Upcoming Episode

• Acquisitions officer turned diplomat Maj Austin McKinney ‘10 (Luke!) gives a rundown of what goes into being a foreign service officer for the U.S. State Department

Pulse of the Wing

Enhanced Character Development Time (ECDT)

This is a directive that was started Fall of ‘23 in accordance with the Let’s Be Clear (LBC) campaign targeting sexual assault. The first Wednesday of every month (alternating M & T days) has a special schedule of calls where a 1.5-hour block of time in the middle of the day is dedicated to cadet-led critical conversations. Topics include everything from shallow versus deep relationships to sexual education. The wide array of topics is intended to fill in any gaps that may exist since cadets come from every state in the U.S. and public school education varies from state to state. Cadets are either split into their classes or elements with element leaders facilitating the conversation. Gen. Clark makes it clear this is a priority since there are very few valid excusals (IC/Airfield activities do not trump ECDT).

OPINION - Out of all the changes made with LBC, this one has to be my favorite. I get to engage in meaningful conversation with the people I live right down the hall from. Nobody is required to talk, but because there isn’t a permanent party member leading the conversation but rather a fellow cadet (usually a socially adept one), the conversations tend to be pretty open and productive. I believe that having these conversations helps to meet the commander’s intent since these stronger relationships are conducive to unit cohesion and hopefully by extension can eradicate sexual assault.

My only gripe with it is that I was told it wouldn’t cut into my time at all since all the class periods would be shortened to make time for ECDT. In reality, now 7th period ends 30 minutes later (1538 → 1606). The 30 minutes lost can be ignored, but please don’t lead cadets to believe they’ll have the same amount of time when they don’t.

Let me know what you think about ECDT at the address below!