Word: cadet
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...West Point fancies itself a timeless institution and, as graduate Dwight D. Eisenhower remarked on his return to the campus, "Some things never change." On Saturdays, two regiments parade in full dress on the great expanse of the Plain. At morning inspection, a cadet's "tac" (tactical officer) can slap three demerits on him for "messy drawers." Cadets must arrange their books on their shelves in order, from tallest to shortest. Physical education is a graded course and each year a cadet is required to run the obstacle course. They call it the O.C. in public, "the suck" in private...
...BASE of this school for soldiers is the fourth class system, a social system which allows a first class cadet to stop a plebe headed for bed at 1 a.m. and demand that he "talk" because he's heard the freshman is Australian and has an interesting accent. It starts on day one--"R" day they call it at the Point--when the new cadets come in at 8 a.m. and by 5 p.m. are shorn, supplied and marching in military formation...
...next two months, when plebes are put through basic training or "Beast Barracks," are a cadet's introduction to the system. "We take people who are just like you," one senior explains as 4000 identically dressed people eat cold pizza in the world's largest dining hall, "and in six weeks, we teach them to be one of us." It's like an initiation into a fraternity, explains another, "a big fraternity." "The new cadet's waking hours are completely controlled," reads the plebe's bible, or Bugle Notes. "They don't have time to think," one cadet explains...
...system is designed to socialize cadets, to strip them of their civilian values as it strips them of their civilian clothes. In a required course on leadership--the cadets call it "Leadersleep"--an instructor is trying to urge first classmen to try and determine what individual characteristics separate leaders from other people. "Individual traits, sir?" questions one cadet who looks as if he has rubbed his black shoes with Formula 409 for 15 minutes. "They issue them to you on the first day of 'Beast...
...halls and yelling out the dress for the day and the minutes remaining until formation. It is easy to recognize them; they are not supposed to initiate conversations and they must walk 120 steps a minute, always sticking to the walls of the stairwells and greeting upperclassmen. If another cadet wants to know what's happened in Iran yesterday, the plebe must answer. He is required to read and know the news on the front page of The New York Times and the cover of the sports section. "One of the strategies for getting through plebe year is sleeping whenever...