There may be no better-known campus in America than West Point, set on bluffs overlooking the Hudson River at a dogleg critical to America”™s independence. It is also set cheek-by-jowl next to Highland Falls, a village with fewer souls than the U.S. Military Academy”™s 4,000-plus cadets.
Relations between the academy and locals are on the mend, but have been historically strained, notably by a 16,000-acre federal land grab in the 1930s ”“ terrain that had belonged to the community, but which was needed for training. Land concessions to Highland Falls have now been made and the mayor”™s son is a cadet, harking to smoother relations. Yet into this comity comes a nation at war and the inherent security required at its oldest (and perhaps most-storied) military college. Where once cadets could send out for pizza, now the pies cannot be delivered. Visitors pass through two checkpoints and provide photo identification ”“ not quite airport-style security, but a very real sign of the times. Such security is having an effect on a community that grew up with freer give-and-take between town and gown (or in this case, locale and Long Gray Line). And into that mix is the history itself, impossible to overlook.
Football season, fall foliage and a fresh assembly of cadets present an ideal opportunity to examine some of the issues that make West Point a picture more nuanced than the Army-Navy game and just as surely worth a look.
Â
