New Commandant at West Point

buff81

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WEST POINT, N.Y. (Jan. 18, 2013) -- The U.S. Military Academy welcomed Brig. Gen. Richard D. Clarke as the 74th commandant of the Corps of Cadets Jan. 18 during a change of command ceremony at Cullum Hall.

Clarke, the former deputy commanding general of operations for the 10th Mountain Division (Light) at Fort Drum, N.Y., comes to West Point with nearly 28 years of leadership experience at every level of command from company to brigade. As the Corps’ senior ranking officer, the commandant is responsible for overseeing the administration, discipline and military training of cadets.


http://www.westpoint.edu/news/SitePages/Commandant Change of Command.aspx
 
Excited to see what changes the "Ranger Comm," as he is referred to here, will make.
 
This is potentially a great move. General Clark is a Special Operations, Ranger, combat veteran, soldier.
Hopefully he will bring some additional dicipline and raise the military standards that have (In my opinion) slipped in the past few years.
I am not really a "The Corps Has" type. I think West Point has made many improvements in the past years - especially academically. However, many of us who are West Point graduates have noticed a reduction in some military standards (wear of uniform, staying in step, making Beast Barracks much easier, etc). Just my opinion.
 
I think a lot of that has to do with the over-emphasis on Academics, which is now starting to rear its ugly head with the branch system and within the corps
 
PDB88,
My son is in the class of 2015. He and his roommates are the main source of my comments above.
I do not think we should go back to the "old" Plebe system but I do think it is time to tighten the military standards. My son has told me many times tht he was not challenged in Beast Barracks and Plebe year was not as tough as he expected. Evidently, Beast Barracks for the Class of 2016 was exceptionally easy.
 
PDB88,
My son is in the class of 2015. He and his roommates are the main source of my comments above.
I do not think we should go back to the "old" Plebe system but I do think it is time to tighten the military standards. My son has told me many times tht he was not challenged in Beast Barracks and Plebe year was not as tough as he expected. Evidently, Beast Barracks for the Class of 2016 was exceptionally easy.

Oh, that discussion again... :rolleyes:
 
PDB88,
My son is in the class of 2015. He and his roommates are the main source of my comments above.
I do not think we should go back to the "old" Plebe system but I do think it is time to tighten the military standards. My son has told me many times tht he was not challenged in Beast Barracks and Plebe year was not as tough as he expected. Evidently, Beast Barracks for the Class of 2016 was exceptionally easy.

Yes, that's the going opinion among grads, tacs, and several cadets who were cadre for Beast.

I'm glad to see someone from the community installed as Comm.
 
I should have specified cadet career

And hey, at least 2015 did pushups during Beast. 2014 got recognized early and didn't scramble. 2016 got ice cream every day for dinner. 2015 though, we got here just in time to lose the tablecloths and congo bars, watch the branching system change three times in two years, live through two hurricanes and an earthquake, and get targeted for the mandatory 200 cuts. We're survivors.

All kidding aside, I agree, we've had it pretty easy, and I think it shows.
 
I should have specified cadet career

And hey, at least 2015 did pushups during Beast. 2014 got recognized early and didn't scramble. 2016 got ice cream every day for dinner. 2015 though, we got here just in time to lose the tablecloths and congo bars, watch the branching system change three times in two years, live through two hurricanes and an earthquake, and get targeted for the mandatory 200 cuts. We're survivors.

All kidding aside, I agree, we've had it pretty easy, and I think it shows.

You will not graduate into a war. Be thankful.
 
I just love to hear people saying that our BEAST was easy because we didn't really get dropped or smoked... My >300 APFT score at the end of BEAST really demonstrates how the lack of smoking didn't prepare me physically.

Here's the deal - they didn't drop us. Okay... we had other sorts of punishment. The cadre had to actually think how to make new cadets who needed discipline obey them rather than just dropping them.

Other argument about the importance of "smoking" new cadets: they teach the new cadets that they can actually handle much more than they thought. Well, guess what - I didn't need to get FORCED to push myself above and beyond what I thought I could do. I forced MYSELF to do it. And wow, did I learn about myself. Not having done any running sports during H.S., it felt a little weird to be on the fastest running group during BEAST. We ran, and we ran... and a lot of people kept falling out. (If you couldn't keep up, you were simply transferred to the next slower running group.

With every single step I took, I thought to myself: "I can just, you know, slow down. Nothing is gonna happen to me, and my life can just suck less. All I gotta do is... slow down..."

But I never stopped. My father once told me: "when you feel exhausted, when you feel like you can't move anymore, when you think you've reached your max... you've only given 70% of yourself: there's still 30% to go."

And if there's anything that BEAST taught me it was that my mind has the power over my body, and I have the strength to control it - I was never forced to learn this... I learned this by myself, and this made BEAST memorable to me.


Unfortunately, there are people here who would choose to have it easy just because they could, just because nothing would happen to them, just because they wouldn't get smoked... in my opinion, if the person thinks that way and does not learn the lesson I've learned during BEAST, he or she shouldn't even be here.


