Spirit Missions

One of the most important things cadets can do at the Academy is to leave a legendary spirit mission. There isn't a perfect prescription of what the best spirit mission is, which leaves cadets to their creative instincts. When old grads come back to talk with us, they always rant and rave about how their class did this amazing spirit mission that people still talk about to this day. These stories are usually greeted with awe and excitement, and cadets want to leave their mark on this place so they can tell their grandchildren these stories.

Two essential parts of every spirit mission are danger and surprise. Cadets do the spirit mission well aware of the risks involved and are ready to prepare the consequences. The historical spirit missions have at least one cadet almost get kicked out of USAFA. Think about what happened in the class of 2004. A few cadets went up on Eagle's peak and painted a giant "04" with spray paint. Furious, the Academy leadership along with forest rangers hastily tried to get rid of the eyesore. They sandblasted the spray paint off, but at the same time they sandblasted a giant "04" into the mountain which will remain for the duration of the Academy. The end of the story always goes that the responsible cadets almost got booted or late grad. These stories have a tendency of scaring cadets away from attempting spirit missions of their own; especially because spirit missions have to be carried out with the leadership of firsties and the brute manual labor of doolies.

The second aspect of a good spirit mission, surprise, is something that the upper leadership is attempting to get rid of. Officially, the current policy stands for every new spirit mission to be approved all the way up to the level of the commandant. Each link in the chain approves the spirit mission with the mindset of WWCD (What Would the Commandant Do?) for fear of if they submit crap up the chain they'll see that crap rolling back downhill before long. Think about how surprised everyone must have been when the planetarium was turned into a giant 8-ball, or when the static display planes were over the chapel wall.

Speaking of static display planes, I was in Morocco last semester but I hear there was an incident with a particular F-35. I've only heard third hand accounts of the situation, but from what I can put together there was first a direct order given out to not move the aircraft (which is cadet code for move the aircraft). After someone did move the F-35, cadet leadership issued a moratorium on all spirit missions. They were officially banned until cadets could show improvement (which is cadet code for never). Some cadets had good intentions to speak out against the situation but did it in an inappropriate fashion and therefore got punished. The main sentiment they felt was that they did not want to see another age-old Academy tradition get washed down the drain.

To show how lame spirit missions have gotten nowadays, check out this picture from last year's Recognition where a spirit sheet on the staff tower was the only thing that got through: