Don’t be lukewarm.”
Segers said the torchbearers’ role goes beyond symbolism; it’s a living expression of Baylor’s calling to serve both locally and globally.
“Torchbearers are the upkeepers of the Baylor spirit,” he said. “They represent what it means to live ‘Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana, Pro Mundo’ — to take the light of Baylor into the world.”
As the Eternal Flame glows on Fountain Mall, the torchbearers continue a legacy more than a century old — one that links every generation through a single act of passing light. For Cox, that moment captures everything her time at Baylor has meant.
“From being a freshman who couldn’t attend Mass Meeting to closing out my time here as a torchbearer, it really feels full circle,” she said. “It’s the big goodbye — but it’s also a reminder that Baylor’s light doesn’t stay here. We carry it with us.”
