Broken leg, 24 concussions, and the list goes on! What on Earth have possessed those kids?!
And these are the future leaders of the American military!!
The highest ranking member of the group probably thought it was a good idea and everyone followed him.
And to think we thought it was bad when someone put ben gay in/on a pillowcase…
I don’t even know where to begin with this…
Gee, with comrades like this- who needs enemies?
It’s really disturbing to be that people can beat the crap out of people that they’re supposed to depend on in life or death situations.
I’m keeping this for the next time someone asks me why I don’t support compulsory military service.
ETA: I also think some of the comments were spot on. Could you imagine what the terms used to describe this would be if it was at a public U or prison rather than West Point? Thugs, riot, etc
Actually, West Point is a public U in a sense.
Even so, I meant a traditional public U…
Really a sad state of affairs on so many levels, imho.
Haven’t we learned from football and boxing how dangerous concussions are?
The spokesman for West Point made it clear that this is an annual ‘tradition’ and they have no plans to end it. Ridiculous. As Tom said, these are the country’s future military leaders? Good grief.
My brother, who loved his time at West Point and cherishes its history, says he had never heard of this tradition. He was appalled by this story.
Ok, I have to point out that this article has several inaccurate details. My son is a WP cadet. For starters, no one had a broken leg. The writer used several social media platforms (like YikYak) for info and so got lots of wrong details and statements taken out of context. For example, the ‘bloody nose’ coment was said sarcastically and not meant as an actual directive.
I can also tell you that the matter is being handled by the school and there is an ongoing investigation - even now, several weeks after it happened, the matter is still being looked into. A military police investigation began the night of the pillow fight and it is ongoing. When all the facts are in, they will take appropriate action.
Introducing chemical weapons would be a pretty serious escalation. It’s bad enough that the plebes damaged government property, however inadvertent it was.
@bookreader, was the comment about 24 concussions, which was noted in the NYT article, accurate?
Actually, if it was compulsory, we may be able to moderate the military better by keeping them in public. They will be subject to public scrutiny more so than now since the public will be part of them.
Yes, there were 24 concussions, but none were severe. All were able to return to duty within a few days.
Igloo, West Point is an open campus, with thousands of visitors every year. The cadets feel like they live in a fishbowl, so there are already plenty of ‘public eyes’ there.
Never a good idea to do social experimentation with the military. We depend upon them to keep us safe, but then we want to look in safely from the outside and decide what they should or should not do. I have a sibling that graduated from one of the other major service academies. There are a lot of things that go on that would make some people cringe. We are hiring them to break things and kill people when needed, but we are ‘shocked, shocked I tell you’ to discover that they would do something violent. Relax. Let the MPs handle anything that should not have happened.
Should I feel happy my tax dollars are funding damaged investments?
Oh please. I’m going to judge institutions that allow students to beat the crap out of each other and students that think it’s perfectly OK.
I talked about this with my FIL last night. He is retired military but did not attend an academy. He was appalled and couldn’t imagine how on earth the superiors let this go on.
^ H was appalled and he is a West Point grad. He was unaware of this “tradition”.