I used to get jolted awake at 3:33 AM by the sudden bang of metal rod and fists on my door.
CRACK—THUNK—THUNK
“The Honor Court has met! Get out on the stoop.”
Bleary-eyed, my three roommates and I would stumble out onto the exposed railings of Old Barracks, the inverted panopticon at the heart of cadet life, and wait in silence with the rest of the 1600 cadets of the Virginia Military Institute. In the winter, we’d huddle together for warmth against the sharp Shenandoah air, but no matter the season we shivered at the snare and bass drums’ ominous roll rumbling through our bones in the still of the night.
A hidden cantor booms “Death Before Dishonor” over the din.
A stern march-in from the Honor Court.
A resounding silence as the drums halt abruptly.
A bit of ceremonial shouting.
“After a trial by jury of their peers, the Honor Court has found Cadet Third Classman John Q. Nobody guilty of two counts of making a false official statement. His name will never be spoken in these barracks again.”
The proclamation looms heavy on the air as its echo decays into the open space under the stars.
The rhythmic clop-clop-clop of polished low quarters on dull concrete slowly fades as they march out of the courtyard.
The Corps of Cadets exhales.
Two battalions of tired cadets shuffle back to their rooms to snag a few more hours of sleep before morning formation.
As we all flopped back onto our prisoner manufactured bedrolls, I’d usually stay up and think about the former cadet for a while, especially if they were a friend.
What does it feel like when you irrevocably alter your life?
Do you cry?
How do you collect yourself, tie up your boots, and soldier on knowing you had violated the VMI Honor Code and were just drummed out of the Institute forever?
“A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal nor tolerate those who do.”
I’ve thought a lot about those 12 words in the decade or so since I graduated.
Fortunately, I never had any personal run-ins with the Honor Court nor was I ever really that worried about violating the Honor Code except in passing bouts of paranoia. I was a good student and never felt tempted to flirt with the most common tripper upper of cadets (cheating on academic assignments). I did, however, lose a few good friends who stumbled under the pressure of a particularly tough problem set (mostly engineering majors) and eventually paid the price.
In practice, these former cadets typically just transferred to a normal college with less stringent cheating policies and finished up their degree, but to me (wrapped up in the stormy mysticism of Mother I) every drum out felt like a fall into the plunging Ginnungagap.
From where I now write, it’s obvious to me that our single sanction Honor System is not built for the modern world. Perhaps it wasn’t even built for the past either. It’s a brief, fantastical, shared respite from reality.
On Planet Earth, people lie, cheat, and steal all the damn time and rarely get punished for it.
And if they do get punished, they’ll almost certainly get a second chance before the hammer really comes down. Confusing justice further, there are big lies and little lies and huge cheats and tiny steals and shouldn’t maybe the severity of the transgression count for something in the cosmic rebalancing of the scales of human righteousness?
Plus, if I’m being truly pedantic, different people will get celebrated, crucified, redeemed, or rewarded for the exact same act of lying, cheating, or stealing, depending on their context.
So why build this imaginary game with its singularly grave punishment in which the only reward of continuing to play is a life of stacking inconveniences?
Receive and Give
I’m fascinated by the power of mythos at VMI and places like it.
Through ritual and raw belief, cadets transform the simple act of standing still with a raised arm near a flagpole in the freezing rain while a bugler desperately attempts to play Retreat and To The Colors through chapped lips as the evening light quickly slips away into something much more reverent than the incredibly silly endeavor that it is.
This power comes, I think, mostly from the magic of oral histories.
We used to joke that a tradition at VMI is anything that cadets did two years in a row. That’s just enough time for both the “tradition” starter to move on to bigger and better things (usually by graduating) and for enough new cadets to enter barracks such that the collective memory of “before” the “tradition” is fuzzy.
By the end of that second year all of the boring facts about the origin of a “tradition’s” “Why” have floated away into the steady march of classes, drills, and physical training.
This leaves enterprising cadets left with only the confident “Where” and “How” and “What” to dictate rigid rules regarding things like:
Where do you rub on George Washington’s statue for good luck? (obviously his crotch)
How do you correct somebody when they improperly suggest you are in F Company? (By helpfully shouting F-TROOP back at them of course)
What is the Natural Bridge worth?
This last tradition is my favorite trick question at VMI (there are many). It was designed by upperclassmen specifically to elicit pushups from unsuspecting Rats (freshmen) by baiting them into guessing a dollar figure when the “correct” answer is hidden deep in a footnote of their Rat Bible.
The Natural Bridge is worth “a visit from every cadet”.
I don’t remember who stumped me with this bit of linguistic larceny when I was a Rat myself, but I do remember thinking they were a bastard as I cranked out another 20. I also remember the glee I felt the following year while asking Rats that exact same question (like a bastard). So it goes.
This receive and give is the cycle of human mythmaking.
These stupid, little, sacred, shared things become culture and meaning through the import we imbue in them.
And the things we imbue with import are a reflection of our values cemented by repetition.
