Act of Harassment Betrays the Ideal of Military Honor

One wonders why Gwen Dreyer went to the Naval Academy in the first place.

True, she was the third generation of her family to do so. And, true, she stated she wanted to go there “to be part of a group of people who strive to be the best.”

But at the first little sign of trouble, she quits. And what kind of attitude is that?

No, she did not quit over the ritualistic harassment that greets all new students. She got through that fine. And no, she did not quit because of the physical demands of life at a military academy. She handled that OK, too.

But when she was abducted from her room by two guys, dragged to a men’s washroom down the hall, handcuffed to a urinal, taunted, jeered at and then photographed for the amusement of the other midshipmen, she got all huffy and quit.

Go figure.

After considerable delay, the academy did decide this incident was not in its finest tradition. But if you thought military academies were places where “honor” really still meant something and that dishonoring a classmate in such a degrading way would call for severe punishment, well, think again.

The Naval Academy treated the attack on Dreyer as a college high jinks that got a little out of hand.

The two midshipmen who dragged Dreyer from her room were given some demerits and lost about a month’s leave time. Eight others who participated were given written warnings.

And that was that. So Dreyer, 19, a second-year student, quit a few weeks ago, stating that the academy’s ideals of “loyalty, honor and integrity” were being blatantly disregarded “by more than a few midshipmen. . . .”

But, hey, let’s keep this in perspective. College kids are supposed to be a little goofy. And nobody goes to a military academy expecting four years at Club Med. So you’ve got to expect a little rough-housing right?

Well, right. And just preceding her attack, Dreyer had been in a snowball fight with some other midshipmen. There was some tussling there and that was OK. She was being treated just like anyone else.

And when it was over, she went back to her room to study. That’s when the two guys came in and grabbed her. And things changed.

Dragging a woman to a men’s washroom and chaining her to a urinal has some pretty chilling psycho-sexual overtones that a snowball fight does not.

And photographing Dreyer while she was chained up is no small matter either. It meant that her feelings of helplessness and terror would not end when she was released from the handcuffs. It meant she would continue to feel helpless and terrorized as long as the pictures were being passed from sweaty palm to sweaty palm throughout the academy.

I wish I could say with certainty that this matter would have been treated differently at Ohio State or Harvard or any other non-military college. Dreyers’ parents think it would have been.

But I am not so sure. Violence directed at women, unless it is very overt, is often dismissed as a prank that went too far.

The Naval Academy superintendent, Rear Adm. Virgil L. Hill Jr., said he took the Dreyer incident “seriously,” but “admittedly the incident grew out of a good-natured exchange between friends.”

He did say, however, the other midshipmen “overstepped bounds” and Dreyer’s “end feeling was humiliation. That’s sexual harassment. We don’t allow that.” But the academy did not feel the attack on Dreyer was “premeditated” or grounds for dismissal.

This led Dreyer’s stepmother to say: “Unless handcuffs are standard equipment at men’s urinals in the Naval Academy, it certainly was premeditated.”

I doubt the men who attacked Dreyer believe they did anything terribly wrong. I doubt they even believe it was a real attack.

Which is a shame. And what is so wrong with their mild punishments.

But I would not have expelled these men. That would have embittered, not educated them. I would have suspended them from the academy and required them to work at a shelter for battered and abused women. And then I would have taken them back.

I think they would have come back changed. Better. And with a true sense of what “honor” really is.

Which was, once upon on a time, what military academies were about.