JB99 said:

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The way I see it, they are just pushing the calendar back a few months. In today's Corp the fish go through the most intense part of their training in the fall and earn their brass at the end of the fall semester. With this new approach, the spring becomes the intense part of the experience where you build your culture. The fall is basically a giant FOW to let kids get acclimated to the corps in hopes they don't quit. Then in the spring when it gets more intense it won't be quite the shock to their system. It might work, it might not. They've changed alot of stuff over the years and some of it has been good. I can see this working out.

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bobbranco said:

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Will this help with attrition and increase study time?

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Jock 07 said:

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Wildmen06 said:

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is there another source for this other than an Instagram screenshot

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My question as well.

But with that being said outfit culture is imperative to the corps experience. One of the main reasons I look back on my college Corps experience with fondness while my fellow USAFA grads often don't. They get mixed up after freshman year and lose all those bonds made by going through the suck together.

I'd be very disappointed if I didn't have the chance to get my sons into E-1 in the future.

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aggiez03 said:

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txags92 said:

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Ok, I guess as a non-reg, I don't see the problem here. From what I am reading, this "basic training" period will be 8 weeks. After that, they will train with their unit, and beginning in the spring they will live with their unit in a dedicated hallway. So are y'all saying that unit training is so specific and different between units that missing September and most of October in the fall of their first year will irreparably harm the ability of an outfit to instill their own culture? So everything the outfit learns that makes them unique happens in the first 8 weeks of school? And if that is lost, the unit culture will be lost forever with no chance of recovery in the remaining weeks of the first fall or any of the seven semesters after that?

Sorry, I am just not buying it. If the idea is to train future military leaders, presumably the corps should have one training program that seeks to make the most out of every member. If there are "good units" and "mediocre" units, then the goal should be to bring more of the leadership from the good units into the mediocre ones until you can make them all good. What everybody seems to be arguing for is to preserve the system that results in some of the outfits being good at the expense of the rest of the outfits. When members of the corps go into one of the branches of the military, they don't get to pick their outfit and only go if they get the good one they want to be in. They need to be able to get along with and work well with the people they serve with regardless of how they got thrown together.

I am sure I am going to get hammered by a bunch of people telling me that I just can't understand how important the bond of the outfit is, but I want each of you to tell me while you do it whether you think the goal of the corps should be to produce the best college ROTC level outfit or the best future leader. The corps may be made up of outfits filled with individuals, but every one of those individuals is part of the same corps. The goal in my mind should be to give every one of them the best shot to be a leader, not to segregate some from the beginning into units that may not prepare them to be the best because they found their way into the wrong silo before they ever set foot on campus.

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Not correct.

The fish will not live with their outfit till 2nd semester, so it is August - January 15th, no upperclassmen will have any interaction with their fish.

If they want to have that experience then setup up a few outfits that are exclusively military and you get to move around every year. If people want to sign up for that, then they can.

Why fix outfits that are not 'broken'?

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ABATTBQ87 said:

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Old Army Metal said:

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Outlaw 8, class of 2003.

This may be a bad thing, but you probably need to keep in perspective that the Corps' raison d'etre is training future military officers, not being a repository for all the things you think are good bull.

Will this more effectively train and prepare future 2lts and ensigns? Maybe. Maybe not. Being a fish is still going to suck, though.

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All things good bull didn't hurt training and preparing those Aggies of the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, nor did it hurt my Aggie Band classmate who is currently a 4 star Marine Corps General.

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CDUB98 said:

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Quote:

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Essentially, instead of being randomly placed by random, the fish will actually have the ability to chose an outfit and earn their logo. This means that recruiting the unit will be significantly less random, and outfit culture and reputation amongst the corps will have a bigger impact.

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Sounds like frat recruiting.

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tree91 said:

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This is all my fault. My apologies to everyone on this board. Clearly, I didn't crap out this commandant enough when we were in the Corps.


I agree that this will kill the bond that forms when fish are going thru the tough times together. After graduating 33 years ago, what I am I doing this weekend? Getting together with my buddies to go skydiving and then go to the Aggie baseball game. Without that bond, will these new cadets still have a lifetime of experiences with their buddies and families? Hell, all of our wives are tight knit, too.

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tree91 said:

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This is all my fault. My apologies to everyone on this board. Clearly, I didn't crap out this commandant enough when we were in the Corps.


I agree that this will kill the bond that forms when fish are going thru the tough times together. After graduating 33 years ago, what I am I doing this weekend? Getting together with my buddies to go skydiving and then go to the Aggie baseball game. Without that bond, will these new cadets still have a lifetime of experiences with their buddies and families? Hell, all of our wives are tight knit, too.

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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txags92 said:

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aggiez03 said:

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txags92 said:

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Ok, I guess as a non-reg, I don't see the problem here. From what I am reading, this "basic training" period will be 8 weeks. After that, they will train with their unit, and beginning in the spring they will live with their unit in a dedicated hallway. So are y'all saying that unit training is so specific and different between units that missing September and most of October in the fall of their first year will irreparably harm the ability of an outfit to instill their own culture? So everything the outfit learns that makes them unique happens in the first 8 weeks of school? And if that is lost, the unit culture will be lost forever with no chance of recovery in the remaining weeks of the first fall or any of the seven semesters after that?

