"You were a prick in Beast Barracks, Dave," Jiggs said, tempering that remark only slightly with a smile.

What was going on was Beast Barracks, West Point's famously exhaustive six-week orientation program for first-year cadets - daily 5 a.m. training runs and hours of marching and drilling in full military gear.

But that was before he started playing for Ross, and before Beast Barracks.

The experience of attending West Point, including the first-year hazing program known as Beast Barracks, appears to have created a loyal alumni corps.

My brother is now finishing up his last year at the Naval Academy, but all this time I have avoided asking him details about his plebe summer (The Beauty of Beast Barracks, by Michael Winerip, Oct. 12).

I imagine parents whose sons and daughters survived the dreaded Beast Barracks would agree with me.

Six weeks before classes begin, they take a basic training course nicknamed Beast Barracks, or simply Beast.

It is luxurious accommodations compared with the Beast Barracks, the rigorous survival training for freshman cadets.

Beast Barracks is nothing more than a license, in the guise of leadership training, to let older cadets beat up on teen-agers.

But West Point was exciting-from the very first days of "Beast Barracks" (the equivalent of basic training) there was talk of "the war in the jungles."