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.
COMING UP IN THE CORPS
Barqawi's leadership style was born of his unique Corps experience.
He said he wasn't sure what to expect when he came to America in August 2005 and readily admits he chose Tech because it was accepting applicants and, he jokes, because of the well-known slogan, "Virginia is for Lovers." When he reached campus, however, his decision to join the Corps happened almost immediately.
"The number one reason was that I saw someone walking in the uniform ... I walked up to him and said, 'I want to be like you,'" Barqawi said.
After reading the corps' mission statement, which he can now recite from memory, Barqawi was hooked.
"We develop leaders of exceptional character who are imbued with the concept of selfless service and are willing to serve the nation and the commonwealth whether in or out of uniform for a lifetime," Barqawi said, eliciting knowing grins from his fellow cadets and leaving the impression that such a recitation is not unusual for him.
A dark-haired, dark-eyed man of medium build and height, Barqawi speaks in clipped, unaccented English and uses subdued but noticeable hand gestures to reinforce his points; rarely does a question faze him or leave him without a ready, considered answer -- a trait that his fellows say carries over to his leadership style.
"It's always a great experience," to be working with Barqawi, "because you know he's planned out every aspect" of the project, Gaddis said. "Rarely do you get something that you say, 'This isn't going to work.' Usually it's something that -- at most -- we're going to have to tweak."
At the beginning of his Corps career, Barqawi readily admits he felt he was overwhelmed by the culture shock of both a new country and the transition to the corps' highly regimented lifestyle. He did, however, find an ally in fellow cadet Adam Smith.
"Adam Smith was instrumental in helping me make the adjustment; he was very sensitive culturally," Barqawi said. "He was trying to protect me from corruption, while trying to expose me to something I've never been exposed to."
Smith said he was sympathetic to Barqawi's initial plight.
"It's a lot of training and adjustment to an atmosphere that you're definitely not used to," said now-Cadet Lt. Col. Smith, a senior mechanical engineering student and the regimental executive officer. "It's a huge shock for anyone, and for Adnan it was a huge culture shock."
While Smith was helping with the cultural component, Barqawi also struggled through the corps' demanding physical regimen.
"I fell behind during our first long run; I didn't give up and when it was over, all I remember is being given my time and then waking up in the hospital," Barqawi said.
After finishing his freshman year, Barqawi found himself in his first leadership position leading a "fire team" of a few cadets.
Barqawi said he found the existing leadership and training model too focused on discipline and not enough on leadership consisting of positive reinforcement and mutual respect, traits he had picked up in his studies of effective military leaders.
For an institution such as the Corps of Cadets that places a premium on continuity and tradition, this was not a popular position -- but he used his ideas to form a new theory of leadership.
"What's key to keep in mind is that tradition is not a 'Gospel,' set-in-stone concept," Barqawi said. "There is good tradition and bad tradition; we keep the good and with time, we set aside bad traditions."
Barqawi said he found a syncretistic approach -- combining Western and Middle Eastern ideas of leadership and culture presented a far preferable alternative to the approach used during his induction.
"Back in Kuwait there are people coming in and out of your house all of the time; you know all of your neighbors and extended family. Having that social network is phenomenal and is such a fulfillment -- that's something that I'd love to bring here from the Middle East," Barqawi said.
ASCENDING TO LEADERSHIP
When he topped the regimental chart during his senior year, he was ready to make institutional changes to the corps' training and leadership model.
"In some cases there was a lot of resistance to the new approach," Barqawi said. "There is this typical mentality to what military training should be."
The rewards the corps has seen are greater numbers of freshmen staying on through the difficult initial training phase, a marked increase in pride and a generally better attitude among the corps' members.
"Our retention standards are the best they've ever been. We normally have about 20 to 25 percent attrition by the six-week point (in the semester)," Barqawi said of the number of incoming Corps members who leave the institution. "That's dropped to 12 or 15 percent."
"As a company commander, I didn't lose a single person (from my company) by the six-week mark and through the semester. Partly, I'd attribute that to this new training approach," Smith said.
As a company commander and then as the commander of the entire regiment, Barqawi built cadets up rather than using them as parts in a machine, Gaddis said.
"I have a wife and daughter. He's always been very considerate of peoples' situations; he always came by on a regular basis and asked, 'Hey, how are you doing? How's your daughter doing? How's your wife?' It was the same for other battalion commanders as well," Gaddis said.
The tide of opinion turned in Barqawi's favor after the corps saw a significant increase in motivation, initiative and "esprit de corps" -- as noted by the commandant and other corps officers.
"One of his greatest strengths is his ability to motivate cadets to take on tough challenges and to strive for excellence," Allen said.
Barqawi said he found his faith in his convictions rewarded over time, despite initial resistance.
"Once you get to that kind of leadership position, like regimental commander, it's no longer a popularity contest," Barqawi said. "What really amazed me is the amount of respect a system earns as you go forward, as you see the rewards."
'OBLIGATED TO RETURN THE FAVOR'
Barqawi is now looking ahead to graduation and beyond, where he will work in the Teach for America Program and become an American citizen. Having spent his entire life as an essentially stateless person, Barqawi says he wants to give back to the country that offered him so much.
"Both my parents were born in Palestine; they were always people without a country," Barqawi said. "I was born and raised in Kuwait, but that didn't make me Kuwaiti -- I was ineligible for public education; I was not eligible for higher education. My parents weren't allowed to buy a house. If you want to open a business, you have to have a Kuwaiti partner who has a 51 percent interest" because of Kuwaiti laws stipulating descent from a Kuwaiti male as a necessary factor for citizenship.
"I chose, and have the privilege, to apply for American citizenship and become a man with a country," Barqawi said. "I wasn't like the majority of foreigners who come here and hang around with people who look and talk like them -- I chose a society that is the heart of American culture and traditions."
Barqawi says those kinds of choices aren't available to everyone in his native Kuwait.
"The leaders in the Middle East are only concerned with one thing -- keeping their seat -- and they do this by controlling the money, by downplaying the importance of knowledge, intellect and education," Barqawi said. "The corps was instrumental in changing me from the worst of the worst to becoming the top cadet -- I wasn't the worst out of arrogance, but ignorance."
Barqawi said Kuwaiti authorities had interfered with his education in several ways during his youth.
"I went to a British private school, and there were pages missing from my textbook -- those were all to do with the Holocaust. I was taught that the Holocaust is an absolute lie," Barqawi said. "I went to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and saw for myself the truth of it."
Looking ahead, Barqawi wants to help America in the way it has helped him: by fighting ignorance, mentoring and helping young people achieve their potential.
"What truly appalled me about this whole picturesque image is that looking into the future is that we have 13 million children who live in poverty," Barqawi said of the United States. "What that means is that half of those children won't graduate high school -- those who graduate from high school read at an eighth-grade level, and only 10 percent will make it to college and graduate."
"That's a problem money and books can't solve; that's when another human being has to be there and give them their hand to bring them up to that level," Barqawi said. "In a country that aspires to lofty ideals like, 'Where you're born does not determine your life opportunities,' this is not the case for those kids who are growing in those low-income communities."
Barqawi said that with the corps' mission statement in mind and his enormous gratitude for the opportunities he's been given in America, it's really the least he can do.
"Someone has done that for me, and now I feel obligated to return the favor," Barqawi said.
For the Corps of Cadets, however, perhaps he already has.