Sorry, I am just not buying it. If the idea is to train future military leaders, presumably the corps should have one training program that seeks to make the most out of every member. If there are "good units" and "mediocre" units, then the goal should be to bring more of the leadership from the good units into the mediocre ones until you can make them all good. What everybody seems to be arguing for is to preserve the system that results in some of the outfits being good at the expense of the rest of the outfits. When members of the corps go into one of the branches of the military, they don't get to pick their outfit and only go if they get the good one they want to be in. They need to be able to get along with and work well with the people they serve with regardless of how they got thrown together.

I am sure I am going to get hammered by a bunch of people telling me that I just can't understand how important the bond of the outfit is, but I want each of you to tell me while you do it whether you think the goal of the corps should be to produce the best college ROTC level outfit or the best future leader. The corps may be made up of outfits filled with individuals, but every one of those individuals is part of the same corps. The goal in my mind should be to give every one of them the best shot to be a leader, not to segregate some from the beginning into units that may not prepare them to be the best because they found their way into the wrong silo before they ever set foot on campus.

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Not correct.

The fish will not live with their outfit till 2nd semester, so it is August - January 15th, no upperclassmen will have any interaction with their fish.

If they want to have that experience then setup up a few outfits that are exclusively military and you get to move around every year. If people want to sign up for that, then they can.

Why fix outfits that are not 'broken'?

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That isn't what is said in the OP. In the OP, it says they will train in the major units for the first 8 weeks, but after that they will train with their selected unit for the rest of the fall semester. You are correct that they would not live together in one hallway until the spring semester, but unless I am misunderstanding it, they would be training with the outfit upper classmen beginning in the middle of the 1st semester.

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As a nonreg, you have no idea what any of this means, so stop trying to correct people.

Training time in "the designated outfit area" is not interacting with the upperclassmen. Not everyone goes to every training time because of class. Usually it's PT time and there's not much "interaction." Hallway time, chow, boot pulls, etc are interaction.

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Gator92 said:

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How is fish intramurals gonna work?

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Gator92 said:

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How is fish intramurals gonna work?

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tree91 said:

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This is all my fault. My apologies to everyone on this board. Clearly, I didn't crap out this commandant enough when we were in the Corps.


I agree that this will kill the bond that forms when fish are going thru the tough times together. After graduating 33 years ago, what I am I doing this weekend? Getting together with my buddies to go skydiving and then go to the Aggie baseball game. Without that bond, will these new cadets still have a lifetime of experiences with their buddies and families? Hell, all of our wives are tight knit, too.

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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aggiez03 said:

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BluHorseShu said:

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aggiez03 said:

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Any CTs on here that are not aware...

New commandant has been rumored to do this, but this came down today...


He is trying to turn A&M into a service academy.

This will effectively kill the Corps.

Corps of Cadets Association and a bunch of high level CTs are working to quell this, but need CTs to call, write, and email and voice their displeasure.


How are politics involved?

They are trying to FORCE EQUITY and get rid of outfit culture.

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I can only imagine the blowback he's going to get from former Corps members. This is not going to go over well. The one thing you don't do at TAMU is mess with tradition in the Corps.

Question about the equity part, was that discussed somewhere else in the memo? I might be thinking of it as trying to push DEI type equity and not another form. I ask because I would think any mention of equity and DEI is a big no no right now.

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No, the DEI thing is not something that is being said outloud, but what they do not want it outfit culture.

There is lots of disparity between outfits and when you have outstanding outfits that lots of kids want to get into, they cannot put all the kids in that outfit. They get stuck in other outfits, some of which have poor culture.

If they knock out the outfit culture, they can put a kid anywhere and then they will have a unified experience across the Corps.

Sounds great, but then imagine your child having to do 7th grade math in 7th grade when they are capable of pre-Algebra.

It is forced equity.

There was a kid in my son's Air Science class that was arguing with a Bull last semester about how Outfit Culture is EVERYTHING, and the Bull's position was that Outfit Culture was a negative and needed to be eliminated.

This is NOT what Texas A&M Corps experience was EVER about....

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The problem I see with the whole thing is that it dilutes the experience and the reason for being in the Corps in the first place. Having different outfit cultures is the reason why you have most of the D&C guys who make up the majority of the Corps. There are plenty who joined for the outfit, not some bland, sanitized experience with 1000 randos. You lose those guys over time and you ultimately lose the civilian guys who go into business and become your big money donors in 40 years.

Also, this is basically 8 weeks of FOW with no buddies. I think that's a great way to get people to punch.

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Come Out Roll said:

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I'm class of '85…and was kicked out of the corps when I was a junior (don't ask to explain - several reasons, both my roommate and I)….had boots made and everything…
HOWEVER, I wouldn't trade my days in the corps for anything. Had a blast, and my fav year was fish year (fall '81-spring '82).

