Hazing as Sadistic Torment

More than 40 women have applied for admission next year to the Citadel, the publicly supported South Carolina military college, and 28 have been accepted. Those who join the corps of cadets should find a somewhat less antagonistic atmosphere than what awaited the four women who enrolled last year.

Two of those women left the school in January after complaining that they had been subjected to months of hazing by male cadets that crossed the boundaries of sanctioned behavior, even at an institution where intense harassment and humiliation of first-year students is treated as a fine art. Two of the young men accused of the most egregious offenses against the women have since resigned. This week another male cadet was dismissed and nine others received lesser punishments for their part in the hazing. The Citadel is apparently determined to show that it is serious about transforming itself--as the courts have said it must--from an all-male to a coed college, and no less serious about reining in those of its cadets who seem to believe it is their mission to sabotage that evolution.

That next year’s class will contain more than a score of women should make that effort easier, if only because it sends a signal to those male cadets who see themselves as die-hard traditionalists that the battle has been lost. That does not, of course, guarantee that the women will always be treated responsibly, any more than first-year male students can expect such treatment. The culture of the Citadel encourages, even demands, the merciless harassment of first-year students as a supposed means for developing character and instilling discipline. What the two young women who are no longer at the Citadel say they had to endure was not impersonal harassment but sadistic torment. School officials, as they showed by the actions they took this week, agree.