Sher Wright's West Point Graduate Exam

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Sher's Graduate Exam

Sher was spending several days a week in the Washington DC Virginia suburbs during the 2002 sniper attacks, and gravitated to internet message boards for ideas on how to keep attacks like this, with the enormous economic and psychological disruption they bring, from being repeated. Some of the more extreme denizens of these boards seem to hold that anyone who would entertain thoughts on regulation of firearms to address attacks like this was a flaming Liberal and a gun-grabber. (Actually, pretty much everyone on those boards felt that way). At some point in the discussion, while trying to point out that he was in neither of those categories, he let it slip that he was once on the West Point pistol team. He was absolutely amazed by the flood of disbelief that ensued. He’d really hit a nerve! Apparently gun rights advocates picture USMA graduates as reliable a group of Big-C Conservatives as you will find. While the West Point graduates Sher knows are indeed uniformly conservative, it would be a stretch to call them all Big-C Conservatives. For example, his “grad” friends seemed much more troubled then others about the long-term implications of the Iraq invasion.

After enduring several weeks of incessant disbelief that a West Point graduate could possibly be a Moderate (as he put it) or a Liberal Gun-Grabber (as they put it), he devised the following exercise. It’s like the tests they’re using on the internet to prove that you’re a real person as opposed to a computer program harvesting email addresses. It has a unique twist – it not only gives you questions but it also gives you the answers. You pass the test if you can nod at the end of each question and say, “yep, that’s right!” Like most of the tests that Sher took at the Academy, grading is on the honor system. He's confident that his classmates would all get perfect scores, although perhaps only after taking a brief stroll through memory lane.

Once he posted this test the level of disbelief quickly declined to zero, and all were able to get back to more substantive discussions. Thus, Sher offers this in the hope that anyone who assumes that someone from a conservative background can’t have moderate views (despite the dictionary’s use of “moderate” as a definition of “conservative”) might think again.

1. When will a female cadet always answer yes to the question "are you a cow?" A: When she is second class.

2. When the answer to the question "How is the cow?" includes a number, where are you? What is the largest value this number can have? A: Washington Hall, 10.

3. What determines the designation "star man?" A: GOM.

4. If a platoon leader is a Cadet Lieutenant and a company commander is a Cadet Captain, what are the respective ranks of a battalion, regimental, and brigade commander? A: All are Cadet Captains.

5. Use of what color pencil keeps cadets out of the Boarders Ward? A: Green.

6. Of Juice or Art, which has PEs? A: Juice.

7. What deity is a cadet in formation most likely to call on? A: Odin.

8. Who is most likely to use the phrase "a tenth pro is a tenth wasted?" A: A goat.

9. What will most likely get the bayonets shaking? A: The Thumper.

10. A firstie is fond of brown betty but gets none. What is the most likely explanation? A: He lost big dick.

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