Don't Gaze!

As some of you may know, freshman cadets are not allowed to 'gaze' on upper quad. What this means is that you may not look left or right while in the area around the Corps dorms. Basically, your eyes must always be locked forward and your head may not move. If you wish to look to your left, you much complete a facing movement which involves a full body turn.

Now, because of this, it is hard to observe other cadets. I decided to observe the freshman cadets on upper quad. I sat myself down in front of Squires so that I had an open view of one full side of upper quad.

It was an interesting experience to actually be able to see what is going on when we are doing the facing movements. Some cadets take their time, thinking no one is watching them and, therefore, they will not get yelled at for going too slow. Other cadets dragged (a walk/run) as if there were a whole company watching them, even though no one else was around. Another thing that somewhat annoyed me was how long the upperclassmen would stare at the freshman. The purpose for this, as I would assume, was because they were waiting for that freshman to screw up. They wanted the freshman to forget to say, 'good morning sir,' or for them to forget to pivot on their turns, so that they would have an excuse to yell at them.

Now, I am a bit biased in this situation, and there were some upperclassmen that just ignored the freshman. However, there is definitely a different atmosphere on upper quad; students seeming to have a switch from 'normal' to 'cold hearted cadre'. But I digress.

Overall, while I was observing the freshman I noticed a few things I had not been aware of before, but also was reaffirmed on other things. For one, I did not realize there was such a change in attitude of all ages of cadets on upper quad because I had never been able to really look. I also got to see examples of what cadets do when they think no one is watching (that was kind of fun). The one thing I was reaffirmed on was that the freshman look pretty stupid dragging and pivoting around every corner!