No Thanksgiving break

Kierkegaard said:
Most mids these days don’t care that much about football games. Many still enjoy watching, but not enough to prefer it to getting time off.
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During DS's 4 years in HS, he may have gone to 4-5 football games in total. I had fully anticipated having to drive him to 5-6 games a year from middle school on up, as that was my school age experience. Once I realized it wasn't going to happen, I assumed it might have been because their school never had a good team. But I am starting to come around to a possible widespread generational shift away from football attendance itself.

Different sport, but there was an article not long ago about how difficult it was for Duke to fill their student section for basketball games many nights, because the students just weren't big sports fans anymore.
 
justme said:
During DS's 4 years in HS, he may have gone to 4-5 football games in total. I had fully anticipated having to drive him to 5-6 games a year from middle school on up, as that was my school age experience. Once I realized it wasn't going to happen, I assumed it might have been because their school never had a good team. But I am starting to come around to a possible widespread generational shift away from football attendance itself.

Different sport, but there was an article not long ago about how difficult it was for Duke to fill their student section for basketball games many nights, because the students just weren't big sports fans anymore.
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This sounds like a truism across the country. There’s just a lot more stuff for people to do (prior to covid obviously) in general now. Not even counting on computers and TV, way more cities have all kinds of concerts, museums, and restaurants, and it’s never been easier to book last-minute travel plans and arrange transportation. There was a discussion on this forum a few weeks ago on why most mids see attending football games as a chore nowadays, and this is why. As opposed to a few generations ago, there are tons of options for taking liberty in modern times.
 
It is more than Army/Navy. The logistics involved in bringing back Midshipmen after a 4-5 day break with COVID restrictions, just to have them leave again less than a month later for winter break, would be extremely difficult.
 
i don't think there was ever a plan to bring them back after a 4 day leave. the plan that was floated a while back was to go home for thanksgiving, and stay home till spring reform. but that means no mids at the game - that doesn't work for USNA (understandable from USNA's perspective, understandably unpopular decision from mid's perspective)

it appears that a decision was made to shorten the semester to end the day before A/N game (it was originally a week later). i would expect a future announcement that mids can go on leave directly from the A/N game if they want. otherwise, travel back to Annap and then go on leave.
 
A6E Dad said:
i don't think there was ever a plan to bring them back after a 4 day leave. the plan that was floated a while back was to go home for thanksgiving, and stay home till spring reform. but that means no mids at the game - that doesn't work for USNA (understandable from USNA's perspective, understandably unpopular decision from mid's perspective)

it appears that a decision was made to shorten the semester to end the day before A/N game (it was originally a week later). i would expect a future announcement that mids can go on leave directly from the A/N game if they want. otherwise, travel back to Annap and then go on leave.
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Again, I think it is much more than Mids at a game.
You can’t learn leadership via Teams.
 
Even if there are MIDNs who actually have fun at the games, it's mandatory fun. Mandatory fun is never fun, leading up to, and going into.
 
Kierkegaard said:
But it sounds like the Supe and Dant really want the Brigade in the stands at Army Navy this year.
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Please get this kind of conjecture out of your system before you graduate and lead sailors/marines. I can pretty well guarantee that even if this is somewhere on the list of motivating factors, it is pretty far down the list.
Number one is of course the risk of travel and then avoiding the pandemic upon returning under anything like a normal schedule. As for going remote from Tksgiving thru the end of the semester? I get the student view of going remote from home but from a broad brush NAVY view, it is far better for the NAVAL ACADEMY to keep training with as much normality as possible. That has little to do with optics of a football game and everything to do with how Plebes learn in Bancroft as opposed to Mom and Dad's basement. Same thing with Firsties - better to spend more face time with the people they lead than with their pets back home.

For many years, there was no such thing as "Thanksgiving Leave" at USNA, it was just a day off with Town Libs. Right now, the rest of the Navy has pretty severe distance restrictions on how far they can travel when not on full fledged leave and under that type restraint, Mids would not get very far anyhow.
 
Old Navy BGO said:
It is really sad to hear of ANY Midshipman thinking that way. Army-Navy isn't just a football game,
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I pretty much guarantee that the "loss" of Thanksgiving break is not because of the Army/Navy game.

Most of the rest of DoD is under pretty severe personnel restraints over COVID and the specific restrictions are tied to what the situation is in the local region.

