Out on patrol that night, Schumacher told me, he felt on the brink of darkness.. A rappel tower the Army constructed on campus for its Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), a program in which Valley Forge no longer participates. The case was settled out of court.). Perhaps the schools most formidable foe these days is Stewart Ryan, the Philadelphia-based lawyer who prosecuted Bill Cosby. On a chilly evening in September 2020, Jordan Schumacher solemnly patrolled the grounds of Valley Forge Military Academy, near his wits end. The school doesnt want to deal with sexual harassment, a female cadet wrote, and students guilty of sexual misconduct saw their behaviors pushed under the rug., Another former cadet who attended around the same time told me she was drugged at an off-campus party and then sexually assaulted by a male Forge cadet while unconscious. He was also waterboarded, he claims, and had his head slammed into a wall. In a contemporaneous memo to the Department of Education, Wood wrote that his efforts to investigate a sexual assault complaint involving two male cadets were impeded by Gallagher, who demanded Wood cease his work. So this semester, with little ado, the Cadet Leadership Development System was unveiled. Failure to produce any of the required knowledge on the spot exposed these greenest of West Pointers to the wrath of their older classmates, and to any number of physical or verbal humiliations. By the accounts of those I spoke with, the Forge has indeed come to mirror many of the worst aspects of military culturethe lies and cover-ups, the unwillingness to deal appropriately with sexual assaults, and the lack of financial transparency. 5.0 out of 5 stars Hazing at West Point. A former Boy Scout whod joined a junior ROTC program at age 11, he was proud of the promotion and ready to lead. In an unpublished 1995 letter to a friend and former classmate, shared with me by the J.D. Nestled 20 miles north of Philadelphia, the private institution teaches middle school, high school, and junior college students. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? Yet in recent years, Forge administrators had laid off some of the best TACs and replaced them with less-enlightened ones. The abuse and hazing continued after summer camp ended and the cadets returned to the barracks and classes. As punishment, they were ordered to paint the commandants house. In the name of leadership, plebes were mandated to learn not only military history, but pages of other trivia and gibberish that, in effect, equaled an extra academic course. Bullies and Cowards : The West Point Hazing Scandal, 1898-1901 We noticed you have an ad blocker on. These concerns were echoed in an audit undertaken on behalf of a board member by the Healey Education Foundation, which warned that Valley Forge is not going to survive by looking backwards. A draft report, leaked to the press in 2019 and cited in a lawsuit that was later dismissed, noted that enrollment had declined 40 percent in the previous five years, and the school was nearly $7 million in debt. Grandma was just making a sweater. The food at West Point has, traditionally, not been very good. Schumacher and a handful of other cadets thus took it upon themselves to shield fellow students from bullies and twisted TACs alike. After four months of constant torment, including a beating in an organized boxing match, ridicule for reading his Bible, and the forced consumption of hot sauce in the cadet mess hall, he resigned. From the early West Point scandals to recent reports of hazing at the Virginia Military Institute, abuses at military schools have been codified in American culture through media reports, literature, and Hollywood tropes. Once a citadel of leadership, Valley Forge today is basically a sleepaway camp for troubled kids with very little supervision, says graduate Ray Bossert, a retired Army colonel and former TAC. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. I remember our daughter mentioning there being a brief by the supe last summer updating the new cadets on how many of their number had left. They didnt care.. Terms of Service apply. $325,000 109 Barney Way 3 Bed 2 Bath 1064 SqFt. But his family blamed his death on daily dosages of Tabasco sauce his older schoolmates forced him to drink. I dont want to say thats a goal of the school, but its something that happens. However, many who passed through hazing voice regret. Then, for 20 excruciating, uninterrupted minutes, plebes were at the mercy of their older classmates. Those evenings, theyd stash their double Zip-Lock-covered piece of paper in their hat, cross their fingers hard, and hope they wouldnt have cause to retrieve it. But, I never did it yelling, and they were for things that they are supposed to know and do, so in reality, enforcing standards. This evening, walking along a mossy brick pathway, he spotted something suspicious: Behind a storage shed, out of sight of campus surveillance cameras, a group of upperclassmen was tormenting a few shivering plebes. A twisted drill sergeant mentality took root. Every weekday we compile our most wondrous stories and deliver them straight to you. But for some old grads (the ones afraid of pastry), abandoning pie cutting rituals means that todays cadets are missing out on something valuable. And each month, plebes would