Feminist Charles Clymer posted this on his blog and gave Liberal’s Unite permission to share the story:
As of this entry’s posting at 2:30 pm EST, the West Point Board of Visitors–a group composed only of Members of Congress and persons directly appointed by the President–are gathering in the Cannon House Building in Washington, D.C. to discuss the state of affairs at the Academy.
Unbeknownst to the rest of attendees–including three Senators and five Congresspersons–an open letter will be read to the small gathering by one of the folks appointed to the Board of the Visitors by the President: Sue Fulton, West Point Class of ’80, one of the first women to graduate from the Academy and a prominent activist for LGBT rights in the military.
Judging by the letter, which I obtained from an anonymous source who asked me not to post it until the start of this meeting, Fulton is not pleased. In fact, she sounds incredibly pissed at the rampant sexism, assault, and harassment directed at women cadets currently attending.
The letter comes on the tail end of several scandals plaguing the Academy: a report released that shows sexual assaults have increased there, the revelation that a sergeant was filming female cadets in a barracks shower without their knowledge, and most recently, the atrocious response of the Academy in allowing more than a dozen senior cadets to graduate after it was revealed they engaged in rampant sexual harassment, including rape jokes and homophobic, racist, and otherwise sexist comments and, most startlingly, taking pictures of women cadets on campus without their permission and doctoring or captioning them to be sexually-suggestive and generally demeaning.
This was all done on the government e-mail system on the official e-mail distro for the team.
The Academy’s response? Pretty lenient. Punishments were given that allowed the cadets to complete them in the remaining eight days before graduation while Academy officials lied in official statements to the Corps of Cadets and to the press about their response, stating the “full maximum punishment” had been given when, in fact, it had not. Not even close.
They also lied about no “inappropriate” pictures being taken and when called out on it, stated they meant no nude photos of women cadets had been taken.
This is all based on one e-mail, by the way, despite knowledge that these weekly messages to the entire team have been occurring for at least a year. West Point claims to have reviewed over 700 pages of e-mails (and supposedly, their threads) but oddly, only had enough evidence to “punish” these cadets on relatively light misconduct boards.
I’m not buying it, and apparently, neither is Sue Fulton, who, as part of that first class of women who started the Academy back in 1976, endured four years of ruthless sexism and sexual harassment, to say nothing of the assaults that went unreported for fear of retaliation.
Here’s the letter:
An Open Letter to the Leadership of the United States Military Academy at West Point
It was hard to attend graduation this year. I knew that almost a dozen rugby players would be walking across the stage – rugby players who had participated in pornographic, misogynistic, sometimes racist weekly emails, targeting their own fellow cadets. Emails that included language like “the only thing <woman cadet’s name> can call out is her own name as she f–ks <her boyfriend> in the a– with an 8″ black strap-on” and “<woman cadet’s name> needs to be raped by like twenty big black dudes.” Emails that included photos taken of women cadets without their knowledge, captioned with sexually suggestive and/or violent comments.
Continue Reading HERE
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Kimberley A. Johnson (BIO) – A.K.A. The Anti Coulter is the author of The Virgin Diaries and an activist for women’s rights. Like her on Facebook, Twitter or friend her on FB HERE. |
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