Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
Tomorrow, U.S. Military Academy on Hudson River Will Celebrate 200th Birthday
Aired March 15, 2002 - 08:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The long list of illustrious graduates from the U.S. military academy at West Point includes Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George Custard and Norman Schwarzkopf. And during the Revolutionary War, George Washington also called West Point the key to the continent.
And tomorrow, the United States military academy on the Hudson River will celebrate its 200th birthday.
And joining us again from "The Point," our Anderson Cooper.
Good morning.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Paula. How's it going?
ZAHN: Good. What's going on there now?
COOPER: I'm at West Point, where, as you said, they are celebrating the 200th birthday of West Point, if you want to call it, the founders day tomorrow.
There are 4,000 cadets at West Point, and I'm here with two of them, Libby Haydon and Zac Miller. Both are firsties. So firsties are actually seniors in college.
This has been your last year. You're graduating in June. Where are you going from here?
LIBBY HAYDON, SENIOR CADET: From here, I'm going to Germany, I'm posted to Germany and trying to go to Hidleberg, and that's where I'll be in charge of a military police platoon and meet all the challenges that they've prepared me here for the last four years.
COOPER: And from there you might end up in Bosnia?
HAYDON: Yes, there I might end up in Bosnia or Kosovo for a six- month rotation and just go wherever the Army needs me to go.
COOPER: Zac, where are you going?
ZAC MILLER, SENIOR CADET: I had the good fortune to be selected as a Rhodes Scholar this year, so I'll be off to Oxford University.
COOPER: You've really been slacking off the last couple of years.
MILLER: I've been trying.
COOPER: What's your major?
MILLER: I'm a computer science and mathematics double major.
COOPER: Wow.
Has there year been different than other years. I mean, we're at war. Has there been a difference among the cadets that you noticed?
MILLER: I think so. One of the indicators that I look at is the number of cadets who went infantry, and this year was the highest out of any year in recent memory, 214 cadets going infantry out of a class of a thousand, which is amazing. And I think the reason why is there's a sense of purpose that the cadets feel. This war on terrorism and this war on terrorism that we're fighting is one of those things that allows us to have a rallying point and to go forward towards that.
COOPER: For you, did it change your last year?
HAYDON: A little bit. There's definitely a much bigger focus of what we're doing and a relevancy to why we're doing certain things here. Before a lot of people just kind of went through the motions, but now they're taking responsibility for their own development and they are excited about what they need to do because they're going to be in a situation where it might not be as easy as they once thought it was going to be.
COOPER: There are 4,000 cadets here. About 600 of them are women, about 16 percent of the class. Women were first admitted in 1976. I know you probably get this question all the time, but what is it like being a woman at West Point?
HAYDON: It actually isn't different, or I haven't met any challenge that I thought I would have when I first came here. The biggest thing is I know there's opportunities here that I would never have gotten if I went to a different school. So I look at those, and I'm happy I made the decision here. You take the good with the bad. I have an extremely positive support network, both male and female. So the only difference is sometimes you can't go combat, you can't do the infantry cool stuff that a lot of people want you to do or what they think the army does. But there's other things that we learn about that are just as important, and we're excited about doing them.
COOPER: Zac, was is it harder than you expected it to be here? What was the hardest thing?
MILLER: Obviously, this is a challenge for anybody, and that's one of the things I looked forward to coming in here is being challenged every day to make yourself better. And as far as the hardest thing goes, probably being on the Army rugby team and being around a group of individuals that strives for excellence every year. Doing that, going out to practice every day, being challenged by your teammates to work hard. That's probably the hardest things I had to do here, and one of the most rewarding.
COOPER: Cool. Zac, Libby, thank you very much for joining us this morning. Good luck to you in your postings wherever you go from here on.
Back to you, Paula.
ZAHN: Somehow I think we might be hearing about the two of them in the future. They're pretty outstanding, aren't they?
COOPER: Yes.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
