OT Serious problems @ AF Academy AD
U.S. Air Force Academy cadet athletes flouted the sacred honor code by committing sexual assaults, taking drugs, cheating and engaging in other misconduct at wild parties while the service academy focused on winning bowl games and attracting money from alumni and private sources in recent years, a Gazette investigation has found.
http://coloradosprings.com/broken-code-afa-superintendent-calls-for-inv…
"How disgraceful college football is"?
This is one college football program. Not to mention that these types of acts have been perpetrated by non-football players across the country, too.
i have feeling your not going to last long here.
August 4th, 2014 at 10:39 AM ^
As a graduate of the USAF Academy, I can tell you that not only am I offended by this statement, I'm outraged that you post on this blog. Be gone with you.
August 4th, 2014 at 11:22 AM ^
Being a bad person makes you a bad person. Liking this kind of thing is just a symptom. But with an avatar like that, what do people expect?
Gucci Mane avatar = person making the post is a disgraceful shameshow
Nick Saban moneybags avatar = ???
So now AF is on par with every other major university?
August 4th, 2014 at 10:46 AM ^
And don't assume you know anything about it, cuz you have no idea.
No, most other major universities don't spend nearly the time proselytizing and attempting to force their students to be Christians in violation of the 1st amendment.
and you have no idea what you're talking about.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/politics/23academy.html?pagewanted=al…
Air Force Academy Staff Found Promoting Religion
Granted, this story is from 2005, but I believe I've seen similar stories on 60 Minutes and other sources.
What is your take on these types of stories? I'm not judging one way or the other, only pointing out that some people consider this a real issue, and responding with, "you are so full of shit," doesn't really do a good job of defending your position.
but I think I've stated several times before, and not just on this thread, I'm a graduate of this school. I'm very involved in the grassroots efforts to bring in good candidates and have classmates and friends not only teaching there, but also in admissions. I've lived it and his statement is so completely far from the truth. I would think that being a grad would give me enough justification to say just what I said. Now, your point not withstanding, my take is that a culture of religion is a strong one, but it is not forced down anyone's throat. It is not mandatory to go to church, whereas going to classes or doing sports. Those are mandatory. I was never forced, nor have I ever heard that going to church was a requirement for graduation nor for keeping out of trouble. Promoting religion is not the same as requiring it. EDIT: And after reviewing the article again, it sounds as if the council did find that there were no overt religious discrimination. Seemed like the tone of the article was that there may have been some misuse of power, but not in an effort to exclude other religions.
Right...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/air-force-academy-religion-pro…
In 2004 a team of Yale Divinity School students and professors found "challenges to pluralism" at the academy. A memo expressed "concern that the overwhelmingly evangelical tone of general Protestant worship encouraged religious divisions rather than fostering understanding among basic cadets."
An internal AFA investigative panel in 2005 found religious "insensitivity," but not "overt religious discrimination."
A 2010 survey found 41 percent of non-Christian cadets faced unwanted proselytizing, even as the religious majority felt that their freedom of speech was being infringed upon.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/05/air-force-acade…
But there was a major shift in the right direction yesterday when recently-appointed Brigadier General Andy Armacost (below) addressed the entire faculty and told them in no uncertain terms that they could not proselytize while on duty.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/education/12academy.html?pagewanted=a…
A chaplain at the Air Force Academy has described a "systemic and pervasive" problem of religious proselytizing at the academy and says a religious tolerance program she helped create to deal with the problem was watered down after it was shown to officers, including the major general who is the Air Force's chief chaplain.
http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20101029/NEWS/10290322/Non-Christi…
An Air Force Academy-sponsored survey of cadets found that 41 percent of those who identified themselves as non-Christian said they were subjected to unwanted proselytizing at least once or twice last year.
Nearly one-fifth of all cadets said they experienced unwanted proselytizing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR20050…
A military study of the religious climate at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs found several examples of religious intolerance, insensitivity and inappropriate proselytizing on the part of Air Force officers and cadets
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR20051…
A private missionary group has assigned a pair of full-time Christian ministers to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where they are training cadets to evangelize among their peers, according to a confidential letter to supporters.
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/92904:air-force-academy-…
Air Force Academy Excludes Group That Exposed Proselytizing of Military Personnel From "Religious Respect" Conference
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,90617,00.html
Complaints of religious intolerance, conversion attempts and favoritism for "born again" Christian cadets had first surfaced in a 2004 campus survey and in criticism in a Yale Divinity School study of chaplain practices at the academy.
http://www.occasionalplanet.org/2010/10/05/group-fights-religious-prose…
353 cadets (almost 1 out of every 5 survey participants) reported having been subjected to unwanted religious proselytizing, and 23 cadets (13 of them Christians) reported living “in fear of their physical safety” because of their religious beliefs.
Find all the articles you want, you have never been there, never will be and don't get it.
Actually, I HAVE been there.
My uncle graduated from the AFA with a BS in Engineering Mechanics in 1982. He then spent 7 years flying A-10 Warthogs (Myrtle Beach AFB, Suwon Korea, Eielson AFB) before becoming a commercial pilot (B-727, A-320, DC-10, A-330).
