Far from his South Carolina home, Gary Moody sat glassy-eyed and tremble-lipped amid the din of the Naval Academy dining hall as upperclassmen pummeled him for answers eluding him: You got a 1500 on your SAT but can't remember our names or what's for dinner?

"It's all about how hard you try, and I don't think you're giving it your all right now. Do you have a little bit more left in there?" asked Kerry George, a senior-ranking upperclassman.

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," Moody said, making it sound more like a question. He left a half-eaten sandwich on his plate, knocked a fork to the floor and walked off, forgetting his towel.

"I thought he was going to cry," George said. "It amazes me how many guys will cry here."

It's not easy being a plebe. And that, sir or ma'am, is the whole point.

The first step in molding officers is weeding out the weaklings. But that is a delicate and imperfect process, and academy officials are increasingly concerned that their traditional initial testing of midshipmen's physical and emotional limits, plebe summer, may be burning off the most-promising freshmen.

Officials are considering using personality tests to identify potential dropouts they want to keep and then offering them some relief from the stressful regimentation of life in the academy and military.

When Moody and 1,250 classmates signed on as the Class of 2002, people spoke to them of honor, courage and commitment. Nobody mentioned such plebe summer realities as "plebe hack" and the ominous "Tango company." When those realities hit, 87 of them walked out the door.

Moody was among them. He and his near-perfect SAT score are back in South Carolina.

Academy officials worry that they might have scared off a future admiral. Again.

Personality plays role

Whether you weep or thrive at the academy depends largely on how you handle the stress of abusive upperclassmen, who returned to Annapolis last week, and the pressures of a heavy academic load, which begins next week. But academy officials are finding that personality type also plays a role. Extroverts, for example, thrive, they have found. Introverts, such as Moody, walk away.

Most Naval Academy students are extroverts, people who follow orders and need to be part of a group. But the Navy also needs independent introverts, people who can weather a month in a submarine on the ocean floor. Yet, most dropouts are these independents, people not weak but disgusted with the military lifestyle.

Since 1986, incoming freshmen have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test, which measures how they interact with others and make decisions. In recent months, the academy has been exploring why certain types -- sensitive, introverted thinkers -- are three times more likely to drop out.

"Their personality tells them, 'I don't like being told when to get up in the morning, I don't like being told what to wear and where to stand,' " said Glenn Gottschalk, the academy's institutional research guru, who studies the students' test results.

The academy is considering what some alumni might consider sacrilege: attempting to reduce the dropout rate by accommodating the introverts.

"Extroverts are recharged and have their stress relieved by group activities, which we have a lot of here. The introvert has his stress relieved by reading a book, listening to music or taking a long run by themselves, which there's no time for," Gottschalk said.

For plebes of all personality types, surviving the first months of academy life is an intense exercise in managing stress, which comes in many forms.

There's "plebe hack," the chronic cough plebes sustain because of exhausted immune systems. There's "plebe funk," the result of too much sweat and too little shower time. And there are the injuries, mostly shin splints, that result from the rigorous exercise.

The pressure and temptation to leave are constant.

Heard at a 6 a.m. exercise session: "Come on, Smith! Don't wuss out. There's a girl over here kicking your butt and you're on your knees. There isn't room here for a weakling like you."

Heard at a training session on the academy's strict honor code: "If you don't want to buy into that [honor] and pay attention to these lectures, please do us all a favor and get out."

Heard from a plebe during an interpersonal relationship training class: "When are they going to stop breaking us down and start building us up?"

Another plebe: "He drove his shoulder into my back and it hurt. It's guys like that who make me say, 'Do I really want to be part of this institution?' "

As a result, the word "Tango" rings in plebes' ears during summer.

Tango company is a remote section of the academy's dormitory, Bancroft Hall, that is used to "process out" the dropouts. Plebes can't just walk out the door. It takes a week or two to complete paperwork and interviews, to turn in their uniforms and to tell a dozen academy officials why they're leaving.

"Tango is looming over people's heads," said Michael Rea, a plebe from Stevensville. "It goes through everybody's mind. The fear that you don't have what it takes to become an officer, that you won't make it academically, that you won't make it physically."

For Rea, who chose the academy over Princeton and Brown universities, the key to surviving has been learning to quietly do his push-ups and to avoid drawing attention to himself, confronting his aggressors or questioning their tactics.

At the end of the first six weeks, plebes are allowed off campus for the first time during parents' weekend. Rea used his liberty to attend a party with family and friends, where he tried to describe the most unusual six weeks of his life.

"I haven't said to myself once, 'This makes no sense. This is pointless.' I've been angry and I've been frustrated. But stress management has been the key," he said.

"Because, if I dwell on my failures I'll be headed to Tango myself."

Nathaniel Hathaway also finds small, creative ways to cope. He has asked his mother to send granola bars and Gatorade. At night, after the lights go out at 10 p.m., he stays up an extra hour or two, catching up on his food intake and writing letters and journal entries.

