Air Force Academy Investigated 54 Sexual Assaults in 10 Years

By ERIC SCHMITT with MICHAEL MOSS The New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 6 — The Air Force has investigated 54 reports of sexual assault or rape over the past 10 years at the United States Air Force Academy, the secretary of the Air Force said today.

It was the Air Force's first official accounting of reports of sexual attacks at the service academy, an Air Force spokesman said, and it included some reports that Air Force investigators could not substantiate.

Nonetheless, the new figures were twice the number of such incidents at the academy that cadets have reported to Congressional officials in recent weeks. As such, the new figures showed a widening of the sexual assault scandal that has seized the service academy in Colorado Springs, stirred outrage on Capitol Hill and prompted three military inquiries, which will include reviews of the Naval Academy and West Point.

On Capitol Hill today, the Air Force secretary, James G. Roche, said the number of women who have been sexually assaulted at the academy is probably much higher than 54, because many women undoubtedly were afraid or ashamed to report the abuses.

"The part that is the saddest," Mr. Roche told a hearing of the Senate Armed Services committee (news - web sites) today, "is that whatever the number is, 25, 50, there's probably another 100 that we've not seen."

As Mr. Roche spoke in Washington, the top general in the Air Force, John P. Jumper, arrived in Colorado Springs for two days of meetings with cadets, faculty members, the academy's military leadership and community leaders. General Jumper, who will address the 4,000 cadets on Friday, planned to remind them that they have a duty to report anything they know about any assaults, Air Force officials said.

Mindful of the Navy's mishandling of the 1991 Tailhook sexual assault scandal, Mr. Roche and General Jumper have vowed to investigate accusations that current and former cadets who reported sexual assaults or rapes faced indifference or even retaliation by academy officials.

"We cannot bear the thought of a criminal being commissioned," Mr. Roche said, talking about the academy's role to produce new second lieutenants. "We can't bear the thought of a criminal flying around with a couple of thousand pounds of bombs under his wings."

In addition to pursuing individual reports, top Air Force officials said today that preliminary findings of an Air Force inquiry suggested that the academy's culture and values had become increasingly divorced from the acceptable standards throughout the rest of the Air Force.

"We're learning enough to realize that change must occur," Mr. Roche said. "Change in the climate, change in how we manage."

Top Air Force officials have moved quickly to try to address the problems. Mr. Roche met Wednesday with Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton, the Naval Academy superintendent, to discuss that academy's policies, and he plans to meet with the top officer at West Point.

Mr. Roche and General Jumper plan to convene a group of women who are senior Air Force officers to review the findings and recommendations of the Air Force inquiry, led by the Air Force inspector general, Mary L. Walker. Investigators, who Mr. Roche said have met with six victims, are to submit their findings by the end of March.

"The increase in reports that we're hearing only serves to underscore their commitment to get to the bottom of this in an urgent and comprehensive fashion," said William C. Bodie, the chief Air Force spokesman.

The latest reports left senators sputtering in disbelief. "I'm stunned," Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a telephone interview after the hearing.

Senator Wayne Allard, Republican of Colorado, said he believed that the situation at the Air Force Academy was worse than the Tailhook scandal — where scores of women complained that they were groped or assaulted by drunken pilots at a Navy booster group's convention — because the system had failed the cadets in this case.

"The entire support and legal system at the academy appears to have failed," Mr. Allard said. "We really do need to instill confidence in the system so victims know when they report rape they know the rape itself will not jeopardize their career."

In the last 10 years, two cadets have been charged with rape, Air Force officials said. One was acquitted, the other pleaded guilty at a court-martial and was sentenced to seven months in jail. In other cases, administrative action was taken because there was not enough evidence to prosecute, Mr. Roche said. More than 1,500 women have attended the academy in the last decade.

Two other inquiries, by the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s top personnel official and the Defense Department inspector general, will examine the other military service academies for possible problems. In interviews this week, officials at other military academies said they had relatively few cases of sexual assault, and that they had rigorous systems to ensure that complaints were thoroughly addressed.

Nonetheless, officials at several academies said they were monitoring the incident at the Air Force Academy to determine if their own efforts needed improvement.

At the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., where 30 percent of the students are women, officials said they have had no incidents of sexual assault since at least 2000. A network of counselors is available 24 hours a day, and no complaint can be dismissed before it is reviewed by the superintendent, officials said.

At the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, Long Island, where 11 percent of the students are women, officials said they have had three incidents in the past decades, which resulted in the trials of two men. One was acquitted and the other was sentenced to nine years in prison. In response to the Air Force episode, the school, which is operated by the Transportation Department, said it has put up posters around the campus aimed at illuminating the issue of sexual assault and harassment.

Tennessean (Nashville, TN) July 11, 2002
Confederate theme would be at heart
Military school gets Bedford County OK

By MAURA SATCHELL

Plans are under way to build an all-male private military college in Bedford County with strong Confederate ties.

The Southern Military Institute, whose organizers received national attention when they publicly called for such a school to be built in the South in 1997, has received a zoning exemption to build its school on a 446-acre site just west of Shelbyville, Bedford County Planning Director Sam Riddle said

"All the necessary approvals at the county level were granted," Riddle said.

The property has not been purchased because the group hasn't come up with all the funding, but two possible architects have volunteered to provide their services for free, said Michael Guthrie of Madison, Ala., one of the founders of the nonprofit college. Once the property is purchased, he said, it will take about a year to get the school up and running. "We have kids that want to come now," Guthrie said. The school will set its capacity at 1,200, he said, the size of a typical Marine Corps brigade.

The school will display the Confederate flag and celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, which is April 26. It will have no problem accepting minority students, Guthrie said.

"We honor the military tradition of the South, a military history that has served this country well," said Guthrie, a VMI graduate of 1977 and commander of a field artillery unit in the National Guard based out of Manchester, Tenn. He is the president of the school's board of directors.

"The intent is understandable, but I think they also need to step back and look at the perception," said the Rev. Dwight Ogleton, head of the NAACP chapter in neighboring Rutherford County.

"Our hope would be that they would adjust to the climate and environment in Shelbyville," Ogleton said, "and move forward in a progressive way."

Guthrie was the president of the Tennessee chapter of the Virginia Military Institute Alumni Association in 1997, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the public college had to let in women.

Guthrie said that he and other alumni of VMI and the Citadel, a South Carolina public military college that was also once all-male, turned their disappointment into action and drafted the mission statement that would become Southern Military Institute.

Reactions to the school and its proposed all-male admissions policy were skeptical.

"I think (Guthrie) will put himself in for a lawsuit there," said Sam Arnold, the Bedford County veteran's service officer.

John R. Vile, professor and chairman of the political science department at Middle Tennessee State University, said, "Frankly, it seems to me that they're probably shooting themselves in the foot. I don't think there are that many fanatical Confederates with enough money" to support such a school.

He pointed out, however, that niche markets exist. "You have your Bob Jones Universities," he said, referring to the conservative, religious, private South Carolina school.

Southern Military Institute intends to incorporate a Christian atmosphere, with Christian course work to be required of all cadets, including those of non-Christian faiths, a fact that the school organizers announce publicly on their Web site.

Guthrie is confident that Southern Military Institute can exclude women. First, he said, the school will be strictly privately funded.

Second, the school will not have any ties to the U.S. military's Reserve Officer Training Corps programs, in which college students are groomed for an officer's commission in one of the service branches after gaining a bachelor's degree.

Students attending the school will receive military training all the same. Upon entrance to the institute, each student will be required to enlist in one of the U.S. military's reserve programs: the Marine Corps Reserves, the National Guard, or Air Force or Army Reserve.

Chicago Daily Herald July 26, 2002, Friday Cook
Copyright 2002 Paddock Publications, Inc.
Chicago Daily Herald
July 26, 2002, Friday Cook
Reading 'Catcher in the Rye' brings companionship, memories

BYLINE: Oliver Andresen

BODY: During the lazy days of summer when everybody is in demand by other people in other places, seniors should remember that our books are human minds waiting to keep us company.

This happy truth is particularly helpful if we've visited with the book before. So, recently on a quiet Sunday afternoon I picked up "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger. Immediately the 16- year-old narrator, Holden Caulfield, talked directly to me with such friendly loneliness that he left the first page to blend with my own adolescent memories. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me and all that David Copperfield kind of (stuff), but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth," he begins.

Then he goes on to say that his parents are nice enough and all, but touchy about anything personal and his mother is particularly hyper-nervous, especially after the death of Holden's younger brother, Allie. Holden also has an older brother, D.B., who writes for the lousy movies, and old Phoebe, a 10-year-old sister who is his favorite human being in a world otherwise peopled by dopes and phonies.

The family lives in New York City. But Holden, while telling his story, is presently in some kind of hospital. For Holden is love- starved. His story is an accounting of a three-day search in New York City for a genuine, accepting relationship.

Holden opens with his being a cadet at Pency Prep, a lousy military academy in Agerstown, Pa. But his stay at the academy is limited. As with all the other private schools he attended, Holden once again has been expelled for lack of academic effort. The day is Saturday. Holden's parents will receive a letter of his dismissal on Wednesday, the day he is to leave Pency forever and go home for Christmas.

His roommate, old Stradlater, with his husky chest, black wavy hair and the reputation of actually knowing girls intimately and for real, is a success in this lousy world. On this Saturday Stradlater is dating old Jane Gallagher, whom Holden knows. The result is a fight ending with Holden on the floor with a smashed nose. Bloody face and all, he decides to leave Pency Prep immediately.

The next three days and nights Holden wanders the streets of New York, smoking, smoking, smoking and drinking, drinking, drinking when he can find a place that will serve him. He stays at expensive hotels, talking to anyone - everyone - offering them all a drink.

He talks to three nuns who, after much hesitation, accept a $10 contribution. He is hustled by a whore who takes his money without the customary service. He even sneaks back home to his family apartment to talk to old Phoebe who scolds him for flunking out of Pency Prep and gives him money. Then he slips out back to the friendless city before his parents are aware of his whereabouts.

Finally, because of nicotine, alcohol and exhaustion, he passes out and begins to hallucinate. Now as he is walking the crowded streets of New York, old Phoebe is suddenly at his side pleading with him to come home. He buys her a ride on a merry-go-round.

"That's all I'm going to talk about. I could probably tell you what I did after I went home, and how I got sick and all, and what school I'm supposed to go to next fall after I get out of here, but I don't feel like it. I really don't. That doesn't interest me right now," is Holden Caulfield's goodbye.

So with a wistful nod, I set the book aside until I need him again.

Still, a special reason for my loving the book is that from 1955 to 1960 I taught English at Pency Prep. The real name is Valley Forge Military Academy, a lavish boarding school for the sons of the famous and infamous at Wayne, Pa. Jerome Salinger was a student there in the late '30s.

In 1963 Gen. Milton G. Baker, the founder and superintendent both in Salinger's day and mine, proclaimed to Salinger about the book, "I thought it was filthy!"

Today, Valley Forge Military Academy is the only prominent school in the United States that does not have "The Catcher in the Rye" in its library.

The following is a year old, but I thought it worth posting:

March 13, 2001
HAZING LAWSUITS THREATEN REPAYMENT OF TEXAS SCHOOL'S BONDS
Darrell Preston at (214) 740-0874 or at dpreston@bloomberg.net or through the New York newsroom at (212) 318-2300/jm

DATELINE: Harlingen, Texas

Student hazing lawsuits may doom a Texas prep school's move to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and spell disaster for its bondholders.

The four lawsuits against the 374-student Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Texas, could force the academy to close down "with little recovery for bondholders," Moody's said.

The academy, which sold $10.4 million in revenue bonds through the Harlingen Higher Education Facilities ... Even if the school gets the bankruptcy court to approve a reorganization plan proposed earlier this year, it may be unable to make good on provisions that call for making up missed debt service payments, Moody's said.

" ... ... bond market. In 1992, almost $40 billion in school bonds were sold; last year, school bond issuance totaled $48 billion, nearly a quarter of the $200 billion sold.

Marine Military Academy's 1995 bond issue, originally rated an investment grade Baa by Moody's, carried coupons of 4.25 percent on bonds maturing in 1996 to 6.375 percent in 2025.

Prep schools nationally are booming, said State Street Bank's Procknow, who said Marine Military Academy was the only one he was aware of that went bust.

"As an industry private schools are really prospering," said Procknow. "But sometimes there are factors outside of your control."

For Military Academy, No Need To Recruit; Pr. George's School Already Has Wait List
Nancy Trejos, Washington Post Staff Writer
A public military academy opening this fall at a Prince George's County high school already has a waiting list for its inaugural class and has a commitment from the Army to provide uniforms and textbooks, school officials say.

But the school district may have to wait until December for the academy's newly appointed commandant -- Warren L. Freeman, commanding general of the D.C. National Guard -- to be released from active duty.

"I don't want to mess with the Pentagon or the White House," schools chief Iris T. Metts said at a news conference yesterday. She had expected to introduce Freeman, but instead presented a string of military and education officials who helped her convert one of the county's poorest-performing schools into a military academy. "There are going to be benefits for this program beyond your wildest dreams," said retired Army Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., a former D.C. schools chief who advised Metts on the project. "You are not going to turn out soldiers -- you are going to turn out good students."

Four hundred teenagers are set to join the freshman class at Forestville Military Academy, including 128 middle-schoolers living outside the school's attendance zone. Several other students, who did not get their applications in before an April 30 deadline, are on a waiting list.

Few public military high schools exist in the country, but the idea is catching on. The public Oakland (Calif.) Military Institute opened this year, and Chicago has two such programs at the high school level. "The military instills good values in people," said Leon Whitehead, a Laurel resident who plans to enroll his daughter in the Forestville school. "If she grew up with good values, it would help her become a better student and person."

Modeled after the three-year-old Chicago Military Academy, Forestville was created to give students the structure and leadership training they need for college, organizers said. "I hope to see, and I believe we're going to see, a real big change in these students when they come on board, and that will be reflected in their academic standing," said Bill Jones, the county's JROTC supervisor, who heads the panel making arrangements for the school.

The school will have an academic principal and rely on Freeman, as well as seven JROTC teachers, to provide military instruction.

Parents and teachers at Forestville initially objected to using their neighborhood school for the project. This fall, only freshmen will be enrolled in the military academy. Forestville High students who will be sophomores, juniors and seniors can remain there in the regular curriculum.

Training for cadets is scheduled for August. Uniforms and books are on their way -- paid for by the Army, Jones said. The Army also will buy materials and equipment and pay part of the JROTC instructors' salaries. Jones said he would set up a nonprofit group to raise money for other needs.

Several parents who have decided to enroll their children in the academy say they see it as a way to set their children on the right path -- to college.

"Right now, I don't hear the college talk out of them. They just think they're going to be rappers.," said Ann Newsome, a District Heights mother of five. She said she thinks the military can encourage students to set their sights higher.

"I feel that raising a child nowadays takes a lot," Newsome said. "The military has a lot of opportunities to offer, especially with black males. . . . I want [my son] to see all the types of things he can do."

But 14-year-old Lionel Newsome was less than enthusiastic at first. "When I first thought of it, I thought it was going to be running-over-hoops, yelling-in-my-face, don't-make-any-trouble boot camp," said the eighth-grader at Drew-Freeman Middle School. He didn't want to wear the uniform, either.

"It's okay to wear a suit or a uniform and have your pants pulled up and say, 'Yes, sir,' and, 'Yes, ma'am,' " his mother countered.

