I can’t say I really understand the USNA’s annual plebe scramble to the top of a towering, lard-slicked granite monument, as the idea of a squirming man-pile of greasy midshipmen seems to validate all of those inter-service stereotypes about the Navy. But, having crawled belly down through a field of mud and cow patties as part of another venerable military college’s freshman recognition ceremony, I know how important these rituals are to cadets. We lost our treasured mud-hill event to institutional bureaucracy a few years back, now it looks like the military’s new movement of safety fetishists are setting their sights on Annapolis’ time-honored tradition:
In the name of safety, the U.S. Naval Academy is considering an overhaul of one of its most bizarre traditions: the annual ritual in which a thousand first-year midshipmen struggle to conquer a 21-foot granite obelisk coated with 200 pounds of lard. The Herndon Climb has occupied a hallowed place in Naval Academy tradition for decades. For members of the plebe class, the climb represents what a former midshipman called “our final exam of all finals.” The starter gun fires, and the plebes, working together, race to replace a blue-rimmed sailor’s cap, known as a “dixie cup,” with a midshipman’s cap. The scene is unforgettable to those who watch, as the sweating, grunting, red-faced midshipmen at the bottom, their arms linked, support a human pyramid surging to the top of the monument. The pyramid often collapses, but the plebes invariably make it to the top whether it takes them minutes or hours. But at the ever-changing academy, the climb may be going the way of the sailing ship and the smoothbore cannon. “Similar to how our Navy looks at all traditions in the Fleet, we are evaluating the Herndon Monument Climb to ensure the event remains a valid part of our heritage but it is conducted with professionalism, respect, and most important, safety in mind,” the academy’s public affairs office said in a statement. It is unclear what changes might be imposed. This year’s climb is scheduled for 9 a.m. May 15.
Kind of hard to instill your midshipmen with a warrior spirit when you deem simple team-building exercises too hazardous to their health. And though this seems small, it’s just another notch in the bedpost of the obsessive safety movement rampant in the Air Force, Army, and Navy (Marines are the exception, I think). The tragedy inherent in this seemingly innocuous move by the Naval Academy is that it quietly engenders a sort of risk-averse mentality in young officer candidates, a mindset that is ultimately harmful to their development from pimply-faced high school kids into the fierce warfighters that we need them to be. Best quote on this comes at the end of the Post article:
Herbert McMillan, a 1980 graduate who became an airline pilot and Annapolis politician, also opposes a change. “We’re going to send these guys to war but they can’t climb a monument because they might get hurt? Come on,” he said. “It just seems like a solution in search of a problem.”
