Coed military training: benefits and concerns

Coed Military Training

Imagine a father actually encouraging the arrangement in which his eighteen-year-old daughter "for her benefit" shares a bedroom with the next-door neighbor's eighteen-year-old son, for months on end, and as he leaves and turns out the light, he happily says, "now be good, kids" (Hart pp). Most people would consider this parent totally irresponsible, and might even wonder whether he was some undercover pornographer or worse (Hart pp). However, for all intents and purposes, the armed forces are doing this and more to the sons of daughters of America that they are responsible for every day, no matter how destructive coed housing and other training practices are to military readiness and to the troops themselves (Hart pp).

In 1998, an eleven member team headed by Former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, examined the issue of mixed-sex training, and concluded after a full scale investigation including inspections and thousands of service member interviews, that mixed-sex basic training and housing should be ended (Hart pp).

However, although the report should have been a red flag regarding the integrated training policy adopted by the Army, Air Force, and Navy, the most that came from the report was that the Army agreed to install partitions in the barracks to discourage sexual encounters (Hart pp). The unanimous recommendations by six women and five men were surprising, considering the diverse makeup of the panel, a mix of retired military officers, a civil rights lawyer and three female college professors (Scarborough pp). After reviewing evidence of disciplinary problems and lack of teamwork, the panelists urged the military services to keep the sexes in separate barracks at the platoon level for the ten-week of basic training, yet, men and women would still train together, sometimes, when small same-sex unites join to make up larger companies (Scarborough pp).

There were so many female recruits who were unable to pass hand grenade tossing tests at one Army base that authorities simply changed the standards, setting different requirements for male and female recruits, reports analyst James Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, in his paper, "Boot Camp or Summer Camp? Restoring Rigorous Standards to Basic Training" (Hart pp). Anderson says that in an effort to entice and retain women, basic training has become much more feminized, de-emphasizing toughness and rigor (Hart pp). At Great Lakes Naval Training Center, recruits are now shown a video that tells them that "anyone can make it through boot camp," when actually the point should be that not everyone can make it (Hart pp). According to one Army recruit who expected boot camp to be tough, said, "this is like summer camp" (Hart pp). Anderson states that "all the emphasis on physical and mental toughness that would enable a soldier to outlast or outperform a capable enemy on the field of battle is being systematically removed from U.S. armed forces basic training" (Hart pp). It appears that political correctness now rules the Pentagon (Hart pp).

After more than forty years of effort, the military appears to have become a model of racial tolerance for the rest of society, yet, efforts for gender tolerance has come to resemble a minefield at numerous military bases and posts (Berg pp). During the past decade, there has been a myriad of allegations that male instructors, including drill sergeants, have raped and sexually abused young women trainees, and conversely, that several women recruits may have offered sexual favors to advance their careers, which suggest that the military may be up against its toughest foe since Vietnam, biology (Berg pp).

While careful not to sound tolerant of sex crimes or harassment, critics declare that placing young men and women together during the first weeks of training, and particularly placing seemingly all-powerful male drill sergeants in charge of young female recruits, is simply a recipe for trouble (Berg pp).

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a policy institute that studies defense issues, states, "Sexuality is a powerful force that doesn't always respond to commands and rules," and believes that the Army has put its young men and women into emotionally combustible situation, and that a policy of zero tolerance is unrealistic (Berg pp). Donnelly suggests that the broader issue is about human nature, "We have to live life as it is, not as we imagine it to be. The feminist philosophy that men and women are interchangeable in all roles is a risky idea in the military" (Berg pp). Donnelly and many others believe that the military services should reconsider coed training, and should also roll back the number of combat and near-combat jobs open to women (Berg pp). Chief public health officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Susan Mather, estimates that between 1992 and 1996, the VA treated more than 4,000 women for trauma relating to sexual abuse while on active duty (Berg pp). According to two VA studies, one in four women vets say they had been sexually assaulted while in the military (Berg pp).

Coed basic training was first implemented by the Clinton administration in 1994, and since then, there has been an atmosphere that is diminishing morale and leading to dangerous situations in the event of conflict (De Pasquale pp).