Rynell Bradford, 13, agreed. He is eager to go to Forestville, he said, and is already used to wearing military fatigues as a member of the JROTC program at his middle school. "I want to go to the military. I'm proud of when I wear my uniform," Rynell said.

It took him a while to get to that point. Before moving in with his foster parents seven years ago, he was living with a mother too sick to take care of him and running with a crowd who had begun to use drugs. He hardly ever made it to school, and when he did, he was often sent home for bad behavior.

Then Kecia and Melvin Evans became his foster parents. They made it their priority to get him to school each day. "Considering his background, I think he will need a structured military-type setting," Kecia Evans said. "We're trying to keep this child safe and drug-free."

She said she and her husband, a D.C. police officer who spent time in the military, had many lengthy discussions with Rynell about changing his ways. They made surprise visits to his Prince George's school. They made Rynell get involved in school activities, such as basketball.

"He had no respect . . . for the teachers or anyone. He wasn't going to school because no one was making him go," Kecia Evans said. "He doesn't do those things now. . . . To keep him on target, on the right course, he needs to stay in a disciplined setting."

Staff writer Hamil R. Harris contributed to this report.

'Taps' Signifies End of Era for Boonville, Mo., Military School
By Cory de Vera
As the Star-Spangled Banner played and the color guard lowered the flag for the last time at Kemper Military School yesterday, many of the couple hundred people in attendance shed tears.

The color guard carefully folded the flag and presented it to school President Ed Ridgley. The band played "Taps." Cadets and former cadets were asked to chant the objective of the school. Then the band played "Auld Lang Syne." It was only Monday that school officials announced that financial trouble would force it to close. The school, the oldest military school west of the Mississippi River, opened in 1844 and had tried to make a comeback after seeking bankruptcy protection in 2000.

For Briana Hosking of Arizona, the school's closure means that she has lost her home of two years.

"I was coming to summer school early," she said. Now, Hosking doesn't know where she'll spend her senior year.

Tactical Officer Mike Franks said there were too many good memories of Kemper to pick just one.

"This year we won the gold football -- we beat MMA," he said, referring to rival Missouri Mexico Academy. "It was a good year for our cadets. I'll always remember this year because it was my last."

George Speidel, graduate of the junior college in 1983, came all the way from Columbus, Ohio, for the ceremony. He was part of the band that played "Taps" for the school for the last time.

Speidel said that the secret to Kemper's success when he was there is that cadets in leadership positions had responsibilities greater than they could get outside the school, he said.

"If a 14-year-old alcoholic couldn't get himself to class, it wasn't the adults that did everything to get that kid to class. It was the cadets," Speidel said.

Not everyone who attended school had happy memories because they were sent there at difficult times in their lives.

Sam Easley, who graduated from the high school program in 1980, admitted that he wavered during his years at Kemper between conformity and resistance. It was 10 years before he began to appreciate what the school taught him, he said.

"We ate the same food three days a week, took cold showers. It taught you what the world was like," Easley said.

When the flag came down, Easley joined other cadets in chanting the objective of the school: "To develop in harmony the physical, mental and moral powers, not to make mere scholars but to make men, sir. Professor FT Kemper, 1844."

For Timothy Hanna, commandant of cadets, it was a second sad goodbye. Before he came to work at Kemper five years ago, he was on staff at a military school in Wisconsin that also faltered under the weight of financial difficulty. That school ultimately merged with another, he said.

"We're just proud we could turn a lot of kids around and make them better Americans and students," he said.

Greg Early, principal of the high school at Kemper, estimated the school employed about 70 people.

Applications to Federal Service Academies Up

Military school applications are up
West Point, Naval Academy, Air Force Academy see rise

SALEM, New York (AP) --Between the day Hunter Southerland applied to West Point and the day he was accepted, the United States was attacked.

People would ask the high school senior after September 11: Do you still want to go? The answer was always yes.

"I feel like what I'm looking at doing has meaning," Southerland says. "What I'm doing isn't just a waste of money and training. I'm really serving my country."

At a time when soldiers are deployed in distant danger zones, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is getting more applicants. While some would-be cadets were likely spurred on by September 11, most coming into the academy this fall began the lengthy application process before the terrorist attacks.

Some future cadets, like 18-year-old Southerland, say the war on terrorism has reaffirmed the reasons they want to serve.

Applications for this fall's freshman class at West Point have been up about 10 percent, to around 11,000.

Maj. Darby McNulty of West Point's admissions office says that while only some of the bump can be attributed to September 11, a better gauge comes from early applications for the Class of 2007, already up 16 percent.

U.S. Naval Academy applications for the Class of 2006 have increased 6 percent to 12,323, continuing a four-year upward trend. U.S. Air Force Academy spokeswoman Pam Ancker estimates that applications for the Class of 2006 are up 5 percent to 10 percent.

McNulty says that well over half the applicants for this fall's plebe class mentioned the attacks in admission essays. Air Force Academy applicants also have mentioned September 11 on their essays, Ancker says. The Naval Academy says several applicants have reaffirmed their desire to serve after the attacks.

Successful West Point applicants are also accepting positions at a higher rate, McNulty said.

"We were actually running ahead of schedule before September 11," he says. "And I think September 11 only firmed up or enhanced young people's desires to serve."

'It's scary at times' Southerland is a tall, crewcut teen-ager living in Salem, a little town folded into hilly farmland near the Vermont border. West Point is a few hours south, so he was able to ride down in seventh grade to watch Army football games -- Saturday spectacles with game balls parachuted in and cannon blasts after every score.

Later, a cadet would tell him about life in the long gray line when she came home for breaks. It sounded tough, but he was intrigued. In January 2001, the second half of his junior year, Southerland asked for a nomination to West Point.

Nominations are hard to get. Congress members typically nominate 10 people a year, and the academy thins the list in search of well-rounded people who would make good military leaders. Academics, athletics and other extracurricular activities are considered.

The application procedures for other military academies -- sorting through congressional nominations to choose most incoming cadets -- is similar.

About 40 percent of this year's West Point applicants received congressional nominations. The academy deemed about 2,200 admissible. According to U.S. News & World Report, 15 percent of applicants get into West Point, making it more competitive than some Ivy League schools.

Southerland is an "A" student, a National Honor Society member, a class president and a member of the varsity basketball, soccer and track teams.

He says it was applications to Bucknell and Cornell -- both of which accepted him -- that really got him thinking about what he wanted to do.

During a visit to Cornell, representatives mentioned all the things he wouldn't have in the military. The point was driven home weeks later when he stayed overnight at West Point. The two freshmen he roomed with were busy shining shoes, memorizing the day's menu and "just doing things that people at Cornell would laugh at," he said. "It was hard, and it did make me think about what I wanted to do."

He received approval from the academy, conditional upon a nomination and a clean bill of health, shortly after the military began bombing Afghanistan in October. He received a nomination from his congressman, John Sweeney, in December. Southerland has followed the Army's activities and noted when soldiers died on duty.

"It is scary at times. But if you believe in what you're doing and you're confident that you're part of something that's doing the right thing, then that's OK. You'll accept whatever the outcome may be," he said.

Southerland graduates from high school on June 28. The following Monday, when many classmates start a summer of lolling or part-time jobs, he will report to West Point for "Beast Barracks," the academy's six-week summer shakedown course of marching, sit-ups and military training for the incoming class.

"I'm preparing myself just getting through what West Point is," he said.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

HEADLINE: Recruiting the class of 2005: military programs have expanded into thousands of public high schools, signing up nearly half a million students. Is Junior ROTC building character--or lining up soldiers?

Mother Jones Magazine
BYLINE: Goodman, David

SEVERAL HUNDRED TEENAGERS dressed in patent leather shoes and crisp green U.S. Army uniforms are greeting and backslapping each other in the crowded school hallway. Suddenly, a drum corps thunders to life, and the students hustle into a cavernous hall, where they snap to attention. Chests out, butts in, chins up, and right hands that smack their foreheads in simultaneous salute. Stone-faced student "commanders" walk along the formation, writing demerits for missing ties, untied shoes, and other infractions. A girl behind me drops to the floor and sweats through a set of push-ups. "I forgot my name tag," she explains breathlessly. Is this West Point? The Citadel? Boot camp? Try again: It's a typical morning at the Chicago Military Academy, a public high school in the most militarized school system in America. More than 9,000 of the city's students, some as young as 11, are enrolled in school programs run by the U.S. military. Chicago is in the vanguard of a growing national movement that is responding to the problems of struggling inner-city schools by sending in the Marines--and the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The city is home to the nation's largest contingent of programs run by the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, a program established by Congress in 1916 to develop citizenship and responsibility in young people. Long limited to classrooms in conservative Southern states, JROTC is now in the midst of the largest expansion in its 85-year history.

The program began moving rapidly into public schools across the country after General Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited South Central Los Angeles following the riots in 1992. Surveying the ruins, Powell declared that the solution to what ailed inner-city youth was the kind of discipline and structure offered by the U.S. military. Since then, the number of JROTC units and cadets has doubled. There are now nearly 500,000 students enrolled in the program at some 3,000 schools nationwide, and the Defense Department plans to spend $ 234 million on JROTC this year--nearly quadruple what it spent a decade ago.

The idea of calling in the military to shape up students has won some unusual allies. Last August, the Oakland Military Institute, a public school run by the California National Guard, welcomed its first class of 170 students. The institute, which kicked off the year with a grueling two-week boot camp, was the brainchild of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, the iconoclastic ex-governor of California who overruled two school boards and braved a firestorm of controversy to establish the academy. "The goal here is to become leaders in business, government, the arts," the embattled mayor declared on the school's opening day. "It's not engaging debates on Star Wars or whether to go to the Gulf War."

Why are schools inviting soldiers into the classroom? The simple answer is that JROTC offers an irresistible bargain: The military provides textbooks, uniforms, and instructors for the first two years of the program, offering an infusion of resources for cash-strapped schools. In addition, JROTC bills itself as a solution to high dropout rates and failing grades, promising to provide troubled kids with the discipline they need to stay in school and improve their performance. "I don't know where we'd be without it," says Joseph Murphy Jr., principal of Burncoat High School in Worcester, Massachusetts. "I think many kids in the program wouldn't make it through high school without the ROTC experience."

But the explosive growth of JROTC has prompted a wave of opposition. From Worcester to Seattle, community groups have resisted the program, charging that the military is exploiting the desperation of inner-city schools. JROTC classes are taught by retired military personnel with minimal training as educators, and the program can muster little evidence that it actually helps at-risk youth. To many opponents, JROTC is little more than a recruitment program in disguise, designed to introduce black and Hispanic kids to a military mind-set at an early age. "Why are we just offering them the military?" asks Harold Jordan, coordinator of the National Youth and Militarism Program for the American Friends Service Committee. "Why does the bargain have to be one where they have to shake hands with Uncle Sam and possibly risk their lives? I don't think it's an acceptable trade-off."

In the weeks following the September 11 terrorist attacks, as the nation's interest was focused on the armed forces, I traveled around the country to see what the military is doing in America's schools. As the United States primed for a new war, it seemed an appropriate time to explore whether the military is helping troubled teens and training a new generation of leaders--or just recruiting more grunts.

FROM THE OUTSIDE, everything about the Chicago Military Academy seems incongruous. In the middle of a neighborhood filled with dilapidated housing projects and run-down shops, the school is housed in an old brick armory that's been restored like a high-rent condo. As I arrive early one morning, boys and girls in smartly tailored green uniforms are filing into the building to begin the school day.

The academy is the jewel in the crown of the JROTC program in Chicago, one of two public schools in the city in which every student is a member of the Army corps. Forty-one of the city's 92 other public high schools are home to JROTC units, and another 16 middle schools also have "leadership" programs run by the military. There are plans for a third public military academy next year, as well as talk of offering JROTC in every high school in the city. The Chicago school system is spending $ 2.8 million on JROTC programs this year and another $ 5 million on the two military academies--more than it spends on any other special or magnet program. The Department of Defense kicks in an additional $ 600,000 for salaries and supplies.

"Our ultimate goal is to increase the preparedness of students for life employment, for higher education, and to be better prepared for their role as citizens in this country in whatever they want to pursue," says Army Lt. Colonel Rick Mills, who directs JROTC programs in Chicago. Mills, a retired squadron commander who was hired by the school system despite having no JROTC teaching experience, earns a salary and bonus of $ 110,000, making him one of the system's highest-paid administrators.

In Chicago, the program's size and aggressiveness have muted most critics. In fact, JROTC is popular here: There were 2,000 applicants for 140 slots at the Chicago Military Academy this year. Many students who gravitate to the program seem to find it a place of belonging. JROTC classrooms often have the feel of a clubhouse, and like any popular club, they offer alluring perks: The field trips, dances, drill competitions, and community service projects build camaraderie and self-esteem. Parents say they appreciate the respect for authority that the military mentality cultivates, and many single mothers see the male instructors as role models for their children. In neighborhoods where gang affiliation is common, JROTC stands as a safe counterweight--a "good gang," in the words of Colin Powell. The program also offers tangible benefits after graduation: For those who decide to enlist in the military, their JROTC stripes are worth at least $ 200 per month in extra pay.

The superintendent of the academy, retired Brig. General Frank Bacon Jr., has heard from critics in the neighborhood who accuse him of training disadvantaged children for a life in the military. Three-fourths of his students are African American; another 22 percent are Hispanic. "We don't have any Vanderbilts or Rockefellers in here," concedes Bacon, a silver-haired man in a neatly pressed Army uniform who grew up in the neighborhood. "We are a poverty area--73 percent of our students eat free lunches." But the superintendent insists that his goal is education, not recruitment. "I'm giving them additional avenues to make a living, and to make them good citizens," he says. "JROTC is just a methodology that works."

That methodology is on display in the corridors of the academy. Students wear either khakis or a full-dress military uniform every day and respond to adults with a curt "Yes, sir" or "No, sir." Cadets are rewarded for good behavior by receiving military rank. The academic workload is typical for a high school, but failure to complete assignments can result in demotions or suspension; chronic violation of the rules can lead to expulsion. Bacon greets incoming students with a no-nonsense message: "If you don't do your homework, we'll bust you out."

Antonio Alvarado, a junior at the academy, has gotten the message. "This is not for the person who has an attitude and shies away from being told to do things," says the 17-year-old cadet. "If you don't like responsibility, if you don't like to be yelled at for not doing things, then don't come here."

Other students chafe under the military regimen. "My parents made me come here," says a 16-year-old student who is sitting in the guidance office after receiving an in-school suspension for swearing at a teacher. Counselors at the school concede that for those who don't "buy in" to the military approach, the going can be rough. That helps explain why as many as 3 of 4 students leave some JROTC programs before graduation.

JROTC claims it has reduced the dropout rate in Chicago schools by 20 percent and improved student performance. "We are a college prep school," says Jeanette Howard, chair of the guidance department at the Chicago Military Academy and a 33-year veteran of the public schools. "We want to send 90 percent of our students to college."

But it's not clear whether military discipline helps students achieve such educational goals. Only 43 percent of students at the academy scored at or above national reading norms last year, down from 52 percent the previous year. A 1999 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank with close ties to the military, showed that JROTC juniors and seniors in Chicago fared no better at grades or attendance than other students, even though military programs have the advantage of weeding out underperforming students. The study did show better performance for JROTC students in Washington, D.C., but senior cadets in El Paso, Texas, actually posted lower grades and worse attendance.

