Navy celebrates seniors

 Once a year contracted Cadets and Cadet midshipmen get together and celebrate naval traditions at an elaborate tradition known as dining in. The dining in, which is a large affair, could not function without cadet midshipmen who put in a lot of time to organize it.
Cadet leaders in the Golden Anchor Society are the ones that are tasked out to setting up for this event. 

"This year and the previous year we tasked things out more to the underclassman so sophomores took a more active roles this time because they are the ones that need to do this for next year," said Kevin Klemens a 22-year-old senior, studies of war and peace major from Dana Point, Calif.

There are many steps, including working with Sodexho. 

"The Golden Anchor Society basically gets together with Sodexo and we build a contract with Sodexo and they base off what they did last year," said LT Jarrod Gazerek of the Navel science department.

"They meet with Sodexo and pick out what food they want and tell them about how many people will be there," said Gazerek.

"One of the first things we do is reserve a location and we have to contact Sodexo and get a menu written up and determine how many people will go and the cost per plate was," said Madison Dupouy, a 21-year-old sophomore physics major from Greenfield Center, N.Y.

What makes the naval dining in such an important event are the many traditions. 

"The dining in itself is a tradition and we have the president of the mess and the vice president of the mess," Gazerek said. "Service etiquette is a tradition; we have our two forks, a desert fork and salad spoons and if you pick up those at the wrong time you can receive a fine."

The naval dining in a formal dinner in which cadets are required to wear dress blues and non-cadets but contracted midshipmen wear the navel uniform. 

One of the biggest changes was changing use of grogs, which is a popular tradition at Norwich University.

"They have grog but this year it was changed into fines so if you did something wrong you pay a fine or you have to do something," Dupoy said.

"The only difference we had this year was the grog; we had to change that and we came up for new ideas for fines and it worked out pretty well," said Klemens.

Each midshipman for every class year is required to show a video, which is a skit that midshipmen put on for everyone to see. 

"We have skits that each class has to do it, [it] goes from freshmen all way up to seniors and usually they are video recorded," said Brett Andrews a 20-year-old junior biology major from Weymouth, Mass.

One of the most important traditions of the event is the use of side boys, which is the ringing of a bell for each naval officer who comes aboard a ship, according to Adam Snider, a 19–year-old sophomore from Tip Ton, Mich.

"One of the biggest navy traditions that we follow is the tradition of the side boys and when an officer comes on to a ship and there is a detail that salutes them and rings them aboard with a bell boson's whistle," said Snider. "When they come aboard it's a ceremony depending on how many stars they have."
Another important part of the ceremony is a guest speaker.

"The guest speaker was the command master chief of Norfolk naval station," Klemens said. "It's rare to get an enlisted side for the Navy; we usually get a bunch of officers. It was great having a senior enlisted and the other midshipmen really liked it."

The guest speaker, unlike most years, gave his insight from the enlisted side to the future officers on how to conduct themselves. 

"Command Master Chief Greg Snaza is the current master chief of the largest naval base in Norfolk Virginia and his speech was based on officer-to-enlisted relationship and he has a lot to offer to us all," said Gazerak.