You learn to hate the checkerboards very early as a Cadet.
Freshmen, aka "knob, smackhead, doowilly, maggot, load, tool and other names your Mom never used, were sometimes used as chess/checkers men by the Seniors. I always hated checkers as you had to leapfrog other men and it was really tough when you had been kinged.
As for women at The Citadel...my oldest daughter was looking at colleges at the same time the Shannon Faulkner fiasco was in the news.
When someone would ask her if she was considering going to her Father's alma mater her reply was quite gratifying.
"Why should I give up the very best thing about being a woman to go through the very worst thing about being a man?"
Both daughters are Columbia College alumna.
Father/Daughter dances there were great with Beach Music and The Shag! Their Freshmen year they saw the dance and heard the music and asked, "What is that, I like it?" I replied, "It's your heritage."
My grandmother graduated from Columbia College in 1895, and taught school for three years before marrying my grandfather.
Her father had been an Assistant Pastor at the Methodist church (Washington Street) by the capitol building, and they married there in 1898 with him officiating.
At Columbia College, she had won the coveted Music Medal, and her youngest daughter, Aunt Betty, won it, too, when she graduated there. My grandfather graduated from Wofford College, and all seven of their children graduated from college.
I used to love to visit them in the summer growing up, each child required to recite a Bible verse before eating, and when I was at Parris Island in the Marine Corps, I went to see them one weekend in 1952 (Korean Conflict). They insisted I wear my uniform and sit up front, and it was such a joy to have my grandmother playing the piano, a cousin singing a solo of Bless This House, and listen to my grandfather's sermon.
An oddity is the fact my two sisters and I all ended up living in South Carolina - each one in a town where our grandfather had pastored a church. The one here is just off the Circle in the center of the town by the County Courthouse, and I actually often feel their presence....quite comforting, knowing of all the prayers they sent forth for their grandchildren, some now felt surrounding me...
Hate to relate this, but the heat is off again, and the repairman has returned and is outside.
Need more prayers, methinks...