Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 4, 1990 TAG: 9005040089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
To hear his cadets and colleagues tell it, he's the kind of leader soldiers in any army - corporate or military - would love to follow: authoritative and persuasive, interested and kind.
That's high praise for a man who after one year has proposed some fundamental changes in the way the more than century-old corps does things. Traditions die hard in college corps of cadets, witness Virginia Military Institute's battle to continue excluding women from its all-male corps.
Then there are the allusions to last year, when 10 cadets got into trouble with local authorities for abducting a fellow cadet and shaving his head near the Duck Pond on campus.
Another, caught breaking into a Blacksburg home, was shot in the shoulder by the homeowner. Five of the Duck Pond conspirators were dismissed from the corps, one of them from the university, too.
Musser has reinvigorated the corps in the wake of those events, cadets say, bringing a fresh perspective to how a military training program should prepare young men and women for the challenges they will encounter in the corporations and bases around the world.
"It was clear to us," said Thomas Goodale, vice president for student affairs, "that we were in a fish-or-cut-bait situation [last year] and we had to find someone of Stan's stature to make the corps viable.
"I think we're at the stage that if Stan Musser can't do it, it can't be done."
Reviews of the general's first year with the 540-cadet corps are gushing. Questions about the downside of his leadership are answered with variations of, "If there is, I've yet to encounter it."
Words like "outstanding," "excellent," and "extraordinary," often uttered in reverent tones, pepper descriptions of the general's leadership. Musser, naturally, commends the corps and its own student leadership for the improved morale, energy and discipline.
"The corps is just in love with General Musser," said Ginger Hiemenz, a junior from Alexandria. "He's brought a lot of energy to the corps of cadets. He's really committed to it."
Said Mark Stillwagon, next year's regimental commander: "He's done an excellent job. He's got a good head on him, . . . but I wouldn't necessarily say he's one of the boys. He knows how to get along with cadets."
Cadets draw a marked contrast between the energetic Musser and his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Howard Lane, when asked how they like Musser and the way he's led the corps for the past year.
"When I first came in we had a general who didn't get too involved with cadets," said Mike Clark, a junior from Lexington, Ohio. "I thought that was the role of a commandant." But Col. Gene Wilson, one of two deputy commandants who has worked for Musser and Lane, said the implicit criticism - that Musser is more involved in the corps than Lane - is unfair.
Lane, he said, was at his office in Brodie Hall by 6:30 a.m. each day. The retired Air Force general, however, was less likely to appear at cadet social functions, creating the impression that he was uninterested in cadet life.
Musser "does extend himself and participate in the cadet activities. I suspect that happened in the early years of General Lane," Wilson said. "For nine years Lane led the corps where it should have gone and accomplished all the tasks that were assigned to him."
Credit Musser's experience as vice commandant at the U.S. Air Force Academy - an assignment he obviously relished - for imbuing the 54-year-old fighter pilot with a keen sense of the needs and anxieties of college cadets.
This, after all, is a man who showed up at a rappelling clinic last month, surprising some of the fraternity and sorority types there, pleasing the cadets. Midway through the clinic, Musser jumped into the chair, rode it to the top of the 45-foot tower and rappelled down.
"It tells us he's not an old man just doing the job he's told to do," Stillwagon said, adding that it proves he's interested, active.
Musser's accolades - most decorated Air Force general, fighter pilot who flew 263 combat missions in Vietnam, top administrator at the Air Force Academy - awe some cadets who dream of a colorful career in the armed forces.
"He's really an impressive guy," said Mike Clark, a junior from Lexington, Ohio, who will command 2nd Battalion next year. "It's hard to imagine a two-star general would take an interest in cadets."
The general doesn't agree. "I love it," he says of his job. The Tech corps regimen is "surprisingly close" to that at the Air Force Academy, which began to integrate women into its corps during his tenure there.
It's the military-college regimen - the training, the disciplinary code and the corps organization - that Musser spent much of his first year reviewing. The changes he subsequently recommended to the corps encountered surprisingly little resistance, he said, a contention reinforced by interviews with cadets.
"We're completely changing the training philosophy, so to speak," he said. "The yelling, screaming, belittling, whatever you want to call it, is going to stop. I'm trying to humanize it as much as possible.
"That doesn't mean there won't be discipline. In fact, there'll probably be more . . . because I changed the discipline regulations, which is another big change."
Musser proposed adding "non-judicial punishment" to the corps' merit-demerit system, which can be abused by cadets who may break some rules for the first 20 days of the month and then shape up in the last 10, escaping penalties.
The new guidelines, patterned after the Universal Code of Military Justice, were effective at the beginning of the just-completed spring semester. Instead of accruing demerits, cadets now are obliged to explain immediately their reason for, say, missing a Monday formation.
Unless the excuse is related to academics, a company commander can mete out punishment that night. If the offense is too serious, the commander passes the case to the battalion commander, who can do likewise with the regimental commander.
Musser tracks the punishments in each company to assure justice is not being distributed capriciously. "It's really a good lesson in leadership. It's how they're going to have to do it in the real world.
"Too much of it [corps discipline] has been rote," he said, referring to written regulations. "Anybody could walk in and say, `OK, you missed a formation, you get eight penalty tours.' "
The tours, reinstituted by Musser, are each one hour long - divided into 15 minutes marching on the VT-shaped sidewalks near the cadet dormitories, followed by a five-minute break. They may be done only on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons, the shank of the revered college weekend.
"The changes he's made have been for the better," said Stillwagon, incoming regimental commander. "He's really working for the corps, in our best interest, to keep us out of trouble."
In an effort to foster unity among freshmen whatever their companies, new cadets will be placed in one of three training groups during their "cadre week" - those steamy August days when would-be cadets learn to march and salute.
"Everybody will be training exactly the same, instead of 10 different ways," Musser said. "And that's how they do it at the academy. That's where I get some of this."
Only after cadre week will new cadets be assigned to one of eight reorganized companies, which they will leave for another at the end of their sophomore year.
Coretta Oden, a junior from Norfolk, said swapping companies after two years in the corps "is a fantastic idea because there were too many cliques and a buddy system that gave too many people jobs.
"Now you get it because you deserve it," said next year's regimental adjutant.
That's just how Musser wants it.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB