Plebe summer is off to hairy start
Induction: The first day for Naval Academy freshmen is a busy one in the barbershop.
By Ariel Sabar
Sun Staff
July 2, 2003
By 8:20 a.m. yesterday, the hair was ankle-deep in places.
Black tresses mingled with blond locks, angelic curls with gel-stiffened spikes. Here, the remains of a bob. There, a tuft from a surfer's mop-top.
Though hair styles come and go, one fact about the Naval Academy's Induction Day never changes. On the first day of school, freshmen surrender their hairdos at the door.
"I guess I don't have a choice," Michael McHugh, 18, of Pittsburgh, said jokingly as he sank into a blue vinyl seat in the Alumni Hall storage room serving as the day's bustling barbershop.
"That's a big negative," confirmed Woody Landis, the man with the clippers.
Induction Day is the start of a grueling six-week initiation called plebe summer, and for most of this year's 1,236 freshmen, it is also day one in the Navy. After hugging their parents goodbye yesterday, the plebes waited for hours in a snaking line, trying on uniforms, giving blood samples, memorizing a book of rules and learning salutes.
Yet there is no surer stamp of the shift from teen-ager to officer-in-training than the haircut. "Suddenly, they're not an individual anymore," said Joe Bogansky, 57, who has cut hair at Annapolis for most of his adult life and now manages the staff of 16 barbers. "They're a big team now. They're in the same boat."
For most of her teen-age years, Rochelle Gandy, of Sacramento, Calif., spent 25 minutes a day washing, combing and styling her nearly waist-long hair. A stylist at home recently trimmed it to shoulder length, but the academy wanted it shorter. "Oh, wow," she said, running her fingers through hair that suddenly peters out now at her chin. "Oh, wow."
The barbershop is the site of this often bewildering transformation. But it is also a refuge, a place where plebes briefly escape the bark of upperclassmen herding them from station to station. So the barbers, like barbers everywhere, use their time to both clip and counsel.
"They expect more abuse when they come in here," Edwina Voelcker, an academy barber for 18 years, said in between cuts. "But the barbershop is one of the most laid-back places. I say, 'Just hang in there. It's going to be OK.'"
"It's a relaxing mood," added Ernest "Smitty" Smith, a 22-year barbershop veteran who keeps up a banter with the plebes. "Once they get out of here, everything is strict military."
Bogansky said that in years past he has seen tears spill in the barber's chair. Other barbers swear they can tell from this briefest of meetings which plebes will survive the first year and which won't.
Yesterday, though, as clippers whined and scissors clicked, there were mostly just long stares, furrowed brows, and nervous laughter. After all, it was just hair.
The plebe summer cut is the most severe male midshipmen receive at the academy. Bogansky calls it "the bald cut," meaning, he says, that "all your hair is cut off."
This is a high-maintenance style, for the simple reason that hair grows. Most plebes will pay at least three more visits to the barber before the summer is out.
Chuck Arcoria, on the job now 17 years, is honest with his male charges about their choices. "You got two options," he tells them. "Slim or none."
Women's hair must stay above the collar. Many decide to give the job to trusted stylists back home rather than roll the dice on "I-Day."
Becky Lack signed a "No Cut" form yesterday after the barbers blessed the stylish street-urchin cut she had gotten at home, in Hatch, N.M.
"I knew that everything was going to be a shock," she said, "so I wanted to have one thing stable before I got here."
The academy signed up this year to donate plebe hair to Locks of Love, a Florida-based group that weaves wigs for children suffering from diseases that cause hair loss. Yesterday, only one plebe, Cassandra Soto, of Jersey City, N.J., had long enough hair to qualify. Her dark, 10-inch tresses may be useless at Annapolis, but they'll soon be performing a community service. (Ed.'s Note: The LongLocks HairSticks Boutique does NOT endorse Locks of Love).
The rules on hair loosen after plebe summer, but only a little.
Though they can grow their hair to 2 inches, men must still keep "hair above the ears and neck ... tapered from the lower hairline upwards at least three-fourths of an inch and outwards not greater than three-fourths inch," according to just one of 15 rules on men's hair. (There are 26 rules for women, including a two-barrette limit.)
Still, this offers just enough of a window for self-expression. "Even though you wouldn't think so," says Bogansky, "the midshipmen are very particular about their hair."
http://www.sunspot.net/news/education/bal-ar.hair02jul02,0,3396452.story?coll=ba... Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun
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