I am class of 98 and I remember when E-1 was integrated. My outfit felt like we dodged a bullet. The Trigon used integration as a punishment almost. They would threaten us with integration every year.

https://instagr.am/p/C3sigAqLwbq

Removed?

Comeby! said:

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Removed?

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Works for me

Opened on the app. Funny sheet.

There needs to be more male outfits. The incoming fish want them. I am happy my son graduated from one. Their experience is very different than the coed outfits.

Jock 07 said:

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I said it on the other thread on the military board but count me as someone with 16 years of service and counting as someone who believes the D&C component of the Aggie Corps is a critical piece that makes the Aggie Corps the Aggie Corps.

Also of note, there's a fair amount of non ROTC contracted cadets in the D&C population (PLC, SMP, etc) or at least there was when I was on campus.

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I was smp as I enlisted at 18. They're absolutely a huge part.

This is shockingly similar to my outfit.

Seems lots of guys have this experience.

The politics of the school and the bleed over of overt DEI nonsense is the worst part of the Corps.

Quote:

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the fish gladly got smoked for the cause, believe it or not). All spend the nighters would chose other outfits or non-reg life in general.

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I believe it. My daughter who wound up going to VMI did Spend the Night programs at both Texas A&M and Virginia Tech back in 2015. The VA Tech one was really great for both the kids and parents. The A&M one was kind of lame by comparison (I provided feedback at the time and hopefully things have improved since then). VA Tech paired her up with a super squared away female who was giving her the hard sell on VA Tech the whole time. From memory, I think VA Tech also had the spend the nighters do PT with their unit. They definitely made them wear their civilian travel uniform - khakis, collared shirt, etc. I guess kids in the USA have khakis but in Australia, nobody ever heard of khaki slacks (khaki shorts on the ANZACs in WWII maybe). At A&M, all I really got back from my daughter was that they stayed up late and one of the kids had a lame playlist.

As far as being down for the cause, back in Fall '88, we probably had 10-15 females join the band out of maybe 120 or so total fish. I think we had 62 fish march Final Review including 1 female. The pressure to get rid of the female cadets via attrition was overwhelming including Senior Details to not whip out to Wags.

Quite frankly, it was a ridiculous situation. In B-Company, we went from 30 fish including 2 females to 13 male cadets who marched Final Review in May '89. I can't think of any organization (other than maybe Navy SEALs) where leadership would be proud of a 57% attrition rate. Everybody's grades suffered and only 9 of us wound up making it through all 8 semesters in the Band. We only had one guy who made the honor society for academics (he was D&C). But, we did achieve the goal of no females in our class. Yay </facetious> Not exactly something I list as an accomplishment on my LinkedIn profile.

I remember marching out of the tunnel after the first few home football games and there were about 15-20 "Old Ags" who would gather around the tunnel and yell at the band as we marched past - "Get the B/Witches Out of the Band".

I told my daughter that story and she laughed out loud. I said, yeah, in 1988, there were a lot of guys who still thought there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, "we" could get "them" all to quit. Of course by this point, there were already 4 female upperclassmen including 1 Zip so I felt like that ship had already sailed. By the time the Class of '93 showed up, there was really no turning back.

Now on the other side of the coin, I served as an Armor Officer and I've worked in IT for 25+ years including a 7 year period where I was responsible for training the newly hired Sales Engineers at my firm.

They started letting females into Armor and Infantry back in 2016. So that last bastion of all male units has been gone for 8 years now. Personally, I think it was a terrible idea to allow women in Armor but, I don't make the rules.

I ran the metrics for the 800+ IT Sales Engineer new hires that I trained and it was 5% female. Despite all the #WomenInSTEM promotion that's been going on, the dirty business end of Information Technology remains at 5% female. Companies are so desperate to improve the metrics that they'll consider females in non-technical roles as being in IT, but they aren't really. My point here is that in the real world, you're still going to have to deal with females in your "unit". Not a lot necessarily, but some. Even if your work is something as macho as working on an Offshore rig. There aren't many jobs where you find the number of females at what Greta Thunberg calls "Real Zero".

The male shenanigans I saw back in the 1980s/1990s just don't really have a place in the 2020s. And frankly, I think that if we train our young men that those sorts of things are acceptable, we're really doing them a disservice when they get out in the workforce and have to deal with females as supervisors, peers, direct reports.