Whatever its track record in the classroom, JROTC certainly has no problem turning students into soldiers. Defense Department figures show that approximately 40 percent of those who graduate from JROTC eventually join the military. This outcome is not left to chance: An Army memorandum directs JROTC staff to "actively assist cadets who want to enlist in the military [and] emphasize service in the U.S. Army; facilitate recruiter access to cadets in JROTC program and to the entire student body ... [and] work closely with high school guidance counselors to sell the Army story."

The prospect that JROTC offers a ready pool of recruits has not been lost on political leaders. At a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee in February 2000, then-Defense Secretary William Cohen told representatives that JROTC is "one of the best recruiting devices that we could have." The committee was impressed. "If that's the case" suggested then-Chairman Norman Sisisky (D-Va.), why not have JROTC programs in "as many places as you can?"

THE MILITARY'S PUSH to expand into more public schools has met with stiff resistance in many cities. Community groups have succeeded in stopping JROTC in California, Washington, Minnesota, and Connecticut. In 1998, community opposition convinced officials in Rye, New York, to halt a JROTC program that had been in the schools for 19 years.

Given the state of many public schools, however, opponents of the military often face an uphill fight. When the Air Force announced plans in 1994 to establish a JROTC unit in Worcester, a working-class city of 172,000 in central Massachusetts, parents and others opposed to the plan swung into action. Forming a group called the Worcester Coalition to Stop JROTC, they staged angry confrontations at school-board meetings, held protest vigils outside school offices, and bombarded the local newspaper with letters to the editor. But school administrators, strapped for cash and eager for alternatives, sided with the Air Force, approving JROTC programs at Burncoat High and two other schools.

Since then, opponents have continued to protest, holding a vigil outside school offices each year on Good Friday. JROTC, they say, is designed to enlist kids at an impressionable age and encourage them to join the military. "If people are indoctrinated in militarism as teens, a time of hope and dreams, where are they going in the future?" asks Scott Shaffer-Duffy, a member of the pacifist group Catholic Worker and a founding member of the Worcester coalition.

When I visit Burncoat High, a double line of students in baggy jeans and T-shirts are slouching in front of the building. Then a young man with frosted hair pivots an about-face. "Preseeennnnt ARMS!" he commands--and the JROTC "airmen" are transformed into a well-oiled marching machine. Four of them step forward in a rehearsed ritual, carefully unfolding the American flag and raising it up the flagpole until it ripples in the autumn breeze. Classmates disembarking from yellow buses take little note of the pageantry as they hustle by.

The JROTC curriculum covers a variety of subjects, from personal hygiene and job applications to military history and the importance of the flag. Character education "is a big part of what we do," says retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Henry Cyr, an instructor with the program in Worcester. "In addition to leadership and citizenship, we do a lot in the area of life skills: financial management, public speaking, survival, and map reading."

I ask ninth-grader Dariana Schultz why she enrolled in the program. "I think ROTC is good for people who wanna do things in their lives but are having trouble," says Schultz, a 14-year-old with straightened black hair and a broad smile. "I figured if I really wanted to do something with my mind, this would guide me through high school."

Even parents wary of letting soldiers lead their children have come to respect the program. "My wife and I are deeply suspicious of many of the deeds that we associate with the U.S. military around the world," says Howie Fain, a union representative whose sons are both airmen at Burncoat. "But ironically, ROTC has been a zone of peace for them. It has been an incredible counterweight to the violence whirling around them. Frankly, we were surprised by what a difference this has made."

Almaz Teare, an Eritrean refugee, says the program has helped her 16-year-old son Paulos, an airman at Burncoat. "It's like another family to us here," she says. "I don't know what I would have done without them. It's not only that they learn basic things, but they learn about structuring their life, behavior, and how to get along with other people." Teare says that when her son encounters problems in school, "I just call the colonel or sergeant, we talk about it, and they talk to my son and sort it out."

But other parents worry that the discipline comes at too great a price. The military "catches you when you're young, and it all sounds so wonderful," says Pete Hollis, the father of two high-school boys and a local Marine combat veteran who spoke out in opposition to the Worcester JROTC programs. "Their business is to fight wars, and they don't care how they get recruits." Hollis offers a blunt warning to his neighbors who support the military expansion into public schools: "I just hope your friends don't die in a war because they end up getting recruited as a result of this."

WORCESTER IS NOT THE ONLY community where veterans like Hollis have joined the fight to block JROTC. The U.S. Marines met resistance from some of their own when they arrived in New York's capital city in the spring of 2000 with a plan to launch a JROTC program at Albany High School. Lt. Colonel Frank Houde, who retired after 20 years in the Air Force, learned of the plan from his neighbor, an ex-Marine. Houde, a former pilot in Vietnam, is no pacifist. He says he objects to the program because it misrepresents itself to kids in their formative years.

"The people who are for this often say it is 'leadership' training," he says. "But it is really followership training. Most people who go into JROTC will not become officers. They will receive dead-end jobs and a low rank. If you do go into the military, it will ensure that you are on the front lines and could get killed."

Houde and other veterans were joined by members of the Albany Friends Meeting and the local Catholic Worker group. "Military programs promote obedience rather than leadership," the Qpakers declared in a statement. "They foster-a culture of war and violence rather than peace. We prefer that young people get credits in serious academic subjects."

Opponents focused their attack on JROTC by challenging the quality of the curriculum. When the Marines failed to provide a textbook that would be used in the course, critics cited racial stereotypes in the standard first-year Army JROTC textbook to make their point. In a section on "brain power," the textbook asserts that whites, who are said to be "left-brain individuals," prefer "being on time," while "right dominant" African Americans prefer "a good time." Opponents also questioned why the school would allow JROTC instructors, who lack state teaching certification, to teach a credit-bearing course--a concern cited by the National Education Association in a 1997 resolution urging that JROTC curriculum and instructors meet "all local and state educational standards and policies."

Students at Albany High School also joined the fight. I meet Zach London, a lanky 16-year-old, in the school's brick courtyard. London and several of his classmates organized a petition drive, gathering 600 signatures of students opposed to JROTC. "The Marines picked this school because it's an inner-city school, and there are a lot of kids who are poor," he says. "JROTC comes in and tells them that their best option for the future is to go into the military." It is lunchtime, and our conversation is punctuated several times by fights that send waves of students scurrying to watch, and security officers sprinting to intervene. London shrugs off the melees. "Oh, that happens all the time," he says.

London and his classmates may be inured to school violence, but the Albany School Board is not. Officials considering the JROTC plan became concerned when the Marines proposed a curriculum that included classes in marksmanship. Nearly half of all JROTC units run by the Army include an optional course in weapons training, but several Albany students had already been prosecuted for bringing guns to school. "The whole issue of guns and training young people about guns didn't sit right with some of us," says Theresa Swidorski, a school-board member. "We are supposed to be a safe school, and no guns are allowed."

On the day London and other students were scheduled to hold a rally against JROTC, he was called into the principal's office and informed that the superintendent had canceled the program for lack of interest. In the wake of the student organizing, only 10 students had signed up. It was a shocking victory: Students and community activists had taken on the U.S. Marines, and won. "In the end, JROTC is a little too militaristic," says Swidorski, "and not up to snuff curriculum-wise to meet muster."

DESPITE THE PROTESTS, the military continues to expand into public schools at an unprecedented clip. In the new defense budget, Congress wants to eliminate a current cap that limits JROTC to 3,500 units, allowing the program to proliferate at will. There are already 600 schools across the country on a waiting list, eager to enlist.

The next frontier for JROTC can be found in Madero Middle School, located in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. Middle schools have rarely been involved with JROTC, since by federal statute the program is intended for students in grades 9 through 12. But Chicago has gotten around this stricture by creating and running its own JROTC-style "leadership programs" in 16 middle schools, without federal sanction. "I think we have a great program focused on teaching character, values, and leadership," says Lt. Colonel Mills, the JROTC director in Chicago. "And if we have the opportunity to present ourselves at an earlier age, all the better."

That is precisely what worries critics. Most of the middle-school programs are held after classes let out for the day. Cadets as young as 11 wear uniforms, learn about military history and citizenship, listen to lectures about preventing drug abuse, and perform in a color guard. But Madero Middle School has taken the concept further: It offers a "school within a school" academy in which the youngest cadets attend classes together, including a daily leadership class taught by a retired Army sergeant. Students are promised a spot in JROTC when they go on to high school--effectively creating a military program that will encompass half of their school years, from their preteens until they are eligible to enlist in the armed forces.

One morning at Madero, not long after the September 11 attacks, I ask a class of 35 sixth- and seventh-graders how many of them hope to go into the military. All but seven raise their hands. I point out that as military personnel, it will be their job to fight wars such as the one in Afghanistan. I ask how they felt about that.

David Ruvalcaba, a pint-size 11-year-old, exclaims that he would like to be a soldier "because it's cool when you defend your country." Twelve-year-old Elver Patino adds, "I wanna go to the military because you get paid to go to college. I heard that in the commercials."

A cheerful 13-year-old named Lydia Banda thrusts her hand into the air. "I wanna go into the military because I see it in the movies and it seems fun," she declares. "And when the war is over, you get famous and you make a lotta money." Her classmates giggle and nod their heads in agreement.

WITH THE ADVENT of the "war on terrorism," the issue of preparing children for careers in the military has taken on a new seriousness. So far, the promise of JROTC--that military discipline can help solve the problems of troubled kids and struggling schools--rests largely on faith in the military's image as a can-do troubleshooter. The program has certainly helped some students, who say the military has provided them with the discipline and values they felt were missing in their lives. But perhaps the biggest beneficiary has been the military itself: With nearly half of all cadets eventually joining the service, JROTC has extended the military's recruiting reach into thousands of public schools. In the battle for the hearts and minds of tomorrow's soldiers, at least, the armed forces are clearly winning.

The military has succeeded in large part, opponents say, because troubled students often have few other options. For students who don't fit in on the football field or the yearbook staff, Junior ROTC offers a sense of belonging in an otherwise alienating environment. "There's no doubt in my mind that the school needs something for these kids who join JROTC, something where you take tougher kids and find a niche for them," says Pete Hollis, the Marine veteran who fought the program in Worcester. "There have to be alternatives. I just wish it weren't JROTC."

HEADLINE: Scholars First, Soldiers Second; Chicago Public School Uses Military Methods to Make Model Students

Washington Post
BYLINE: Nancy Trejos, Washington Post Staff Writer

It's time for the morning drill.

A few hundred teenagers in crisp green Army uniforms stand in lines, their backs straight, their chins up, their eyes looking directly ahead. They end their sentences with sir or ma'am. They wear shiny belt buckles and newly polished black shoes. And they get yelled at -- a lot.

"No hands in the pocket. Give me 10," Master Sgt. Walter Littleton tells one cadet. The cadet drops to the floor for a set of push-ups. This could be a scene out of West Point, but it isn't. This is a public high school in Chicago, one of the first in the nation devoted to the Army JROTC program and partially funded by the Army -- a blueprint for a military academy that will open in August in Prince George's County.

Now in its third year, the Chicago Military Academy has become a model for what military education can do. Among the 98 public secondary schools in Chicago, this school in a tough, Southside neighborhood has one of the highest attendance rates, one of the lowest chronic truancy rates and some of the highest standardized test scores.

Like the Forestville community that will house the new academy in Prince George's, the Bronzeville neighborhood around Chicago's school is predominately African American. There are many low-income households, and the area is plagued by crime, unemployment, gang activity and drug use.

Academy officials say they are offering the 375 students who attend the school structure, leadership training and the promise of academic achievement to help them escape from the chaos of their impoverished neighborhoods. Students say they feel safer at the military school, where the gang activity they find near their homes and at other public high schools is not tolerated.

"Our goal basically is to take these kids and make them leaders, better citizens, to take them off the streets," said Sgt. Mario Villarreal, a JROTC instructor.

The idea has caught the attention of public school districts nationwide: The public Oakland Military Institute opened this year, and Chicago has opened its second public military high school.

Forestville High School is on track to become the Washington region's first public military high school, despite continuing resistance from parents. Prince George's Superintendent Iris T. Metts signed an agreement last June to convert Forestville, one of the county's lowest-performing schools, into a college preparatory military academy for a student body that will eventually top 1,000.

"We're putting them on the right path to further their education," Metts said. "We hope we'll be giving them the belief in themselves that they can do it. We'll give them the pride and the discipline."

It's that type of guidance that Lavin Curry desperately needed.

When Curry arrived at the Chicago Military Academy as a freshman in 1999, he was brash, he was wild. "He was a bad little sucker, always into something, always thought he was right," said Frank C. Bacon, the academy's superintendent and a retired Army brigadier general.

He couldn't live with his mother, and he had never met his father. The teenager was raised by his cousin and her husband in Southside Chicago.

By the time he got to high school, he was drinking, smoking and ignoring everyone. "I just didn't care about the rules of the school," Curry said. "I didn't think about the consequences of my actions."

One morning, Curry and a buddy drank a few cups of Canadian Mist whisky in the parking lot of the nearby McDonald's. He was drunk before first period and passed out in a school bathroom.

He almost was kicked out of the school, going through an expulsion hearing with his cousin, Ilona Mabry, sitting by his side. But even during the process, his instructors and the commandant prodded him to change his behavior, to salvage his academic career.

Curry was allowed to stay, after he promised to attend a weekend counseling program. One day, when Mabry was driving him there, a car crashed into theirs. Mabry's leg was broken and her chest injured; Curry escaped unscathed. "He felt so guilty," she said.

That was the turning point. He realized that his teachers had simply been trying to give him what he needed: some order in his life. The marching, the saluting, the obeying of rules were all part of turning him into someone who deserved respect.

"They changed my life," he said. "They fought for me to stay in school. They really cared about me."

Now, at 17, Curry has stopped drinking and smoking. He has bumped his grades up to A's and B's and begun talking about college, maybe even law school. He's started playing chess with the tough-talking dean of students, James E. Wimes. He's thrown himself into the football team -- he's a running back -- and into his drawing -- he sketches Japanese animation characters. He began a part-time job at a Loews Cineplex. His only major infraction is having long sideburns and a mustache.

Parents first reacted to the Chicago Military Academy with suspicion. They didn't want a school that would be a training ground for the military. It took a while for them to realize that the academy was there to prepare the students for college and not war, Bacon said.

Students' schedules are heavy on the basics and light on the electives. They take the core subjects -- English, math, social studies and science -- all four years.

Punishment is levied at the teacher's discretion if students are tardy, don't turn in their homework or misbehave. Some teachers make the students do push-ups, others call parents. One teacher requires tardy cadets to stand during the entire class.

With no graduating class yet, Bacon has no empirical evidence that his strategy is working. But on a recent day, a steady stream of students arrived at the guidance office to pick up forms for the ACT, the college entrance exam used by most Midwestern colleges.

The academic rigor and high expectations have produced not only high test scores and low truancy rates, school administrators say, but also a measure of self-esteem.

"When they come in, they're looking down. As they begin training, they begin to walk straight, they hold their heads up," Principal Phyllis L. Goodson said. "I'm watching them grow. I'm watching them change. . . . A lot is possible. You just have to give them the right possibilities."

That's what Metts had in mind when she approached the Prince George's school board and community last year about a similar academy. "We're going to paint a picture and a vision and a future for these students that some of them would not have thought of," she said.

The Army has agreed to provide $ 500 a student for uniforms and books, as well as paying half the salaries of JROTC instructors, donating computers and other equipment and offering guidance. The program will be phased in, beginning with about 400 ninth-graders. All students now attending Forestville will be able to finish the regular program there or have first choice of entering the military academy. Teenagers from other schools also may apply.

