Between the sexual assault issues and now this, it's enough to make one wonder if perhaps the academy ought to be shut down, and we should just start over.
DENVER -- The Air Force Academy, still recovering from rape and sexual harassment scandals, is facing charges that some Christian cadets have bullied and berated Jews and students of other religious backgrounds.
School officials said Tuesday they had received 55 complaints over the last few months and were requiring students -- and eventually all employees -- to attend a course on religious tolerance.
"Some complaints had to do with people ... saying bad things about persons of other religions or proselytizing in inappropriate places," said academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker. "There have been cases of maliciousness, mean-spiritedness and attacking or baiting someone over religion."
About 90% of the academy's 4,300 cadets identify themselves as Christians; the school's commandant, Brig. Gen. Johnny A. Weida, describes himself as a born-again Christian.
Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and a lawyer in Albuquerque, said that his son Curtis -- a sophomore at the academy -- had been called a "filthy Jew."
"When I visited my son, he told me he wanted us to go off base because he had something to tell me," Weinstein said. "He said, 'They are calling me a ... Jew and that I am responsible for killing Christ.' My son told me that he was going to hit the next one who called him something."
Weinstein, 50, said he wanted Congress to investigate what he said was a pervasive Christian bias at the academy. "When I was at the academy, there wasn't this institutional notion that if you didn't accept Christ you would burn eternally in hell," he said. "I want the generals to come out and say, 'Yes, we have a systemic problem and we are working to fix it.' "
Somehow, given all that it took for them to admit that there was an issue with sexual assault in the Academy, I doubt that you will ever have them admit that they've got a religious problem. Moreover, it's highly unlikely that our almost-but-not-quite theocratic Congress would ever authorize an investigation into religious intimidation at a service academy -- or if they did, they'd be trying to root out intimidation of Christians ... which, given the numbers and the profession of faith by the academy administration, would be nonsensical on its face. But when has that ever stopped Congress?
Posted by iain at April 20, 2005 03:40 PM
