Senior Detail

The culture in the Corps at A&M dictated that a cadet serve his outfit and its members for an academic year, then receive increasing amounts of service for the next three. The service to the outfit is described in such memories as Whistle Jock, Mail and Laundry Detail, and Batt Man. Service to the outfit's upper classmen, however, had the potential for getting out of hand, so there were a series of privileges allocated to each class.

Pissheads had no right to personal service from the fish. Sergebutts and Zips did, but there was a priority involved - a request for service (usually called a "detail") from a Zip took priority over a request from a Sergebutt. Moreover, a Zip could countermand a "Junior detail", but not vice versa. Finally, in the eyes of fish, all zips were equal, so no Zip could countermand another Zip's detail. Thus, a "senior detail" had the highest claim on a fish's time. Of course, by the time cadets got to be white-belts, they understood the claims on a fish's time, and refrained from sending fish on details that would cause them to miss classes or major Corps functions.

It wasn't unusual for seniors to stipulate that a fish on a detail not stop to whip out or anything else expected of a fish under normal circumstances that would delay completion of the senior detail. That included stopping to explain what they were doing, other than to say to the questioner, "Senior detail, Sir."

One other facet of the culture of the Corps at A&M came into play here - fish were considered to be infinitely dumb (in the words of Eddurds, giving his Commander's "welcome" speech to the Class of '75, "You're so dumb, I can't even tell you how dumb you are, 'cause you're too dumb to understand what I'm telling you.") Thus, they had a built-in excuse for behaviors that exceeded the privileges allocated to their class. Of course, there were consequences involved in those behaviors (see the memory on Corps Discipline.)But it wasn't unusual for a fish to exploit that expectation of ignorance, and to believe that it was a fish privilege to get away with anything he could. In fact, there was even a name for the practice of intentional unauthorized assumption of one or more privileges not allocated to one's class - "pull-out", since the idea to do so was presumed to have been pulled out of the perpetrator's anal orifice.

Since the usual conditions for a senior detail implied that the fish had whatever privileges he needed to get the task completed, the senior detail offered a perfect opportunity for a fish to execute a pull-out, with a low probability of suffering the normal consequences for doing so. If a fish was late for an event or class, it might pop into his miniscule brain to bee-line across the grass in the quad (which was a senior privilege), and to respond to anyone who questioned this action with "Senior detail, Sir!"

I hope that my buds will list their most memorable senior details here (legitimate details they performed, details they issued as Zips, and pull-outs.)

One I remember from our Zip year involved Mitchell, who had accepted a Marine Corps contract, and often wore a sleeveless sweatshirt with "U.S.M.C." in large letters across the chest. fish, upon sighting an upper classman in the halls of the dorm, had to yell out, "Howdy, Mister <insert last name>, Sir!". One morning, another of our buds asked fish Latimer to tell him what was written on Mitchell's sweatshirt. After the usual protestations from Latimer that it wasn't a fish privilege to read things in the hall, the zip forced him to do it anyway (senior detail). Latimer shouted out, "USS-MICK, Sir!" which put us all in gales of laughter, and prompted another senior detail - from then on, the fish were to greet Mitchell with "Howdy Mister Uss-Mick, Sir!".

John (Yankus) Yantis