In October 1993, me, both of my roommates and six or seven guys, all of us from the same company took a trip to Manhattan one weekend. We were a little over a month into the fall semester and still getting to know each other. By then we had endured weeks of shared plebe duties — tasks assigned to freshmen to instill a sense of accountability, time management, organization and teamwork. Every day duties started well before breakfast formation with a copy of The New York Times delivered to every room in our section of Pershing Barracks. Other duties included collecting recycling, and delivering laundry and dry cleaning in the evenings. Duties rotated weekly among the four platoons, but everyone available participated for the bigger jobs, like laundry and mail. The week leading up to our trip my platoon was assigned to call minutes.
Minute calling occurred before every weekday formation, which meant at a minimum, before breakfast and lunch formation. There were other times, too, like drill formation and mandatory dinner on Thursday nights. The expectation was for everyone to call at the same time and cadence, even though we were spread across different corridors and out of sight from each other. Anyone who heard us from their rooms would know, without having to look at a clock, how much time remained before they had to be squared away and out of their doors on the way to formation in Central Area. Minute calling required a plebe at every clock in the hallway in our section of the barracks. We called out the number of minutes that remained until formation, starting with an announcement of five minutes remaining, repeating the call until two minutes remained. The two minute call included a reminder for everyone to turn off their lights before leaving their rooms. When we completed the two minute call, we could depart our posts and join the rush of footsteps in the hallways, down the stairs and outside to formation.
The description seemed simple, but getting it right involved a host of subtasks. Minute callers needed to gather in a platoonmate’s designated room with plenty of time to check each other’s uniforms. When we left that room, each one of us had to station ourselves near every wall clock within our specified section of Pershing Barracks. Someone had to be the lead minute caller and be able to project their voice loudly enough for the rest of us to synchronize our words, regardless of which section of the hallway each of us occupied. The week leading up to our trip, we repeatedly failed at organizing ourselves into a well oiled minute-calling machine. Lunch formation was usually a problem. Inevitably, someone would be delayed arriving to the designated room after the last class of the morning. By the time we departed to our assigned clocks, we were already late.
All week we had received repeated scoldings from our platoon sergeant, a short in stature cow named Cadet Jun. By Wednesday evening, he lined us up to deliver our two-dash-ones, our cadet equivalent of an Article 15. The offense? "Late calling minutes." No one protested; each of us provided the following response in the designated block on the form: "No excuse, sir." Minute calling was a character building activity, and the consequence of doing it wrong? Also a character building activity. Cadet Jun sentenced each of us to two hours of area tours, a punishment that required us to shine our brass and shoes, and waste precious time walking back and forth across the sectioned off pavement in Central Area. Even though Cadet Jun seemed like a heartless terror, he was strategic with his punishment: two hours of area tours meant we could walk on Friday evening and be signed out and on our way to the city by Saturday morning. On a regular weekend, this would have been a very brief outing, as we would have to be back by Sunday for a 6 p.m. accountability formation but it was a holiday weekend so we had until Monday afternoon to explore.
We took the free ferry that left from the South Dock and crossed to the other side of the Hudson River to Garrison. From there we bought train tickets and boarded the Metro North commuter train for a ride terminating in Grand Central Station. Plebes had to depart and return to West Point in our dress gray uniform which seems like poor OPSEC for the sake of public novelty. Manhattan wasn’t new to me; I had grown up in neighboring Rockland County until my family moved to California at 13. New York was home, and being able to return was part of the allure of attending West Point. It was an education I could pay back in service, with bonus points for being in my home state. Attending a prestigious school in familiar surroundings and emerging with a job and no tuition bills sounded ideal to 17 year old me.
Someone in our group had the foresight to call and make a reservation at the Soldiers and Sailors Club in midtown. We schlepped our weekend bags there right after getting off the train. Reservations here meant you reserving a bed not a room, which meant there was a possibility of sharing a room with a stranger -- another service member or a veteran. The nightly rate was cheap — about $20 a night from what I remember, and fortunately, I was in a three bed room with my roommates.