take particular note of what nights there would be pie. Every single class that has ever come here has been told during their freshman year that you got it easier, Hammond says. The decision to admit women into the junior college was made in 2005 by Longs successor, Charles Tony McGeorge, the Forges first civilian president. Sir, the dessert for this meal is cherry cobbler!. ), In 2020, fed up, Schumacher and a dozen or so other cadets created a PowerPoint and presented it to school officials. Try the frozen treat that inspired Arrested Development's famous banana stand. With school leaders doing little to address the fraught campus atmosphere, Schumacher had taken it upon himself to patrol the grounds as often as possible. McMaster, Donald Trumps former national security adviser. A minor stabbing, perhaps, but telling of more extreme hazing that campus leaders seemed willing to tolerate, and sometimes even take part in. While rule breakers once got the ax, staffers have allegedly overlooked serious misdeeds while retaining the offending students and banking their tuition dollars. Read his musings in his column "Golden Heart Tales" in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Citing privacy concerns, retired Marine Col. Stuart Helgeson, the schools president, said in a statement that the Forge has zero tolerance for hazing and illegal and inappropriate activity, thorough policies and procedures in place to address allegations of wrongdoing, and a proven track record of taking action to address concerns quickly and appropriately. The school, he added, will continue to manage matters that arise according to law, policy, and the best interest of the cadets entrusted to our care., School trustees and senior administrators, according to legal documents and numerous sources, have minimized rather than remediated the problems. Friday, January 30, 2009; Page A02. We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget. (Two of the cadets former classmates confirmed that he told them this story shortly afterward. The 2008 suicide rate of 20.2 per 100,000 marked a historic high for the Army, and for the first time since the Vietnam War era it surpassed the overall U.S. rate for people of similar ages and backgrounds: 19.5 per 100,000 in 2005, the latest year for which the statistic is available. United States Military Academy at West Point : To improve enforcement of the prohibition against hazing, the academy superintendents should, for first-offense, hazing-type practices of lesser seriousness, consider establishing punishments that prevent reoccurrence such as suspending the offender's involvement in fourth class indoctrination. The Politics of Pie Cutting at West Point's Mess Hall. The cadets I interviewed, along with an internal list of student grievances I obtained, say the Forge frequently minimizes mental health issues, with a school nurse once scolding a student for sending up red flags that dont need to be sent up.. We keep hoping these guys would go away, Helgeson complained to the newspaper. When Oscar Booze entered West Point in 1898, the older cadets decided that he did not conform to their image of what a cadet should be. When I was a plebe, anybody could tell you your brass buckle needed a shine. (Despite these physical demands, cadets throughout the 19th century reported that bread was the only other reliably edible food.). 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Rivera was well-contained during the presentation, Schumacher said, but their effort to speak truth to power amounted to naught. in their boot camp or whatever, they had him taking some weird pills or whatever, and he lost like 30 pounds (he wasnt fat, probably average healthy weight). Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). He became withdrawn and depressed, and would eventually require therapy. Too many people in the past here saw the seniors role as placing stress on the subordinate, he says. People could do whatever they wanted, the young woman told me. OSCAR BOOZ'S HAZING AT WEST POINT - PressReader One filled in as school chaplain, holding religious ceremonies and counseling suicidal cadets as young as 13. But in November 2004, the board of trustees booted Long for an alleged pattern of sexually harassing employees. iss facility services head office. Afterward, one emailed him a screed claiming he lacked the traits of a US Marine. The pie scars remain: West Point grads from that era, now 20 or more years from graduation, have been known to feign terror at being asked to cut a dessert. The ritual was something out of a bad fraternity movie: blindfolded neophyte cadets, half-naked seniors and a threat of forced oral sex. All they cared about was that there was no negative press, even if it meant that kids were being sodomized or kids were having inappropriate sexual relations, or getting drunk or getting high, or whatever. This score helps find the safest places to live in America. But the new reform is fundamentally different, he says. In 2015, the schools thenTitle IX officer warned of a Gomer Pyle method of training, referring to a character from Full Metal Jacket whose brutal hazing by others pushes him to commit a murder-suicide. He then grabs the boy. Former cadets Ryan Niessner, Jordan Schumacher, and Young Sheng are among the former cadets speaking out about their