Early morning exercise, formation, marching and drill are not the college experience most parents and prospective students imagine. But hardly any freshman student hasn't had to ask an upperclassman about the odd, uncomfortable-looking "rattling" -- 90 degree right and left turns made while walking around campus during a freshman year in the Corps of Cadets.
Out-of-place as it may appear, members and alumni can easily speak about the corps' formative role in their early adulthood and its fundamental place in making them the people they are today.
This transformative process can work both ways, however, in the case of a special cadet.
Enter Adnan Barqawi, a senior business major and a descendant of Palestinian refugees who grew up in Kuwait; who, as Major General and Commandant of Cadets Jerrold Allen put it, is "the hardest-working, most dedicated leader I have observed in my 10 years as commandant."
Barqawi served as the regimental commander for the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets in the fall semester, leaving the top spot this semester for a position as a cadet major as per the Corps procedure of allowing more students to tackle the position's challenges.
"Part of the duties of regimental commander was to select the direction that the corps will take. Your vision is to shoot two or three years down the line from now," Barqawi said.
At the head of the Corps, Barqawi used his experience as a mid-level leader to set out a new model of cadet leadership that emphasizes positive reinforcement and mutual respect between leaders and trainees.
"There was a lot of focus on negative reinforcement during training, and attitude of, 'We're going to do to you what was done to us,'" Barqawi said. "It's a cancerous mentality that has ground at the corps for quite some time."
It was a new direction much appreciated by his peers.
"That's what leadership is all about, caring for your people, caring for their needs, what's going on in their lives," said Cadet Col. P.C. Gaddis, a senior sociology major and the current commander of the Corps of Cadets.
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