Not One of the "Boys"

I'm off to a Parade!

Do you like the white gloves?










Sorry it's been so long since I've written on this topic. Been rather busy lately....


I often get asked if I experienced any sexual harassment at the Air Force Academy, especially in light of the recent scandal there. I had one incident, where I caught a peeping Tom.

That first year my day started pretty early. I needed to shower and clean my room before the upperclassmen got up so I could get out in the hall to "call minutes". (Some guys used that as their wake-up call.) Anyway, this one morning I was walking down the hall to the ladies bathroom, on the right side, towel properly draped over my left arm, shampoo and soapdish in my bathrobe pockets. As I approached the doorway, I noticed the door was propped open (it was an inward swinging door). My roommate had gotten to the bathroom first and I could hear the water running. I was still a little groggy and after entering (still wondering why the door was open), I saw a guy laying face down on the floor. My first thought was "why is someone doing push-ups in our bathroom?" Then I realized he was inching forward to watch my roommate shower. We had typical military showers for that time, (no curtains) so he had quite a show until I interrupted. I'd like to say I clocked him with my shampoo bottle but I didn't. Wearing only underwear under my bathrobe, I didn't want to give him any more of a "show" anyway. But mostly I was caught very off-guard! Anyway, I must have let out a yelp or something because he jumped up and ran out the other (propped open) door of the bathroom. Breaking the rules (speaking), I told my roommate what had happened. We reported it to the squadron commander and were told it would be investigated and punishment would follow. Later, I found out that the peeper was a General's son, and therefore didn't get punished.

That's when I realized the Air Force has a good 'ole boy system.

Interestingly, I flew my last trip with a captain who graduated in the class of '79. They have proudly labeled themselves LCWB, which stands for Last Class With Balls. (The class of '80 was the first class to have women.) He is a nice guy, and we had some interesting discussions on the topic of women at the Academy. I mentioned that I didn't remember it being very bad when I was there, except for the peeping Tom. He had read an article that claimed the sexual harassment was initiated by his class, and we both felt that was ludicrous. While I never was too "keen" on his class's nickname (the had a banner in the parking lot of football games to attract classmates to their tailgate party), I don't think it led to any harassment. It was more of a historical thing. The last class of morons... Anyway, we both concluded that one of the biggest problems with the Academy is that the goal is to train future AF Generals and some guys get a little "power-happy" right from the start. Academy graduates have a bad reputation *of being jerks to put it mildly, when they get into the "real" Air Force. It was a compliment to me when someone would say, "Wow, you're one of them?! You don't ACT like an Academy grad!" Music to my ears.

With sexual harassment finally being addressed, the next troubling issue I've heard about is the religious bias. But that's not something I want to get into right now. It makes me crazy!


*There was one other group of officers with a bad reputation. The prior-enlisted officers were often known to be particular asshats to the still-enlisted troops, like they were better than them or something.