My son is an 4th year IC and was out of town for a game and missed parents weekend. My husband and I are going to visit him this weekend. He thinks he can get out for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon, per his AOC. Is he using a pass to do this? I hate for him to waste a pass for 2-3 hours.
Uh...yeah...
All basic pass units get reset...unless you lose a merit list, or your squad's performance goes down, you will only be gaining pass units...
...unless you would rather have a grand total of 5 Basic pass units for your entire cadet career...
Can anyone decipher this:
"The Commandant approved the new OSS system that takes us to two “GOs” per year (vs. four) yesterday. I spoke with CAMIS today and they’re going to go in and give everyone their additional baseline passes (1°s 30, 2°s 20, 3°s 10, and 4°s 5) either this afternoon or tomorrow. They’ll let me know when they’ve done this.
Unlike in the past where cadets received an OSS bump up and/or merit list passes at prog, they will only get these passes at the beginning of the semester (essentially a decrease in passes for those cadets). So, if you have a 1° on the Supt’s List and they come to you asking why they only received 30 passes and not 45, it’s because we only give out those passes once a semester now."
I understand that it looks like the passes are now all on a semester basis. Makes sense, but how does that make it appear to be a decrease?
It looks like a decrease because those of us on lists would normally get bonus passes every 20 lessons, now we only get those bonuses every 40 lessons, so the number of passes if you are on a merit list basically got cut in half
So can someone post what that means in number of passes for this semester for a lowly 4 degree? Will they not have any extra passes for grades this semester? I think you are saying they won't get any merit passes this semester but if they earned them when this semester completes they will have them in the spring semester to use? If so, that is too bad for 4 degrees that were working towards good progress reports to get some extra passes.
You can't be put on a list at prog, so the earliest a four dig can earn extra passes is spring semester (unless they make Comm's List for excellence during BCT, but that's pretty rare). That hasn't changed.
My squad comm said earlier this week that there was a rumor going around about passes moving to a semester system and not resetting at prog. Interestingly enough, she said it was false...
07, it has to be better for the passes to be on a semester basis allowing use of the dean's and supie's passes for the entire following semester rather than just until the next prog. What doesn't make sense is the real or perceived problem of only a quarter's number of passes being awarded rather than the entire number. Hope there is clarity out there. We've been less than impressed with the quality of information sometimes from squad leadership.
My understanding is the cadets have their base passes loaded each quarter. It appears that the quarter system is out and passes are now earned in one semester and burned in the next. One problem has been if a cadet is on the Supie's List from last Spring and gains 30 passes, he only has the following Fall first quarter (until Prog) to burn them. That issue may be 'fixed.' What is confusing to me is the language in the second paragraph of the announcement:
"Unlike in the past where cadets received an OSS bump up and/or merit list passes at prog, they will only get these passes at the beginning of the semester (essentially a decrease in passes for those cadets). So, if you have a 1° on the Supt’s List and they come to you asking why they only received 30 passes and not 45, it’s because we only give out those passes once a semester now."
No, they didn't zero out and reset the passes.
They simply added the basic pass package. Yesterday, I had 30-something. Now, I have 60-something passes.
petko, the word coming down from wing (after meeting with the upper PP leadership) was that the rumor was false. They said passes will reset just as normal.
now what some upper PP is looking into changing is the number of passes cadets receive. For example, a firstie, in a terrible squadron with 0 merit lists gets 30 passes to use over 8 weekends. that means he can go out every weekend because he's a firstie period. also, a 4 dig on Supt's list next semester in a good squadron also has 30 passes, and could leave every weekend. Cadets have come to the point where they feel it's their right to leave instead of a privilege. that's in the works of maybe changing.
on a similar note, the 99 basic passes wing/group staffs receive will probably change too, since as stated earlier we already have more passes than we can use.
While I do think we get a few too many passes, I don't see it as a huge privilege to be allowed to leave campus every once in a while. Hell, even the most junior Airman can come and go as he pleases.
