Bad Taste at VMI?

Not to be outdone by the stupidity of Prince Harry...apparently cadets at the Virginia Military Institute have been accused of wearing costumes to a Halloween celebration within their own barrack this past October! Unfortunately, just like at Abu GrabAss prison in Iraq, someone with a camera decided to share photographs with the mainstream media. Here's the story!

VMI Cadets try to outdo British Prince's Stupidity

Okay, now that you've read and returned...let's go through some of the facts.

• The cadets were celebrating an accepted holiday inside the barracks where they live. This was not a "public" event.
  
  
• These cadets are probably only 17-23/24 years old at the most. We're not talking about completely mature adults.
  
  
• The inappropriate costumes in question include: Nazi blackshirts with swastikas, drag queens, a starving African, and some as "sailors" with red targets painted on their rear ends.

If we start pointing fingers at every college-aged student that makes an error in judgement, we're going to run out of fingers pretty damned quickly. Add to that college age factor, VMI is a school that imparts much more discipline and applies much higher standards than the average institution of higher learning. When you live in an environment like VMI, West Point or some of the other prestigious service academies...many times cadets/students look to inappropriate avenues to blow off steam. Like it or not, that's what happens.

I refuse to go into any of my past transgressions, but there certainly are skeletons in my closet when measured by today's yardstick of "political correctness." Did that make me a less effective combat leader during Operation Desert Storm? I don't think so. I'd imagine the families of the men I led in Saudi Arabia and that little diamond area disputed by Saudi and Iraq at the time are quite thankful that I was able to take their sons overseas and return them safe and sound. Had the youthful transgressions of my past been held against me perhaps those soldiers would have had a less effective, prepared leader in front of them that did NOT bring them home.

Before we go a little crazy in dreaming up the punishment for these cadets...let's try and remember that they're still gaining in the maturity that is preparing them for their futures. College students are works in progress. That doesn't mean that they get a "free pass" at every turn, but they do deserve a little more room to make errors than this article would lead me to believe.

From the high ground...I'll be the one with a Shiner in one hand...and a full house in the other! (Okay...I'll discuss a couple of transgressions)

MajorDad1984


. And here is the rest of it.