RUTHFULLY YOURS

By MIGUEL BUSTILLO

Now that Rick Perry is a presidential contender, Americans are trying to get a handle on the Texas governor’s personal mix of aw-shucks conservatism and swashbuckling anti-Washington rhetoric.

But to folks in Texas, a simple fact has always made the governor readily understood: He’s an Aggie.

Mr. Perry is a proud 1972 graduate of Texas A&M University, a school whose peculiar pageantry and moral traditionalism stand out even in the colorful and conservative Lone Star State. Its students’ nickname, “Aggies,” is derived from the “agriculture and mechanical” abbreviated by A&M.

The governor isn’t just any alumnus, but a former “yell leader,” a male cheerleading position that is considered the ultimate expression of Aggie school spirit. He also belonged to the Corps of Cadets, a Reserve Officers Training Corps program that prepares students for post-graduate military commissions.

“Rick Perry the yell leader, Rick Perry the [commissioner of] agriculture, Rick Perry the governor—what you see is what you get,” said Art Saldaña, a college friend and fellow cadet-corps member. “He hasn’t changed a whole lot. He’s the same guy I knew at A&M.”

A spokesman for Mr. Perry’s campaign said A&M helped shape the governor’s values and remains a vital part of his identity.

Indeed, Mr. Perry learned during his college years that leadership often involves charm and charisma more than displays of dazzling intellect, and that surviving a trial by fire—in his case, the hazing underclassman endured in the corps—strengthens one’s character. Those skills subsequently served him well in a lengthy career in politics that includes the longest gubernatorial tenure in Texas history.

When Mr. Perry arrived in 1968 on the College Station campus, after graduating from a high-school class of 13 in Paint Creek, the nation was roiled by Vietnam War protests and the rise of the hippie counterculture.

A&M was far removed from those turbulent currents; it was still largely a place where rural families sent boys to become men and train for careers in ranching or engineering. (Women began enrolling at A&M in the early 1960s, though they weren’t allowed in the student military ranks until 1973.)

Upperclassmen gave Mr. Perry an unflattering buzz cut like those of other freshmen cadets, known as “fish,” and was surrounded by young men who looked and thought the way he did. “There might have been a few liberals, but we didn’t discuss them in polite company,” recalled Mike Cunningham, who was a fellow cadet.

By his own admission, Mr. Perry was no scholar. He graduated with a 2.2 grade-point average. A transcript leaked to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram during his winning campaign for lieutenant governor in 1998 shows he received an F in organic chemistry and D’s in such classes as principles of economics, Shakespeare and “Feeds and Feeding.”

During a Sept. 14 speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., Mr. Perry acknowledged struggling with the dueling demands of school and military drills, and recalled downsizing his dream of becoming a veterinarian to major in animal science after a frank talk with a school dean. “He said, ‘Son, I am looking at your transcript—you want to be an animal-science major,’ ” Mr. Perry told the audience.

Yet he learned an important lesson that eventually led him into public life, after a stint flying cargo planes in the Air Force: He had a way with people. He parlayed his popularity into the student government position of social secretary.

“I obviously wasn’t going to do it academically. I wasn’t going to do it athletically. But politics requires people skills, which is something I had,” Mr. Perry said in interview with the Abilene-Reporter News in 1989.

Former classmates said Mr. Perry’s popularity was boosted by several daring pranks he pulled on upperclassmen, including one his campaign recently confirmed: The young Mr. Perry placed live blackbirds in a student’s closet to create a putrid stink during a vacation break.

Such shenanigans were still common when Mr. Perry was on campus, but were slowly being rooted out by then-A&M president James Earl Rudder, a World War II hero. He successfully pushed to modernize the school to combat dwindling attendance.

” ‘All male, all military’ was the motto of the old Army Aggies, who exercised a great influence,” said historian Thomas M. Hatfield, who wrote a biography of Mr. Rudder.

Still, many A&M alums warmly describe the campus as a place where a man’s worth was measured honestly.

“I wouldn’t have had a chance at a school like [Southern Methodist University], with its fraternities, where who your father was and what kind of car you drove mattered,” said 1968 graduate Henry Cisneros, who later served as President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. “At A&M, none of that stuff mattered: it was all about how you performed on the drill field and in the classroom.”

The cadet corps’ harsher customs eventually fell by the wayside, but hazing was routine during Mr. Perry’s era and perseverance was demanded of participants. In the fall 1968 semester, 31.5% of Mr. Perry’s fellow “fish” cadets dropped out of the corps, along with 14.8% of sophomores, according to school records.

During his Liberty University speech, Mr. Perry recalled that cadet upperclassmen would look for minor infractions, such as a scratch on a belt buckle. “They told us when they found those—which was on a regular basis—to drop down and give them 72” push-ups, in honor of their graduating year.

Those shared experiences are why many fellow cadets, including a few Democrats, are supporting Mr. Perry’s presidential bid. “Some of my yellow-dog Democrat friends won’t like it, but, yeah, I will vote for Rick,” said former cadet corps classmate Kirk Hawkins, now a lawyer in San Angelo. “He’s from West Texas. And, of course, he’s an Aggie.”

Write to Miguel Bustillo at miguel.bustillo@wsj.com