Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 7, 1995 TAG: 9505090039
SECTION: DISCOVER NRV PAGE: DNRV-74 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
That meant it was catch-as-catch-can when it came to hiring folks to work in VPI's mess hall. The results were not good.
"We began to find Band-Aids and cigarette butts in food," said Henry Dekker, a cadet who now is a member of the board of visitors.
And it went on for a year or more - until hungry seniors decided to take matters into their own hands.
"The corps assembled at midnight in civilian clothes and marched to the drill field. The brigade - 3,000 cadets - all marched up and surrounded the president's house and let out a big roar, and marched back," Dekker said.
"The next day, the governor was here."
Needless to say, the mess hall soon served meals sans cigarette butts. Tokyo Rose even interpreted the incident in her own particular way, reporting that a mutiny had occurred at a military academy in Virginia, located in the United States.
It is an incident now passed into cadet lore, like the VMI-VPI game in the '50s at which the live kangaroo (VMI's mascot) kicked to death the live turkey (VPI's mascot) when loosed upon the football field. Apparently no one knew the turkey, or a species quite like it, was a native enemy to the kangaroo.
The Tech corps is scheduled to move out of its longtime home in the quad sometime in the coming years, victim of efficiency and economy. The upper quad, with a $5.9 million renovation to Major Williams Hall almost finished, will become office space and some classrooms. The now-400-member corps will move down to Eggleston Hall, one of the imposing Hokie stone dormitories that housed cadets back when VPI was an all-male military school.
It'll take something out of the annual upper quad vs. lower quad snowball battle, a marker of the first snow as surely as daffodils signal spring.
And it'll muddy the corps' identity as recalled by VMI cadets, who've been known to foray into the quad for various reasons of their own.
"We would have guys sneak out at night, paint stuff on [their] football field, or the quad they have," recalled Mike Strickler, VMI class of '71. "Back then, they had a big Corps of Cadets."
But change is no stranger to Tech's corps, which shares a campus with 24,000 civilian students. It's the only university besides Texas A&M to house such a corps.
"I think most of the cadets prefer to stay here. And in all honesty, I do, too. We've just been here so long," said Stan Musser, the Air Force major general who is commandant of the corps.
And there are practical considerations, like "pt," or physical training, and formations conducted at the quad, and the rapport built up with other students who live in dorms on that part of campus.
"The rest of the civilians who live up here know we do these things, and they don't get too upset if we wake them up," Musser said.
That's reveille he's referring to, 'round about 6 a.m.
"I would rather see them not" move, Dekker said. "It's a grand part of the tradition. But it will be preserved; I think the tradition can continue in the Hokie stone dormitories on the lower quad as well."
More than anything else, it was an economic decision, Dekker said. And university architect Peter Karp said most folks seem to accept it. Because of state budget decisions, the move can't occur any sooner than the fall of '97.
The corps began alongside Tech, originally the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College, established in 1872. Federal legislation authorizing the act gave 30,000 acres of public land to each state for each senator and representative in Congress, according to the 1860 census. The land was to be sold to pay for a state college that emphasized agriculture and mechanical arts.
The legislation, known as the Morrill Act, allowed for the opportunity to study military tactics. At all-male Tech, the notion was embraced wholeheartedly. Enrollment in the corps was mandatory until the early 1960s, at which time President Marshall Hahn launched the metamorphosis that has produced the state's largest university.
But the corps lives on, with women long ago allowed in its ranks. Many students receive ROTC scholarships, and can tap into some of the cadet scholarships that pay their room and board. You can be a cadet even if you're not in ROTC, and an effort now under way might boost the corps to 1,000 students by the year 2000.
Dekker is leading the $5 million scholarship fund drive with $3 million already raised. Another $1 million has been offered by a cadet alumni if his classmates can match it, and Dekker reports they should make it in another year or so.
At the same time, a minor in leadership studies is working its way through the Virginia Tech internal governance system. The field is growing in popularity; only recently, the University of Richmond opened a school devoted to leadership. Mary Baldwin College is opening the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership, the state's alternative to admitting women to VMI.
"There's a whole lot to learn," said Paul Lukas, a junior from Potomac, Md., who feels he's already earning leadership training through Tech's corps.
"You learn a lot about leading and following. Training for freshmen is very involved. You get your hair cut very short," he said. "You all go through that freshman training together."
Musser, who has taken two tours at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, won't stand for hazing and yelling at freshmen by upperclassmen. Instead, he instituted a strict program that stressed punishments that came with explanations and consultation - not simply demerits.
Lukas is proof that he and his classmates have bonded.
"They're my 'buds,' " he said. "That's the term for it."
The corps, with its mighty history, has changed since the '60s. But the football rivalry with VMI hasn't. There are a few cadets over in the upper quad, for instance, who served some community service time in VMI's hometown of Lexington after they were caught trying to write "Tech" in the middle of VMI's football field.
Seems a group of freshmen were up to some hijinks, but a junior cadet - a woman - ran the mission
"She was just being a leader," Musser said.
by CNB