Almost 20 percent of the female cadets at The Citadel, the state-funded South Carolina military academy that was forced to open its doors to women 10 years ago, report having been sexually assaulted since enrolling.
The state-funded Citadel military college opened its doors to female cadets 10 years ago. Last year, 118 women and 1,770 men were enrolled.
All the women and about 30 percent of the men were asked to complete the anonymous online survey, Citadel spokeswoman Charlene Gunnells said. Of those, 114 women and 487 men responded.
Of the 27 sexual assaults against women at The Citadel mentioned in the survey, 17 were never reported to authorities. About half of the women who did not report assaults said they feared ostracism, harassment or ridicule if they did, the survey found.
The sexual assaults in the survey included unwanted touching, but 16 of the 27 incidents reported by women and 15 of the 23 reported by men involved unwanted sexual penetration or oral sex.
Most of the reported incidents involving women happened in the barracks or elsewhere on campus, and the perpetrator was another cadet, according to the survey. Some of the cadets reported being subjected to more than one sexual assault.
The problem is not limited to The Citadel; female cadets at the U.S. service academies — which have been co-ed since the 70s — are also subjected to assault, which The Citadel’s president knows quite well:
“Some wonder why I would release information that reflects negatively on the college,” said the school’s president, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. John Rosa. “My reason is simple: In order for us to address these issues, we must discuss them openly.”
Rosa previously was superintendent of the Air Force Academy in the wake of a sexual assault scandal that found female cadets feared they would be disciplined if they reported rapes.
To his credit, Rosa is very clear-eyed about what’s going on:
Rosa was the superintendent at the Air Force Academy for about two years beginning in July 2003. He arrived at a time the institution was dealing with many reports of sexual assault. He aggressively attempted to reform the school’s culture.
Rosa said he’s not surprised by The Citadel’s survey results. The national statistics on sexual harassment and assault are staggering, he said. “Generally I would say that we’re in line with what’s happening in society and that’s not good enough for us.”
The Citadel’s rate of sexual assaults is higher than that of other military academies surveyed:
Citadel cadets reported more incidents of both sexual harassment and sexual assault than their counterparts at the three federal service academies.
In the academies’ surveys, 262 of the 1,906 women surveyed, or about 14 percent, reported one or more incidents of sexual assault. At The Citadel, 22 women, or about 19 percent, reported one or more incidents of sexual assault. Last year, 118 women attended The Citadel.
Of the 3,107 male students at the academies, 54, or nearly 2 percent, reported a sexual assault. At The Citadel, 4 percent of the men surveyed reported one or more incidents of sexual assault. Nearly 1,800 male cadets attended The Citadel last year and 487 of them completed the survey.
Also in the survey, 68 percent of female cadets and 17 percent of male cadets reported some type of sexual harassment while attending the school. The most common forms of sexual harassment reported among both female and male cadets were repeated sexual stories and jokes and offensive remarks about cadets’ appearance, body or sexual activities.
At the academies, 50 percent of female and 11 percent of male students reported some type of sexual harassment.
The use of sexual assaults to keep women in the service in line and to let them know that they’re not welcome is, sadly, nothing new. Remember Tailhook? It’s also something (along with hazing) that’s turned against men — 4 percent of the men at The Citadel who responded to the survey had reported having been sexually assaulted. And male cadets at the Air Force Academy who spoke out against the pervasive proselytizing by evangelical Christian cadets and administrators were subject to harassment.
Shannon Faulkner, the first woman admitted to The Citadel in 1995 after she successfully sued to get in, dropped out after five days.
Shannon Faulkner sued for admission in 1993 and was admitted as a cadet under a court order two years later. She withdrew after five days citing isolation and stress.
In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the similar all-male cadet policy at Virginia Military Institute unconstitutional, and The Citadel opened its doors.
Four, including [Nancy Mace] Jackson [the first female cadet to graduate], were admitted, but before the end of the fall semester, two of them said they had been hazed, including having their clothes set on fire by male cadets.
Susan Faludi wrote about Shannon Faulkner in Stiffed; she interviewed a male cadet who told her that “female” was the ultimate insult at The Citadel.
“According to the Citadel creed of the cadet,” former student Michael Lake told me, “women have no rights. They are objects. They are things that you can do with whatever you want to.” The only way to maintain such a worldview, of course, was to keep the campus free of women who might challenge it. The acknowledged explanation for this policy was that women were to be kept at a distance so they could be “respected” as ladies. Several months before the Citadel’s courtroom defense of its all-male admissions policy, I was sitting in the less-than-Spartan air-conditioned quarters of senior regimental commander Norman Doucet. He was explaining to me how excluding women had enhanced his gentlemanly perception of the opposite sex. “The absence of women makes us understand them better. In an aesthetic kind of way, we appreciate them more because they are not here.”
Women who breached the Citadel’s borders were, however, not appreciated. Newly arrived female faculty members reported receiving obscene phone calls as well as pornographic messages and drawings. One female professor wouldn’t even put her nameplate on her office door because of the abuse she knew it would draw. When Jane Bishop, a professor of medieval history, posted on her door a photocopy of a New York Times editorial supporting coeducation at the academy, she found it graffiti-riddled in a matter of days. “Dr. Bishop,” one scribble read, “you are a prime example of why women should not be allowed here.” Another notation read “Women will destroy the world.”
Remember what I wrote yesterday about male fear? This is another example of it.
At this point, women make up only 6 percent of The Citadel’s cadet corps; from the experience of the school’s director of ethics and leadership, who was a member of the first class at West Point to admit women, the school will not achieve full inclusion until women make up at least 15 percent of the student body.