As in Chicago, the school will be run by a principal and a military commandant. Metts also has established the Military Academy Foundation to solicit donations from retired and active military personnel and local business leaders, a strategy she learned from Chicago.

But even as plans for the school move forward, the community remains uneasy about opening a military academy at a public school.

Some parents and a school board members say the superintendent misrepresented how much money the Army would provide. Metts has denied that accusation. Staff members at the school say they were not consulted enough before the decision was made. Some community leaders have ideological problems.

"Putting a military school in a poor, black community makes it too inviting for these youngsters to go out and volunteer for the military" instead of pursue a college education, said state Sen. Ulysses Currie (D-Prince George's).

The organizers of the Chicago Military Academy heard the same complaints. But they faced more daunting odds.

Rather than convert an existing school, Chicago spent $ 24 million rebuilding the Old 8th Regiment Armory and starting the academy. Bacon, a Korean War veteran, drew up a balance sheet itemizing the expenses and listing the various school system accounts they could come from. He helped raise $ 10 million from donations.

The challenges didn't end after the school opened in August 1999.

Initially, administrators believed that the Army would supply enough uniforms to last the cadets all four years. But they soon realized that they needed more for the growing teenagers.

And uniforms alone couldn't instill discipline.

"I think teachers expect soldiers and are completely surprised," said math teacher Alex Van Winkle. "They're teenagers and have stronger influences outside of here. Obviously these kids are not soldiers, nor should they be."

About two dozen students transferred out in the first years because they didn't like the structure.

In the hallway between classes one recent day, the cadets were talking sports, teasing each other, and discussing the Billboard Awards winners announced the previous night.

The next night, at a girl's basketball game, tempers flared. One of the opponents pushed a cadet player. The cadets in the audience grew angry and heckled the opposing team.

"You all need to stop acting like fools. Last night the situation almost got out of hand," Wimes, the dean of students, said the next day during an assembly. "You caused a damn-near riot in my school."

Despite the academy's growing pains, the city considers it a success. Construction is underway for a new wing. Next year, the school will have four full classes. Applications -- basically a letter of recommendation and a signed pledge to do their best -- are on the rise.

Sitting in his office with a window overlooking the drill hall, Bacon recalled the first days of the school. "When they first came in here, they were a bunch of ragtag little children who didn't know how to talk," he said.

"Class, attention!" shouts Cadet Dellareese Jackson, a junior who commands other students.

It's time for algebra class, and Jackson calls out each name.

"Curry," she says.

"Cadet Curry here, ma'am," Lavin Curry responds. He looks like the model cadet with his shirt tucked in, his belt buckle shining and his name tag on straight.

In the halls of the military academy, Curry feels safe. "I don't have to worry about somebody jumping me in the hallways or someone messing with me," he said.

But outside is different. Curry knows not to look directly at some of the teenagers in his neighborhood -- especially when he's wearing his uniform.

One day, Curry was walking home in uniform when he noticed three gang members following him. He couldn't shake them, so he confronted them.

"There's been times I've had to fight in uniform," he said. "But it's hard. The shoes, they're like glass. You run, they break, get a hole in them, and then you have to buy new ones and that costs money."

Now he wears street clothes and comfortable shoes home, for the times he has to run. But once he gets home, he carefully hangs up his uniform. Before he goes to bed, he irons his shirt. He shines his shoes several times a month.

"I feel proud when I go out in my uniform," he said. "There's something about wearing it. You carry yourself differently."

HEADLINE: High School at Attention

Newsweek
BYLINE: By Dirk Johnson; With Pat Wingert in Washington, D.C., and Karen Breslau in San Francisco

Wearing army greens and spit-shined black shoes, the cadets stand ramrod straight and silent. It is 7:30 a.m., time for dress inspection. "Drop!" barks a platoon leader, spotting a uniform infraction, a cadet without a name tag on his jacket. Busted, the cadet hits the deck, pumps 10 push-ups, then asks for mercy: "Permission to recover, sir?" The request is granted, and the offender jumps to his feet, still huffing, and calls out his gratitude in military rote: "Thank you, sir," he says, "for conditioning my mind and body." The day is just beginning in this Chicago public high school, where the traditional three R's are joined by a fourth: regimentation. The three-year-old Chicago Military Academy, in the street-tough Bronzeville neighborhood on the city's South Side, is part of a growing experiment by public-school districts, mostly in America's urban centers, to adopt the ethos and structure of the armed forces. Like compulsory uniforms and zero-tolerance policies, the move marks the latest step aimed at bringing order to schools that can be unruly and even dangerous. Educators like Jeffrey Mirel of the University of Michigan say urban school leaders have become willing to take radical steps because "the problems in urban schools are so severe, and have gone on so long," despite two decades of reforms. For many children growing up without a cohesive family, the military model seems to offer a bedrock of stability--a world of clear-cut rules and unmistakable authority figures.

The military style has captured the imagination of school leaders around the nation. Oakland, Calif., opened a public military high school at the start of the school year. Next fall, Prince George's County in Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., will convert a neighborhood high school to a military-style academy. A public middle school in Charleston, S.C., is run in a military fashion, as is a public high school in Richmond, Va. Private military academies have existed for centuries, usually as boarding schools that can charge $20,000 a year. But it is only in the last few years that many public schools have seriously considered the approach. School officials in Atlanta, among others, have traveled to Chicago to scout the Bronzeville academy, housed in a refurbished old brick armory, a stone's throw from street corners governed by gang members.

The popularity of military schools marks a cultural about-face from a generation ago, says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, recalling the antiwar tenor of the late '60s and '70s, "when colleges like Harvard were kicking the ROTC off campus." The critics of military schools have not vanished. Rick Johnkow, the coordinator for the Project on Youth and Nonmilitary Opportunities, based in San Diego, charges that military-style schools steer poor, black students into the armed forces, rather than encouraging them to go to college.

But sociologists like Moskos say the military has achieved credibility among young minorities and their parents, in large part because it is a rare institution that is not dominated at top levels by whites. "The Army is the only place in American society where whites are routinely bossed around by blacks," he says.

It's too early to tell whether military-style schools will succeed in raising test scores and restoring order. But attendance at the Chicago academy is running at 95 percent, a figure that most urban school administrators can only dream about. The Chicago academy, which has roughly the same number of boys and girls, is open to any student in the city. All that is required is a grammar-school diploma and a letter of recommendation. For this school year, there were 2,000 applications for 140 slots in the freshman class; a committee chose not the brightest or the most troubled, but what it considered the most well-rounded group. The boss at the academy is retired Brig. Gen. Frank C. Bacon, a 72-year-old veteran of the Korean War, gray-haired but still square-shouldered. By turns stern and avuncular, Bacon sometimes sounds a bit like Father Flanagan from Boys Town. "They can have been in trouble and still come here," he says. "They just can't stay in trouble and stay here." Bacon says the school does not necessarily take the top students. "Hell, I can go out and get a lot of ultrabright kids who will make me look good," he says. "But what good does that do? I'm interested in taking average kids and making above- average citizens out of them."

Robert Shores, 16, says he was a lost child with a bad temper when he enrolled at the Chicago academy three years ago. He hadn't seen his father in years. His mother for a time succumbed to drugs, moving away and leaving Robert and his two siblings in the care of an aunt. The other boys at his grammar school bullied the slender boy mercilessly. They called him "shorty" and "little man." Gang members came calling, trying to recruit him. "They said they'd fight for me," Robert says.

He didn't join. But he learned to use his fists. He got in trouble for fighting. He got in trouble for throwing rocks through windows. He got in trouble for smart-talking to teachers. His report card in the eighth grade showed D's.

His mother, Phyllis, who had kicked drugs and moved home, read a newspaper article about the planned military academy in Bronzeville. She thought he should give it a try. "No way," he told her. But they eventually struck a deal: he would attend for one year. If he didn't like it, he could quit. During his first year at the academy, he got into plenty of scrapes, mostly for clowning. For misbehaving in English class, he was sent to the Peer Council, a student-run body that hears disciplinary cases and metes out punishment. The council can give detentions, order a student to scrub floors or maybe run in the gym for an entire day. In this case, the council told Robert to go back to English class and apologize to the teacher, Ms. Vines. So one morning he looked her in the eye and told her, "I'm sorry I disrupted your class." He meant it, and she accepted the apology. To Robert, the simple act of fessing up, standing accountable for his wrongs, struck a chord. He said it made him feel like a man. He started acting like one.

He hasn't been a perfect angel. But his grades improved. He joined the sports teams--basketball, baseball, soccer. He plays drums and cornet in the academy's band. "If you feel like nobody cares about you, then you feel like a nobody," Robert says. "But there's a lot of people here who really like me. They'll pull me aside and tell me what I did wrong. And they tell me what I've done right."

Phyllis Shores says the academy has been the salvation of her son. "Robert's a totally different child since he's been at that school," she says. He helps around the house, fixing cabinets and light switches. He even makes it his responsibility to clean the bathroom in their upstairs apartment in a brick two-flat on the city's South Side.

At military-style schools, the armed forces typically pay half the salaries of officers who work as instructors, and pick up the cost of the kids' uniforms and equipment. Of the 50 administrators and teachers at the Chicago academy, 10 are retired military officers. But even the civilian teachers invoke the military code. Dina Morelli, a diminutive art teacher, begins her class with a sharp command: "At-tention to muster! Roll call." ROTC officials say their participation is not part of a recruiting drive, but rather part of an effort to promote good citizenship. Critics dispute the claim, noting that one study shows roughly 40 percent of these students plan to eventually join the military. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley led the push for a military academy. He said the military-style schools simply offer another option, like magnet schools that emphasize art or foreign language. Daley faced some arched eyebrows from skeptics when he proposed the military academy. But he shrugged off the criticism as coming from "those '60s-type people" who still harbor distrust of the military. When Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland pushed for a military academy in that overwhelmingly liberal city two years ago, he was greeted by more than raised eyebrows. "They called me a racist and a militarist," Brown says. "You had people who hate the military, who thought we were going to turn these little kids into killers." His plan was shot down by the Oakland school board, so Brown went to the state for approval. California gave $1.3 million toward the Oakland Military Institute, which is affiliated with the state's National Guard.

But the critics in Oakland are still riled. Dan Siegel, who is a member of the school board that opposed the academy, called the military school "culturally inconsistent with the traditions" of the East Bay. "It's like putting the Ronald Reagan Museum in Berkeley. It doesn't belong here."

But Brown, who was educated by the Jesuits, says the military approach shares some of the virtues of Roman Catholic schools, which have shown success in educating poor children in urban centers. "I see authority. I see discipline." Brown loves to tell Oakland Military cadets: "I've met a lot of Catholic nuns who are tougher than any drill sergeant."

To Brown and others worried about urban education, the crisis of poor test scores demands some kind of new campaign. For now, it seems that plenty of school boards and parents--and young people, too--stand poised to salute.

HEADLINE: THE VIEW FROM THIS SIDE OF THE GREAT RELIGIOUS-FREEDOM DIVIDE; HERE'S HOPING THAT VMI'S LATEST CAUSE DOESN'T HAVE A PRAYER;

Roanoke Times & World News
BYLINE: ELIZABETH STROTHER EDITORIAL WRITER

TEN CADETS from the Virginia Military Institute died for the Confederacy in 1864 when they and more than 200 of their compatriots marched into artillery fire as they advanced on the Union-held town of Haymarket.

VMI knows something of fighting for lost causes.

Too much, perhaps, for a college that so reveres its traditions.

In an age in which the mainstream of society has accepted that the tenets of America's civic faith - equality of opportunity, for instance - apply to all Americans, the state-supported military school fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to maintain its exclusionary, all-male admissions policy. Of course, the fight was in vain, as any dispassionate observer could have predicted. Gracious in defeat, the college went on to incorporate women into the corps of cadets with a dismayed dignity.

Now it is engaged in yet another battle of principles - and, I expect, another lost cause.

The college clung fast to its custom of corporate, nondenominational prayer before dinner each night, over the protests of two cadets who objected to a state institution sponsoring the practice of religion. The American Civil Liberties Union took up the cadets' cause, and late last month a federal judge - predictably - ruled in their favor.

A dispassionate observer again might note that the outcome seemed to be a no-brainer from the start. To pass constitutional muster under the landmark Lemon v. Kurtzman Supreme Court ruling, state-sponsored prayer must 1) be secular in purpose, 2) neither advance nor inhibit religion and 3) avoid excessive government entanglement with religion.

U.S. District Judge Norman Moon found that in holding VMI's nightly prayer up to this three-point test, it failed on every point.

Moon could not help but notice, for example, that while the school claims participation was not compulsory, the "choice" to decline was all but illusory. The school's superintendent ordered the prayer, but anyone who did not want to participate could be absent from the mess hall when it was said. In VMI's vaunted military atmosphere, where a top-down command structure and "unit cohesion" are twin cornerstones upon which the social order rests, refusal must almost certainly be seen as disrespect, even defiance.

Indeed, cadets Neil Mellen and Paul Knick - the two who sued - told reporter Matt Chittum last year that when they refused to stand for the prayer, other cadets "threw napkins at them, glared at them and cursed them when they had the chance."

No undue pressure there, oh no.

What interests me most about VMI's unsurprising stance and its unsurprising loss in federal court is the way each side believes, passionately, that it stands on the side of freedom of religion - each in direct opposition to the other. In this battle, an institution that prides itself on traditions that set it apart from the casual informality of modern manners merely reflects a fracture running through contemporary American society.

Vowing to appeal Moon's ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore opined: "It's a shame that while American soldiers are fighting for our liberties in places like Afghanistan that these young men and women training to be soldiers at VMI can't pray for their safety as a body."

What? Has Kilgore never heard of the Ministry for the Enforcement of Virtue and Suppression of Vice, the Taliban's dreaded religious police? They, too, merely wanted to return God to the center of civic life, and they were quite as certain as any Christian preacher that they knew just what God wanted that to look like.

To freedom-loving Americans, and to many Afghans, it looked like hell on Earth.

On this side of the great religious-freedom divide, the enforced piety of state-mandated prayer looks in principle, though not in practice, like the enforced piety of a theocracy: "You will pray, and this is when and this is what you will say."

The shame is that while American soldiers are fighting for our liberties in places like Afghanistan, folks like Kilgore are working to take them away from the young men and women at VMI.

Another lost cause. I hope.

CORRECTION-DATE: February 12, 2002

CORRECTION: IN HER column Monday, Elizabeth Strother erred in writing that 10 Virginia Military Institute cadets died at Haymarket during a Civil War battle in 1864. The battle was fought at New Market.

HEADLINE: Women: In the company of men: Nancy Mace survived three years of vicious verbal abuse and gruelling physical training to become the first woman to graduate from America's toughest - and most sexist - military academy.

The Guardian (London) February 11, 2002
BYLINE: Sharon Krum

You just know that Sigmund Freud would have loved to analyse Nancy Mace. For him, it would have been the psychological equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. A file with no grey areas, just a clear diagnosis of Electra complex.

Here is how his notes might have read. Young American girl grows up in a military household where her adored, albeit highly reserved father, Brigadier-General James E Mace, of the US army, is never around. When he is, he pays her scant attention. As the girl grows up, she becomes determined to make daddy notice her, and in a brilliant display of tactical thinking, she does.

She enrols at the Citadel, the toughest military school in the US, the one that for 154 years refused to admit women. Better yet, it's his old school. Oh yes, now she has daddy's attention. Fast forward three years to graduation, where Mace's father, whose parting words to her were, "If you decide to quit, don't call me to come get you. Just put on your jogging shoes and start walking home," is in tears as he watches his daughter make history as the first woman to graduate from the Citadel. Perhaps even Freud could not have resisted the happy ending. But the made-for-the-movies finale, (as told in her new book, In the Company of Men, which is, in fact, being made into a movie) is not what Mace, now 23, wants to talk about, or what people want to hear.