That evening we walked to Bleecker Street to an Irish pub that welcomed us even though we were not legally old enough to buy alcohol. Showing our military ID resulted in the If you’re old enough to serve, you’re old enough to drink treatment. Our group occupied a large table, and someone ordered shots. By the time I left the pub with my roommates, the guys had split off to another adventure and we made our way back. Our room was long and narrow with a tall window opposite from the door. The bedding and older furnishings made the place feel less like a hotel hotel and more like the guest room of an elderly relative. L and I took the two beds positioned longways against the wall on the left side of the room, and while K chose the single bed on the opposite wall. A few hours after we had turned out the lights and gone to bed, someone knocked. K got up and cracked the door open.
It was S, who was drunk and trying to talk his way into our room. We didn’t know which room he was staying in, and he didn’t explain why he was at our door instead of his own. K opened the door and S stumbled into our room smelling like stale beer and old sweat. He was still in the same clothes from our visit to the Irish pub and ambulatory enough to walk past K and crawl into her empty bed. My other roommate, L and I watched as K shooed S out of her bed. Every time K stood up in an attempt to usher S to the door, he would circle around her and lay down in her bed again. After a few rounds of this, K rolled him out of her bed and onto the rug in the space between the beds.
I didn’t really know S beyond the chaos of working through plebe duties. I knew he had a solid sense of humor and had hoped to walk onto the football team. I hadn’t yet gained the appreciation that developed through the conversations and jokes we shared in the years that followed, from our time at school together and after. Even though S had entered our room uninvited, nothing felt dangerous in the moment. S mumbled while he was laying on the floor. He unzipped his jeans and pulled out a floppy penis, the first adult one I'd ever seen, and promptly fell asleep. My roommates and I looked at each other, amused, embarrassed and annoyed that S had made himself our problem. K threw a blanket over him and turned out the lights so we could all go back to sleep. By the time the early morning sunlight filtered through the room, S was gone. I always wondered what he thought, waking up on the floor of our room like that, but I never asked.
I wish I could say attending college at a place with consequences for something minor --like screwing up minute calling -- translated into all cadets understanding that severe consequences followed more significant offenses. I wish I could say every male cadet I knew was just as safe and unthreatening as S, but I can't. I have plenty of stories of unwanted touching or being pressured for something sexual simply for being physically present in the same space as a guy with expectations. My memories of this trip are spotty not because my mind is trying to protect itself from recalling something painful but because these events took place 33 years ago and the finer details have faded with time. I can remember highlights, like breakfast the following morning when a few of the guys told us how they had gotten lost on their way back from the pub and decided to stop in a graveyard because sleeping among the dead seemed the safest option. Or the following night when we dressed up and went clubbing at the Limelight, which we jokingly counted as going to church on Sunday.
S entered our room and tried to occupy a bed that wasn’t his. After he wound up on the floor and unzipped his pants, we covered him with a blanket and turned off the lights. At no point did my roommates and I consider taking advantage of the “free dick” that was suddenly available in our room. Even using the phrase "free dick" in reference to my friend feels weird, gross, and uncomfortably laughable. The equivalent phrase with genders reversed feels horrifying and far from funny due to the implication of offering up another human being in the same way a restaurant might advertise an all you can eat buffet. The story that unfolded here leaves no room for anyone to question why S went to our room in the first place, or investigate what he was wearing, or ask what did he expect? There's no trolley problem where the traumatic experience of one man is seen as acceptable collateral damage for the future of three promising young women. The usual attempts to balance the scales, play devil's advocate, or justify wrongdoing doesn't exist in this story because my roommates and I didn’t feel entitled to exploit someone for willingly entering our room in a vulnerable state. S was safe with us and we were safe with him, which, at a minimum, is exactly what anyone in a similar situation should be able to expect.