Never mind that the actual people currently there - including numerous officers and cadets at the academy - are saying and have said it's an issue.
From the USAF Academy Climate Survey:
353 cadets (almost 1 out of every 5 survey participants) reported having been subjected to unwanted religious proselytizing, and 23 cadets (13 of them Christians) reported living “in fear of their physical safety” because of their religious beliefs.
well, I have a classmate who flew the space shuttle, so I know exactly what its like to be in space.
"Your" is the word for which you're looking.
...and I never claimed to know "exactly what it's like".
I just disagreed with the assertion - "you have never been there, never will be".... because well, I HAVE been there. I WAS there for my uncle's graduation ceremony.
So you've now made two false assertions (have never been there, never will be there) to go along with ignoring the fact that majority of the complaints on the issue of proselytization have come from current faculty and students.
I may not know exactly what it is like - but the 20% of AFA cadets who reported having been subjected to unwanted religious proselytizing certainly DO know exactly what it is like.
a student or graduate, not visitor. And 353 is a lot less than 20%...its more like 8%, of all cadets, but I can't tell if you were speaking about them as a sample size (1 in 5) or the whole cadet wing. So, there's a false assertion of your own. But I've said what I wanted to say on the subject. And yep, you caught me in a typo. Good on ya.
And 353 is a lot less than 20%...its more like 8%, of all cadets, but I can't tell if you were speaking about them as a sample size (1 in 5) or the whole cadet wing.
"353 cadets (almost 1 out of every 5 survey participants) reported having been subjected to unwanted religious proselytizing"
Note - this is from an INTERNAL survey.
Plus...
An internal AFA investigative panel in 2005 found religious "insensitivity,"
A chaplain at the Air Force Academy has described a "systemic and pervasive" problem of religious proselytizing at the academy"
An Air Force Academy-sponsored survey of cadets found that 41 percent of those who identified themselves as non-Christian said they were subjected to unwanted proselytizing at least once or twice last year.
A military study of the religious climate at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs found several examples of religious intolerance, insensitivity and inappropriate proselytizing on the part of Air Force officers and cadets.
It's a real problem, and largely one that has been reported BY cadets/officers at the AFA.
You're not very bright, are you? Do you have any inkling how the military chaplain corps works? Do you know how much time they spend not proselytizing so they can serve everyone's needs? Nevermind. I just realized I spent 3 minutes responding to your incredibly unintelligent post and it's all for naught. Folks like you don't understand common sense.
That's not exactly accurate, but it does have a tangential relationship to the truth. There was a commandant of cadets years ago(Walsh or Welsh I think was his name), who had a problem with proselytization and it gave a man named Mikey Weinstein, who is the definition of a pain in the ass advocate an in to talk about all the perceived slights he suffered at the academy. The academy bent over backwards to get Mikey to shut up, but he took it as encouragement to continue being a pain in the ass and escalate every little incident he comes across as being a "major problem". I never heard or saw much proselytizing while I was there, beyond chaplains ensuring cadets knew when services were(across all faiths BTW). Some cadets would send out e-mails about events their faith group was holding, but they were A) invitations and and B) mostly ignored. Someone getting offended by any of that is going out of their way to be difficult.
I think the big thing is that academy/ies are made up of a (mostly) conservative student body, that may seem to be overly religious to a kid from New York City. And I can see how an invitation may be seen as pressuring, but to an extent the question that comes up here is how far do you go to make sure a group of 18-22 year old kids locked up in a tower far away from the public never offend each other as they try to live their lives. What is seen by one person as reaching out and offering an invitation can be seen by another as proselytizing or pressuring and if you're encouraged to take your complaints to the authorities or a group of advocates trying to stir up trouble instead of, Oh I don't know, "TALKING TO EACH OTHER AND FIGURING IT OUT LIKE ADULTS." these are the kind of bullshit stories that are going to come out because everyone sees the academies as their own little petri dishes with specimens they need to control instead of places where a lot of young adults are doing a lot of growing up really fast in a difficult environment.
Sorry long rant. Basically yes, there was an issue with a commander that was proselytizing to cadets. It got shut down and dealt with, but the academy continues to deal with the echoes of it because an advocate realized he could use it to further his own agenda. I think it points to the fact that generals lose touch with reality and tend to think they can do whatever they want rather than the place being a hotbed of religious activism.
This is the student-made video from the article, but it really does get the point across, I believe, and thought it was worth sharing here. Hopefully, these cadets can accomplish their aim.
August 4th, 2014 at 10:03 AM ^
I don't know what it is about the air force that they are beset with honor violations and scandals, such as this, on an almost annual basis. The other two academies, while they've had their scandals, they are usually of the academic variety. Another point which is interesting is that the integration of women into the corps of cadets at the AF academy was a much easier transition than it was at West Point and Annapolis, yet the latter two institutions rarely have scandals of the sexual nature.