I'm trying to understand "bad outfit culture"….what the Hell is that??? Look, there were crazy f'rs all over, regardless of outfit…
Got more stories than I probably should about being in college and in the Corps….

All on all, This sounds like a damn bad idea….

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$240 Worth of Pudding said:

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New Commandant was a zip when I was a fish. We were in the same outfit but he was Brigade staff.
Meaning we hardly knew him. We did shave his head during hell week and he stabbed one of my buddies in the thigh with his saber trying to fend us off, so there's that.

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MouthBQ98 said:

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I can see it helping with Fish retention. I can also see it negatively affecting overall leadership training opportunities for ALL the cadets, unless they are very careful with how and what the units do regarding leadership development for the entire fall semester every year.

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oldord said:

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Tex100 said:

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DevilD77 said:

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I can understand why they are thinking this would be a good thing. Like the armed forces, all recruits go through basic training before being assigned to their first unit. However, the bonds of brotherhood between a unit's fish is created in those first few months of the fall semester where it was them against their pissheads! That's when kids of every kind put aside their differences and merge into a united force to survive that first year. Even now, any of my fish buds would drop everything to go and help another one out if needed. I could see having a regimented training program that the units have to follow, but it's the interaction between the fish and their unit upperclassmen that can make or break a fish class.

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. That was what it was all about. Different backgrounds (city/country: black/white/:brown; rich/poor and you have little but each other. Will kill outfits and has been pointed out make upper class men almost irrelevant

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Had two kids at my house this weekend. High school friends of my daughter (At A&M, damn sure not a CT).
One of these young men was in an outfit in the corps and the other was at West Point.

Of course a pissing match came about.

The west pointer hands down beat us in academics and had a great counter for each academic argument.
Where he lamented were two areas:
1. No decent girls
2. Everyone was out for themselves. Upperclassmen would bring honor violations against Plebes just for the hell of it. Complains of sexual harassment are commonplace and if you are a male, you can count on a conviction which leads to expulsion and potentially discharge.
There was little sense of comradery except with individuals you share common interest with. There is no mixing of cadets from different backgrounds ad relationship building with those folks.


Those comments put in BOLD contrast the difference between A&M and the service academies. AS the comment above points out, the human development aspects of the A&M experience far outweighs the academy benefits as it related to post graduation life.

I have had two west pointers work for me and I have had to terminate both for various reasons but sad to say they both had poor character when it came to team development and humility.

Makes a bit of sense when hearing about interactions at the academies. I know that I am painiting with a very broad brush but there are definite real world implications to what the commandant is trying to initiate.

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El Guero said:

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Class of 98 here. I hate to hear these plans. I have a senior in high school that planned on joining the Corps. This will kill that. The best part of my Corps experience was the fish year and the outfit culture. The comments in this thread that are blue starred clearly show that most people agree that this is a terrible idea.

I wonder when they plan on telling next year's fish about these plans. I wonder how many would not join. They need to communicate what is going to happen ASAP. Those that will not join the this proposed version of the Corps need to have time to make other housing arrangements.

By the way, I don't think contract cadets are any where near 50%. I bet it is closer to 70% non contract to 30% contract. Most kids are not going into the Corps with plans on joining any branch of the military.

And....sometimes it is not a bad thing when a cadet quits. It does not have to be for everyone.

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oldord said:

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Tex100 said:

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DevilD77 said:

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I can understand why they are thinking this would be a good thing. Like the armed forces, all recruits go through basic training before being assigned to their first unit. However, the bonds of brotherhood between a unit's fish is created in those first few months of the fall semester where it was them against their pissheads! That's when kids of every kind put aside their differences and merge into a united force to survive that first year. Even now, any of my fish buds would drop everything to go and help another one out if needed. I could see having a regimented training program that the units have to follow, but it's the interaction between the fish and their unit upperclassmen that can make or break a fish class.

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. That was what it was all about. Different backgrounds (city/country: black/white/:brown; rich/poor and you have little but each other. Will kill outfits and has been pointed out make upper class men almost irrelevant

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Had two kids at my house this weekend. High school friends of my daughter (At A&M, damn sure not a CT).
One of these young men was in an outfit in the corps and the other was at West Point.

Of course a pissing match came about.

The west pointer hands down beat us in academics and had a great counter for each academic argument.
Where he lamented were two areas:
1. No decent girls
2. Everyone was out for themselves. Upperclassmen would bring honor violations against Plebes just for the hell of it. Complains of sexual harassment are commonplace and if you are a male, you can count on a conviction which leads to expulsion and potentially discharge.
There was little sense of comradery except with individuals you share common interest with. There is no mixing of cadets from different backgrounds ad relationship building with those folks.


Those comments put in BOLD contrast the difference between A&M and the service academies. AS the comment above points out, the human development aspects of the A&M experience far outweighs the academy benefits as it related to post graduation life.

I have had two west pointers work for me and I have had to terminate both for various reasons but sad to say they both had poor character when it came to team development and humility.

Makes a bit of sense when hearing about interactions at the academies. I know that I am painiting with a very broad brush but there are definite real world implications to what the commandant is trying to initiate.

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