The Air Force would not appear to be having a good week, in Albuquerque or Colorado Springs particularly. To go in escalating order of importance...:
Group Says Air Force Base Poisoned Prairie Dogs Behind Commander's House (KRQE News 13, March 13, 2003): Kirtland Air Force Base is under fire from an animal protection group who says the base poisoned about fifty Prairie Dogs behind the base commander’s backyard. Just months after a public outcry encouraged the City of Albuquerque stop poisoning the tunneling rodents, a group calling itself Prairie Dog Pals said they received calls Wednesday from people working on base, alerting them to the mass poisonings. A spokesperson for Kirtland did not deny the poisoning and said the Prairie Dogs pose a health hazard to humans.
You know ... most people out west seem to regard prairie dogs as burrowing rats, and a pain in the rear. Who knew they could cause such agita?
Surge in Sex Cases at Air Force Base
(Washington Post, March 12, 2003): An Air Force base in Texas responsible for training intelligence specialists and firefighters experienced a surge in cases last year involving sex between instructors and students, resulting in court-martial proceedings against four instructors and one student, according to Air Force officials. [...] Nonetheless, the sudden increase in 2002, after a total of only two instructor-student sex cases in the previous five years, suggests that the Air Force may be confronting a broader problem in the enforcement of proper sexual conduct in its education and training system. The rise in violations at Goodfellow occurred despite steps taken by Air Force authorities months earlier to update codes of conduct and to ensure that instructors and students were receiving regular briefings on what constitutes proper behavior.
You know ... if most very large organizations had a grad total of five cases of technically consensual sexual misconduct inside a year, most people would not refer to that as a "surge" in anything. (Although the fact that four of the cases occurred in March -- and one seems to have involved a wee orgy of sorts -- would be considered unusual.) Besides, given that such cases may generally be consensual (although there may be a goodly dose of actual sexual harrassment involved), it's entirely probable that there's a great deal more of such contact that nobody besides the participants ever knows about.
Which is to say, this type of thing, given the terribly small numbers of known cases, really doesn't say anything about the Air Force and keeping order, no matter what the Post says.
Air Force Probing Cross Burning in N.M. Findlaw/AP, March 13, 2003): Military officials were investigating whether four Air Force security guards burned a cross in a home's back yard and participated in other supremacist activities. The four men, members of the 377th Security Forces Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, were relieved of duty and restricted to base, base spokesman Ralph Francis said. Their names will not be released, Francis said. He said the men had Nazi swastikas and literature from the Ku Klux Klan - things that he said are not "illegal to possess, but it depends on how it's being used." Their other alleged activities were not specified. Francis said a preliminary internal investigation showed that the cross-burning was not directed at anyone.
"Not directed at anyone"? They run around burning crosses just for fun?
If they did in fact burn crosses as has been alleged, then either they're lying, or they're just too damn stupid to be working security for anyone. How could you burn crosses in this day and age and not realize that it would not go over terribly well?
Academy Culture and Sex Charges (Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 2003): ...... A growing rape scandal is raising tough questions about a male-dominated military culture - and about a leadership structure that may have both allowed it to happen and left it unpunished. The Academy says it has received 56 reports of sexual assault in the past 10 years - although research on rape reporting suggests the number of actual assaults may be far higher. [...] A few areas of concern have surfaced, including a hierarchy that gives upperclassmen near-total control over freshmen, or "doolies." "Lowerclassmen kind of exist at the whim of upperclassmen," says Kate Summers of The Miles Foundation, a nonprofit in Newtown, Conn., that examines domestic abuse and sexual assault in the military. "Freshmen are like slaves. Because of that, you have very systemic problems, with the Academy as well as within the military."
So basically, you combine freshman hazing with the fact that some of the freshmen are women, and you have a disaster waiting to happen. (This would also imply some interesting things about freshman hazing generally at the academy, assuming that it's a particularly harsh version of the sorts of things that young men seem to do to each other with appalling regularity.)
The Pentagon hopes to make its recommendations later this month, says Air Force Lt. Col. Dewey Ford. Reform proposals may include segregating cadet dorms by sex - an idea that sexual-assault groups say would exacerbate the problem - and training Air Force nurses and investigators to deal with sexual assaults.
I must confess, I don't understand why sex-segregated dorms would aggravate the problem. I don't see how they could possibly make it any worse. And I find it shocking that Air Force nurses, in particular, weren't trained to deal with sexual assaults. To be honest, that sounds like standard medical training, given the world we live in. To be sure, some sort of specialized approach might be needed because of the specialized environment. (The investigators' lack of training would be less surprising, all things considered.)
Posted by iain at March 14, 2003 01:27 AM
