A large group of us went: me, both of my roommates and six or seven guys, all of us from the same company. 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 accountability, time management skills, and cooperation. 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 weekly, and delivering laundry and dry cleaning in the evenings. Duties rotated weekly among the four platoons, but for the bigger jobs, like delivering laundry and mail, everyone available participated. The week leading up to our trip my platoon had to call minutes, which was not going smoothly.
Minute calling occurred before every formation, which meant at a minimum, before breakfast and lunch formation. There were other times, too — for drill formation and mandatory dinner. The expectation was for everyone to call at the same time and cadence, even though we were spread across several 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 for each minute left until two minutes remained, with the last call including a reminder for everyone to turn off their lights before leaving their rooms. With a couple of minutes to spare, plebes would depart their posts, join the hallway rush, hurry 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. Someone would have to be the lead minute caller so our voices would be in sync regardless of which section of the hallway each of us occupied. When we left that room, each one of us had to station ourselves near every wall clock within our specified section of Pershing Barracks. 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 the room for the hallways, 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. 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 towards, 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.
We had all heard the stories from century men and century women, cadets who had accumulated at least 100 hours of area tours. The plebes in my platoon, along with several others in the company had planned to go to New York that weekend, but instead of heading out on Friday night as originally planned, we would be in our shined and polished parade gear with our drilling rifles, walking back and forth in Central Area. We adjusted our plans and left on Saturday morning instead. On a regular weekend, this would have resulted in a very brief outing, as we would have to be back by Sunday for a 6 p.m. accountability formation, but this was a holiday day weekend, which meant we had until Monday evening to explore.
We took the free ferry that left from South Dock and dropped us off at Garrison. From there we bought train tickets and boarded the Metro North commuter train from Garrison all the way into Grand Central Station, all of us adorned in dress gray. Plebes had to depart and return to West Point in uniform, making us highly conspicuous. 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. No, I’m not supposed to admit that, but I won’t lie to appear noble. It was an education I could pay back in service, with bonus points for being in my home state.This was the thought process of a 17 year old craving familiar surroundings and financial freedom. To know I could attend a prestigious school and emerge with a job and no tuition bill sounded pretty appealing and I wasn’t the only one.
Someone had the foresight to call and make a reservation at the Soldiers and Sailors Club in midtown Manhattan, where we schlepped our weekend bags after getting off of the train. Reserving space here meant you reserved a bed, which opened up the possibility of sharing a room with a stranger, but the nightly rate was cheap — about $20 a night from what I remembered, and fortunately, I was in a three bed room with my roommates.
In the late afternoon we walked to Bleecker street and occupied a table at an Irish pub that welcomed us even though we were underaged. Showing your military ID resulted in receiving 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 to our room. The room was long and narrow. The bedding and older furnishings made the place feel less hotel-like and more like the home of an elderly relative. L and I took the two beds longways against the wall on one side, 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 conscious enough to walk past K and crawl into her empty bed. My other roommate, L and I watched from our beds 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. After a few rounds of this, K rolled him out of her bed and onto the floor.
When S entered our room, drunk and uninvited, we were one month into life in our academic companies. I didn’t really know him and I didn’t yet gain the appreciation that built in the conversations and jokes I shared with S in the years that followed, from our time at school together and beyond. I remember nothing felt dangerous or threatening about S, even though he had invaded our room. By the time he was laying on the floor, he was mumbling. He unzipped his jeans and pulled out a floppy penis, the first adult one I'd ever seen. 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, we turned out the lights and everyone went back to sleep. By the time the sun rose and the room was light, S was gone. I wondered what he thought, waking up on the floor of our room like that, but I never asked. While entering the room uninvited and exposing himself was inappropriate, nothing he had done up to that point caused me to feel unsafe.
I wish I could say attending college at a place with consequences for screwing up minute calling translated into cadets understanding that more severe consequences resulted from more significant offenses. I wish I could say every male cadet I knew was just as safe as S. Unfortunately, I have plenty of stories of unwanted touching, coercion, and being expected to participate in something sexual simply because I was there. My memories of the trip are spotty not because my mind is trying to protect itself from something traumatic, but because this trip took place 33 years ago and the details have faded. I remember the 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 sleep in a graveyard because sleeping among the dead seemed the best option at the time. Or the following night when we went clubbing and discovered the Limelight, which we jokingly counted as going to church on Sunday. Remembering a trip fondly without the burden of compartmentalizing unwanted events feels like a privilege.
S entered our room and tried to occupy a bed that wasn’t his. When he wound up on the floor, he unzipped his pants. We covered him with a blanket and turned off the lights. At no point did my roommates and I share the thought to take advantage of the “free dick” that was suddenly available in our room. Even using the phrase "free dick" feels laughable while the equivalent phrase with genders reversed feels horrifying and far from being funny. There's no invitation for anyone to ask why S he went to our room in the first place, what he was wearing, or what did he expect? There's no imagined trolley problem where the traumatic experience of one man is seen as acceptable collateral damage for the future of three promising young women. There is no additional part of this story because my roommates and I didn’t feel entitled to exploit someone because he willingly entered 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.
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