VMI Culture
The outside world looks at us cadets as students going to a military college living a typical military lifestyle. What they don’t understand, and what they will never understand unless they matriculate, are the customs and traditions that shape our everyday lives and even our spoken language. Within the corps there is one overlying language that everyone speaks but there are two sub-communities that have very distinctive languages of their own. These two groups within VMI are the rats and the cadre. The specific details about the different languages spoken at VMI will be covered soon but for now just know that the things we are required to do and the unique language we speak as a corps truly sets us apart from society making us by definition, a discourse community.
For those not familiar with the VMI ratline it might come as a surprise that rats are not allowed to use pronouns. Rats are required to say “this rat” and “this rat’s” when speaking of themselves and they have to say “this rat’s brother rat” when referring to another rat, even when referring to female rats. Instructors enforce this rule very strictly and it’s all for one reason: to build comradery. By saying “this rat” and “this rat’s brother rat” it takes away all senses of individualism and in a way it’s showing that you acknowledge that you are no better than your brother rats. This is especially important because throughout VMI’s long history, individuals have never succeeded in the ratline. Rats rely on their brother rats on an everyday basis to motivate each other and keep one another going because they know at some point they will need help from their brother rats to get them through another day too. The reason rats need so much help and support from their brother rats is because our instructors, known by us as our cadre, belong to their own sub-community which has its own specific language used to demoralize rats. Usually everything that a cadre member says to a rat is meant to make the rat feel bad about themselves or even make them want to quit the ratline. They’ll scream things like “you’re the worst rat in the company” or “you’re embarrassing your family” to try and get inside the rat’s head. Even though the rats may think cadre are just saying those things to be mean, they’re actually testing the rats to see who can overcome the emotional reaction and work harder to better themselves. Those two sub-communities’ languages are really the only two languages that differ significantly from everyone else at VMI’s language. The overlying language used by the entire corps differs from the general public’s language because of our use of terms only used at VMI and our use of abbreviations.
Here’s an example of a sentence with common terms and abbreviations used by rats at VMI: “At SRC formation tonight I got boned for shoes then afterwards on my way back from the mess hall I was headed towards the PX but ran into some RDC members who had me sound off the GC four times before letting me fly away”. To a typical cadet at VMI they would know exactly what I was talking about but to most people that would make absolutely no sense. This brings me to my next point about how VMI cadets use acronyms and words with different meanings to communicate with each other. Some common acronyms include BRC, CQRB, CTT, DRC, DTT, GC, PX, RDC, SRC, the list goes on and on. As mentioned, to most people those acronyms are just a bunch of random letters, but to every VMI cadet those acronyms all have meanings with specific purposes. The reason for having all of these acronyms isn’t to exclude everyone else from knowing what we’re talking about but it’s simply to shorten what we have to say so we can communicate more efficiently. For example if I use the sentence from earlier but replace the acronyms with the full words it would sound like this “At supper role call formation tonight I got boned for shoes then afterwards on my way back from the mess hall I was headed for the post exchange but ran into some rat disciplinary committee members who had me sound off the general committee four times before letting me fly away”. Now after hearing the acronyms fully explained the sentence probably makes a little more sense but it’s probably still not one hundred percent clear. That’s because the words and phrases VMI uses don’t mean what most people would think they should mean. For example: bone, dyke, dyke-out, fly away, sound off, strain, turn out, and many more. In the given example the terms boned and fly away were the only non-self-explanatory terms used. The term boned refers to the act of receiving demerits for doing something wrong while the term fly away refers to a rat having to walk away at a brisk pace. Now that everything has been broken down into its fundamental meaning everyone should be able to understand the statement above. The terms themselves have been around for generations and have become tradition so they just haven’t left the corps. The difference between these terms and the acronyms is that VMI could use these terms to exclude non-cadets since they’re all rooted in tradition and can only be learned at VMI.
To conclude, VMI as a whole uses a system of acronyms and words that sound normal but have different meanings than expected to communicate efficiently with other cadets. VMI is considered a discourse community in itself because of its unique language but there are also a couple of sub-discourse communities inside of it. The two sub-discourse communities every cadet is familiar with are the rats and the cadre. Basically rats are told to disregard all language that could be taken as individualistic so they see their brother rats as equals and bonds can be formed. Cadre on the other hand are told to train the rats and test them in a very strict but controlled manner. These are two groups that make up a portion of the population VMI, their spoken languages differ significantly from the rest of the corps yet every cadet understands them. The multiple languages spoken within the corps and use of abbreviations for pretty much everything are the reasons VMI is its own discourse community. Since these languages and abbreviations are deeply rooted in tradition, the only way to fully understand some of the things cadets do is to matriculate yourself.