Term "appointment"

SF1775

SF1775

5-Year Member
Joined
Dec 5, 2012
Messages
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With all of these appointments coming in, and the great news spreading to the family and friends of those appointed, I am wondering if anyone could shed some light on why acceptances to the Academy are considered instead to be appointments.

I have been telling people simply that I've been accepted, just to not confuse them, but I want to know why it's instead called an appointment. Does it have something to do with Acceptance Day?
 
I find that its a special term among the service academies that no other institution or college has. I find it much more formal


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I believe it's because you will be entering federal office. So you are "appointed" to said office. I could very well be wrong, so take it with a grain of salt.
 
This is solely a somewhat informed guess here... back in the old days (say 1800s) there were no slates of any kind. A congressman appointed someone from their state or district unencumbered with any academy review or qualification. The term therefore exists for historical reasons. Think R.E. Lee or U.S. Grant.
 
These all sound reasonable. Thanks for the responses.
 
Little known fact found in biographies: Grant was appointed for political reasons related to his father. While at USMA, there was talk of closing the academy and he was disappointed when it didn't happen.

We might be a very different country today without his contributions, tenacity, and determination during the 1860's. Thank you USMA....
 
Disclaimer-Navy family here so I will use Navy examples. Same principle for USMA just different terms.

It is possible that it comes from the Appointments Clause in the Constitution. Way way back, the training for military officers was the SA (no ROTC) so it mattered to the newly formed Congress WHO received that training. So the advice/consent of Congress part of the AC, while maybe not directly related to service academies per se does give insight that certain functions/jobs were seen by the framers as important enough to require a higher level of oversight (such as who will be an officer in the Department of the Navy-word Department being important in this context) and this oversight was accomplished by the nomination of Congress and appointment by the Dept (of the Navy) to USNA (or USMA) to the eventual Dept of the Navy "office" of Ensign at commissioning. Think of the Oath of Office taken at Commissioning.

In short the acceptance is called an appointment because you are receiving an appointment to an office (midshipman which leads to ensign) on the advice/consent (nomination) of Congress.
 
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