United States Air Force Academy | In-Processing Day | Class of 2024

Put this on, keep it on, and throw it the other way. Give up. Bye son, have fun at summer camp! Bye! Appreciate it. Put that on and keep it on. Throw it the other way. Thank you so much. Good luck. Thank you. Good morning. Yep. Cool. Yep. Cool. Good luck. So I have to tell you, as I mentioned, that so many people are except us in the rest of the country. You all decided to... And it is going to be a challenge, and it is going to be... Together. These are now your brothers and... Uh, you may take a seat. So please raise your right hand. A cadet in the United States Air Force that, uh, when he has tall enemies, when he has tall enemies, foreign and domestic, that I take this obligation freely. The duties of this... Everybody is working on... Welcome to the United States Air Force Academy. Yes sir. No sir. No excuse. You are now basic cadets. Welcome to the United States Air Force Academy. About your choice to enter our... Lieutenant General Robert D. Beckel. Lieutenant... Members of the class of... Hurry up, basics! Keep that gap closed! Let's go! Yes sir. Were you asleep or something? Because apparently you didn't let your son in the response room. Son in the response... Child. Son in the response... Sir. No excuses, sir. While you're here, catch a ghost! Fix it! Let's go! Move faster! Move in a circle! Go right! Hurry up! Successfully complete. Basic cadet training. Yes ma'am. Do it again. Yes sir! No sir! Stop running! Keep up with him! Close the gap! Let's go! I can't! Hurry up! I can't! Hurry up! Get on it straight! Go! Do you not know them? I said, do you not know them? Five seconds to tuck in those laces. Go! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Back into position! Do what I'm saying to you! Let's go! Stop changing your mind! You are now a basic cadet trainee. You do not want to be a ghost. Hurry up! You have all these people waiting for you! Take your shirt off! It's a shirt. Mouth in your left hand! Give me my mask back! Give me the mask back! Put me back! Look at her hands! Look at you trousers! Shut her hands! What's going on? Do I look like a sir? That's it, before I lose my mind. Start over. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. Now. Why are you wearing that shirt? Why are you moving? Do not run. Let's go. Arms straight and pull to your side. Fuck your ass! Oh, God. Your son should never be able to run. Captain Dennis Lin. D-E-N-N-I-S-L-Y-N-N. And I'm one of the directors for In Processing Day. For the new appointees coming in, this is a shock. It's different. It's the start of their new career. They're leaving their families. They're coming here. They're about to experience what the military lifestyle is like. As soon as they get through this day and the very next day their basic training starts, that's going to be the shock and awe. It's going to be completely different than what they've experienced before. The main difference for this I-Day is that we had to take into consideration COVID-19 precautions. We had to move some of our locations to bigger open spaces so that we can maintain social distancing and ensure the health and safety of the staff and the new appointees coming in. Today we're expecting around 1,200 cadets coming in. All organizations on this base come together for this one day, and we do all the in-processing actions, all the administrative things that these appointees need to accomplish in a single day. But everything gets done in a single day, and we issue them their uniforms. We give them their supplies, their equipment, and then we send them off into the rooms, and the very next day they start basic training. This is perhaps one of the best team efforts that USAFA puts on. In a typical staff meeting, we have about 45 people that we're coordinating with, and we had to do this over Microsoft Teams in light of the COVID-19 precautions that were taken. So it's a huge coordination effort between multiple agencies across USAFA. So my biggest piece of advice for the new appointees coming in is to keep your motivation and your determination to finish this program. It's going to be difficult. There's going to be a lot of challenges, but make sure you keep your head held up high and you focus on the end goal, and that is your commission as an officer in the Air Force. So the biggest differences between this I-Day and the previous I-Day and the obstacles that we had to overcome is that we had to choose spaces that had enough space to maintain social distancing, which completely threw off a lot of the typical buildings that we use for in-processing day actions. So we had to branch out and expand and look across the base and find other places where we can accomplish this. And then also another big difference is the planning aspect behind this in terms of the meetings that we had. The thing that makes this I-Day more special and interesting than any other I-Day that we've done is the fact that no matter what obstacles, for example, COVID-19 or any other global outbreak or disaster happens, the Air Force Academy will always accomplish its mission of producing officers of character and getting the new appointees their commissions as an officer in the Air Force.