Sharing a Hill: Lunch at the Coast Guard Academy lends perspective

We were late. I forgot my wallet, so I ran out of my Nonfiction writing class to my Jeep Cherokee, drove it onto the grass outside of Windham’s front door and left it running downstairs (illegal). I grabbed my license, changed into something as business casual as I could manage (black jeans and buttons?) and sped down to South Lot to pick up Managing Editor John Sherman. We bombed through the Coast Guard’s front entrance, where the security guard told me my license was expired (illegal), and then hugged a left onto Harriet Lane to find fourth-year cadet Dan Cahill, who we were meeting for lunch. We were Connecticut College stereotypes, completely disregarding rules and speed limits, our minds focused on everything for which we couldn’t prepare.

The second issue of the Voice included a front-page piece called “Trouble on the Coast,” detailing violence between a cadet and Conn students from the perspective of its weekend bystanders. Details woven for the Conn community laid bare our prejudices: Conn students called out offensive phrases at cadets, but held that they came to campus on weekend nights primarily to “pick up girls,” and the event held blame on both sides: the cadet acted aggressively, but was ultimately assaulted by our students. Our campus community offered little response to the article online, but we received outrage from across the way. 97 “thumbs down” and 79 comments later, I got an email from Dan expressing concern that the event “may have created unnecessary and undesirable tension between our schools,” and the Academy wanted to “stem that as quickly possible.”

So there we were. We waved at them vigorously, parked and trotted over, College Voice tote bags slung over our arms. Daniel was standing with his fellow cadet Allison Murray, both members of the regimental staff, who are responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Corps of Cadets. They wore blue shirts neatly tucked into navy pants, gold stripes on each shoulder, and familiar white hats. We immediately became a jumble of wide smiles and crisscrossed shaking hands.

I always knew the campus was all brick, but didn’t realize how much the buildings could change a campus color scheme – our white stone offsets green grass and orange trees – their red brick pulls you into the intensity of autumn. The Thames River is within smelling distance. Boulders sit, unmoving, at dangerous angles, nestled into the buzz-cut grass.

They ushered us to lunch up staircases that snaked along the hill we sit atop. Chase Hall, a mammoth building that houses all 1019 CGA students, hosts the campus’s only dining hall: the Wardroom. The Wardroom is wide enough for every student to eat lunch in together, on white tablecloths – nine per table, like a ship – family style, food brought tableside and passed from hand to hand.

“What do we need to know?” I asked.

“Once all the cadets are in the Wardroom,” Dan said, leading us through double doors, “I’ll wave my big white hat and whoever’s at the microphone will call for attention on deck. The cadets will stand at attention and we’ll walk up to the head table. Next they’ll call a moment of silence, then Seat. That’s it! You ready?”

For as long as I live, I will never forget the next fifteen seconds. We entered in a row – Dan, John, and then me, and the silence hit abruptly, like someone had turned off a concert and turned on the lights. The cadets stood straight behind their chairs, eyes glazed forward. John and I tried to keep up with Dan’s stride, hyperaware of every small sound, any potential word disguised in a cough. The walk felt endless. John almost fell off the platform we were invited to dine on, which faced the Wardroom like The Last Supper.

When we sat down at the Head Table, Dan turned music over the loudspeaker (“It’s a Friday thing – usually it’s the radio, but occasionally members of the Regimental Staff will compete over who can make a better CD.”) and the room aggressively revived itself. Cadets passed around plates of pizza and ladels of soup, chatting, laughing, occasionally cheering. We talked about what cadets do after the Academy (most are assigned as Engineers in Training or Deck Watch Officers on ships) and what we do after college (a question we tactfully rushed through). We learned that Allison was training for a marathon, and Dan spent a summer on the Coast Guard Cutter Gallatin, traveling through the Caribbean looking for ships that may be carrying narcotics into the US – “400 feet of warship and they let you drive it when you’re 19 years old,” he said. Allison is a civil engineering major, and Dan majors in Government. They said John’s art history major sounded fun, and asked me what “new media studies,” my self-design, actually means.

I asked at least five people what they suggested I bring up at this lunch – they all wanted to know, in some form, how living such a regimented lifestyle affected the cadets’ internal sense of order. They, like I, assumed that cadet training had developed their personalities to be strict, uptight and by-the-rules. I found the cadets I met to be fit, scruffless, upright folks, who walked with purpose and made easygoing, charming company. The Coast Guard, it seemed, gave them the structure and meaning that we find in our extracurriculars, majors, Centers and campus jobs. But the key difference is that we channel our energy into different causes. For Conn students, college is promoted as exploratory, a place where we find the causes we want to work toward. The primary cause of the Coast Guard is shared: service.

We were also joined for lunch by our SGA President Nate Cornell ’11 and Parliamentarian Carson Miller ’11, who left shortly thereafter. Dan continued to lead us along paths and through buildings. When we reached the library (“Great if you want to learn about historical naval ships, but I prefer yours”), I broached the topic that had prompted this visit: our social relationship.

Dan told us that the article was on the Admiral’s desk by 7:30 on the morning after it was put online, and that it was circulated widely throughout the Coast Guard’s Academy and larger community. The cadet in question was treated for his injuries at L&M the night of the incident and released the following morning, and disciplinary action had not yet been decided on. The real issue, he thought, was bigger: “The article painted a less than flattering portrait of our cadets, and we’re a service academy,” he said. “When we visit your campus we’re representing our institution, and we don’t want these interactions to be the basis for our relationship.”

One comment on the article’s online post rings particularly true: “This small group of Coast Guard men reflect poorly on their institution, as the meatheads who assaulted them reflect on Conn.” Two weeks ago, Dan tells us, he met a member of the Class of 1955 who had met his wife at a square dance at Connecticut College. The larger history of our institutions is meaningful and rich, and not tainted with blood and beer cans. Whatever biases have persisted throughout our years at Conn, perpetuated and grown through hearsay from 4-year cycles past, stem from random drunk exchanges and aggressive ice hockey games. A two-hour lunch cannot offer any conclusive, simplified declaration of how cadets really are – that’s something I can never claim to know. It did encourage me to judge my neighbors on more than their worst weekend miscreants, as I hope they will for me.

Dan, John and I have resolved to create more opportunities for both institutions to get to know each other—perhaps even when sober. When you get there, we ask you for open-mindedness – a promise to reserve any embedded judgment upon seeing a white hat.

One of our students’ favorite complaints pertains to the homogeneity of experience and beliefs on our campus. The Coast Guard has no student newspaper, and Dan suggested that when issues arise that cadets could use a forum to discuss, that the discussion happens primarily “behind closed doors.” Despite the anger seen in many of the comments regarding this article, the comment space itself gave cadets an opportunity to make a strong case, one that has led to some actual impetus for change.

As Dan walked us back to the parking lot, I remarked that of all five branches of the military, the job of the Coast Guard seemed the least contentious. He stopped at the spot we met two hours before. “I’ve always thought,” he said, “that no matter what your political beliefs are, pulling people out of the water? Entirely bipartisan in my opinion.”

-Lilah Raptopoulos