dressing up like nazis

The question is not whether VMI cadets should be allowed to dress as Nazis for Halloween. The question is what kind of 20 year old men want to dress up as Nazis for Halloween.

The answer? Sick ones.

Having grown up around the whole southern-prep-school-DAR-country-club thing myself, I'm very familiar with the kinds of boys who enroll at The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute. They're mostly boys who have a fascination with all things military, hold very sexist views they would describe as as "old fashioned chivalry," but they don't have the grades and SAT scores to get into one of the real military academies (Annapolis, West Point, Air Force Academy, etc). Many of these boys are also legacies -- under pressure from fathers or grandfathers who attended one of these schools to go there and love it, by God!.

All in all, it's a recipe for racism, misogyny, and, yes, production and encouragement of the kind of young men who truly don't get what the big deal is about dressing as Nazis for Halloween.

If you want a good sense of what I'm talking about, you should read The Lords of Discipline by Citadel alumnus, Pat Conroy.