Hilton on the Hudson

Under those grim stone turrets at West Point, buttoned-up, close-cropped cadets still "hup, two, three, four" in precision parades. Unchanged in 30 years are the slate-grey cadet uniforms, and it is still forbidden for a cadet to hold a girl's hand when he walks her on campus. But beneath the surface sameness, the Point within the past five years has undergone a drastic, evolutionary change to match the new ways of what its teachers like to call "the profession of arms." Harsh hazing and pointless indignities have given way to a more mature approach to discipline based on respect for the individual student as a potential leader of men. In the same spirit, a curriculum once narrowly limited to engineering and military skills has broadened into a liberal-arts program designed to stimulate critical intelligence.

The theory behind the new approach is that the West Point grad is not intended to be just a platoon leader. "Those we can turn out in 90 days," says retired Lieut. General James Gavin, an academy graduate. In today's Army, the diplomacy, political savvy and staff skills of a career officer may prove as pivotal as his mastery of firepower; needed are not rote answers but a broad background of educational experience. "The fellow who spent his whole career first as a platoon leader, then company commander, then battalion adjutant just doesn't exist any more," explains Lieut. Colonel William F. Leubbert, Ph.D., one of the Point's professors. "Now he's dealing with Government contractors, diplomats and politicians as much as he deals with the Army."

Cocktail Training. The Point is still no paradise, but its new concern for student comfort has led some cadets to dub the place, in jest, "Hilton on the Hudson." In the new dorms, spring mattresses have replaced stuffed cotton bedding, and bureaus have pushed out steel lockers. Morning coffee is served between classes, and some instructors even invite cadets to their quarters for evening pizza and beer. Even plebes can date and dance on the post every fall weekend. Seniors can sip cocktails in the officers' club, a privilege that the Army rationalizes as "the social training of the cadets."

It is true that cadets still must perform push-ups--but no longer over a bayonet; the yearly dose of close-order drill has been slashed by 70 per cent. Gone are the interminable handson-heels "duck walks" that once sent Douglas MacArthur to a hospital. Forbidden, too, are such hazing tortures as "shower formation," in which plebes braced at attention until perspiration soaked their bathrobes. Instead of requiring the traditional gibberish reply to the upperclassman's question, "How is the cow?"* a plebe may be ordered at dinner to deliver a ten-minute lecture on Viet Nam.

Surveying & Chinese. Academically, the Point has stimulated student initiative by allowing upperclassmen since 1960 to take some courses of their own choosing. Although all cadets still must study certain basic professional disciplines, such as surveying and mechanical drawing, they can also choose from 100 electives ranging from Mandarin Chinese to Contemporary Germany and Public Policy. Classes are ideally small, with an average of 13.

With the added electives, humanities courses now account for nearly half the Point's curriculum. The reason, says Lieut. Colonel Wilfred Burton, who teaches English, is that the Army exists to defend freedom and "preserve the dignity of man," but to do that, its officers must first "know the nature of man." Burton exposes students to such contemporary writers as W. H. Auden and Edward Albee, plays devil's advocate by roaring at his classes: "Army officers are just machines, aren't they? If they're told to go out and massacre the innocents, they go out and massacre the innocents!" He grins when a cadet politely but heatedly objects, "We just can't accept that, sir."

Corps of Integrity. The military academy expects its students to pick up most of their specialized military and technical knowledge in summer training and after they leave the Point--and 60% of them eventually do go on to civilian graduate schools at Army expense. Today, technical instruction at the Point emphasizes such versatile new tools as the computer. Every cadet must take at least 40 hours of basic instruction in the use of the Point's three GE 225 computers.

This month the Point's Board of Visitors, which is headed by Purdue President Frederick L. Hovde, released its annual report on the academy, praising its current trends. Hovde contends that only a few top U.S. universities offer better undergraduate instruction than the Point, which boasts an "outstanding young teaching faculty." He also believes that the standards of West Point--and those of its sister service academies--give the U.S. "an officer corps of personal and professional integrity not equaled anywhere else in the world."

* Answer: "Sir, she walks, she talks, she's full of chalk. The lacteal fluid extracted from the female of the bovine species is highly prolific to the 11th degree."

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