The Norwich Guidon

The Norwich Guidon, student newspaper of Norwich University, is published twice monthly and has won numerous awards for excellence in its class.

Reporters, editors, and managers for The Norwich Guidon are students at the university who work under the guidance of a Communications faculty advisor. Student editors learn electronic pagination using state of the art computer equipment.

If you have any questions or comments about the paper, please contact Professor Ken Bush at kbush@norwich.edu.

In The News

February 13, 2003

Foxtrot company hosts dining in at Milano Ballroom

Scott Craven
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

The freshman cadets of Foxtrot Company added to their Winter Carnival weekend with a dining-in awards ceremony hosted by their cadre staff in Milano ballroom on Friday evening.

The event took place at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 9, and lasted almost three hours, according to Col. Eric Braman, USA (Ret.), who was one of their invited guests.

"I was really impressed," Braman said. "Every one of their cadets had some part in it. It was very well organized."

According to Braman, this is the first dining-in that he's been witness to during his four years at Norwich.

"They really came together for it, and everybody had a good time," said Cadet Lt. Dustin Blecha, the freshman platoon leader for Foxtrot Co.

According to the 21-year-old from Littleton, Colo., one of the things that made the event so special was that the freshmen did a lot of the work, themselves.

"Unlike all the other balls where the seniors and the juniors are doing all the planning and all the work, the freshmen conducted the entire thing, themselves," Blecha said. "It was done by their own rook buddies, not anyone else, which is probably the best training that they can do."

Another important aspect of the night was that the freshmen had a taste of what a real military formal is like, according to their Platoon Sgt. Joseph Benete, a 23-year old environmental science major from Danberry, Conn.

According to Benete, who has been in the Coast Guard Reserves for four years, "when you're in the actual military, you do a lot of formal functions, and the freshmen should have an idea of how to do that sort of stuff, so when they actually go into the military they're not clueless on how to run things."

Benete said the focus of the dining-in was to honor the freshmen on their accomplishments so far this year.

"They do amazing things, even though they're freshmen, and it's our right as leaders to recognize them for it," Benete said.

The freshman platoon has managed to keep 25 of its original members, and each one of them received some kind of award at the dinner for their efforts.

"In some way or another, they each received some sort of an award for something," Benete said.

According to cadre members, various ribbons and certificates were handed out for such things as military bearing, uniform standards, corps spirit, PT scores, academics, and rook knowledge.

"Just general stuff that's in the S.O.P. that a lot of people tend to overlook," Benete said.

According to Braman, the event was an excellent example of something positive a cadre staff could do for their freshmen.

"It was a classic case of what upperclassmen can do with freshmen and have a good event that has some real lasting value to it, and will teach them a positive tradition," Braman said.

Additionally, Braman expressed his hope that other companies could adopt the model in the future.

"I think it would be a hell of a thing to do," Braman said. "It's an opportunity for the cadre to reward the performance of their freshmen. With all the things that we hear bad about the cadre, I was really impressed with what they did."

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