They want to know about the three years of hell that preceded the graduation ceremony, and how and what she endured to make history as the first woman to break the all-male stranglehold on the school.

Highly articulate and wise beyond her years, she speaks openly, without fishing for sympathy, about the gruelling physical and mental challenge of being the first of four women admitted to the Citadel in 1996. Of the taunts of "dyke", "bitch", and "slut" shouted out by classmates, instructors, and even their southern- belle wives. Of life inside an 1,800- man military school where you could smell the testosterone at five paces and the misogyny at 10.

"People think I came to tear down tradition but I didn't. I went there to become part of it," she says softly, in an accent that is a road map to all the places she lived growing up as an army brat: South Carolina, Alaska, Panama, Chicago. "In the beginning I think I went for my father, but soon it became much more about proving something to myself."

Like its name implies, the Citadel, located in South Carolina, is a fortress as a building and in the mind. Cadets are put through a punishing four-year academic and military syllabus that would be too much for most Olympic athletes.

If getting in is hard, staying in is hell. Which is why being a Citadel graduate carries a cachet in the US that opens doors all the way to the Pentagon. But until 1995, the Citadel was all male, despite being funded by the taxpayer and therefore legally bound to admit women. In what is now commonly referred to as the "Shannon Faulkner debacle", when the Citadel admitted women under court order, Faulkner enrolled only to pack it in after just one week.

But Mace, who arrived next, was determined not to cry, (or let them see her cry), drop out, or complain about the constant harassment. She would, in other words, take it like a man. "I decided I wouldn't show any emotion. If you do, it's a sign of weakness, and I knew they were watching me to see if a girl could make it."

So she kept her chin up, cried behind closed doors and responded to every question or insult from a superior with the required "Sir, yes, sir!", or "Sir, no, sir!". She was determined, she says, to win the respect of those same peers who left messages in shaving cream on her door, such as "Go Home Bitch", and crept up behind her to whisper "You've ruined our school."

"It was so hurtful," she says. "If you think it's hard for women to break the glass ceiling, try doing it at a traditional southern military school."

The first week at the Citadel is known as Hell Week but for Mace it sometimes felt as if hell never ended. Though she loved the academic rigour and did form some strong bonds with male cadets over time, she missed female friendship. Resentment over her presence was palpable, and with her head shaved, the word she heard too often was "dyke."

The other constant was physical pain. When women march with men, the pace is set by the average male leg length. Since women's legs are usually shorter, they have to stretch their pelvises to keep up. Mace was a regular visitor to the infirmary for pain in the pelvic area. Still, she got on with it and never complained. "One of the things I saw straight away was that I had to work twice as hard as a male cadet just to be seen as an equal."

Here's an illustration: in the first week all new cadets, known as "knobs" have to pass a physical test of push-ups, (42 for men, 18 for women) sit-ups (52 for men, 50 for women) and a two-mile run (18 minutes for men, 16 minutes for women). Mace beat 145 of 150 cadets in the two-mile run, and logged 59 push-ups and 70 sit-ups. If she thought this would endear her to her fellow cadets she was wrong. They only resented her more. As Mace tells it, the fact that the students loathed her for tearing down their male bastion was patently obvious. But discovering they were still living in the 18th century when it came to understanding women was simply comical. "I got my period during my first week there. The place was in an uproar. I couldn't believe it. An officer actually came to interview me about my 'incident'."

He asked if she needed to go the infirmary, be excused from activities, or to have medication or special supplies bought in. "I explained that I wasn't sick, that women deal with this every month, and I just needed to go to the bathroom before returning to duties. Thank God I have a sense of humour or I never would have made it through."

Mace says she toughed out the rigours of the Citadel solely to prove something to herself, little thinking at the time that all subsequent female cadets would be judged by her performance. Nor did she understand at first why feminist groups were hailing her as their new icon. "I have to be honest. When I arrived I didn't see that it wasn't just about me, but I was representing all women. I see it now."

While sounding unsure about calling herself a feminist, she admits it was flattering to receive a letter from Gloria Steinem and have women's groups rally to her side. "The support was wonderful. And it feels great knowing that I am inspiring other girls to attend the Citadel. Ninety-eight women have enrolled this year," she says proudly.

B efore leaving, Mace joined an advisory committee to draw up guidelines on female recruitment, sexual harassment, even procedures to deal with menstruation.

Though Mace is now married to a Citadel graduate and lives at an army base in Fort Benning, Georgia, she chose not to pursue a career in the army. Instead, she has become a business consultant. Why - after all she went through? "I was marrying someone in the army, and to have both spouses in the military is hard." She says her experience hasn't been wasted."It prepared me so brilliantly for the civilian world. They put you under enormous stress, and when you get through it, you have a significant amount of self-confidence. The Citadel taught me patience, discipline and the ability to take on any challenge."

When Mace graduated in 1999, as she took to the stage to receive her diploma, the crowd rose to give her a standing ovation. Fellow cadets applauded wildly. After three years of vitriol, it was joy overload. "I knew then that for the women who came after me, there would never be any question about whether females can handle the Citadel. We can."

In the Company of Men: A Woman at the Citadel by Nancy Mace is available from Amazon.

January 21, 2002, U.S. Edition
HEADLINE: High School at Attention

BYLINE: By Dirk Johnson; With Pat Wingert in Washington, D.C., and Karen Breslau in San Francisco

In Chicago and across the country, educators are are taking a controversial new step. Their aim: to bring order to dangerous, unruly public schools and coherence to caotic lives. The experiment: military rule

BODY:
Wearing army greens and spit-shined black shoes, the cadets stand ramrod straight and silent. It is 7:30 a.m., time for dress inspection. "Drop!" barks a platoon leader, spotting a uniform infraction, a cadet without a name tag on his jacket. Busted, the cadet hits the deck, pumps 10 push-ups, then asks for mercy: "Permission to recover, sir?" The request is granted, and the offender jumps to his feet, still huffing, and calls out his gratitude in military rote: "Thank you, sir," he says, "for conditioning my mind and body." The day is just beginning in this Chicago public high school, where the traditional three R's are joined by a fourth: regimentation. The three-year-old Chicago Military Academy, in the street-tough Bronzeville neighborhood on the city's South Side, is part of a growing experiment by public-school districts, mostly in America's urban centers, to adopt the ethos and structure of the armed forces. Like compulsory uniforms and zero-tolerance policies, the move marks the latest step aimed at bringing order to schools that can be unruly and even dangerous. Educators like Jeffrey Mirel of the University of Michigan say urban school leaders have become willing to take radical steps because "the problems in urban schools are so severe, and have gone on so long," despite two decades of reforms. For many children growing up without a cohesive family, the military model seems to offer a bedrock of stability--a world of clear-cut rules and unmistakable authority figures.

The military style has captured the imagination of school leaders around the nation. Oakland, Calif., opened a public military high school at the start of the school year. Next fall, Prince George's County in Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., will convert a neighborhood high school to a military-style academy. A public middle school in Charleston, S.C., is run in a military fashion, as is a public high school in Richmond, Va. Private military academies have existed for centuries, usually as boarding schools that can charge $20,000 a year. But it is only in the last few years that many public schools have seriously considered the approach. School officials in Atlanta, among others, have traveled to Chicago to scout the Bronzeville academy, housed in a refurbished old brick armory, a stone's throw from street corners governed by gang members.

The popularity of military schools marks a cultural about-face from a generation ago, says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, recalling the antiwar tenor of the late '60s and '70s, "when colleges like Harvard were kicking the ROTC off campus." The critics of military schools have not vanished. Rick Johnkow, the coordinator for the Project on Youth and Nonmilitary Opportunities, based in San Diego, charges that military-style schools steer poor, black students into the armed forces, rather than encouraging them to go to college.

But sociologists like Moskos say the military has achieved credibility among young minorities and their parents, in large part because it is a rare institution that is not dominated at top levels by whites. "The Army is the only place in American society where whites are routinely bossed around by blacks," he says.

It's too early to tell whether military-style schools will succeed in raising test scores and restoring order. But attendance at the Chicago academy is running at 95 percent, a figure that most urban school administrators can only dream about. The Chicago academy, which has roughly the same number of boys and girls, is open to any student in the city. All that is required is a grammar-school diploma and a letter of recommendation. For this school year, there were 2,000 applications for 140 slots in the freshman class; a committee chose not the brightest or the most troubled, but what it considered the most well-rounded group. The boss at the academy is retired Brig. Gen. Frank C. Bacon, a 72-year-old veteran of the Korean War, gray-haired but still square-shouldered. By turns stern and avuncular, Bacon sometimes sounds a bit like Father Flanagan from Boys Town. "They can have been in trouble and still come here," he says. "They just can't stay in trouble and stay here." Bacon says the school does not necessarily take the top students. "Hell, I can go out and get a lot of ultrabright kids who will make me look good," he says. "But what good does that do? I'm interested in taking average kids and making above- average citizens out of them."

Robert Shores, 16, says he was a lost child with a bad temper when he enrolled at the Chicago academy three years ago. He hadn't seen his father in years. His mother for a time succumbed to drugs, moving away and leaving Robert and his two siblings in the care of an aunt. The other boys at his grammar school bullied the slender boy mercilessly. They called him "shorty" and "little man." Gang members came calling, trying to recruit him. "They said they'd fight for me," Robert says.

He didn't join. But he learned to use his fists. He got in trouble for fighting. He got in trouble for throwing rocks through windows. He got in trouble for smart-talking to teachers. His report card in the eighth grade showed D's.

His mother, Phyllis, who had kicked drugs and moved home, read a newspaper article about the planned military academy in Bronzeville. She thought he should give it a try. "No way," he told her. But they eventually struck a deal: he would attend for one year. If he didn't like it, he could quit. During his first year at the academy, he got into plenty of scrapes, mostly for clowning. For misbehaving in English class, he was sent to the Peer Council, a student-run body that hears disciplinary cases and metes out punishment. The council can give detentions, order a student to scrub floors or maybe run in the gym for an entire day. In this case, the council told Robert to go back to English class and apologize to the teacher, Ms. Vines. So one morning he looked her in the eye and told her, "I'm sorry I disrupted your class." He meant it, and she accepted the apology. To Robert, the simple act of fessing up, standing accountable for his wrongs, struck a chord. He said it made him feel like a man. He started acting like one.

He hasn't been a perfect angel. But his grades improved. He joined the sports teams--basketball, baseball, soccer. He plays drums and cornet in the academy's band. "If you feel like nobody cares about you, then you feel like a nobody," Robert says. "But there's a lot of people here who really like me. They'll pull me aside and tell me what I did wrong. And they tell me what I've done right."

Phyllis Shores says the academy has been the salvation of her son. "Robert's a totally different child since he's been at that school," she says. He helps around the house, fixing cabinets and light switches. He even makes it his responsibility to clean the bathroom in their upstairs apartment in a brick two-flat on the city's South Side.

At military-style schools, the armed forces typically pay half the salaries of officers who work as instructors, and pick up the cost of the kids' uniforms and equipment. Of the 50 administrators and teachers at the Chicago academy, 10 are retired military officers. But even the civilian teachers invoke the military code. Dina Morelli, a diminutive art teacher, begins her class with a sharp command: "At-tention to muster! Roll call." ROTC officials say their participation is not part of a recruiting drive, but rather part of an effort to promote good citizenship. Critics dispute the claim, noting that one study shows roughly 40 percent of these students plan to eventually join the military. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley led the push for a military academy. He said the military-style schools simply offer another option, like magnet schools that emphasize art or foreign language. Daley faced some arched eyebrows from skeptics when he proposed the military academy. But he shrugged off the criticism as coming from "those '60s-type people" who still harbor distrust of the military. When Mayor Jerry Brown of Oakland pushed for a military academy in that overwhelmingly liberal city two years ago, he was greeted by more than raised eyebrows. "They called me a racist and a militarist," Brown says. "You had people who hate the military, who thought we were going to turn these little kids into killers." His plan was shot down by the Oakland school board, so Brown went to the state for approval. California gave $1.3 million toward the Oakland Military Institute, which is affiliated with the state's National Guard.

But the critics in Oakland are still riled. Dan Siegel, who is a member of the school board that opposed the academy, called the military school "culturally inconsistent with the traditions" of the East Bay. "It's like putting the Ronald Reagan Museum in Berkeley. It doesn't belong here."

But Brown, who was educated by the Jesuits, says the military approach shares some of the virtues of Roman Catholic schools, which have shown success in educating poor children in urban centers. "I see authority. I see discipline." Brown loves to tell Oakland Military cadets: "I've met a lot of Catholic nuns who are tougher than any drill sergeant."

To Brown and others worried about urban education, the crisis of poor test scores demands some kind of new campaign. For now, it seems that plenty of school boards and parents--and young people, too--stand poised to salute.

Wednesday October 24 09:38 AM EDT

West Point's Newest Recruit: ABC ABC seems to be drawing no line in the sand when it comes to distinguishing between advertising and entertainment.

The Alphabet Network has announced a $25 million deal with the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to promote next year's 200th anniversary of the Army institution via a series of entertainment specials and commercials that are intended to help inspire the country's youth to sign-up.

The arrangement is between the network's sales group, ABC Unlimited, and the West Point Project, an Academy alumni and private citizen group. The deal was allegedly in the works long before the events of September 11 opened up real battlegrounds for soldiers trained at institutions like West Point.

Coincidence or not, the deal will undoubtedly raise some controversy for Disney, parent company of now the now fourth-place network, about the ever-deepening encroachment of advertising into programming.

ABC held a press conference Tuesday to trumpet the agreement and reveal plans for a prime-time special next June titled Young America Celebrates West Point . The program is described as "a celebration which will honor the history and people of the Academy with stars from stage, film, television and the recording industry."

The new agreement doesn't stop there. Sports fans, documentary and classical drama buffs, even women who favor touchy-feely programming and kids--presumably too young to pick up a gun--will also be targeted, as will be print and Internet readers and radio listeners.

"By using the full array of Disney properties, West Point will be well positioned to tell its story to a wide audience on ABC prime-time, as well as to women on Lifetime, young adults on the Disney properties, history buffs on the History Channel and men on ESPN," says Mike Shaw, ABC's president of sales and marketing.

Nothing like recruiting an army full of couch potatoes.

ABC Unlimited has previously signed somewhat similar integrated media campaigns with Toys "R" Us and EAS Nutritional Products.

"For 200 years, West Point has produced leaders of character who have led this nation in times of prosperity and adversity. The bicentennial of this great institution is a celebration for all of America and its significance only increases with current world events. We look forward to sharing this celebration with the American people," says West Point superintendent William J. Lennox Jr.

In addition to the Young America special, the History Channel will run a two-hour documentary called The Long Grey Line, a four-hour history series to air concurrent with the spring launch of the book West Point--The First 200 Years and the film retrospective West Point & the Movies. If that wasn't enough ($25 million apparently buys lots of exposure), "the history, architecture and curriculum of West Point" will also pop up on the Modern Marvels series.

But wait, there's more. ESPN will show a sports-in-the-Army documentary and telecast reruns of old Army games on its ESPN Classic channel. The cable channel's eponymous sports magazine will showcase ads celebrating 200 years of Army athletics. ESPN.com will feature West Point sports trivia.