Right now, I've got a direct report who is marrying her girlfriend later this year. That goes against everything I believe in (remember, I'm really a misogynistic Saudi at heart) but, I've got to deal with it. My "Get the B/Witches Out of the Band" training certainly did not prepare me to deal with matters like this. And hi-jinks like my Army training including my Battalion Commander (an Aggie) ball walking people didn't help me either (you can Urban Dictionary that one if needed).

One skill I did get from the Corps that helped me tremendously when conducting business in Asia was learning how to be an expert binge drinker. But, I don't think too many people would recommend adding that to the curriculum.

TL;DR - there should never be a lone female in a Corps of Cadets unit just for the sake of saying they're integrated. We did that in the late 80s/early 90s in the Aggie Band and it was a mess. There needs to be some % of females in a unit for them to be successful. Maybe it's 5%, Maybe it's 15%. But, if the numbers of females are available, there shouldn't be any problem integrating all the Corps of Cadets Units. That's just real life in the 2020s.

aggiez03 said:

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Tom Kazansky 2012 said:

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281TexAg said:

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aggie93 said:

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The other big shift for good or bad was prior to the integration you had very little dating among Corps members. It wasn't banned and it certainly happened but it was nothing like now. Now dating among Corps buddies is as normal as can be. Prior to that most male Corps members dated outside the Corps and female Corps members tended to date less and instead spent more time with other females. While dating among the Corps is fine it also can create other problems, especially among college students, as obviously that's not designed to be a feature of Corps training.

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Yes. This is why I support all-male outfits. I was in an integrated outfit in the late 2000's/early 2010's. Our class was split, in large part because of a sexual relationship between buddies and the conflict and jealousy that resulted from it. Our class was tight my freshman year, and then after that it was ruined. I never got the "marry and bury" experience. I remember watching our class gather on the quad after our last final review and seeing half of the class in one group and the other half in the other group, and I just sat on a bench and watched it from a distance. It was a microcosm of the last three years, and I was just sick of it at that point. Sick of being asked to take one side or the other and be caught in the middle of disputes that I never really cared about. I still regret having any involvement in that conflict at all. We don't and can't do anything as a class since graduation because of that division. We couldn't even do anything as a class before we graduated.

We were a very successful class on paper. We won GM, had good grades, etc. But internally it was a disaster. I would have gladly traded the GM cord (as if that really even matters years later) for class unity.

If I ever have a son who wants to be in the Corps, I will have a long talk with him before he decides to join an integrated outfit.

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My dad and uncle sat me down and had this convo with me before I joined. Integrated outfits weren't in the running from day 0

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Bingo!

1st Order of business if you really want the Corps to grow is ask the current and incoming cadets some very straight-forward and uncomfortable questions. The desire for an integrated outfit has to be on3 of the questions asked. As a cadets father, former cadet myself, and multi-generational CoC family, I can tell you this is a major issue.

There are multiple persons on this thread that have cited it as a primary issue with their son daughter, nephew, niece, or friend. And, I know first hand that some are choosing to NOT join the CoC because their only choice is an integrated ooutfit.The Trigon forces limits of incoming fish on the non integrated outfits!

It is disingenuous to say you want to grow the CoC to 3,000 and then continue to force limited choices in outfit gender mixes and enforce limited quotas of incoming freshman on the non-integrated outfits. You must SELL what your customers are BUYING. Not force them to BUY What you THINK is best for them. These are college young people we are talking about that have significant choices in student organizational involvement. Most parents don't like the integrated outfit dynamics (living conditions, forced interactions, differing accomodations, bathroom situations, etc.), but will anyone in the University or Trigon listen? Or is that too political to be allowed?

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Lots of gold in here.

Except they really don't beg anyone for money. The CCA isn't the only means or primary means of raising money. They have a few dozen inside former cadets with access to real wealth and they lean on those. The million you are talking about is a rounding error. They'd rather schmooze 1 or 2 people with the capacity to stroke 6 figure checks than 40 people who collectively add up to $1MM. The 80/20 rule.

aTmAg said:

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So here is my F the Trigon story:

My outfit was famous for ridiculous fitness. My fish class, for example, didn't earn our brass until Good Friday. We were the last outfit in the corps to do so and it was a full day smoke-a-thon (classes were cancelled that day, the entire university basically gone). Other outfits would often tell us that they felt sorry for us, but we took it with a sense of pride. We were afraid that if we were integrated with women, then we would have to change our entire identity. (And we were proven right later.)

