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| OH NOES! TEH MILITARY! |
| 2007-09-20 |
| Lotp to the white courtesy phone, please (er, if I remember correctly). This was an opinion piece in the Columbia Spectator, of Columbia University, but I'm sending you to the copy at the IvyGate blog, because somehow the article has become unavailable on the Spectator's site. Heavily edited for length and maximum buffoonery. I know why I chose Columbia: the campus is magnificent, the education is top-tier, and my peers are intelligent. I could look at a stranger, tell him or her that I went to Columbia, and hear the predictable, “Wow, you must be smart.” When my brother was getting ready to go to the Naval Academy, everyone ooohed and awed about how brave he was...one uncle who works on Wall Street said..."You will be set for life."...So in June, my family dropped him off in Annapolis. Soon that pride turned to anger and fear: after my mom dropped him off at Annapolis, she came home with an acute sense of grief. The only thing she could talk about was how to get him out...she was scared by the extent to which her son had suddenly become the property of the U.S. Navy. She begged me to call a naval lieutenant Monday morning to start the out-processing forms for my brother. When I looked at the course catalogue, which boasted seminars about leadership and selflessness, they were in fact seminars about weaponry and leading troops into combat. The reality of sending my brother to the Naval Academy began to set in: this was not a school; this was the military. OK, this is as much as I can stand. Short version -- rilly rilly smart Columbia student has a brother at Annapolis, which she realizes -- too late! -- is not an elite college after all, but part of the U.S. military! They must get him out! Complicating matters is all this pesky "oath" business, plus the fact that her brother doesn't want to leave. We are promised a four-part series. |
| Posted by:Angie Schultz |
| #17 Might want to take a look at what's happened at the Point and to the corps in the 20+ years since then. There are jerks and ring knockers that graduate from time to time. Known a few. But it's a pretty different place now than in the late 70s when your captain would have graduated. Today's cadets are running IED detection/avoidance drills in their sophomore year. Juniors are spending their summers in some cases doing air assault school. And there's a small but influential number of cadets coming to the academy now after combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-20 21:45 |
| #16 This was in the 1980s. The Captain in question had been assigned to an ROTC at a university. In short order he had managed to piss off most of the other officers, the senior NCOs, the ex-OSS Dean of the college of Liberal Arts, the US Civil War expert Assistant Dean, several prominent Conservative faculty who were providing guest lectures to the Military Science Department, a highly decorated retired LTC Vietnam War Green Beret hero, a highly decorated Airborne Major Vietnam War hero, and even a very old retired Lt General who had been on MacArthur's staff, who was the Dean of the Athletic Department. In other words, a truly gifted individual young Captain. His OER was described as being heavily crumpled, and impressed with boot prints and brown streaks. He left the Army shortly thereafter. Otherwise, an enlisted friend told me he had been chastised by a LTC for offering to save the life of a West Point officer who through his own incompetence has set his own GP medium tent on fire with himself stuck in it, by playing around with a gasoline furnace. He saved his life, anyway. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-09-20 21:31 |
| #15 What time frame, 'Moose? Just curious. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-20 19:28 |
| #14 The service academies have their advantages and their disadvantages. Annapolis and the Air Force Academy do far better than West Point, because they still control much of the "top tier market" of officers in their branches. West Point, on the other hand, has been relegated to a minority status in the Army, and its graduates have to prove themselves as acceptable leaders before the dominant ROTC officers will look at them with anything other than suspicion and mistrust, for either being martinets or slackers. Many West Pointers do not openly brag of the fact, except in the West Point heavy Engineer branch. And the Army is rife with horror stories about failed West Pointers. One I knew was driven out as a Captain because of his uncanny tactlessness and arrogance. He had a positive gift for insulting people of importance and respect, including war heroes. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-09-20 18:13 |
| #13 Somehow, the mental picture of Jimmah enjoying the professional services of a LBFM have distorted my images of such services...... |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2007-09-20 14:53 |
| #12 Soon that pride turned to anger and fear: after my mom dropped him off at Annapolis, she came home with an acute sense of grief. The only thing she could talk about was how to get him out. In addition to missing his presence at home, she was scared by the extent to which her son had suddenly become the property of the U.S. Navy. Geez, maybe he went there to get away from his suffocating mom and high society douchebag sister? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-09-20 12:52 |
| #11 This is really strange. I've known several people who have attended (or currently attend) our military academies. All of them understood exactly what they were getting into and worked extraordinarily hard for the opportunity. I don't know what percentage of applicants are accepted, but its got to be pretty low. None of the academies need to con people into attending. This is either a clueless twit with a high IQ or someone trying to fit into the in crowd at Columbia by claiming her poor brother was victimized by the military. |
| Posted by: DoDo 2007-09-20 12:39 |
| #10 I look forward to seeing Miss Barnard and her Mom dressed in pink, waving signs, and singing "We Shall Overcome" outside the Academy gates of a Friday evening... |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2007-09-20 10:25 |
| #9 Oh noes! A military school teaching men how to lead a military unit in a military action! Oh the humanities! Call your congressmen and complain!! Worthless pieces of shit. They should have been dropped in the river at birth. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-09-20 07:58 |
| #8 I'll bet they wish it was Barnard. Or Vassar. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-09-20 06:58 |
| #7 Oh well .. every school has its failures. By the way, the tactical officers at West Point (senior captains, mostly majors) take a master's degree in organizational behavior, psychology etc. before instructing in leadership and overseeing the corps of cadets. Want to guess which well known university in NYC gives the degree? |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-20 06:15 |
| #6 I am very proud of my attendance and academic record at the Academy. It was only after repeated deployments to the sexual Disney Land of Submic Bay (Olongapo), many cases of San Miguel beer, and crossing shi* river a couple of thousand times did I begin to notice a degree of mental degeneration and frequent lusting in my heart after wimin. Beer and LBFM's have left me a wasted man, a mindless, quivering democrat. |
| Posted by: Jimmy Carter 2007-09-20 06:03 |
| #5 First job only. After that, it's all how good you are, not the school's rep. What a sad little pony she is. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2007-09-20 05:49 |
| #4 The service academies are indeed military units. They are also elite schools. West Point is in the top 5 nationally for most engineering fields (among schools that don't have graduate degree programs, i.e. not counting big research universities). Academy grads get into graduate schools like MIT, Stanford, Northwestern, Princeton .... including into their business schools. I know several West Point grads who did their grad work at Columbia, in fact. And cadets meet those standards while also maintaining physical fitness plus learning how to lead. Contrary to this airhead's assumptions, there's a good deal of organizational and personal psychology and social science behind the leadership courses at the Academies. One reason so many businesses are quick to hire Academy grads when they come available. Good luck to this young woman on that Columbia reputation thing. If that doesn't get her the oooohs she wants I hear expensive purses are still hot in Manhattan - she could invest the tuition in them. Wouldn't be any more of a waste than where she's spending it. If she's on scholarship, tho, she'll probably need to flash her shaved private parts or write a sex blog or something .... |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-20 05:36 |
| #3 Nice find, Angie. Meant to note that I saw it at Tightly Wound. The Captain had more to say, as did Ace. |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2007-09-20 01:53 |
| #2 Nice find, Angie. Though the best part is in the comments where the Columbia snobs and the Barnard wannabes are flailing away at each other with their squash rackets. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2007-09-20 01:16 |
| #1 There is a position opening up for her on "The View"! |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-09-20 00:59 |