First-year students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland have participated in a ritual that marks the end of their plebe year. Members of the Class of 2027 worked together Wednesday morning to scale Herndon Monument, a greased 21-foot obelisk, to replace a white plebe “Dixie cup” hat with an upperclassman’s hat. It took them 2 hours, 19 minutes and 11 seconds. Now that the ritual is complete, the students will be called fourth class midshipmen, not plebes. The climb dates back to 1940. The shortest time for the climb is believed to be 1 minute and 30 seconds in 1969, a year that the monument wasn’t greased. The longest was more than four hours in 1995, a year when upperclassmen glued down the Dixie cup.