So, what, if anything, will the NCAA find itself doing? Do they follow their own precedent of PSU, or do they follow the course they've set over the last two years and do nothing?
August 4th, 2014 at 10:36 AM ^
The government thinks the issue is that West Point and Annapolis do not encourage reports of incidents like these as effectively as AFA does, not that they have fewer of them. That wouldn't be surprising if it were true, given what we know about campus sexual assault nationwide.
ETA: I didn't realize you were OP. Recall this part:
"The greater number of reports seen at USAFA is not likely due to a higher crime rate," the Pentagon said in a 2013 report to Congress.
The Pentagon isn't just bullshitting when it says that.
August 4th, 2014 at 10:44 AM ^
thoughout their history, have had troubles of this sort. Navy and West Point have had sexual assault cases, but they weren't as highly publicized as this one is because it was before social media, before this problem became as highlighted as it has been over the past few years. I'm not belittling the issue, just commenting on the coverage it receives now. All that said, heads will roll in C-Springs over this. I hope that the offending cadets get the sundown policy (gone by sundown, if found guilty) and that people who knew about it and said nothing get the boot as well. I'm deeply ashamed this has happened at my Academy. As someone who has assisted two young people get into the Academy for this year, one of them at the Prep School, I'm wondering about the environment they've been sent to.
Annapolis has had several cases involving football players recently; here is the one from 2013
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-details-emerge-in-naval-academy-sex-assault-case/
and a special kudos to the female swimmer in the video (holla) and the kid who was running track...in shorts...with snow on the ground. #AcademyDifference
Just sayin...
Just sayin... ;)
August 4th, 2014 at 11:50 AM ^
As the Father of three Daughters I am not sure what conversation(s) or wisdom I can share with them to be assured of their safety on a campus of anykind.
is going to come looking for some of these clowns.
This probably serves as the other side of the story: The Gazette Journals OSI source was a kid who was kicked out of the academy, because he said he was working as an OSI informant in a confidential program. For the last year he has been trying to put pressure on the academy to let him back in and has spoken to OSI about alot of the "operations" he was in. The fact that the program exists pisses me off to high heaven, but I know from several academy sources that the relationship between this particular young man and the truth is not exactly tight. The Gazette-Journal always sells a lot of papers when it sensationalizes events at the academy and while I am sure there is some truth to the report, I can never get over the suspicion that the gazette-journal is twisting the facts to its own purposes. Finally, the Title IX thing that is causing so much pressure on other schools has been causing pressure on the academy for even longer, Back in 2002/2003 there was a huge scandal there on the same thing, so you're looking at a long period of time of having that type of lens at the school.
As far as what the culture there is actually like, this is based on what I remember from my time at the Academy(Long ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth), keeping in mind I was both A) not an intercollegiate athlete and B) not especially good friends with any intercollegiate athletes so most of what I heard was second or third hand.
1. I never heard a damn thing about roofies or date rape drugs and simply cannot imagine that being something that was widely passed around as the athlete's didn't really need them. Most cadet athlete's got all the play they wanted as they were the ones that the cadet women tended to want(I think it's a bad boy thing writ in academy terms) and they also tended to have civilian buddies on the outside at the other campuses. I can imagine wild parties where lots of stuff happened that the girls may not have been proud about the next day happened, but I doubt very highly that date rape drugs were required, this feels like the embellishments of the confidential informant.
2. There has always been a tendency at the Academy to make things look worse than they are, so that cadet leaders and officers can make nice bullet points about, "Things they've done to change the culture." There's a ton of politically correct BS at the academy and given the academy is such an easy target it tends to capitulate to whoever has an issue so they will get left alone. The problem is that advocates never give in when they smell blood and instead push for more and more concessions. I am willing to bet that most of the articles cited in the above pissing contest came from the work of one Mikey Weinstein, who has had a stick up his ass about the academy being too Christian ever since he graduated. He's noisy, never satisfied, and made a ton of hay at the right time and so his megaphone has never really been turned down even as the "controversies" he highlights get dumber and dumber.
3. The academy has always had trouble incorporating intercollegiate athletes into the overall program, although I'll say the same thing I have always said, the life of an intercollegiate athlete at the academy is HARD(if not quite as hard as the media makes it out to be, every grad rolls their eyes when the announcers say these guys have the full burden of military stuff on top of school and athletics) and I would not have traded places with any of them. Seeing those men and women come back up to the dorms after practice, grabbing something to eat really quickly and then studying until they fell asleep exhausted along with the fact that during the season their weekends were SHOT, did not fill me with any particular envy and it was understandable they let the military stuff slide or would be excused from certain military events. The simple fact is there's a significant number of cadets at the academy who are there only because it allowed them to play their sport at a D1 level. There's a place for them in the military, but they're generally going to have a harder time buying into the overall program.
4. Finally, bad apples have always made it into the academy and always will, you can't control for that, some people just suck and endless appeals to honor and discipline aren;t going to move their needles. There should be higher expectations for the academies and their cadets, but this continually acting like they are all suppossed to be paragons of light and virtue is bad marketing and unfair to everyone involved.