Deep-Six for Sexual Harassment?

The Navy, which for the last three years has had an official policy of zero tolerance for sexual harassment, may at long last be getting ready to show that it means what it says.

Adm. Frank B. Kelso, the chief of naval operations, says that by the end of this year all members of the service--officers and enlisted personnel--will have been put through a new training program on sexual harassment. Additionally, commanders will be given authority to punish those who engage in gender-related misconduct, up to and including separation from the service. Of the Navy’s 576,000 active-duty members about 10% are women. There is no question that there has been widespread and intolerable misconduct directed against Navy women. A study completed last year found that 75% of Navy women and 50% of Navy men believed that sexual harassment took place within their commands.

If Kelso’s initiative had a single shaping event it came from the behavior of a group of Navy and Marine Corps officers at a naval aviation convention in Las Vegas eight months ago. There at least 26 women, a majority of them Navy officers, were sexually bullied and abused by a gantlet of male officers. The Navy is now considering punishment for as many as 70 men who participated in the incident or who witnessed it but did nothing to halt it. What has yet to be explained is why it has taken so long to institute disciplinary action in this case. In nearly every other matter, military justice proceeds far more swiftly.

Kelso’s action may also have been encouraged by a no-nonsense decision of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. The committee has put thousands of Navy promotions on hold, until it is convinced that the sexual harassment problem is being satisfactorily dealt with.

The Navy, to be sure, is not unique among the services in facing problems of sexual harassment and sometimes violent sexual abuse. But as Kelso and others have noted, there may be unique aspects to naval culture that exacerbate the problem. The Navy’s senior admiral has now served notice that changes must and will be made. The Navy will be a better organization for that.