experiences at the Forge. They did their best to prevent fights, and would rush injured kids to the hospital. Dwight D. Eisenhower once recalled his own plebe year in 1911 as double-time all the way.. (By Muhannad Falaah Associated Press) It was, Toughen the fuck up! By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from Mother Jones and our partners. We cant tell you, Army Secretary Pete Geren said at the Pentagon news conference. Starting in the fall this year, we have only been allowed to have one three-day weekend, one student said. Sign up for our email, delivered twice a week. The same suit claims that after a 13-year-old classmate reported his own abuse to school officials, his tormentors branded him with a Bfor bitch., Based on the schools nonprofit tax filings, Valley Forge has spent more than $4 million on legal fees over the last two decades. he said that . This is a stressful place. Its kind of like prison, one former student said. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point's mission is "to educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army." As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. I first researched the turn-of-the-century hazing scandal at West Point for my 1990 book Broken Pledges, slogging through deep piles of government documents to gain access to an amazing variety of demeaning hazing practices conducted by cadets. It merely makes them obedient. This truth helps highlight the moral clarity of dissenters such as Salinger and Schumacher, whose insubordination was a clear-eyed response to abuse, a righteous rejection of bullying masquerading as command and control. Students of color and female cadets were admitted, if not with open arms. Visit a sweet shop selling one of the first candies ever made and sold in America. That pissed me off, Schumacher recalls. WEST POINT, N.Y., Nov. 9 The United States Military Academy admitted today that female cadets had been ordered last summer during maneuvers to kill chickens "by biting them across the tendons. An additional 15 await final determination by the armed forces medical examiner. What we got was silence. He didnt know whether he wanted to go on living: I was just mentally shattered., His friends found him later, parked on the roadside in a state of shock, and urged him to come back to campus. Schumacher had arrived on campus in 2019, excited by the Forges time-honored traditions and drawn to its curricula on counterterrorism and cybersecurity. (Ten other cadets went AWOL that weekend, some for a temporary taste of freedom, others hoping to escape permanently.) But Michael Karson, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Denver who specializes in child abuse, told me that one of the few hard laws in his field is as follows: Punishment doesnt work to change peoples character, he says. As alum General Norman Schwarzkopf, architect of the first Gulf War, put it, West Point prepared me for the military. Upperclassmen looked on, taunting. Oscar L. Booz died of tubercular laryngitis 18 months after he dropped out of the academy. For example, they said the freshman, also known as a plebe, who attempted to take his life on Saturday had been mercilessly teased by older students after he sent them an e-mail suggesting he had worked as a private security contractor, according to one of his psychology classmates. We were there to be a role model for these kids, not a drill instructor. One can reasonably argue that the military must instill compliance and cohesion in its combat units. Press Release - PRIB: Transcript: Senate media interview of Senate Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. Now only someone in your chain of command can make a correction., I wouldnt say its easier, says John Shugena, a plebe. And despite the grumblings, its the cadets respect for leadership that will make or break the new system. Ryan Niessner, who submitted a sworn affidavit for one of Stewart Ryans cases, told me he was sexually assaulted as a 15-year-old Forge cadet in 2009. A recent post on a private Instagram account titled Valley Forge Sucks shows two cops peering into a schoolroom, with the caption: Normal day at the Forge., Valley Forge administrators declined to respond to detailed questions about the concerns raised in this story, or to make named staffers, administrators, or trustees available for interviews. They had the wrong idea of what service and tradition really are. But he was even more frustrated with the school for creating an environment in which college kids were saddled with responsibilities beyond their age and experience. Some of them will be because of injury and others because "this was not what they expected." It brings out the best and the worst in people, he told me. ), In 2007, two parents told the Philadelphia Inquirer they were pulling their sons from the Forge after one of them, age 16, was brutally beaten by peers, and the other, a 13-year-old, was repeatedly tormented, kicked while doing pushups, and branded with a five-pointed star. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the worlds hidden wonders. But the leaders role is to remove stress.. Yung talagang pasaway na ayaw tumigil sa panggu-gulpi at pangtotorture dito sa estudyante, mga kapatid nila na gusto sumama sa mga organisasyon na ito.
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