Corps Values
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So why did Gates decide to take the route that he did? Even his strongest critics don't believe that he could be pressured into giving up on diversity; the professor who sent Gates the despairing letter alluding to "Crackerland" wrote in an accompanying e-mail, "I do recognize that you were (and are) fighting the 'forces of evil' and stupidity that have kept TAMU backward for so long." When I put the question to Gates, his answer was, "Affirmative action didn't work at Texas A&M before Hopwood. We're going to do something very Aggie—define our own path." His official statement, which ran for eight pages, was very Aggie. It began with an homage to the land-grant mission: "In our early days, one father wrote that his Aggie son attended a school where the poor man's son and the rich man's son stand precisely on the same footing. Each student is judged by what he is and does. That is the standard by which this university has grown in size and reputation. It is the standard that underpins all our traditions and culture. It is the standard by which we will move forward." Equality, tradition, culture: very Aggie indeed. Gates must have realized that affirmative action would never have been accepted by the larger Aggie community—especially any former student whose child was rejected for admission—and that the discontent could have imperiled his entire agenda of change. This is political realism too.
That's not quite the end of the story. At the same time that Gates announced that he was not implementing racial preferences, he revealed that he was raising the standards for automatic admission: at least a 1300 score on the SAT I test, including at least a 600 score in both the verbal and the math sections, and standing in the top quarter of one's class. The projection is that the new requirements, which will take effect with the entering class of 2005, will cut the number of automatic admissions in half, from around 1,700 to around 850. That will mean 850 more slots for discretionary admissions, for which the criteria will include "unusual experiences" and an essay about additional information an applicant wishes to be considered in the application for admission—"for example, exceptional hardships." What do you want to bet that the results will turn out to be a lot like affirmative action? As Gates would be the first to tell you, it pays to look at the difference between what people say and what they do.
With the departure of the Class of 2004 on May 15, the Corps will see the end of an era in training doctrine and leadership philosophy, as well as four years of experiences that shaped the ideology of an entire class. With this in mind, many have said that Corps morale is at an all-time low due to changes that have taken place during the last year and a half. For the most part, a feeling of alienation has been expressed by members of the junior and senior classes, who I believe simply become uncomfortable when asked to do things that they do not find familiar. A clash of culture that can be felt over the entire University between the old and the new is, for the most part, a matter of growing pains to better align A&M with American society today. For the Corps, time will heal our wounds that have caused the consternation of a generation who merely grew up under the teachings of the old regime.
—OPINION ARTICLE IN THE BATTALION, MARCH 2004
WILL MCADAMS, THE AUTHOR OF THIS letter and the cadet commander of the Corps, remembers all too well what it was like to be a freshman in the most important organization at Texas A&M. "If you messed up, you had to do physical training," he said. "We called it 'Corps games.' It lasted from eight to four. The academic day was totally violated. I had friends who didn't go to class for two weeks at a time. You were willing to go through it because you wanted to be a part of something larger than yourself. You sacrificed grades for peer admiration. It was a dismal semester. You could see the attrition when grades came out. I saw my unit start as a class of thirty; now we're a class of ten. It's the result of bad grades and the inability to stick it out. My best friend from my hometown was gone in two weeks. Others were run off by peer ostracism. If you survived, you felt like a superman."
In McAdams' sophomore year, it was his class that meted out the physical punishment. The upperclassmen led the sophomores into a dorm room and showed them the opening scene of the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, a tirade of abuse of new recruits by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, their drill instructor. ("From now on, you'll speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be 'sir!'") "That's how we were shown to be leaders," McAdams says. "I could quote to you the entire opening scene."
The character that was the model for the Corps' leaders was shot and killed later in the film by one of his recruits. The significance of this apparently escaped the students in the Corps for years, but not McAdams or the retired Army officer who serves as commandant of the cadets, Lieutenant General John Van Alstyne. Both understood that if the Corps did not change its blind adherence to the old ways, if it continued to destroy its own members' chances for academic success, it would not survive at Texas A&M. Inconceivable, you say? The numbers say otherwise: The full strength of the Corps, if every bed in the Corps dormitories were occupied, is 2,600. Seven years ago, the membership was around 2,200. The figure cited today by university officials is around 2,000. The real number, Van Alstyne told me, is 1,706. The Corps is a dying institution. Loud and prominent, but dying nonetheless.
