Pritchard ’25: Regimental Commander

“I have an opportunity to actually make a difference for other people, and so it’s exciting.” That’s what Cadet Brian Pritchard ’25, the 2024–25 regimental commander, has to say about being chosen to lead the Corps of Cadets. Pritchard, an English major from Thornton, Colorado, plans to commission into the U.S. Marine Corps.

With a lifelong desire to serve in the military and a special attraction to the Marine Corps, Pritchard decided to attend Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Texas, for high school. When a fellow Marine Military graduate matriculated at VMI and later told Pritchard, “Oh, it’s hard!” Pritchard knew he’d found his school.

“I chose to come to VMI because of the challenge,” said Pritchard, a recipient of a four-year Marine Corps scholarship. “I wanted to do something harder.”

After taking a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pritchard matriculated at VMI in August 2021, over a year after his first very brief visit to post for an admissions open house in early March 2020, just before the pandemic hit.

Even on the worst days in the Rat Line, Pritchard never thought about abandoning the uncommon path he’d chosen. “There were a few times in the Rat Line [when] I wanted to enlist, but it was either VMI or that was it,” he stated. “I didn’t want to go to any other school.”

During his cadetship, Pritchard has been a member of both the club ice hockey team and the jiu-jitsu club. He’s been deepening his academic interests, earning concentrations in art history and visual culture, literary studies, and rhetoric and writing, all of which are offered through the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies, and he’s been climbing through the leadership ranks in Company I.

Pritchard credits VMI with instilling a structure and discipline that will serve as the basis of his future Marine Corps career. “There’s a lot of things in life that nobody wants to do, but we still have to do them,” he commented. “I think VMI is giving that structure—it makes you more disciplined, doing the little things, shaving every day, shining your brass and your shoes, and making sure your uniform actually looks good. I think those little things build discipline.”

In spring 2024, just a few weeks after being named regimental commander for the upcoming academic year, Pritchard outlined his plans for leading the Corps. “I’m looking forward to being regimental commander because I’m not doing it for a resume or for anything else,” he stated. “I’m doing it so I can actually serve the people here and work for the Corps and help them. That’s how I see the position—I’m there for them and there to help them, the entire Corps, whether it be to go to bat for them at different things or explain why certain things are happening.”

Pritchard also wants to increase the Corps’ esprit de corps and pride in the Institute, as VMI’s cohesiveness is one of its biggest strengths. “You’re all in it together,” he said. “You’re all doing the same things. Nobody’s really above anybody.”

He believes the Rat Line effectively introduces that concept from the moment new cadets march into the barracks to meet their cadre. “Everyone’s coming from all different places, but then the second you get taken into barracks, what you’ve done and where you come from—nobody cares. You’re all on the same playing field. … It’s what you do here that matters. You can build yourself up from here: It’s a new start.”

And just before he departed post for the summer furlough, Pritchard was anticipating his own new start as the Corps of Cadets’ servant leader, setting the standard for all cadets. “I’m very excited to lead my peers and just work for them, to serve them in any way that I can, and help them.”