When I was a cadet '79-'83, it was a tradition to have "Joe College" nights, when cadets were allowed (and encouraged) to wear civilian shirts or coat sand tie under the short overcoat (no civilian clothes could be seen at formation) and the menu was always pizza, soda, and "Go Army Cake." Plebes could "fall out" but were required to demolish the cake when cutting it, rather than make the nice, clean divisions required on all other occasions, and validating the A-1 was a time-honored way of being gung ho for plebes. "Validating" referred to "chugging," or emptying a bottle of some liquid atone pull. Plebes would often "volunteer" (as they could not be ordered to, but there were sure some clear hints given by upperclassmen) to "validate" the A-1 steak sauce bottle, but I have also seen hot sauce validations, as well as a dumb attempt to validate the peanut butter jar. I myself am a veteran A-1 man.

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Joe College nights were usually the Friday night prior to a home football game. The uniform for dinner was announced by the Plebe minute callers as: "Joe College over racing stripes". The uniform consisted of a personally owned tee shirt (plain white or your favorite design), Dress Grey trousers and optional headgear. Following dinner there was a pep rally in which the entire Corps turned out and cheered the football team onto victory.

The Corps would be so fired up that there would be very little studying for Saturday's classes between recall and tattoo. Between tattoo and taps, an impromptu rally would sometimes erupt where cadets would open their windows and cheer again. Of course, there were those infamous "spirit missions"...

John Greiman

'81, I-2

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