I am not saying "smoking" shouldn't happen at all. It does have a point, which I think got blurred with all the "anti-hazing" story. But I am of the opinion that BEAST is more about the CADRE than it is about the New Cadets. If the CADRE can motivate the New Cadets without all the corrective physical punishment of the previous classes... congratulations: you are a true leader. The upperclassmen can make a plebe's life as miserable as they want... maybe not physically, but through other means... it's all up to them. If my BEAST was easy because they couldn't make us do many pushups, well, the cadre should've come up with better ways to make our BEAST hard (and by hard I mean a challenge... not unnecessarily hard like making us do 100s of pushups, but try to instill that lesson that "smoking" develops - whatever it is - through other means).


On a related note:

"If they went through basic in 1950, that was the last period of hard basic training. If they went through in 1975, that was the last hard class. If they graduated in 1999, that was right before basic began to get 'wimpy.'"
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/armyjoin/a/basicinterview.htm




BOTTOM LINE: It's not how hard you are pushed. It how hard you push yourself. And if you are not willing to push yourself beyond what you already know you can handle, then you should reconsider your decision to come here.
 
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But 2016 was also the first class to get cots out in the field. :biggrin:

Well, I didn't ask for that. The hooches weren't that bad, I wouldn't mind spending the nights we had cots in hooches instead.

+I'm pretty sure it was some key leader's decision to have cots instead of hooches for us. So don't make it easy on us and then complain about how easy it was :rolleyes:
 
Well, I didn't ask for that. The hooches weren't that bad, I wouldn't mind spending the nights we had cots in hooches instead.

+I'm pretty sure it was some key leader's decision to have cots instead of hooches for us. So don't make it easy on us and then complain about how easy it was :rolleyes:

You're getting your lines crossed there, young buck.

I didn't make it easy on you. Thus, I can complain that Beast (it's Beast, not BEAST, it's not an acronym) was easy on you. If they put me in charge, pushups would be the least of the physical worries.
 
You're getting your lines crossed there, young buck.

I didn't make it easy on you. Thus, I can complain that Beast (it's Beast, not BEAST, it's not an acronym) was easy on you. If they put me in charge, pushups would be the least of the physical worries.

Sorry for not being clear - I was referring to what the current cadets think and say.

Anyway, maybe they should've put you in charge. Because, according to what most upperclassmen say, the lack of "smoking" is what made our Beast easy. Perhaps someone who understands that there are other ways to make Beast "hard" than just dropping us for whatever reason. Hopefully the new Commandant will bring a new perspective onto this, because I believe the New Cadets AND cadre could learn a lot more about themselves if the cadre used their "weapons" more effectively and creatively.

Still, "The Corps has..." according to, well, every graduating class. So I honestly don't care about opinions concerning our Beast, because it is always getting easier in some people's opinions (I had cows and firsties tell me that every class says their Beast was harder, including the upperclassmen when they were plebes). It was challenging for me, and that's what matters (it wasn't necessarily physically challenging, but rather psychologically). I just wish the upperclass cadets would realize that Beast was "easy" because they made it easy, and fix themselves instead of hiding their fault in the fact that they couldn't "smoke" us - there are good and bad plebes this year (just like any other year), and the upperclassmen insist on generalizing. The upperclass' opinion is useless to me, but I fear that their generalization will not serve them well as Officers. Do correct me if I am wrong, please.
 
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So maybe now plebes will "greet" and recognize that just because you exist you aren't entilted to same privilages as everyone else........this may get interesting.
 
Sorry for not being clear - I was referring to what the current cadets think and say.

Anyway, maybe they should've put you in charge. Because, according to what most upperclassmen say, the lack of "smoking" is what made our Beast easy. Perhaps someone who understands that there are other ways to make Beast "hard" than just dropping us for whatever reason. Hopefully the new Commandant will bring a new perspective onto this, because I believe the New Cadets AND cadre could learn a lot more about themselves if the cadre used their "weapons" more effectively and creatively.

Still, "The Corps has..." according to, well, every graduating class. So I honestly don't care about opinions concerning our Beast, because it is always getting easier in some people's opinions (I had cows and firsties tell me that every class says their Beast was harder, including the upperclassmen when they were plebes). It was challenging for me, and that's what matters (it wasn't necessarily physically challenging, but rather psychologically). I just wish the upperclass cadets would realize that Beast was "easy" because they made it easy, and fix themselves instead of hiding their fault in the fact that they couldn't "smoke" us - there are good and bad plebes this year (just like any other year), and the upperclassmen insist on generalizing. The upperclass' opinion is useless to me, but I fear that their generalization will not serve them well as Officers. Do correct me if I am wrong, please.

The small novel you've written here suggests that you do care.
 
So maybe now plebes will "greet" and recognize that just because you exist you aren't entilted to same privilages as everyone else........this may get interesting.

2016 greet? That's a good joke
 
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