ABC will also run 30- and 60-second vignettes on all its television and radio programs, including news shows like Good Morning America and Nightline. Kids programming will be peppered with spots focusing on West Point students and their achievements outside the military. Army role models for women will be featured on Lifetime's Intimate Portrait series. During February's Black History Month, the Urban Advantage Network will begin airing Leaders of Today spots focused on prominent African American and Hispanic graduates. The History Channel and A&E will also run spots highlighting West Point alums and historical moments.

The network states that all the West Point vignettes will be clearly labeled as advertising.

Now fall out and tune in, cadet.

HEADLINE: VMI Reverses Expulsion After Protest by Cadets
The Washington Post, September 20, 2001
BYLINE: Lisa Rein, Washington Post Staff Writer

An unusual, six-day standoff between the Virginia Military Institute and its cadet corps over the disciplining of several students ended yesterday when the school reduced some penalties.

Officials at the Lexington college agreed to reverse their expulsion of one cadet and to reconsider penalties for two others who were expelled and suspended last week. All three cadets were disciplined for mistreating freshmen. The decision came after VMI officials met with seniors who led a schoolwide protest last week against sanctions they considered excessive. The protest included a rare act of civil disobedience by hundreds of students who refused to march in a school-sponsored parade.

VMI officials said they will continue to consider sanctions against those students.

"The students questioned our initial thoroughness in reviewing the facts of the cases," said Chuck Steenburgh, the school's acting public relations director. "In retrospect, perhaps we overreacted."

But Steenburgh said some or all of the cadets who refused to march in last Friday's parade -- as many as 900 students -- could receive demerits, be confined to the post or required to perform community service.

"In military school, you don't simply decide not to march," Steenburgh said, calling the protest a "sort of mob action."

The protest began last Thursday after two senior cadets were expelled, a junior was suspended and two others were disciplined, based on a complaint from the parent of a freshman who dropped out after the first week of school. The parent said his son was mistreated on the "rat line," VMI's six-month freshman ritual of forced marches, push-ups and scoldings imposed by upperclassmen.

Steenburgh would say only that the students violated school rules for training and disciplining new cadets. But Devon Miller, editor of the school newspaper, The Cadet, said one student was charged with "working out" large numbers of rats instead of small groups and another with threatening a rat with lewd language.

Protesting seniors quickly refused to supervise the rat line and said school officials had abused their role. Miller, a senior from Warrenton, said the lewd language was meant as a joke. He accused Maj. Gen. Josiah Bunting III, the school's superintendent, of trying to paint a positive public image of VMI at the expense of the corps.

"The class leadership decided that it wasn't going to put up with what they saw as the administration kicking cadets out to use them as scapegoats," Miller said.

For one of the expelled seniors, VMI officials agreed to substitute a severe administrative penalty involving demerits and confinement to the school barracks. The others have been given time to present their cases for lighter discipline to the school for review, a procedure Steenburgh called unusual.

HEADLINE: Judge allows St. John's libel suit to go forward
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel September 27, 2001 Thursday
Copyright 2001 Journal Sentinel Inc.

Waukesha -- An Illinois man and his attorney being sued by St. John's Northwestern Military Academy for libel lost a bid Wednesday to get the suit dismissed.

Circuit Judge Donald Hassin Jr. agreed with the academy that it had the right to file suit against Gary Meyers and his attorney, Terry Boesch, in Waukesha County Circuit Court. Lawyers for Meyers and Boesch had argued Monday that they had not had sufficient contact with the State of Wisconsin to be forced to defend a suit filed in that state. Meyers lives in Northbrook, Ill., and Boesch practices law in Valparaiso, Ind.

But St. John's attorney, Bruce O'Neill, argued that the two had made numerous contacts via e-mails and faxes to St. John's faculty, students and parents and also had filed a lawsuit against the academy in Federal Court in Milwaukee.

Meyers, whose son once attended the Delafield school, has filed several suits on his son's behalf alleging the academy allowed discrimination and child abuse on its campus.

On Tuesday, Hassin signed an order appointing attorney Peter Plaushines to act as special prosecutor in reviewing whether Boesch and Meyers should be charged with criminal contempt of court for not promptly following Hassin's order to remove the names of juveniles from Web sites listing public police records of child abuse cases at the academy.

VMI cadets earn place in history
Thomas C. Mandes; SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

May 15 marked the 137th anniversary of the Battle of New Market. This Virginia battle was not an engagement of epic proportions or strategic significance, but it was unique because of the contribution of cadets from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington.

It was the second battle in recent American military history in which a large body of youth engaged in combat. In September 1847, the cadets of the Mexican Military Academy met American troops storming Chapultepec. These young men, ranging in age from 10 to 16, fought tenaciously, causing many casualties among the American troops. Seventeen years later, the corps from VMI, with an estimated strength of 179, ages 13 to 18, left for the New Market battle. Eight cadets were killed, and 44 were wounded.

In 1861, the entire corps went to Charlestown, Va., where they were involved in providing security under their commander, Stonewall Jackson. No armed engagement occurred, and they returned to Lexington, where they stayed until called upon to march to New Market three years later. During the early spring of 1864, the war was turning against the South. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant set in motion a strategy to press the Confederacy into submission. The breadbasket of the South, the Shenandoah Valley, was critical to his plans.

In eastern Virginia, Grant confronted Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. In the west, Grant selected Gen. Franz Sigel as commander of the Northern forces. Sigel, a German who had emigrated in 1852, was to secure the Shenandoah Valley, thereby cutting off supplies to Lee and sealing off the mountain passes to prevent troop movement.

The South's command was in the hands of Gen. John Cabell Breckinridge - vice president of the United States under James Buchanan and presidential candidate in 1860. Breckinridge rose to the rank of major general and in 1865 was appointed secretary of war in President Jefferson Davis' Cabinet.

At the start of the Battle of New Market, the Confederates were entrenched in the town as the Yankees approached. The Union force numbered about 6,500, while the Confederates had 4,500 troops in addition to the VMI cadets.

The principal clash was on a rise that was part of a farm owned by the Bushong family, whose homestead ended up in the middle of the battlefield. There had been heavy rain, and the field on which the cadets fought was a quagmire. As they advanced up the rise, footing became so treacherous that many lost their shoes, and the ground later became known as "the field of lost shoes."

As the battle progressed, a gap developed in the Confederate lines. The cadets held in reserve were ordered in by Breckinridge, who uttered, "Bring in the cadets, and may the Lord have mercy upon my soul."

The youngsters from VMI filled the break, and as they advanced, a Federal artillery shell fell in their midst, killing and wounding several. They persevered and, along with the remainder of the Southern troops, pushed the Union forces back past the Bushong farm, up the field of lost shoes and to the North Fork of the Shenandoah River.

The role of the cadets has been embellished greatly. Their time on the field was less than a half-hour. They did not take any prisoners but did secure one abandoned Federal cannon. With the enemy routed, Col. George S. Patton of the 22nd Virginia, grandfather of the World War II general who bore his name, ordered the cadets from the battlefield. Though their role may have been exaggerated and romanticized, the youngsters nevertheless remained resolute, showed courage and discipline under fire, and did not waver when pushed into battle against a superior force.

The rout of the Federal troops was stayed temporarily when the Rebels came under fire from the 5th U.S. Artillery under the command of yet another famous participant at New Market, Capt. Henry A. du Pont of the Delaware du Ponts.

Among the cadets, Thomas Garland Jefferson, a relative of the third president, was mortally wounded near the Bushong farmhouse and died in the arms of perhaps one of the most famous of the VMI participants, Moses Jacob Ezekiel. Ezekiel was the first cadet of the Jewish faith to enroll at the institute. He was graduated in 1866 and left to study art in Europe, where he became a sculptor of world renown, returning to Virginia to complete some of his most famous works. The statue of Stonewall Jackson at VMI is his creation. "Virginia Mourning Her Dead" on the VMI campus also is his work - the one he prized the most, created in homage to his friends who were killed at New Market.

The Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, "The Righteous Cause," is the largest and most elaborate statue there and also is an Ezekiel work. Nearby is the grave of the sculptor. The inscription reads: Moses J Ezekiel, Sergeant of Company C, Battalion of Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute.

New Market, Va., is a two-hour drive from Washington. The battlefield site includes the Hall of Valor Civil War Museum and the Bushong farm. There is a self-guided battlefield tour.

Thomas C. Mandes is a physician in Vienna.

Aiming high Life is tough at the service academies
Jenni Carlson, Staff Writer

When Bryan Blew's alarm goes off, the morning sun pokes over the mountains and filters through the pine trees.

He has lots to do. Shower. Iron his shirt. Shine his shoes. Tidy his room. Dry his sink. Clean his mirror. Study his notes.

And that's before class starts.

Classes at the Air Force Academy begin at 7:30 a.m., when Blew has even more to do. This semester, the 1998 all-state player from Edmond North attends class until noon. Then formation and marching to lunch. Then football practice. Then dressing for dinner. Then squadron meetings. Then three to five hours of studying. "This year," Blew said, "it's kind of eased up."

Eased up?

"It's not for everybody," said Blew, the kick returner and second-string quarterback when Air Force hosts Oklahoma on Saturday. "If you're not up to living in this place, it's not worth staying.

"The Air Force is not really keen on having guys here who don't want to do it."

Football players must really want to do it. Playing Division I football for the military academies - Air Force, Army and Navy - while living an already demanding lifestyle is difficult.

Having success is even harder. While Air Force has seven consecutive winning seasons and has averaged 8.4 wins during that time, Army and Navy had only two wins combined last season. Navy's only victory came against Army. Neither have been to a bowl game since 1996.

The programs, even Air Force, struggle to land blue-chip recruits. Most of the best high school players aren't interested in a heavy academic load, wearing a uniform and worrying about failing haircut inspections and squaring corners when they walk the halls.

And even if the military lifestyle is appealing, the military commitment required after graduation often is not.

"We can't promise them a car to come to school here," Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry said, "but we can certainly promise them that if they stay four years we'll give them a jet airplane."

Army coach Todd Berry, a Miami, OK, native who played quarterback for Tulsa 1979-81, hears the misconceptions.

"People think we get up at 5 a.m. and run three miles with rifles above our heads," he said. "During the academic year, we're much like other academic institutions."

Sort of.

"Our young people don't take Spanish," Berry said. "They take Chinese."

Chandler Sims isn't taking Chinese. German is his language of choice. The Navy junior flanker, a graduate of Casady High School, is minoring in German and majoring in economics.

"We're not taking, like, TV 101," Sims said. "These aren't Mickey Mouse classes."

The classes are not only demanding but many. Navy students, for example, must take at least 15 hours but most average 18.

Football players don't get a break either. While many Division I players cut back their class load to the minimum 12 hours during the season, academy players take the same load as non-athletes. Grade point averages must be maintained. Graduation must be on time.

There is no five-year plan at the academies.

Going to class is not only expected but mandatory.

"When you came here, you pretty much knew you were going to have a heavy academic load," Air Force starting quarterback Keith Boyea said. "You learn to manage your time. We all figure it out. We're all smart guys.

Smart guys, indeed.

The average SAT score for incoming students is 1,200. They are involved, active, dynamic. They are leaders. They are standouts. About 50,000 students annually express interest in each of the academies; less than 2 percent are accepted.

"These are guys that have been class presidents in their high schools, that were all in honor societies," Navy coach Charlie Weatherbie said.

Berry said, "This is the cream of the crop, the elite of the elite."

Sometimes even they can't hack it.

Freshmen football players at the academies don't exactly get a warm welcome.

With basic training at Air Force, The Beast at Army and Plebe Summer at Navy, every incoming student is pushed. They run and march and climb and crawl and learn and grow. Ties to the civilian world are cut. Bonds with the military are established.

Everyone considers quitting - "I don't think you're human unless you think that," Sims said - and some do.

Many others quit football once they encounter the academic rigors. Because every student has a full-tuition, government-funded scholarship and the football team has no scholarship limits, it is not unusual for 200 freshmen to report. Air Force's senior class included 13 quarterbacks when it arrived. It has one now.

"It's a brotherhood," Blew said. "That's why we win games. We win it with the brotherhood."

That is unique to the academies.

"We've been through a lot," said Navy punter Eric Rolfs, who played at Bartlesville. "That reflects on the football field."

Army flanker Aris Comeaux, who played for Tulsa Union, said, "We may not have the biggest or the fastest people here, but I think our will to win is just the same."

But football games are not won on will alone. They are won with cornerbacks who run the 40 in 4.4 seconds and linemen who tip the scales at 300 pounds. They are won with size and speed.

Air Force has no players weighing more than 295 pounds.

Even though all the academies have had players in the NFL in the last decade - Air Force's Chad Hennings, a former Dallas Cowboy, might be the best known - most of their players will not play professionally. The academies require students repay their all-expenses-paid education with four years of military service. That military appointment is a major delay for a player with NFL aspirations.

"Just because of the type of individual we're recruiting, we can appeal to their rationale," Berry said. "They're not only thinking what's for breakfast the next morning; they're thinking ahead."

But if they're thinking NFL, they probably aren't choosing the academies.

Air Force continues to flourish despite the obstacles. Ten of the last 12 years, the Falcons have won the Commander in Chief's Trophy, given annually to the winner of the competition between the academies.

So why is Air Force successful while Army and Navy struggle?

The slide began in the late '60s. With the Vietnam War escalating and anti-military sentiments growing, the academies became a less-desirable destination. The notion of a military commitment wasn't popular.

"It made the military somewhat of an unpopular thing," Berry said. "That's changing."

Between 1969-73, Army had two winning seasons and one 0-10 season. Navy had nothing but losing seasons between 1968-74.

Ken Hatfield, now the coach at Rice, brought the wishbone to Air Force in 1978. The style suits the academies, emphasizing intelligent quarterbacks and quick linemen.

Air Force still uses the wishbone and the option today. "We can't go out here and recruit the 6-4, 6-5 quarterback. Then the receivers. Then the big offensive linemen that it takes to pass protect," DeBerry said.

Recruiting is where it all starts, and it isn't always an easy sell for the academies.

"There's a higher mission here," Berry said. "We're not just selling football."

The academies are selling a different way of life.

Boyea didn't play as a sophomore at Air Force; he violated the school's honor code. The academy slapped him with a six-month suspension, which overlapped the entire football season.

His crime: using a fake ID.

Florida State receiver Peter Warrick walked out of Dillard's that fall with some drastically reduced merchandise.

His punishment: a two-game suspension and a national championship.

"I looked at that and said, 'Well, what's worse?' " Boyea said. "But I knew the rules when I decided to come here."

No violating the honor code. No cars until their junior year. No going out on weeknights. No fun?

"I haven't had a girlfriend in a while," Boyea admitted. "I don't know if that's because of school or me."

But seriously...

"It's just something we decide to give up," Boyea said.

Football practice is one of the few activities that isn't regimented, militarily.

"I wouldn't say we enjoy it," Sims said, "but it's a great way to step out of the box. It's just a great time to get out and be a kid again."

Boyea said, "It's by far better than aeronatical engineering."

No doubt.

"The best part of our day is practice," Blew said. "We love being down here."

Football, then, makes facing that morning sun a bit easier.

