The U.S. Naval Academy receives a fair amount of media coverage, which in turn forces it to be more publicly accountable in addressing key issues. In the 2018 Department of Defense (DoD) report of sexual harassment and sexual assault at the service academies, the U.S. Naval Academy report showed a significant increase in behavior considered sexual harassment. Fifty-six percent of the female population and seventeen percent of the male population reported “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and deliberate or repeated offensive comments or gestures of a sexual nature.” This dwarfs the level of behavior captured in the 2016 report, where forty-four percent of the female population and nine percent of the male population reported the same.
Shortly after the report was released, Naval Academy Superintendent, Vice Admiral Ted Carter, testified before Congress for three hours. As any leader does, Vice Admiral Carter accepted full responsibility for the negative results. While commendable, I disagree with his accepting all the blame. The root of this problem lies with the midshipmen, not the Academy’s senior leaders. And the first and perhaps most important thing midshipmen can do to “own” this problem is to police themselves, and not indulge in improper language that feeds a culture where sexual harassment thrives.
The Naval Academy provides midshipmen extensive education on sexual violence and harassment. Each year the education program is revised to ensure relevancy in both subject and technique. To prevent sexual assault, educating midshipmen on how to recognize and prevent sexual harassment is the focus. Since identifying the root causes of harassment helps prevent a culture where assault is more prevalent, midshipmen need to take more ownership of the Naval Academy’s prevention program, and not pass through four years of training in the receive mode only. Sexual Harassment and Assault Prevention Education (SHAPE) aims to “foster an environment of equality and assist in the development of future officers who will promote and practice proactive leadership.” SHAPE is more than the biannual “reform” briefs. Rather than just informing midshipmen with a dry set of facts and a list of prohibited behaviors, the program seeks to educate midshipmen on appropriate behavior by utilizing a tiered-education system. By first-class year, eight small group sessions and four expert presentations have prepared those headed to lead in the fleet with a sound understanding and appreciation of ways to recognize and prevent sexual harassment training.
The fleet today is incredibly diverse. It recruits men and women from all backgrounds, ethnicities, and religions. In so doing, it truly is America’s Navy. With this diversity in recruitment comes diversity of thought. While it should be easy enough to understand the black and white lines of sexual harassment, the more difficult discussion focuses on the gray areas that exist because of differing cultures, backgrounds and, not unexpectedly, politics. Raised conservatively in rural Arkansas, my beliefs and practices might differ from those of a midshipman raised in New York City, or even in a nearby city in Arkansas. But this doesn’t mean ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ regarding sexual harassment is entirely relative. Regardless of midshipmen backgrounds, we must do better.
Some consider the increase in sexual harassment reporting a good thing, as it indicates people feel safer and better trust the system to report sexual harassment. Yet there remains the underlying issue that more than half of female midshipmen struggle to receive the proper dignity they deserve. Sexual harassment creates a caustic work environment because it degrades trust and morale. While all midshipmen should treat others with respect out of human decency, they should be even more sensitive to how detrimental sexual harassment is to an organization. Organizational integrity crumbles when female midshipmen cannot trust their male counterparts to be appropriate and professional in the workplace. While it might appear unimportant to have trust in the workplace at the Academy where the stakes are relatively low, in the fleet it is vitally important. As it has been stressed to us, you do not become an ensign or second lieutenant at graduation. You train yourself in the four years prior to that. We play how we practice, and if we are to lean into this issue when we get to the Fleet we must work harder to prevent sexual harassment at the Academy.
This is not easy. Experts commit their lives to fighting this issue and still fail to help organizations achieve the results they seek. If there was a silver bullet to this problem, it would have been used years ago. Changing a culture is challenging; it is not done overnight. But from a midshipman’s perspective, perhaps we can scrape away at the verdigris covering the Academy by changing our language. There is a clear connection between sexual assault and sexual harassment: curbing sexual harassment helps prevent sexual assault. Perhaps curbing our language might help prevent sexual harassment.
Language remains an integral part of what we are. It defines us. What we say creates the culture we live in. While people remain polite in public, behind closed doors shifts in language occur. Most readers understand the language I am addressing here—locker room talk. I would be lying if I claimed to step in every time it starts up. You want to fit in, to be part of the culture. Yet using such language creates an environment in which sexual harassment thrives. Culture is not a switch that can be turned on and off. The “locker room talk” culture seeps out into everyday culture. It is not possible to compartmentalize the two.
I believe in this institution. I believe it is composed of some of the finest young men and women the nation has to offer. I suggest that we embody what we are and meet expectations by policing ourselves at all times. Review our old plebe summer rate, the Qualifications of a Naval Officer. Own a larger sense of personal honor and institutional pride. Buy into the Naval Academy’s culture and help shift the tone through our daily language. Based on our extensive education, midshipmen know the difference between right and wrong in regard to sexual harassment. It is just a matter of doing the right thing all the time. It starts with our language.