Lt. Col. Bill Parker, chair of the Department of Military Science, said when he went to West Point in the 1990s, the water survival test essentially was the same.

“The test goes back to lessons learned from World War II,” he said. “We were seeing soldiers enter the water, and it (was) deeper than they anticipated. Obviously, then, they found themselves in situations where they had to swim to survive,” he said.

The test took between an hour and an hour and 30 minutes for each cadet to complete.

Kinesiology senior and battalion commander Alec Schaffer said the test prepares cadets for the potential situation of having to be in water for missions.

“The whole point of this is to get acclimated and more comfortable to a water environment, so that if they find themselves in a combat situation where they needed to operate in water, at least they are comfortable,” he said.

For Schaffer, the hardest part of the test was the 15-meter equipment swim.

“It’s not too far to swim, but that’s where the discomfort comes in,” he said. “You have more weight than you are accustomed to, and there is extra weight from the water. The point is to get everyone more comfortable with unfamiliar surroundings.”

Schaffer said the passing percentage for the swim test is almost 100 percent.

“Last year, we had zero people fail the test. The year before we had two people that didn’t pass who re-did it over the summer and were perfectly fine,” he said.

Senior criminal justice major and Cadet Capt. Sarah Shelton said one of the goals of the U.S. Army is for their cadets to have basic swimming skills.

“You don’t really think of the Army with water, but … we also want people who have a fear of water to overcome that fear,” she said.