Pukers

E.T.A. slang for the academy's punitive conditioning drills — corrective discipline disguised as fitness. "Certain drills are well known to be nothing more than attitude-adjusters, designed to do nothing but dramatically lower life-quality for a few minutes"; drills like the disciplinary version of Tap & Whack "are known to the kids simply as Pukers. Puker-drills are really meant to do nothing but hurt you and make you think long and hard before repeating whatever you did to merit them" — while staying describable to parents and police as cardiovascular conditioning, "with all the actual sadism completely sub rosa" (p. 515). The insidious part is exactly that deniability: punishments "can take the form of what might look like straight-out athletic conditioning", which is why Schtitt and his prorectors, who set the A.M. drills, are feared beyond any academic. The word enters in Ann Kittenplan's forecast of the Eschaton debacle's fallout: "You’re all in for some serious Pukers is my prediction" (p. 515).