My outfit successfully held off integration my entire time there, but the Trigon was hell bent on integrating us, and it got ugly.

We had had the most cadets of any outfit on staff (and RVs) at the time and basically owned the recruiting chain. When female prospects popped up, our guys on staff would guide them to other outfits. And since they were all D&C (including our CO and FS), there wasn't much the Trigon could hold over their heads. The Trigon then pushed us to have female spend the nighters. So we would recruited sisters of cadets who had zero interest in joining the corps just to check that box. If, for whatever reason, we got stuck with a real female spend the nighter, we would not censor what they saw. They didn't bag in, but woke up with the fish and saw everything they went through, including smokings (and the fish gladly got smoked for the cause, believe it or not). All spend the nighters would chose other outfits or non-reg life in general.

Stuff really hit the fan when we chose leaders for those following my senior year. There was a clear #1 choice for CO and FS. Their grades were superior, they were true leaders, and all of that. EVERYBODY knew who they would be. Then enter a half assed cadet. We will call him: Chode. Chode was a contract cadet. But he was in the bottom 1/4th of his class. For example, I as a D&C zip could out PT him even though he was a contract pisshead (and I wasn't special or anything). Chode sneaks off to the Trigon and tells them that if they make him first sergeant, he would integrate us. Suddenly, the Trigon approaches us and starts pushing this guy as a "real leader" and "squared away". That was out of the blue from our perspective. Chode was a chode. He wasn't being considered for any role at all. And his grades, his PT, his performance in every way showed that he wasn't near qualified.

The Trigon a-holes kept pressing us on it anyway. When we refused a lot of our guys lost their staff positions. But they were D&C and didn't care. The Trigon finally relented when it was clear that dissatisfied contract heads (who were more qualified but were getting passed over due to gender politics) were going to go D&C over it and many D&C cadets threatened to defect to other outfits. The Trigon a-holes did give Chode FS of a new integrated outfit that they had just created. We were happy that he was gone. But it's hilarious how overt the political BS was.

The Trigon didn't forget. A year later they awarded our outfit "most improved" as a final "F you" to my senior class. Which is hilarious as we were #1 in grades, the most cadets on staff and RVs, a ton of other accolades. We took it as a badge of honor. F the Trigon. None of us has ever given a single cent to the corps (and I bet combined, all 4 classes would have given a million or so by now otherwise).

Edit: I remembered something wrong. One of our guys on corps staff was not D&C. But we were an Army outfit and he ended up going into the Air Force and got his pilot slot.

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Can you PM me who the chode was? I'm trying to remember.

The CCA's total contributions last year were only around $2.7MM, I"m sure they are not kicking those hypothetical 40 donors out of bed.

Guessing most of their donations are around $100-200 a year.

ETA: NM, I see that you are discussing donations outside of the CCA.

Which outfit was this and what year range? I think I've got it based on army, non-integrated, and recruiting comment, but just curious.

Comeby! said:

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Except they really don't beg anyone for money. The CCA isn't the only means or primary means of raising money. They have a few dozen inside former cadets with access to real wealth and they lean on those. The million you are talking about is a rounding error. They'd rather schmooze 1 or 2 people with the capacity to stroke 6 figure checks than 40 people who collectively add up to $1MM. The 80/20 rule.

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I get plenty of calls, mail, and emails from A&M wanting my cash. Some from CCA but they come in all directions. That's "begging". Sure they have a few big donors and I know some of them, many were folks my Dad knew well. A lot of those guys are old and many have passed. The hardcore types from the old days.

In the meantime my checks have stopped and it will take a lot to get them flowing again.

281TexAg said:

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aggie93 said:

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The other big shift for good or bad was prior to the integration you had very little dating among Corps members. It wasn't banned and it certainly happened but it was nothing like now. Now dating among Corps buddies is as normal as can be. Prior to that most male Corps members dated outside the Corps and female Corps members tended to date less and instead spent more time with other females. While dating among the Corps is fine it also can create other problems, especially among college students, as obviously that's not designed to be a feature of Corps training.

