graduation, although Will's friends will head off to fight in the Vietnam War, which Will is personally against. However, Will does have some pride in the Institute, representing it in basketball. Though anti-war, he also despises the discrimination the Institute faces from civilian students of other colleges due to its military association, which he sees at away games. For example, when Will plays a game against the Virginia Military Institute, which is considered their biggest rival game, he notes that VMI was the only team all season that did not harass him and his teammates. Colonel Berrineau, the Commandant of Cadets who is commonly known as The Bear, asks Will to look out for the Institute's first black cadet, Tom Pearce, knowing that Will is the only liberal in the student body. Will also begins a secret relationship with Annie Kate Gervais, a girl from an upper-class Charlestonian family who has become pregnant from a boy who refused to marry her, though their relationship is doomed because Will is Irish-American, Catholic, and not wealthy. Will attempts to help a freshman, Poteete, who is struggling with the plebe system, which is the brutal hazing and abuse experienced by freshmen at the Institute. However, Poteete kills himself. In an extended flashback, Will then describes his own plebe year three years earlier. Will learns that the only way to survive is to bond closely with the other members of his class against the cadre. Having entered the college on a basketball scholarship, Will is also protected by other members of the basketball team who don't want to see Will physically harmed and, at one point, rescue him from a particularly brutal hazing incident. Many of Will's classmates are not so lucky, and resign from the school due to the unrelenting hazing. However, a recruit named Bobby Bentley who has a problem with urinating on himself due to the stress of hazing but in excellent shape, refuses to quit and can handle all physical hardships. Conventional hazing methods fail to break Bentley, causing Will's freshman class to come together, and making Will's cadre the subject of ridicule of the entire cadet corps. Near the end of the year, Will's freshman class is recognized as cadets, and the hazing ends. Some time before this, Bobby Bentley is taken off campus by an unknown group and withdraws from the Institute the following day for unknown reasons.