Military school liable for hazing rituals

A FEDERAL COURT judge in New York awarded $ 312,000 on June 1 to a 17-year-old freshman, who, while attending a private military school in Vermont, was subjected to brutal indoctrination, rituals, initiations and hazings. The plaintiff contended the university knew and condoned hazing of the "rooks" by upper-class students. The plaintiff claimed that he received two-fisted punching to the chest to knock the wind out; blood wings (punching unsheathed metal spikes of the school insignia into the chest until blood is drawn); being "blessed" (hit in the head with heavy graduation rings); and necktie parties (two rooks' ties are tied together and the rooks are pulled apart until they choke). The university said it was aware of only one incident, for which it expelled the student involved, but denied any others, noting that the boy never reported them to school officials or documented them medically. The plaintiff said rooks were not permitted to report abuses to anyone other than their hazers, and that no formal complaint system outside the chain of command existed. He contended that the university was aware of the violent nature of the hazing, which had gone on for more than 60 years. Causes of action included assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as negligent supervision. Judge Leonard Wexler found that the plaintiff, who suffered physical and emotional injuries, had been assaulted and battered by students acting as agents of the university in indoctrinating and orienting freshman. Keith Briscoe v. Norwich University, No. 98 Civ 6969.

Citadel graduate rebuilds program; COLLEGE FOOTBALL

BYLINE: JOHN HOLLIS

Ellis Johnson is in a different world.

The former Alabama assistant is head coach of The Citadel, a Division I-AA military school with strict rules and budget limitations.

It's also home for Johnson, the place where he played college ball and matured into a man. "I enjoyed going to school here," Johnson said. "I understand the place. It feels good to be back. It was just something I wanted to do. It was the right place at the right time."

The Citadel means a lot of things to its graduates, but the school will never be confused with Alabama. Johnson, 49, had been Alabama's defensive coordinator for the previous six seasons and was the outside linebackers coach of the Crimson Tide team that won a national championship in 1992.

Gone now are the days of playing in front of national television audiences and the luxury of annually recruiting the best high school athletes in the country. Also gone is the intense national media coverage.

But Johnson doesn't appear at all bothered. He had a chance to go to Maryland as the defensive coordinator under new coach Ralph Friedgen, the former Tech assistant. But the lure of going back home and running a program proved too strong.

"It was really tough," Johnson said. "Those are obviously two different choices, two entirely different situations. There are a lot of stark differences, the most obvious being one school is in the ACC and the other is in the Southern Conference. It was a really hard decision for me to make."

Johnson inherited a Citadel team that is coming off consecutive 2-9 seasons. His rebuilding job won't be easy, but those who know him think he'll get it done.

"He's going to be good for the school," said The Citadel graduate Lance Thompson, Tech's defensive ends coach and recruiting coordinator. Thompson coached with Johnson for two years at Alabama. "He's a disciplinarian-type of guy. I expect him to win 'em all except for one."

Johnson will have his hands full competing in the Southern Conference, much less against Tech on Saturday. But winning and losing are not necessarily his top priorities, right now.

"I probably enjoy every day at work more than I used to," said Johnson, who has Hodgkin's disease. "I don't get overly concerned about winning and losing anymore. Sometimes there are just bigger things to worry about."

College guide lauds Naval Academy faculty

The Naval Academy has made a splash in the 2002 edition of the Princeton Review's "The Best 331 Colleges" with its professors ranked the best in accessibility to students.

"We've known for decades we have world-class faculty," said Navy Cmdr. Bill Spann, academy spokesman. "It's nice to know the midshipmen appreciate them as well."

The school also ranked fourth for being "stone-cold sober" _ a score Cmdr. Spann said they're always looking to improve.

The Princeton Review surveyed 65,000 college students on how well their schools do in terms of academic and athletic performance, social environment and racial diversity. Comments offered by midshipmen on the survey included unattractive campus, campus difficult to get around, library needs improving, lab facilities are great and "everyone loves the midshipmen."

On other scores, the academy dropped in the rankings from first to eighth in the "Runs like butter" category _ or in military lingo, running a tight ship _ and also dropped two places to seventh for being toughest to get into.

Its arch-rival, the Military Academy at West Point, ranked sixth on the tough admissions scale.

The Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., outpaced its naval competitor with its No. 2 ranking in highest number of study hours _ the Naval Academy placed seventh. The Coasties also left the Mids in their wake by ranking second in best overall academic experience for undergraduates to the Naval Academy's spot at 20.

Tiny St. John's College in Annapolis scored in two categories: 12th place for all students playing intramural sports and 15th place for intercollegiate sports unpopular or nonexistent.

Female enrollment peaks at The Citadel

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (AP) -- When retired Marine Maj. Gen. John Grinalds arrived as president four years ago, The Citadel had been shaken by controversy surrounding the admission of female cadets.

He quickly announced the state military college was "on a campaign" to turn things around.

This week, Grinalds provided figures to show the success of that campaign -- the largest freshmen class in two decades and more than 100 female cadets schoolwide.

"There is an essential goodness to The Citadel in what it achieves," Grinalds said. "That has never been lost in the midst of very poor publicity and controversy that surround a week, citing stress and isolation. The school suffered a public blow when cadets shouted and cheered upon learning of her departure."

The following year, in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the college dropped its all-male admissions policy and four women enrolled. Two left after a semester, alleging that they had been hazed.

When Grinalds arrived in 1997, he sought to repair the school's image and increase enrollment of both male and female students.

In 1997, there were 559 incoming freshmen. This year, 694 freshmen are at the school, including 40 women.

The recent figures showed the school had 112 female cadets, with the total topping 100 for the first time. Ten women graduated last spring.

In all, the college has 1,934 cadets, almost more than it knows what to do with. As classes started Wednesday, 53 cadets were temporarily being housed in a trailer and a wrestling training room.

In considering the school's recent successes, Grinalds noted that sometimes what appears to be negative can prove to be a positive.

Senior cadets Sha Peterson of Chicago, Illinois, said she first learned about The Citadel though news accounts of the hazing of the female cadets. She decided to give the school a chance.

"I figured it can't be too bad. I came expecting the worst and it wasn't like that at all," she said. "It's difficult. The first year you go through emotional and physical obstacles, but it's worth it."

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.

WEST POINT BEGINS ITS BICENTENNIAL YEAR
BYLINE: The Associated Press
DATELINE: WEST POINT, N.Y.

The U.S. Military Academy, training ground for some of America's most famous soldiers, formally began its 200th anniversary celebration Saturday.

The new Class of 2005 was to be "accepted" into the Corps of Cadets during the traditional Acceptance Parade on the Plain at West Point. The academy's official bicentennial flag will also be unfurled for the first time. Saturday's events marked the first pomp and ceremony of what will be a year of parades, concerts, museum exhibits, conferences, and other celebrations for the academy overlooking the Hudson River.

"This is the U.S. Military Academy, and we want people to be proud of their military academy," said Col. Pat Kane, director of West Point's bicentennial celebration office. "We believe we owe a debt to society.

It's the taxpayers¬ academy, and we want to use the momentous celebration to make more people aware who may not know about the military academy. " As it is, nearly 3 million people visit West Point each year.

The bicentennial celebration will reach a peak around March 16, the actual 200th anniversary of the day President Thomas Jefferson signed the congressional act creating the academy.

The West Point Band will perform on March 15 at Carnegie Hall in New York City. On March 16 at West Point, U.S. Postal Service officials will unveil a new West Point stamp and the U.S. Mint will announce the release of 500,000 new $1 coins in honor of the academy.

The new cadets being welcomed into the corps numbered 1,153 as of Friday, according to academy spokeswoman Andrea Hamburger. That was down 36 cadets from those who began the intensive six-week boot camp for incoming students at West Point known as "Beast Barracks. " That ended last week.

Among the other bicentennial-year events planned at the military academy are special exhibits at the West Point Museum; retrospectives on how the academy has been depicted by Hollywood (Oct. 16-April 30); a conference (Nov. 1-3) on Thomas Jefferson, who created the academy despite his suspicion of large standing armies; and the centennial of the Class of 1902 (May 6) to be attended by the former cadets¬ relatives.

Starting with the Civil War, the commands of American armies in all major conflicts have been dominated by West Point graduates.

Freshmen boot camp: 'You're not at home anymore'
BYLINE: ANDREA JONES

Dahlonega --- Robert Trow shut his eyes and cringed. Pinning the chicken's scraggly neck down to the ground with sticks, he gave a mighty yank on its feet.

Pop.

"Good work, frog," barked Cadet First Sgt. Christopher Tison, holding up the headless white flapping bird for the crowd of new recruits.

Wiping his face on the sleeve of his camouflage uniform, Trow blew out a ragged breath and returned to sit among his classmates in the forest clearing. "That," the 19-year-old whispered when Tison was out of earshot, "was pretty gross."

Last week, as thousands of Georgia's college-bound youths were busy decorating dorm rooms and guzzling beer at keg parties, the newest cadets at North Georgia College & State University were getting a vastly different initiation into higher education.

In a grueling, seven-day boot camp filled with buzz cuts and blisters, Trow and 230 fellow freshmen learned the how-tos of becoming a military cadet.

Upperclassmen serve as stone-faced drill sergeants during this peculiar form of pre-college orientation, called FROG Week, where push-ups and yelling are standard operating procedure.

"They get up here and it's a double whammy," said retired Army Col. James Palmer, Cadet Corps commandant. "They go from civilian life to military, and high school to college. It's a lot to deal with in a few days."

They come from as far away as Ghana and Bosnia, as close as Dawsonville, the next town over. Among the ranks is a 20-year-old tattooed transfer student who saw the program as her last chance for a free college ride on an ROTC scholarship. There's a stocky kid who attended military schools his entire life. The last-minute patriot who saw the Corps practicing on the school's grassy drill field and joined up.

Tucked away in the old mountain mining town of Dahlonega, North Georgia College & State University is one of only four senior military colleges in the United States.

But unlike the school's Southern brethren --- Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel --- North Georgia's strict military program shares the picturesque campus with civilian students. The cadets, outnumbered 6-1, earn degrees in liberal arts, not military science. But they face additional rules: attending classes in crisp uniforms, waking before dawn for leg lifts and stretches in the wet grass, and abiding by midnight curfews.

"It's hard to convince high school students to give up the regular college experience," said Cadet First Sgt. Meagan Goodman, one of the Corps student recruiters. "But once you're here, it's really worth it."

Upperclassmen and alumni agree: Getting through FROG (Freshman Orientation Group) Week is the hardest part.

'I really miss my mom and dad'

It's 10:10 p.m. on Monday night, and 18-year-old Melissa Shaw is trying not to cry. She stands in her newly assigned dorm room in wet flip-flops and soaked clothes, after being hurried from the shower by bellowing upperclassmen.

"I know I can handle the push-ups," the Duluth High School graduate says, her voice wavering. "I just really miss my mom and dad."

Shaw joined the Reserves after seeing an Army booth in Walt Disney World on a school trip. The cheerleader spent 10 weeks in basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia this summer, but hadn't planned on joining the military program at school.

"When I got up here and I saw the Corps, it just broke my heart that I wasn't a part of it," she says. Shaw marched across campus to the program's offices and signed up on the spot. Her parents paid for her uniforms, and she called her best friend to break the news that she'd be living in a Corps dorm.

"She wasn't really happy about that," Shaw says. "But it was now or never for FROG Week."

At 5:45 a.m. Wednesday, the band AC/DC's "Hells Bells" blasts through the polished tile hallways as upperclassmen bound down darkened corridors, banging on doors.

"My lightning's flashing across the sky," the singer screams. "You're only young but you're gonna die."

The harsh lyrics are followed by tough words.

"What do you think this is, the Motel 6?" Cadet First Sgt. Joseph Byerly roars over the heavy metal music. "Get up! Get up! Get up!"

Bleary-eyed freshmen flee from their rooms in gray shorts and white T-shirts, puffing out their chests to stand at attention.

"You have 10 seconds to get out here," Byerly barks to late risers. "You're not at home anymore."

After an hour of exercises, the new recruits eat breakfast, run back to the dorms to change into camouflage uniforms and load onto school buses.

At Pine Valley, a four-acre tract of land not far from the college, they rotate between classes with names like the Grenade Assault Course and Hand to Hand Combat. They take turns beating each other with padded sticks, crawl face-first through mud pits and, in (Cadet First Sgt.) Tison's survival skills class, get a lesson on how to kill, skin, debowel and cook a chicken.

Keeping the recruits

By Wednesday night, their salutes are sharper and marches mostly in step, but it hasn't been easy, even for those who came with military experience.

Trow, the squeamish freshman, graduated from Riverside Military Academy in nearby Hall County, but he's as sore as the rest.

As smoke grenades send a blanket of fog over his company during a nighttime training exercise Wednesday, Trow becomes a casualty himself.

"You're dead," yells Cadet Lt. Col. Michael Abercrombie, his face a fierce mask of green war paint. "Lie down and don't move."

Trow smiles ruefully as five of his classmates painfully drag him up a steep embankment by his shirt. "I guess it serves me right for killing that chicken."

While FROG Week is grueling, the upperclassmen are careful to use words like motivation, accountability and honor. They run alongside the recruits and match push-up for push-up, constantly reminding kids to drink water to avoid heat exhaustion. They push them to extremes but show an almost paternal protection. It's clear nobody wants these new students to drop out.

Although the military program is rated among the best in the country --- their cadets win national competitions year after year --- the school has had trouble filling the Corps' allotted 458 beds on campus since its peak enrollment in the 1980s.

"Years ago, they'd have between 30 and 40 students drop out during FROG Week," said Terry Wilfong, the director of cadet recruitment. "We do everything we can to keep them here now."

This summer, it worked. Only two out of the 232 freshmen dropped out --- a record in the school's 128-year history.

Blisters and war stories

Twenty-year-old Erin Witt --- who got her fifth tattoo two days before FROG Week began --- wavered on her decision to stay throughout the week. A transfer student from Kennesaw State University, Witt was offered a ROTC scholarship. The catch? Two years of active duty service after she graduates.

Thursday, as her company practiced rifle drills in drizzling rain, Witt calls her ROTC recruiter.

"I've decided to decline my scholarship," she tells the officer. "Thanks very much."

But Saturday morning, Witt is among the ranks who gather on the drill field for a 3 1/2-mile run up Crown Mountain, the final finish line for FROG Week.

She's going home, she's decided, but wants to finish the week out right.

At 9 a.m., proud parents take in the college through camcorder lenses and sip water in the baking sun, as their children struggle up a heartbreaking hill near campus.

"Keep going, you can do it," a sweaty Robert Trow yells to his classmates as he grabs a buddy's shoulder on the way up. "We're all going to make it."

And they do.

By 10:15 a.m., the 230 triumphant freshmen are taking a victory lap around drill field. Upperclassmen give them golden crests in a solemn ceremony and all are sworn in with an official cadet oath.

Melissa Shaw's mom, Dot, stands grinning on the sidelines, snapping pictures.

"I missed you so much," Dot Shaw says as the pair share a long embrace. "We're so proud of you."

The weary freshmen will spend the rest of this weekend recovering, bandaging blisters and recounting their war stories.

"It's a great accomplishment," Palmer, the colonel, says. "They deserve the praise."

But it won't last long. Tomorrow, the recruits face a new challenge: college.

Final demolition begins today on Padgett-Thomas Barracks

The final stage in the demolition of Padgett-Thomas Barracks begins today at The Citadel.

At approximately 1:30 p.m., demolition on the building's signature tower - that last piece still standing - will begin.

For safety reasons, the streets and sidewalks near the barracks will be closed to pedestrian and motor traffic.

Padgett-Thomas Barracks, the oldest building on The Citadel campus, is being razed to make way for a new dormitory and leadership learning laboratory for Citadel cadets. The barracks was the first building constructed in 1922 after the military college moved from Marion Square.

