What Does a Room Look Like in Bancroft Hall at the USNA?

While some of you may have visited Bancroft before, many of you may be wondering what your mids’ rooms actually look like. While not every room is actually the same, I’d like to give you a basic layout of the oh-so-glamorous Bancroft Hall (as depicted in a note I very artistically drew over my Plebe Summer for my parents above).

Sink and Shower

Each room has a sink and shower. Midshipmen are in charge of cleaning both. There are no toilets in the rooms, but there are heads (bathrooms) in the p-ways (hallways).

Racks, Desks, and Closets

Each room will have between 2 and 3 racks (beds) and the same number of desks. Each Mid also has a closet, which contains their shoes, undergarments, socks, USNA shorts, and blue rim T-shirts neatly folded and organized. 

The desks have multiple shelves to store books and other personal items.  

However, over Plebe Summer it is very likely you will only see issued books as well as newspapers on their shelves.  

*Side note: The plebes are given newspapers on a frequent basis and are required to be able to have a professional discussion on two articles related to world events, and one about sports from the most recent paper.

However, I want to focus on the “racks,” or beds.  

The blue sheet on the rack is what we refer to as a “blue magnet” and is probably the most useless sheet on the planet.

And yet, a midshipman’s rack will always be his or her favorite place at the Naval Academy.  

Blue Magnets

It is a requirement that every rack is made each morning, with sheets pulled tight, and the lines on the blue magnet running parallel to the ground.  

As upperclassmen, in an attempt to maximize every possible minute of sleep, midshipmen find creative ways to not have to make their beds daily. They do this by creating ways to hold their sheets in place (my personal favorite was attaching shirt stays to each end of the sheets to keep them pulled tight) and then sleeping on top of their sheets with a blanket or in a sleeping bag.

All this, I believe, truly makes the blue magnet the most useless bed sheet in history.  

During Plebe Summer, the plebes don’t have the ability to sleep on top of their sheets.

Every night at 2200, or 10:00 pm, the detailers will walk through each room to make sure all of the stinky plebes are underneath their sheets. For the mischievous plebes that try to mess their sheets up as little as possible, the detailers quickly catch on and take preemptive countermeasures.  

Throughout my times being involved with Plebe Summer, I have seen extremely creative methods for ensuring the plebes are tucked in at night for great night sleep.

My personal favorites are the plebe burrow and the plebe burrito.  

The names are relatively self-explanatory, as the plebe burrow involves a plebe burrowing him/herself into the sheets and the plebe burrito involves a detailer rolling a plebe up in the sheets until they have turned into a plebe burrito.  

I slept underneath my sheets 43 total times during my time at the Naval Academy: the 6 weeks of Plebe Summer and then the last night I spent in Bancroft Hall during my 1/C (senior) year.  

So as you’re worrying about your sick plebes, you should at least be comforted by the fact that they are being tucked in at night and getting a great night of sleep… underneath their sheets!

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