Paramilitary subset of the student body at
Virginia Tech, that lives in its own corner of campus, attends classes in
uniform, and generally attempts to mimic a military-school
atmosphere. Tech was founded in
1872 as a
land-grant college, with the student body on the model of
VMI, and so all students were originally required to be part of the Corps during their time at VT. Sometime in the
1930s or
1940s the requirement was dropped to two years, and was
phased out entirely in the
1960s. Thus began Tech's rise to
national research university status.
The VTCC keeps the military traditions of the school alive. All ROTC members are required to be in the Corps, but any student may join without enrolling in the ROTC program. A disproportionate number of rich alumni are Old Corps, so the Corps has plenty of money to hand out for scholarships. They still haven't been able to reach their goal of 1,000 students on a 26,000-student campus, though.