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Yes. This is why I support all-male outfits. I was in an integrated outfit in the late 2000's/early 2010's. Our class was split, in large part because of a sexual relationship between buddies and the conflict and jealousy that resulted from it. Our class was tight my freshman year, and then after that it was ruined. I never got the "marry and bury" experience. I remember watching our class gather on the quad after our last final review and seeing half of the class in one group and the other half in the other group, and I just sat on a bench and watched it from a distance. It was a microcosm of the last three years, and I was just sick of it at that point. Sick of being asked to take one side or the other and be caught in the middle of disputes that I never really cared about. I still regret having any involvement in that conflict at all. We don't and can't do anything as a class since graduation because of that division. We couldn't even do anything as a class before we graduated.

We were a very successful class on paper. We won GM, had good grades, etc. But internally it was a disaster. I would have gladly traded the GM cord (as if that really even matters years later) for class unity.

If I ever have a son who wants to be in the Corps, I will have a long talk with him before he decides to join an integrated outfit.

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Gator 2?

JB99 said:

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aTmAg said:

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So here is my F the Trigon story:

My outfit was famous for ridiculous fitness. My fish class, for example, didn't earn our brass until Good Friday. We were the last outfit in the corps to do so and it was a full day smoke-a-thon (classes were cancelled that day, the entire university basically gone). Other outfits would often tell us that they felt sorry for us, but we took it with a sense of pride. We were afraid that if we were integrated with women, then we would have to change our entire identity. (And we were proven right later.)

My outfit successfully held off integration my entire time there, but the Trigon was hell bent on integrating us, and it got ugly.

We had had the most cadets of any outfit on staff (and RVs) at the time and basically owned the recruiting chain. When female prospects popped up, our guys on staff would guide them to other outfits. And since they were all D&C (including our CO and FS), there wasn't much the Trigon could hold over their heads. The Trigon then pushed us to have female spend the nighters. So we would recruited sisters of cadets who had zero interest in joining the corps just to check that box. If, for whatever reason, we got stuck with a real female spend the nighter, we would not censor what they saw. They didn't bag in, but woke up with the fish and saw everything they went through, including smokings (and the fish gladly got smoked for the cause, believe it or not). All spend the nighters would chose other outfits or non-reg life in general.

Stuff really hit the fan when we chose leaders for those following my senior year. There was a clear #1 choice for CO and FS. Their grades were superior, they were true leaders, and all of that. EVERYBODY knew who they would be. Then enter a half assed cadet. We will call him: Chode. Chode was a contract cadet. But he was in the bottom 1/4th of his class. For example, I as a D&C zip could out PT him even though he was a contract pisshead (and I wasn't special or anything). Chode sneaks off to the Trigon and tells them that if they make him first sergeant, he would integrate us. Suddenly, the Trigon approaches us and starts pushing this guy as a "real leader" and "squared away". That was out of the blue from our perspective. Chode was a chode. He wasn't being considered for any role at all. And his grades, his PT, his performance in every way showed that he wasn't near qualified.

The Trigon a-holes kept pressing us on it anyway. When we refused a lot of our guys lost their staff positions. But they were D&C and didn't care. The Trigon finally relented when it was clear that dissatisfied contract heads (who were more qualified but were getting passed over due to gender politics) were going to go D&C over it and many D&C cadets threatened to defect to other outfits. The Trigon a-holes did give Chode FS of a new integrated outfit that they had just created. We were happy that he was gone. But it's hilarious how overt the political BS was.

The Trigon didn't forget. A year later they awarded our outfit "most improved" as a final "F you" to my senior class. Which is hilarious as we were #1 in grades, the most cadets on staff and RVs, a ton of other accolades. We took it as a badge of honor. F the Trigon. None of us has ever given a single cent to the corps (and I bet combined, all 4 classes would have given a million or so by now otherwise).

Edit: I remembered something wrong. One of our guys on corps staff was not D&C. But we were an Army outfit and he ended up going into the Air Force and got his pilot slot.

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Can you PM me who the chode was? I'm trying to remember.

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I don't have stars, and therefore no PM. I unfortunately do not remember his name (though I can see his face). He was the class of '99.

Stive said:

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Which outfit was this and what year range? I think I've got it based on army, non-integrated, and recruiting comment, but just curious.

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K-1 93-97 range.