"I did it, and I knew it was wrong. But I had so much to do during the day. There's just no time," said Hathaway, of Bowie.

Classes on coping

The academy tries to help plebes deal with the lack of time and the extra pressures of a military education. They attend classes on anger and conflict resolution ("Conflict at USNA is inevitable and normal"), eating disorders ("Are you preoccupied with concerns about food, weight and body image?"), and coping with stress ("Academy life is inherently stressful").

But Hathaway has seen classmates who simply haven't found a way to cope. Some have been on crutches all summer with shin splints, sprains or blisters. At one point this summer, 120 of them -- 10 percent -- held "medical chits" that earned them light duty.

Those are often the ones who incessantly fume about coming to the academy just to please their mothers and fathers. "Some people just shouldn't be here," Hathaway said.

But some freshmen don't realize that until they're crying into their pillows at night.

Those were the ones lined up outside Capt. Len Hering's door July 16, the first day plebes were allowed to drop out. Inside, Hering listened to their reasons:

"This is not the career for me."

"This is not what I expected of college life."

"This is not what the brochure said."

"A kid this morning said to me, 'I really like the Marine Corps' dress blue uniform.' That is not a reason to come to the Naval Academy," said Hering, plebe summer's officer in charge.

"One guy said, 'I must have been out to lunch.' Well, yeah. I guess so. Some people, a military life is just not for them."

They are the ones who went to see Keith Laganga, a senior chief petty officer who supervised Tango company this summer. Laganga said many dropouts were academic or athletic standouts unaccustomed to the failures common in plebe life, such as a poorly made bed.

'What'd you expect?'

"I can't understand how you can go to the Naval Academy and not recognize that it's going to be regimented," Laganga said. "I mean, what'd you expect?"

By the end of the freshman year, more than one in 10 will have dropped out. By graduation, in 2002, three-fourths of the freshman class is likely to remain.

The academy is trying to determine whether it is accepting too many people destined to drop out, or whether it should be working harder to help them survive.

That's where the personality testing will play a larger role.

The Myers-Briggs tests categorize each person in one of 16 personality types. More than half of the incoming freshmen fall into three categories. Most are extroverts who are intuitive rather than sensitive and rely on facts, not feelings, to make decisions. Sensitive, feeling people made up 1.5 percent of the freshmen between 1990 and 1997, but 22 percent of them dropped out.

"There's not much room for feelings here," Gottschalk said. "We don't give them a chance to say, 'Gee, what do you think about that?' That's the epitome of what the military is not."

It is seen in the drill practices, where plebes spend two hours in the sun, three times a week, wearing camouflage fatigues while learning how to face right and present arms.

Those who don't step in time and drop their rifles are called "individuals," which is not good at the academy, said Gunnery Sgt. Terrance Slaughter. "We call them an individual because they stick out from the rest of the platoon. We'll pull them off to the side," he said.

Four years ago, the academy tried to include more personal time during plebe summer to help the "individuals" unwind. But there were a record 102 dropouts "because the other extrovert types had more time to think, 'Why am I here?' " Gottschalk said.

This summer, the academy used a "ramp up" approach, starting exercise and military training gradually. But the attrition rate remained about the same as in prior years.

The academy is thinking of telling dormitory supervisors, called company officers, which students are the independent-thinking introverts so that the officers can dole out duties tailored more to the possible dropouts.

The extra attention is important for the Navy because introverts become admirals at a higher rate than extroverts do, Gottschalk said.

"They're very productive members of the military once they assimilate. It just takes them longer," he said. "If we can just get them past the summer."

The Facts

.. .. .. .. .. Plebe summer .. .. .. ..Plebe year

Year .. .. .. .. .dropouts .. .. .. .. .dropouts

1994 .. .. .. .. .. 8.4% .. .. .. .. .. .. 11.0%

1995 .. .. .. .. .. 7.4% .. .. .. .. .. .. 11.4%

1996 .. .. .. .. .. 6.8% .. .. .. .. .. .. 11.8%

1997 .. .. .. .. .. 7.4% .. .. .. .. .. .. 11.0%

1998 .. .. .. .. .. 7.1% .. .. .. .. .. .. ..n/a

Plebe dropouts, 1986-1997, based on personality type

Personality types are determined by Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: extrovert/introvert, E or I; intuitive/sensory, N or S; thinking/feeling, T or F; judgmental/perceiving, J or P.]

ISFP = 1.5% of all admissions, but 11.7% of ISFPs drop out during plebe summer; 22% drop out by the end of plebe year (ISFPs are the lowest percentage of the student body, but have the highest dropout rate)

ESTJ = 18.3% of all admissions, but only 1.8% of ESTJs drop out during plebe summer; 8.3% drop out by the end of plebe year (ESTJs are the highest percentage of the student body but have the lowest dropout rate)

SOURCE: Naval Academy

Pub Date: 8/16/98