If you want to think about bad optics though, think about having the whole brigade attend USNA remotely for a couple of semesters and then try to defend keeping USNA's budget intact. We just built a pretty expensive building for Cyber that includes a much needed SCIF. How are they going to do THAT remotely from Mom's basement.
 
My plebe is bummed, but he actually wanted to stay and take his exams at USNA vs home. He said he’d rather have a “clean break” after exams are over than try to study, take exams when all his friends are home as well....texting/calling and “bothering” him. This plan ensures he has max focus on his end of the year academics.
 
georgiemason said:
My plebe is bummed, but he actually wanted to stay and take his exams at USNA vs home. He said he’d rather have a “clean break” after exams are over than try to study, take exams when all his friends are home as well....texting/calling and “bothering” him. This plan ensures he has max focus on his end of the year academics.
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Absolutely. And it IS only a couple more weeks. Totally worth it to be DONE. Not to mention trying to proctor final exams virtual not the best situation for anyone.

Its still early. Wonder what will happen if there is no attendance allowed at the game? I wonder if the entire brigade will reform at the same time 2nd semester? Lots could change. Lots can happen...
 
UHBlackhawk said:
You can’t learn leadership via Teams.
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+10 to this. I teach at our flagship state university down the road, but really I teach on a laptop, speaking to a webcam in the bright glare of a ring light. I can say firsthand from a teacher perspective: This online learning sucks! Yes, it’s making the best of a crappy situation. Yes, it’s better than nothing.

But as @UHBlackhawk says, you can’t learn leadership via Microsoft Teams. And you can’t earn your bachelor’s degree via Zoom. Sure, maybe you get away with it for a semester or two. But the drop-off in participation, engagement, comprehension and application is enormous when online vs. in the classroom. One may get through all this online charade and have a sheepskin to show for it, but it’s far from the same value of having learned it all live.

So I, for one, am glad DD is on the Yard — all the restrictions notwithstanding. I saw what she did spring semester, and that was a poor facsimile of the world-class education and leadership lab she’d signed up for. If she’s home again next semester, both she and I will be gravely disappointed.
 
Look at the bright side... you will get 3-3+ weeks at Christmas! Thanksgiving is really a 96 weekend in the fleet. I never made it home for Thanksgiving as we always had a basketball tournament. Thanksgiving as a team was a blast! Plus this is one of the only times you will get to have Thanksgiving with all your buddies! You probably won’t ever get to do that again.
 
MidCakePa said:
+10 to this. I teach at our flagship state university down the road, but really I teach on a laptop, speaking to a webcam in the bright glare of a ring light. I can say firsthand from a teacher perspective: This online learning sucks! Yes, it’s making the best of a crappy situation. Yes, it’s better than nothing.
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Do your students turn on their cameras? Mine do not. I “teach” to a gray screen with profile pics of Cardi B, Nicki Manage, and Jessica Rabbit. Oh, and a cute pic of a student’s infant. I agree, this online learning sucks.
 
NavyHoops said:
Look at the bright side... you will get 3-3+ weeks at Christmas! Thanksgiving is really a 96 weekend in the fleet. I never made it home for Thanksgiving as we always had a basketball tournament. Thanksgiving as a team was a blast! Plus this is one of the only times you will get to have Thanksgiving with all your buddies! You probably won’t ever get to do that again.
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I always thought college BB players got hosed the most.
 
Devil Doc said:
Do your students turn on their cameras?
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I ask them to turn their cameras on, as a means of building community and engagement. Most comply. And I don’t shy away from cold-calling those with their cameras off. But none of this stops them from doing a million things out of camera view.
 
UHBlackhawk said:
I always thought college BB players got hosed the most.
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We never got Thanksgiving, 3-4 days at Cmas, and never spring break. Patriot League tourney was that week. Summer leave we usually got a few weeks, but tried to always have a few players working camps (plus the $500/week was huge for me) and kept us in shape with conditioning and lifting. We often were in summer school too. My room mates my firstie year said they had no idea the kind of schedule we kept, how much class we missed and how much sleep we missed. They laughed and used to say... ‘All that work just to miss a few parades!’ I always chuckled at that. It was a lot of work, but I knew what I was getting into. It was all my choice and would not have traded the experience.
 
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