It’s sixth period, Thursday, October 31. Me and every other person in sixth period fitness at my high school are directed to the gym.
“You must complete the registration to participate in the challenge.”
A man in a Army-branded polo says over the loud PA system. That’s a half-truth. If you don’t participate, you get a zero. I dump my backpack on the bleachers, and look for my friends.
“Get in line, get in line.”
A minute and a half into passing period, and there is already a line at the ‘registration’ station. Everyone’s phone is hidden away in their pocket, and some people are nervous. I step into the growing line, and manage to grab one of my friends from my class. We idly chatter as the line moves forward.
Once we get to the station, I’m directed to an iPad with a form on it. Name. Date of birth. Zip code. Phone number. I fill them all in. It’s required.
“When you’re done, hit the Sign button and accept.”
‘Sign’ brings up a document. It’s the standard ‘privacy compliant’ agreement. I try to take time to read through it all, but everyone needs to move fast. Most people just swipe down blindly and hit ‘Accept’. Once I’ve accepted, I get an elastic wristband which sits on my desk beside me as I write this. It too, is required for a the challenge.
The challenge itself is not much of a challenge: 10 squats, 10 burpees, 10 push-ups, and 10 sit-ups. Then you ‘race’ the other team of four to move a plate of three medicine balls from one pillar to another. Next you construct a bridge between blocks without touching the floor by passing two planks around. Not hard. Since our team won, we were directed to a table where we got a free Army t-shirt, and another table to get a generic dog tag with my school, city, state, month, year of participation, and the Army’s recruiting URL, goarmy.com, engraved on it.
The wristband and dog tag we were given.
The rest of the period is open for students to do individual activities as they chose to. Since we were in the back of the line, my team watched a few other people do a few challenges. If you signed a form with your address, and did fifty push-ups, you got a water bottle. Cross a peg wall, and you get a drawstring back. Do fifteen pull-ups and get a hat. My team did a challenge where you had to balance a beam with unmarked weighted medicine balls to obtain a lanyard.
All prizes bore the Army logo, if not their recruiting URL too. When there was five minutes left, we were still working on the ball challenge.
“Get your t-shirt! It doesn’t matter if you won or not.”
So everyone who didn’t win flocked over and grabbed an Army t-shirt in their size. The woman running our station handed everyone a lanyard, even through we didn’t finish. We pulled off to wade back to our backpacks.
Sounds like a pretty cool period, right? Maybe. If you don’t mind the branding, or the recruiters watching you, or the hidden NFC chip they put in your wristband. The picture I provide here is of a chip someone had found in their wristband earlier that day in my band period.
The chip found inside the wristbands.
Lets talk for a second here. Requiring me to give you personal info to participate today: not cool. Grabbing people’s addresses so they can do a ‘challenge’: not cool. But I am ashamed that nowhere did they mention to a student that they put a chip in that wristband.
Sure, it’s not actively tracking you, it’s just a blank NFC. But what if you swapped it for a more active form of tracking? I don’t care what the chip is doing, even if it’s nothing, I should know if I have a new potential tracking device on me!
Walking out of the gym that day, wearing my Army tee and Army dog tag, I felt a little something. Universality. Conformity. Call it what you may, I felt like I was part of something. Great marketing, Army, I’ll be sure to come back next year for more free stuff. But please, tell me what you put in them.
Verbym
