I cant help you on the VTCC thing. I have and have known people who snuck out of VMI for a few hours at certain times to keep our sanity. That can be a difficult task though. VMI values honor above anything, unfortunately sometimes the administration try to use that against you. If there is a mandatory status check, (such as taps), and you are not in your room for that, then you are required to report yourself. There is a nightly check where the duty officer will "check rooms" to make sure cadets are there. It happens between midnight and 3am normally, and usually only 1/3 of the rooms in barracks are checked. They post the sheets every morning of the rooms checked. If yours was checked and you were not in there, you are again required to report yourself.
An honor offense at VMI will end your cadetship. That is the most serious thing we hold dear. If you lie, cheat, steal or tolerate someone who does, then you will stand before the honor court and if found guilty, you will be drummed out and never allowed back, your name will never be spoken in barracks again, etc.
As for having to do OCS still, only the Marine Corps requires VMI grads to go to OCS. All other services consider your time at VMI to be 4 years of OCS. As much as VMI sucks while you are there, in the end I think it is worth it. Life is definately one big vacation after that place. I got accepted to many schools (MIT, RPI, Academy, etc) but none of them impressed me the way that VMI did.
An honor offense at VMI will end your cadetship. That is the most serious thing we hold dear. If you lie, cheat, steal or tolerate someone who does, then you will stand before the honor court and if found guilty, you will be drummed out and never allowed back, your name will never be spoken in barracks again, etc.
As for having to do OCS still, only the Marine Corps requires VMI grads to go to OCS. All other services consider your time at VMI to be 4 years of OCS. As much as VMI sucks while you are there, in the end I think it is worth it. Life is definately one big vacation after that place. I got accepted to many schools (MIT, RPI, Academy, etc) but none of them impressed me the way that VMI did.