Can I get into West Point if I had bad grades in high school? By Ann Scott Tyson This falls plebes now just have to read the Times, not memorize the front page. They had the wrong idea of what service and tradition really are. But he was even more frustrated with the school for creating an environment in which college kids were saddled with responsibilities beyond their age and experience. He and his wife Gosia, recently of Union City, Ind., have owned 20 acres in Alaska for many years. We were there to be a role model for these kids, not a drill instructor. Over the last four academic years, the Radnor Township Police Department has responded more than 300 times to incidents on campus. And the female cadets were met with hostility. All they cared about was that there was no negative press, even if it meant that kids were being sodomized or kids were having inappropriate sexual relations, or getting drunk or getting high, or whatever. But Michael Karson, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Denver who specializes in child abuse, told me that one of the few hard laws in his field is as follows: Punishment doesnt work to change peoples character, he says. Salinger Literary Trust, the author, then 76, seemed to regret the untitled three-stanza poem he wrote shortly before graduation, which was placed on display in the school chapel after Salinger got famous. On June 11th, an angry and mournful letter signed by hundreds of graduates of West Pointspanning from the Class of 1948 to . About 35 percent took their lives after deployment. Days later, hundreds of alumni arrived from around the country for a tense meeting with school officials at Mellon Hall, a stately building with a checkerboard-tiled ballroom. On Jan. 15, a junior put a belt around his neck in an effort to hang himself and later tried to jump out a window, but he was stopped in both instances, they said. His masterwork, The Catcher in the Rye, opens with Holden Caulfield at Pencey Prep, a fictionalized version of the Forge. he said that . After four months of constant torment, including a beating in an organized boxing match, ridicule for reading his Bible, and the forced consumption of hot sauce in the cadet mess hall, he resigned. Grandma was just making a sweater. The son of working-class parents, Lord grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood in South Philadelphia. But it was escaping the campus that brought him the greatest joy: Though [the Forge], to me, was on the whole a thoroughly bad joke, its pretenses and posturing irreversibly sham, contemptible, Salinger wrote, I wonder if I ever again felt as free, as gratefully on the loose, as I did on that pretty walk to Wayne and the diner on a Sunday after signing out.. A congressional committee uncovered other abuses, such as forcing plebes to sit on bayonets or slide naked down splintered boards. However, many who passed through hazing voice regret. It was the most bizarre thing in the world. Other administrators were similarly perplexed. McMaster, Donald Trumps former national security adviser. But in November 2004, the board of trustees booted Long for an alleged pattern of sexually harassing employees. The 2008 suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000 marked a historic high for the Army, and for the first time since the Vietnam War era it surpassed the overall U.S. rate for people of similar ages and backgrounds: 19.5 per 100,000 in 2005, the latest year for which the statistic is available. When a structure is set up on rank, power, and pain, youre going to have problems, a former Forge official explained. On one side were concerned parents and alumni, and Lord; on the other an increasingly bellicose group of trustees and administrators, including Lords replacement, current president Stuart Helgeson. Schumacher returned to the dorms but quit the school for good soon after. The cadets I interviewed, along with an internal list of student grievances I obtained, say the Forge frequently minimizes mental health issues, with a school nurse once scolding a student for sending up red flags that dont need to be sent up.. Since the late 1960s, when the mess hall was expanded to its current size, the corps of more than 4,000 cadets have filtered into the hall at mealtimes to find their seats at 10-person, mixed class tables. But for some old grads (the ones afraid of pastry), abandoning pie cutting rituals means that todays cadets are missing out on something valuable. Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. In another troubling case that Wood discussed with a local newspaper in 2017, four male college cadets conspired with a fifth to covertly film his sexual encounter with a drunk female cadet. It didnt always go that well. The Forge wasnt adequately communicating with students about the Pell program, and multiple cadets said they never received money they were promised. On a chilly evening in September 2020, Jordan Schumacher solemnly patrolled the grounds of Valley Forge Military Academy, near his wits end. 5.0 out of 5 stars Hazing at West Point. When Oscar Booze entered West Point in 1898, the older cadets decided that he did not conform to their image of what a cadet should be. It is both against college/academy regulations and can be criminal per state/federal law. Ryan Niessner, who submitted a sworn affidavit for one of Stewart Ryans cases, told me he was sexually assaulted as a 15-year-old Forge cadet in 2009. The school is now being monitored by the US Department of Education for financial or federal compliance issues, which may stem, at least in part, from its sloppy handling of Pell grants. Perceived stigma for those who seek help is a continuing problem throughout the Army and also exists at West Point, officials and students said. We didnt get anything done.. Every single class that has ever come here has been told during their freshman year that you got it easier, Hammond says. Theyre weakening the brand.. The exam is the culmination of a boot camp of sorts for incoming college students. Battle-torn flags adorn the two-story stone walls, and chandeliers in the shape of ornate candelabras hang from the cathedral ceilings. Lord also provided intense guidance to misbehaving cadets and booted a handful whose behavior had become threatening. He now represents the former cadet who filed the tooth-pasting lawsuit, and three others who allege that, as minors, they, too, experienced tooth-pasting and other abuse at the Forge from 2014 to 2018. Its not the same, says Robin Schuck, a female senior from Davenport, Iowa. Oscar L. Booz died of tubercular laryngitis 18 months after he dropped out of the academy. Although hazing is often associated with the activities that take place as a prerequisite for joining a group, it can also include activities that take place as an established member, such as the 2011 death of fraternity brother George Desdunes . Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do. (The Forge has previously denied that the funds were misdirected.) Entrusting students in leadership roles was all well and good, but a dearth of healthy adult oversight and accountability had contributed to a culture replete with assaults, verbal abuse, hazing, and sexual violence that had resulted in police visits, lawsuits, and a cold war pitting recalcitrant trustees and administrators against reform-minded parents, alumni, and cadets. Upperclassmen looked on, taunting. A few years ago, the school began rationing toilet paper. When the TACs started asking questions and she gave them her account, one of them said it was my fault. The alleged assailant was allowed to remain on campus for the semester. Two female former cadets recalled to me how, after they were caught trying to sneak off campus, Rivera threatened to look in on their rooms at night when they slept. On Jan. 2, cadet Gordon Fein shot and killed himself while at home in North Carolina on leave, and on Dec. 8 cadet Alfred D. Fox, a junior, took his life at a motel near campus by allowing a helium tank to empty in the room while he slept. Leadership and character are sacred terms here. He ascended through the Army ranks to the position of major general and served in Sarajevo and Afghanistan. He had spoken of wanting to die as an infantry commander in combat, classmates said. That kind of mentality grows here; once someone gets ostracized, it snowballs.. Some cadets have taken to calling the freshman class getovers--as in those who get over by doing as little work as possible. He also won third place for the column in 2022 from the Indiana chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The end result of Plebe year can be seen easily in a comparison of what the average West Point Plebe can do in a 24 hour day compared to a Harvard Freshman.

