Upcoming Episode

• Acquisitions Instructor Course instructor Charles Prichard ‘11 (Olds!) discusses his expertise in acquisitions as well as his identity shift after leaving active duty!

Pulse of the Wing

Recognition

Recognition (Rec) is probably the longest held tradition here at the Academy. Although it has come in many forms over the decades, it has served as the culminating event of the Doolie year and all of its training. In recent years, Rec has started on Thursday at 1600 after all academic duties are over, and concludes Saturday night.

Recognition occurred this past weekend but due to over a foot of snow falling over the course of more than 24 hours, the schedule was changed drastically. The snow started Wednesday night and cancelled school on Thursday and training on Friday leaving only Saturday as a training day. Under strict scrutiny from Congress, USAFA leadership has been pressed to dial back many aspects of the training. I’ll leave out the details for the sake of keeping the secrets of the tradition, but not a single push-up, squat, lunge or any other physical exercise was authorized. You could not yell for the sake of making the situation more stressful, but rather you could "modulate” your voice to encourage the Doolies. After a truncated 12 hours of training the Doolies received their Prop and Wings.

OPINION - I first off want to acknowledge how hard it must be as a 27er to have something as arbitrary as the weather almost completely cancel such an impactful event. Rec is one of my favorite memories at the Academy so it’s difficult to see another class miss out.

I am not here to give another unoriginal opinion about how the Academy is getting soft (though I am a strong proponent of physical fitness and intense training) because I’ll be the first to admit that I am not equipped to know exactly what form of training will forge cadets into LTs prepared for war; but what I will offer is a thought experiment.

Imagine USAFA is shut down for two years. No cadets present, Permanent Party and faculty were sent to other jobs and all that was left was the facilities. A new group of professionals with no prior tie to USAFA were assembled to wipe the slate clean and create a new USAFA academic, military, and athletic curriculum. What would they come up with and what would USAFA look like on the other side, especially the activities that target strengthening soft skills?

Along with measurable performance metrics like GPA, MPA, and PEA, there are undoubtedly more difficult to measure soft skills like organization, discipline, persistence, attention to detail, et cetera. USAFA is more than just a college, we develop leaders so I argue that these soft skills are just as important as the hard skills.

The purpose of the thought experiment is to think about how the soft skills are developed here and how personal experience can bias the activities we do to build them. Bringing in less biased decision makers could allow more deliberate decisions regarding requirements instead of making sure the next class does the same thing as the last for the sake of upholding a tradition. I am not anti-tradition, I am just pro-America winning any fight.

Please share with your classmates as I’d love to have more discourse around this topic. Thank you for reading!