First-year students at the U.S. Naval Academy participate in the annual Herndon Monument climb Wednesday. This is a ritual that marks the end of the plebeian year, and some say it portends career success.
Members of the Class of 2027 will work together to scale a 21-foot-tall obelisk covered in vegetable shortening and replace their white plebe “Dixie Cup” hats with their senior caps, according to the Naval Academy. There are about 1,300 plebs in the class, said Elizabeth B. Wrightson, a spokeswoman for the academy. Once the climb is complete, they are called cadets 4th class instead of plebs.
It is said that the person who places his hat on top of the monument will become the first admiral of his class.
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Midshipmen attempt to climb the Herndon Monument to exchange their white plebe “Dixie Cup” caps for upperclassman caps at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, May 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
According to a history of the event by James Cheevers, former senior curator at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, the climb began in 1940, when an officer’s cap was placed atop the obelisk to mark the conquest of the plebe year. That was seven years later. The upperclassmen greased the monument for the first time in his 1949 year, making it more difficult to climb. They placed Dixie’s cup hat on top of the monument for the first time before his 1962 ascent.
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Records of how long it took each class to scale the monument are incomplete, but the shortest time is believed to be 1 minute and 30 seconds in 1969, when the monument was not anointed with oil. . The longest time was over four hours in 1995, the year the upperclassmen were glued to the Dixie Cup.
