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For those of you non-cadet types, BRC stands for Breakfast Role Call. This is the first formation of the day for the VTCC, and all the companies are supposed to head out onto the VT on the upper quad for formation before marching over to Shultz dining hall for breakfast. Or at least that was how it worked when I was a cadet. Now Shultz dining hall is becoming a bit of history, and I don’t know what the requirements are for who forms up when. Back in my day… (Jeeze, don’t I sound old!)
Anyway, back in my day, I believe the battalions alternated days for early morning formation, unless there was a special event. And depending on what you had going on in your personal calendar, you could get excused from formation. I missed plenty of morning formations due to the Army ROTC physical training schedule. We were usually finishing up a 2 mile run just as formation was ending, so we had an automatic out for that day. And if I had a test I really needed to get up early for, or a project I had to work on late the night before, I could get an excuse for those, most times.
But there were the occasional mornings when I got out to the VT and I was only one of a handful of cadets present. Nothing seems more ridiculous than having only 20 cadets out of an entire battalion forming up at the crack of dawn for first formation, but we did it anyway.
Wow, that’s a lot different than what we do now. The entire regiment goes every weekday, and the only way you can get out of it, really, is if you are too sick to go, ie. you may pass our throw up while out there.
Ashley, I imagine it has changed. Policies like formation attendance change with the whims of whoever is in charge at the time. If the commandant of cadets wants everyone there, everyone will be there. If it’s not a huge priority with the commandant, then the policy will reflect that. You’ll see another example of this in tomorrow’s comic 😉