The Politics of Pie Cutting at West Point’s Mess Hall

(via Atlas Obscura) Until the mid-1990s, squared-away plebes (what they call freshmen at the United States Military Academy—better known as West Point) carried a circular piece of paper in two small Zip-Lock plastic bags under their hats whenever the mess hall was serving pie. They always knew when pie would be on the menu because they always knew when everything was on the menu; part of their job as the punching bags of the United States’s finest military academy was to know what was for lunch.