The world wide web abounds with sites related directly or indirectly to West
Point and to the U.S. Army at large. This article will outline some of the
most useful sites to those seeking more information on West Point and the
Army.
The obvious starting point is, of course, the West Point web site at
http://www.usma.edu. On this page there are numerous links to useful
information, items such as: "About the Academy", a brief overview of the
mission of the Academy and the various training programs; links to more
detailed information on the academic, physical and military programs, as
well as athletics (intramural and corps squad), cadet life, and admissions.
One particularly useful link is the one entitled "Search/Reference" where
one can search for the email addresses of current cadets, and search the
West Point Master Schedule for upcoming events. The home page itself
contains photographs and news headlines to recent events; since the home
page is updated at least once per week it pays to visit this site regularly.
Another official West Point site, still active, is the Bicentennial site at
http://www.usma.edu/bicentennial. There's some nice historical information
on the Academy here.
One extremely interesting site is called Virtual West Point and can be
called up at http://www.virtualwp.org/. Here you may replay such items as
last year's graduation ceremonies, to include the entire commencement speech
by the Commander in Chief, President George W. Bush; the 2001 and 2002
Acceptance Day parades; Army-Navy Game highlights; the audio of Gen.
MacArthur's classic Duty, Honor, Country speech; various tours at West
Point and of the Smithsonian West Point Exhibit; and lots of other neat
stuff. This is definitely one to check out if you have a lot of time to
kill!
For those who are interested, the West Point Preparatory School at Fort
Monmouth, NJ (i.e. USMAPS) has a web page at
http://www.usma.army.mil/USMAPS/ .
And then there is West-Point.Org, the organization that manages more than
300 listservers in support of most USMA classes, 51 West Point Societies, 41
West Point Parents Clubs and other parent sites. The starting point for
WP-ORG is http://www.west-point.org/.
At this page you can choose from a
number of links giving much more detail on the scope of WP-ORG services, as
well as links to the Grad Store, multimedia (speeches and music), a primer
on antivirus protection, links to various USMA (e.g. sports, the Pointer
View weekly newspaper, History of the Military Art) and Army (e.g. Army
homepage) websites, the Google search engine, and to the Fox, CNN, and ESPN
news services. There are also links to West Point related screen savers and
USMA "wallpaper". Another good one to check out.
Among the several parents
lists supported by WP-ORG is the West Point Parents Net, or WPP-NET for
short. This is the net used by our parent moderators to pass "hard news"
information to all parents who have an e-mail address in the west-point.org
system. WPP-NET is a closed net and the only person who can post messages to
this net is the WPP-NET moderator. This net operates on a "push" system. The
moderators push the information out to you unsolicited as they learn of news
from West Point. This net is not a "chat" net. It is for information only.
For WPP-NET go to http://www.west-point.org/parent/wpp-net/ (again, lots of
useful links here, and a "Subscribe Now" button). If you want to chat with
other parents then you need to subscribe to parent-forum at
http://www.west-point.org/parent/parent-forum/.
There are several unique links here, to include the Countdown Clocks to
graduation (at least for the three upperclasses - for Plebes the countdown
to graduation is "Infinity and a Butt"!); class crests; and a wealth of
information available through the "Resources" page.
The Resources page is
a MUST check it out page ( http://www.west-point.org/parent/wpp-net/faq/ ).
Most of our routine questions are addressed here.
The West Point Association of Graduates (AOG) has a nice site that can be
seen at http://www.aog.usma.edu. Here you can find articles from the
current Assembly magazine, the official publication for AOG members, and
transcripts of speeches of recent Thayer Award recipients (see AOG Awards).