"It's not in the constitution or the laws of the state of Texas that there has to be a Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M," Van Alstyne told me. "The things that don't contribute will fall away in the twenty-first century. If I didn't believe the Corps could change, I wouldn't be here."
Van Alstyne's plan to reinvigorate the Corps is, first, to recruit ("You can purchase a list—I love capitalism, you can buy anything you want in America—that the service academies have been buying for ten years. It has the name of every youngster in the state of Texas who is on a college preparatory track and who has evidenced some interest in the military in a survey. It has seven thousand names"), and second, to "support our members in achieving their aspirations." That means emphasizing academics and leadership—not the leadership style of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, but that of the modern Army, to set high standards and to help people meet them. "Positive leadership," Van Alstyne calls it. "The role of a leader is to establish a vision, establish organizational values, and establish and sustain an environment of achievement," he said. "How do we come to that?" He reached for something on a shelf. "This generation is visual," he said, producing a video cassette of Twelve O'Clock High, a World War II film starring Gregory Peck as a general who struggles to change his leadership style as his fliers become battle-tested. "You turn on the video"—he snapped his fingers—"and you've got 'em."
As it turns out, you've got some of them. The resistance in the Corps to positive leadership—to ending the practice of verbal harassment of first-year cadets and putting academics ahead of Corps games—has been overwhelming. "We had buy-in at the higher levels," McAdams told me, "but not at the lower levels. There are twenty-eight unit commanders and just a small Corps staff. It was a daunting task.
"In the old days," he said, "you got something intangible from being in the Corps. We want to offer something tangible—a chance at academic success." McAdams was hoping for a dramatic improvement in the Corps' GPA last semester, but the actual result was a disappointing increase of only 5 percent of a grade point. "It's going to be a long process," he said. "The entire Corps has to cycle through the university. Our numbers keep going down. We have to implement this or be eliminated."
I missed something on the campus tour I took a few years back and have been living with this realization since my freshman year at Texas A&M. I missed that part on the tour where Aggies commit hate crimes against fellow Aggies and it is acceptable for everyone to turn their head. My friend was beaten up this weekend by a fellow Aggie because he is gay. He is part of the "Aggie family." Since when has hate become part of the Aggie family? Sure, we can say, "not all Aggies are like that." But we are only as strong as our weakest link.
—LETTER TO THE BATTALION, JANUARY 2004
A FORMER FACULTY MEMBER ONCE described Texas A&M to me as "part university, part military school, part employment office for retired generals, and part cult." The latter aspect grew out of the obsession with traditions and the disdain for those who didn't participate—or, worse, questioned or flouted them. Anyone who fell into this category was known as a "two-percenter." In the days when just about every student was male, from a small town, and in the Corps, the tiny fraction of dissidents was close to accurate. Today, says student body president Matt Josefy, "'Two-percenter' is undergoing a redefinition. It used to be somebody who didn't stay at a football game. Now we realize that every tradition isn't going to be bought into by everyone. Some students will never buy into Aggie football. Which traditions are important is a personal decision."
Of all the changes coming out of A&M, this one may, in the long run, be the most important. It is sacrilege to say so, but for too long tradition has been the tail that wagged the educational dog. A&M's two most revered traditions, Bonfire and the Corps, gave responsibility to student leaders but also gave them license. That's why Bonfire is unlikely to return to the campus in its old form, and that's why the Corps can't attract and keep recruits. Tradition has become a trump card that overpowers everything, even the diversity issue. "I have to say I am a bit confused about the issue of diversifying A&M and how that would cause a loss in traditions," a student wrote in a letter to the Battalion. "Can a black person not whoop? Can a homosexual not stand as the Twelfth Man?"
