Taylor Bell tried to rebel, but in the end, he became a Wildcat, just like his parents before him.
“”I went to Biola University (for my undergraduate degree),”” Bell said, now a James E. Rogers College of Law student. “”I kind of rebelled against them. My dad even sent me down here for a weekend.””
“”I’m here for law school, and now that I’m here, I’m trying to be as involved as I can,”” he followed. “”I got accepted to both ASU and UA, and if it weren’t for my parents going here, I definitely wouldn’t have come.””
An active member in the Associated Students of the University of Arizona and the Arizona Students’ Association, Bell is a second-generation ASUA member and a fourth-generation Wildcat.
“”I decided to keep the legacy going,”” he said.
His work in ASA, founded just a few years before his parents met, is just one way that Bell pushes his family’s legacy forward.
“”My parents came here for undergrad, and they were pretty involved,”” Bell said, whose father, Jeffrey Bell — a Delta Chi — and mother, Pamela Corbin (Bell) — an Alpha Phi — met during the planning of 1980’s ASUA Spring Fling, a student-run carnival that the UA hosts each year. “”They met because he was running Spring Fling and my mom was working for him. They kind of kept it on the down-low at first because she was working for him.””
His parents aren’t the only ones. His great-grandfather attended UA’s law school in the 1930s, and his grandfather pursued an undergraduate UA degree in the late 1950s.
After getting married shortly after college, his parents had Bell, who, despite not pursuing his undergraduate degree here, is loving his UA experience.
In fact, he and his wife want to start a family after he graduates from law school.
“”That’s one of the main reasons,”” he said. “”Education is very important, and I would definitely be able to suggest the UA for my kids.””
Even today, the connection his parents forged at the UA is strong, as he joked about them reliving their moments at Gentle Ben’s Brewing Co. on University Boulevard, altered from the ’80s version by the construction of the Tucson University Marriott Park hotel, and getting excited for a 30-year Bobcat reunion during this year’s 125th anniversary homecoming celebration.
“”It’s one thing to look at it through a yearbook,”” Bell said of his parents’ experience, and now his own, at the UA. “”It is another thing to see it through their eyes, to walk down the street and through the neighborhood where they used to live.””
