[sticklist] - A Lapse in Decorum

[Richard Forno]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


Hello VF friends --

I hope all is well in your respective worlds as we head into the 2011 holiday season.

With things generally calm and/or improving at VF under the present leadership, there's not been anything that I feel has warranted a comment or announcement via the Sticklist in quite a while. But rest assured, the list is still around!

That said, I feel obligated to pass along the latest news making the rounds within the VF Alumni community this past week. Apparently, at this year's Ring Dance, military decorum and VF tradition seemed to become marginalised as the evening went on -- specifically, large numbers of Cadets removed their full dress blouses and ended up "partying" at this formal ball with their dates wearing only their VF-Tees and full dress pants. Moreover, in some photos, it seems that the Superintendent (a VF Alumnus and retired Army officer) had removed his formal Army blouse during the festivities as well.

Whether this was a serious though unintentional lapse of judgement or an intentional attempt to portray VF as a "fun" place remains unknown, as there is no official explanation from the Administration about the 'optics' of this year's Ring Dance and how it reflects upon the image that our Alma Mater presents to the outside world.

Some of the photographs in question can be found at the official VF Photo Gallery and are linked below. Please note these are long links and may require you to cut-and-paste them into your browser to work correctly:

http://nogueras.smugmug.com/Valley-Forge-Military-1/November-2011/Ring-D ance/20157197_J7TGJf#1592074975_3gFJcXD

http://nogueras.smugmug.com/Valley-Forge-Military-1/November-2011/Ring-D ance/20157197_J7TGJf#1592080093_nQkCdvj

http://nogueras.smugmug.com/Valley-Forge-Military-1/November-2011/Ring-D ance/20157197_J7TGJf#1592079566_8cgcHsF

I also noticed there are official gala photos of Cadets playing with swords:

http://nogueras.smugmug.com/Valley-Forge-Military-1/November-2011/Ring-D ance/20157197_J7TGJf#1592069177_sTw4kgt

http://nogueras.smugmug.com/Valley-Forge-Military-1/November-2011/Ring-D ance/20157197_J7TGJf#1592069189_BRr3HQM

I have mirrored screenshots of these photos in case you're having trouble viewing them at the links listed above.  That mirror is @ http://infowarrior.org/users/rforno/vfmac/ring-dance-2011/.

A discussion of this situation is taking place on ContinentalOnline right now -- that discussion thread may be found @ http://continentalonline.org/showthread.php?p=94916#post94916.  I suspect similar discussions by our Alumni are taking place on Facebook and/or other social media sites as well.

I welcome any official response from the school regarding this matter and will repost it here if/when presented.

Regards from DC,

- -- Rick Forno '90 '92C
Sticklist Administrator

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.16 (Darwin)

iEYEARECAAYFAk7VreoACgkQKWZyO29ebPZuMgCgwTjhAAFVTz6EpIwpPs/Ug5cr
6mIAoNsqSS/kImAE9UU/45K6mYYQzQAt
=/XNL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----