,

I know what you mean when you say the "hazing" in 2006 is not what it was in 1936 or 1876, but could you elaborate a bit more for those young men and woman who are considering applying to West Point and to whom this "hazing" thing might not (or might) be familiar?

,

And while on the topic of what's different at West Point in comparison to a "civilian" college, my wife has told me by phone (she's still near West Point visting family) that several of the new cadets have already dropped out due to broken bone injuries. I never really felt like they were following financial aid procedures, one former staffer recalled. The school doesnt want to deal with sexual harassment, a female cadet wrote, and students guilty of sexual misconduct saw their behaviors pushed under the rug., Another former cadet who attended around the same time told me she was drugged at an off-campus party and then sexually assaulted by a male Forge cadet while unconscious. It marks a jump from the Armys rate of 12.7 per 100,000 in 2005, 15.3 in 2006 and 16.8 in 2007. The cumulative stress of his ordeal was too much for Booz and on Oct.31, four months . In the name of leadership, plebes were mandated to learn not only military history, but pages of other trivia and gibberish that, in effect, equaled an extra academic course. But at this 188-year-old school, hazing is a tradition that has survived reform before. Several alumni who serve in the armed forces told me that nothing in their military experience has been as harrowing as their years at the Forge. Schumacher had arrived on campus in 2019, excited by the Forges time-honored traditions and drawn to its curricula on counterterrorism and cybersecurity. It's us but for your ears. Two West Point cadets have committed suicide since December and two others attempted suicide in the past two weeks, prompting the military academys leaders to summon an Army surgeon generals suicide team to the campus today to investigate the causes. In 1999, the institution officially banned hazing with pie or anything else. Journalist Hank Nuwer is the Alaska author of Hazing: Destroying Young Lives; Broken Pledges: The Deadly Rite of Hazing, High School Hazing, Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader. Upperclassmen had the right to come up to any first-year students wearing a crooked cap or dingy belt buckle and literally shout in their face the proper rules for conduct. For cadets who passed through the Academy in the later decades of the 20th century, a favorite form of hazing centered on pie. For a member of West Points class of 83, pie cutting provided me with a priceless gift: the ability to sort through the mess, bring some order to it, and continue functioning.. Enrollment peaked after World War II, but by the end of the Vietnam War, 65 percent of the institutions had closed their doors. Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone.