PHOTOGRAPHS BY NANCY SUKIS
Cadet Kenneth Geiger helps
Cadet Tom Lund into dress (below)
to dramatize (left) proper way to pass
through receiving line at formal danee.
Signs indicate roles cadets play in skits.
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Cadet-iquette at West Point
A game of charades gives the Army brass of tomorrow its social polish
The aim of the United States Military Academy is
to turn cadets into officers and gentlemen. So, along
with courses in tactics, logistics, and statistics, West
Point also offers lessons in good manners.
Upperclassmen take the responsibility of teaching
lowerclassmen the rudiments of "cadet-iquette" in
lectures vividly illustrated by humorous skits which
they put on themselves.
These little performances show the "dos" and
"don'ts" of social and military etiquette, practices hal
lowed by years of tradition. The lessons dealing with
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dating and dancing are especially amusing since one
of the cadets is usually recruited to play a young miss.
He also plays the officer's wife in the lesson on din
ner parties. Donning an old blue-satin dress over his
gray uniform and stuffing it appropriately, the cadet
becomes a guinea pig to whom all kinds of discour
teous treatment are handed out to show the students
how not to treat a lady.
Though exaggerated, the skits make their point,
and long before he is commissioned in the U.S. Army,
each West Point cadet is a model of courtesy.
Attempt to combine
social grace with military
bearing backfires slightly
as cadet dances while
standing at attention.
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Cadet ffenmar Gabriel plays part
of boorish dinner guest ignoring his
"host" and "hostess" and leaning elbows on table.
Student cadets take hint from exaggerated
skits and improve their manners.
Family Werklu, January 27, !IB3
S n n s c i h I l J i