Sometimes it’s top down, but mostly it’s accidental and this, as far as I can tell, is how everything we end up believing ultimately gains shape and structure and eventually, through ritual adherence, a kind of permanence.
Death Before Dishonor
I was a very curious Rat. I am also reflexively rebellious (thanks to my conservative Catholic upbringing). Combine this with my accumulated fatigue from all the pushups and such, and I got pretty frustrated with waking up so early for Honor Court proceedings.
Lucky for me, Rats are assigned a mentor from the senior class to talk to about things like this. If your senior mentor likes you, they can also offer you a brief respite from the rigors of the Ratline (provided, of course, you keep them happy by doing their chores and any side quests they might find funny), but the relationship can sometimes have an intimidating “older brother” element to it. Mine certainly did.
My mentor was a terrifying gorilla of a man, but he was a smart guy and typically enjoyed my sacrilegious questions so I decided to ask him directly.
“Why hell do we have to wake up at 3:33 AM for drum outs?”
He turned, cocked his beastly head, and said flatly,
“Because it’s halfway to Hell.”
He then packed a massive dip in his lip and went back to what he was working on.
Any veteran will clock this as universal body language for “that’s the only answer you’re going to get so kindly fuck off”.
So off I fucked and later, half asleep in my circuits class, it hit me with a zap that 333 is half of 666.
Duh.
I’m not a religious guy nor am I particularly occult-y (I did study Physics and Applied Mathematics after all). I don’t really subscribe to afterlives or before-lives or alternate realities or samsara’s or any other similar ideology (no judgment), but…
“Halfway to Hell” somehow makes perfect sense to me.
There is definitely something no-shit spooky about waking up at the witching hour.
I’ve done countless guard shifts, pulled plenty of all-nighters, and run sleepy mission after mission, and the 3am chunk is always the absolute worst section of the night for me.
Maybe it’s just superstition or some strange, vestigial monkey fear, but chanting “Death Before Dishonor” in the deepest dark with the howling wind under a cloud hidden moon makes that shit land, man.
But where does it land?
What does it land?
Abyss
I turned 33 this year and sometimes wonder if I’m halfway to Hell myself.
I try to be a good person (whatever the fuck that means) and, despite the sins inherent in a modern American existence and my stints in the military and at Harvard, I do think I generally succeed at that.
And yet the midnight thoughts remain.
Some folks call 33 their Jesus Year (because they decided that’s how old Jesus was when he was crucified). They celebrate it as a year for sacrifice, renewal, and personal growth. After the Army, I’m not particularly enthused by the idea of martyrdom anymore, but if that’s what the Fates are weaving for me it is what is I guess. I’m certainly no stranger to tragedy.
Could there actually be something inherently devilish about 33?
It is the highest degree of Freemasonry, after all.
I think it’s hard to say in medias res, but I do feel like something is impending.
It’s probably not doom. I only feel that these days after too many white monsters.
Maybe the phrase I’m looking for is feelings of impending room?
Room for both my outer and inner selves.
Room not just for the things that I’ve already been filled with, but for what I might still find and gather tomorrow.
Room for the pieces I’ll keep.
Room from the parts I won’t.
What does an Honor Code mean at 33?
The power of any tradition comes from our belief in its sturdiness, its lineage, and its truthiness.
Does it still stand up? Does it still come from a place we value? Does it still land?
And for oral traditions especially, how has that perspective shifted as it passes from speaker to receiver cum speaker to receiver?
With some time and distance, it’s clear to me that the through line of tradition at VMI is the belief that doing hard things is intrinsically valuable.
Leave your family. Shave your head. Climb House Mountain. March 20 miles. Survive the Ratline. Live in Barracks. Hit the wall. Shine your shoes.
Maintain your morale.
In the spirit of American leaders like John F. Kennedy, the grand calculation of VMI is the deliberate choice to “press up the hill of science with noble emulation” and in some ways that truly is a gratifying (albeit Sisyphean) spectacle.
As part of this multi-year, marathonic equation, the specter of lying and cheating and stealing becomes less about the avoidance of misdeed itself and more about picking the path along a road you know will be harder than what it could have been.
The theatrical punishment is the narrative escalation to make the choice matter. There is no challenge if there are no consequences. There is no gain without the risk of loss.
Hard work makes hard men and women.
And sometimes, you need to be hard.
And in the context of Cincinnatus and the concept of the citizen-soldier upon which VMI was founded, this tradition feels as effective a vision as any I can imagine to help prepare cadets for the unknown scale, nature, and shape of challenges they’re sure to face after graduation.
I was that cadet and I faced those challenges. I felt prepared for them and for tomorrow’s too. Perhaps not as single-minded as before, but prepared all the same.
VMI isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done anymore, but it was my holistic high-water mark for a very long time. Participating in its traditions showed me that I could push more, swim deeper, and climb higher if I chose to do so (and put in the work).
And while I don’t shine my shoes anymore, I do start to smile every time I realize I’m pushing another boulder up another hill…
Even if it’s just for the hell of it.
Getting through med school taught me I could accomplish anything If I try