The barracks was closed in August 2000 because the aging building created a safety hazard for occupants.

PT will be rebuilt and will look identical to the razed building.

Demolition began May 24. The tower is the last piece to be razed because it is structurally the weakest part of the building and because work crews had to disassemble a wooden water tank located in the upper reaches of the tower.

The tank provided water to the barracks' fire protection sprinkler system, but it has not been used for that purpose for many years.

In days gone by, cadets would sneak into the tower on summer nights and swim in the tank, which has etched in its wooden planks and scribbled in ink the names of nearly nine generations of cadets who lived in Padgett-Thomas Barracks.

The tank was disassembled plank by plank and will be preserved for future display.

LOAD-DATE: August 9, 2001

Kemper Military School Out of Bankruptcy
SOURCE: WORLD-HERALD NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: Boonville, Mo.

A little more than a year after filing for bankruptcy, Kemper Military School and College in Boonville has emerged from Chapter 11 status.

Court proceedings finished Wednesday, and a confirmation order is expected to be handed down this week by a federal judge, according to a statement from the school.

Kemper filed for bankruptcy protection three days before last year's graduation ceremony. Alumni and cadets raised enough money by the May 13 graduation to keep the school afloat for the 2000-2001 school year.

"We will continue to move forward in the direction we've established, but we will continue to need the support of our alumni, friends and community" said Dr. Ed Ridgley, Kemper's president.

Officials attribute a tighter budget to new administration, internal improvements in business operations, the cancellation of junior-college programs and increased enrollment.

The oldest military school west of the Mississippi River, Kemper will begin its fall semester Sept. 6.

Jerry Brown's 'boot camp' school opens;
Seventh-graders trade long days, added rules for extra attention
BYLINE: Meredith May

Nearly 200 seventh-graders marched in formation yesterday for their first day of school in classrooms with names like Fort Justice and Fort Cooperation.

They filed past Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, whose idea -- to create the first charter school in California to pair military discipline with college preparatory classes -- faced an uphill battle from the start.

"Young people like structure," Brown said. "You gotta have structure where everyone knows the story. Form creates clarity."

The Oakland Military Institute, Brown's answer to reforming the Oakland public schools, was rejected first by the Oakland school board and then by the Alameda County Board of Education. Both said that $3 million in federal and state funding was too much to spend on a school serving just 175 children when there are 52,000 in the Oakland public schools.

But with a little assist from military school graduate and Brown ally Gov. Gray Davis, the school was eventually granted a charter from the California Board of Education.

But the politics behind the Oakland Military Institute mean nothing to the 11- and 12-year-olds now attending school in portable classrooms on the Oakland Army Base. Many of them wanted to enroll to escape overcrowded and chaotic classrooms in the Oakland public schools. Most of the students come from Oakland, but some are from Berkeley, Richmond, the San Joaquin Valley and a handful from outside California.

TWO-WEEK TRIAL RUN

They all went to the National Guard headquarters in San Luis Obispo for a two-week summer camp to get used to military life and assessment tests. They also hiked in the wilderness and kayaked in Morro Bay.

Three dozen youngsters dropped out of camp. Some left because they fought -- but most because they missed mom and dad, and those kids are being given a second chance at the school, said Brig. Gen. Ralph Marinaro, who is serving as the school's superintendent.

Although Justin Jones cried when he left his mother to board the bus for San Luis Obispo in June, he now wears his uniform with confidence.

"This is better than my old school, because at my old school kids would be smoking and there were bullies and stuff," he said.

Justin smiled when his homeroom teacher assured the class that the Oakland Military Institute would be a safe environment..

LONG DAYS, EXTRA SUPERVISION

Back-to-school came early for the cadets, and their school days will last longer than at traditional public schools. Each day starts with military drills at 7 a.m. and ends with an after-school tutoring session that will keep them working until 6 p.m. A National Guard member will be assigned to each classroom, to serve as a mentor and teacher's aide for the class until the students graduate as 12th-graders.

That's exactly what Pak Keawdee wants for his son. A graduate of a military school in Bangkok, Keawdee came to the Oakland Army Base yesterday to watch his son Chat start school.

"I believe students in this environment learn to respect their teachers," he said. "They will have mentors and all new equipment."

Every classroom was furnished with a bank of new computers. The students will be getting new books and veteran teachers who have, on average, 12 years' experience in the classroom.

IN FOR THE LONG HAUL

"The students are digging this now," said Sgt. Nathaniel Ratley, who wiped away many homesick tears in San Luis Obispo.

"This is a bit overwhelming for them, and for us, with all the media," he said. "We explained to them they are just a news item right now, but we are going to be with them for the next six years."

Dad Ralph Johnson was so happy to watch his son in the group that he gave a big bear hug to National Guard Maj. Gen. Paul Monroe.

"I can't wait until 2006, when my son says, 'Dad, I'm going to Harvard,' " Johnson said, wiping back tears.

Johnson and a couple of other parents formed a Parent Teacher Association on the spot.

Jacqueline Torres, who joined the Oakland Military Institute with her best friend, was excited for classes to finally start.

"It was hard to get up this early," she said, "but I want a better education. I want to be somebody."E-mail Meredith May at mmay@sfchronicle.com.

Oakland's public military school snaps into action
BYLINE: By John Simerman

OAKLAND, Calif. _ Two dozen pre-teens sprung from a portable classroom, braids flopping and jaws flapping after their first class of the school year Monday. Platoon Sgt. Nathaniel C. Ratley fell in fast on their black leather heels, displeased.

"Why are you having conferences in the classroom?" he growled, staring down the ragtag ranks. "Why are you not in formation? Haveyoulostyourminds?"

The seventh-graders stiffened upright, and Ratley smiled at onlookers who had come to witness the start of Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown's controversial new tactic in education reform.

A 7:30 a.m. reveille pierced the gray morning on the site of the former Oakland Army Base, launching the Oakland Military Institute. Brown and other supporters hope the charter school will yield student discipline, high test scores and competition for the city's beleaguered public schools.

The 166 students who lined up in khaki pants and black, standard-issue backpacks make up the first class of what Brown hopes will become a full-fledged college prep academy with more than 1,000 students.

The strict military veneer, enforced by the California National Guard, may seem incongruous for a usually left-leaning politician known for his meditative bent. On Monday, Brown curtly downplayed criticism that the academy glorified militarism. Such fears led both Oakland and Alameda County schools officials to reject his charter request, forcing Brown to secure the first-ever state-sponsored school charter earlier this year.

"It's the ceremony, the tradition," Brown said.

"There's a sense of honor. All these deep values and commitments are there for these kids to grow into," said Brown, who tasted rigid discipline in a high school ROTC program and three years of Jesuit seminary.

"The goal here is to become leaders in business, government, the arts. It's not engaging debates on Star Wars or whether to go to the gulf war," he said. "That was just something some people from Berkeley conjured up."

Most of the school's students live in Oakland, though some traveled from as far as San Jose or Vallejo. Supporters note that enrollment is purely voluntary. The school's students, two-thirds of them boys, attend because their parents or guardians want them there.

Juanita Hughes of Richmond broke into joyful tears after seeing off her khaki-uniformed granddaughter Jenia.

"I'm not trying to send her to the service. I just see it as discipline, direction," said Hughes. "She's not planning to be colonel. Whatever it is, it's better than watching Nintendo."

The students got a taste of the regimen at a two-week summer "boot camp." Not everyone survived _ 33 students dropped out for unruly or uncooperative behavior. A dozen were readmitted after appealing. To some, the camp proved an unexpected surprise.

"The teachers came in the barracks and hit on a metal dust pan. The way they yelled, I was like, 'Dang!' I jumped out of my seat," said Cadet Ashley Hatter, 12, of Oakland. "I thought it was going to be a fun camp and I was shocked."

Several cadets acknowledged being nervous Monday morning, with rigid 10-hour days ahead of them. Not only longer each day, the school also runs nearly three weeks longer than other public schools.

Cadet Jose Padilla, 12, arrived sobbing, fearing the consequences of being two minutes late. School officials said they'll cut some early slack as parents learn the intricacies of public transit.

Teacher Gianni Polk, 29, reveled in having a National Guard enforcer in the back of her classroom.

"It's invaluable," she said. "You can't even put a value on it."

The value of Brown's pet project, meanwhile, remains to be seen, and test scores may prove critical to its future. The school opened thanks to a $2 million federal defense grant, $1.3 million from Gov. Gray Davis and $700,000 in state per-pupil money. Future funding remains in doubt.

"This is to be an institution that will stand the test of time," Brown said. "We have to hustle."

Mother Rat; VMI shows the door to pregnant cadets
BYLINE: BY ERIN SHELEY;
Erin Sheley, an intern at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is a senior at Harvard University and serves on the editorial board of the Harvard Political Review.

WHEN THE FIRST female cadets signed their names in the matriculation roster of the Virginia Military Institute in 1997, proponents of women's rights trumpeted the event as a great victory for equality. Satisfied with this conclusion to the years-long legal battle that forced the venerable all-male military college to admit women to its famed "ratline," the lawyers and the media packed up and left Lexington, Virginia. But the difficulties of co-education are just beginning for the school they've left behind. The day-to-day dilemmas of the co-ed VMI are perhaps nowhere more obvious than in a new code the school plans to implement in the fall: All cadets who mother -- or father -- a child will be required to leave the school.

Occasioned by the recent case of a VMI junior who elected to remain in the barracks until the seventh month of her pregnancy, the policy answers a question that, for the school's assimilation committees, had been the ultimate hypothetical: What happens if a cadet gets pregnant? The dismissal policy was actually proposed when VMI was first planning for co-education but was scrapped in favor of a voluntary leave of absence for pregnant cadets.

In her book Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of Women, Laura Brodie, who served on one of the assimilation committees, described that decision as evidence of how far the school "could go to acknowledge the practical realities of women's lives without altering the essentials of VMI." But given that VMI features one of the most rigorous physical training regimens in the country and communal living quarters with next to no privacy, it is clear that the school's "essentials" and the "realities" of pregnancy are anything but compatible.

The new VMI policy is unique among military schools. At South Carolina's storied military college The Citadel -- which was also litigated into co-education in the 1990s -- pregnancy is deemed a "temporary disability," and a cadet may elect to remain enrolled, provided she does not miss more than three weeks of school per semester. Likewise, the federal service academies, which went co-ed in the late 1970s, allow for up to one year of leave. However, all these institutions seem to agree on one thing: It is not possible to reconcile pregnancy with the realities of a military education.

The code at The Citadel expresses this well: "Cadet life is stressful, physically demanding, and requires the full-time commitment of all cadets. Consequently, cadets, male or female, are not permitted to be married, nor are they permitted to have custody . . . of a child." In other words, even if a cadet does give birth, she must give up the custody of her child to remain in school.

In moving to expel cadets who become parents, VMI understands itself to be buttressing one of the most important principles it teaches cadets: responsibility. No military school has ever allowed its cadets to raise children while enrolled. To allow a cadet to remain in school after becoming a parent is thus, to a certain extent, to endorse the shirking of a more fundamental responsibility. VMI's new policy keeps the school from tacitly encouraging the evasion of parental responsibility -- at the risk, unfortunately, of encouraging abortion -- but it also runs into a legal snag.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 forbids recipients of federal funds from excluding "any student from its education program or activity . . . on the basis of such student's pregnancy. A recipient shall treat pregnancy . . . in the same manner and under the same policies as any other temporary disability." Citadel spokeswoman Charlene Gunnels cites Title IX as the reason the South Carolina school did not consider a policy of dismissal for pregnancies when amending its own code for co-education.

Already the American Civil Liberties Union has sent VMI a letter advising them against the policy. But according to Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia ACLU, the group will file suit against the school only if the federal courts, which are still monitoring the school, or the Justice Department, which filed the original discrimination case, fail to do so. "I'm sure if a VMI student breaks his leg, he's not required to leave the school," says Willis. "We also believe there's an equal protection argument . . . because in reality such a policy would be implemented in a way that discriminates against women. . . . The school may never know about men who impregnate women."

The language of the code will not be finalized until September, delaying legal threats for the moment. According to Randy Davis, spokesman for the Virginia attorney general's office, which is assisting VMI in drafting the code, before the cadets "return in the fall, our office will work with them to make sure that the policy is constitutional."

Whatever the quality of the legal draftsmanship, it seems unlikely that VMI will avoid yet another skirmish in the courts. The conflict resurrects the old question that surrounded the original VMI debate: What to do when the egalitarian impulse collides with the irreducible differences between the sexes? Quite simply, pregnancy is not the same thing as breaking a leg. Nor, if one considers the long-term import, can bringing a child into the world be considered a "temporary" disability. The legal issue, though, will be whether VMI is obliged to pretend otherwise.

Will the VMI code discriminate against women? Of course it will. No one could argue that a male cadet who impregnates a girl on a weekend off, possibly unaware of it himself, will have as hard a time escaping detection as a woman in her third trimester. But rooting out such "injustices" will carry a high price. If VMI cannot simultaneously preserve both the health of its students and the educational role it was created to fill without violating the law, perhaps it's time to reexamine the definition of equality to which it was forced to conform in the first place.

Where 'camp' means crew cuts, camouflage
BYLINE: Marjorie Coeyman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: WAYNE, PA.
HIGHLIGHT:
Valley Forge blends summer fun and military discipline

It's just past noon on a hot July day, as a formation of boys in sneakers and T-shirts - some hoisting rollerblades and hockey sticks - stomp their way toward lunch across the campus of the Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pa.

"I used to eat at Mickey D's," shouts a student drill leader with an earnest air and shorts that droop over knobby knees and skinny legs. "Now I eat my MREs!" echoes back a little band of comrades, using the shorthand for "meals ready to eat." The group exhibits energy, but as of yet only a bare minimum of spit and polish, crewcuts notwithstanding.

These boys are among the 320 campers enrolled at the Valley Forge Military Academy Summer Camp. But they are also part of an American trend: a renewed desire to expose young people to military traditions and education.

"Many boys want a taste of the military, but they don't want boot camp," says Lt. Col. David Williams, director of Valley Forge's summer camp and director of activities at the academy during the school year. That's why the four-week camp tries to position itself as a blend of military discipline and just plain fun.

The camp, which accepts boys ages 8 to 16, has seen a 10 to 15 percent increase in applications every year since 1994. That corresponds with a 5 to 10 percent annual increase of applications at the year-round school.

"There has been a resurgence of interest in the military-school experience," says Charles O'Malley, an independent educational consultant based in Annapolis, Md. "There's a perception among parents that more discipline and more morality are needed in society in general."

New military schools

The number of military schools declined dramatically in the wake of the Vietnam War and a resulting disenchantment with the armed forces. Since 1950, the schools' ranks have shrunk from 160 to 40. At Valley Forge, year-round enrollment plummeted to about 500 by the early 1970s, from more than 1,100 in 1966.

But today, for the first time in decades, two new private military schools are being planned, in Florida and Virginia. At the same time, some troubled urban public-school systems are seeking to import what they see as the successes of military education.

In Chicago, a public military high school has been in operation since 1999. In Prince George County, Md., a similar school will open next year. A military charter school in Oakland is said to be inspiring interest in other California cities.

At Valley Forge, a number of the campers enrolled this summer are there to test the waters. If they like the camp, they may end up at the boarding school this fall. "Typically, about 30 to 40 percent go on to the school," says Colonel Williams.

However, he cautions, "I'm not sure camp is a good testing ground. It's a lot more fun."

Punishment? No paintball

Although the boys at the Valley Forge camp get their heads shaved upon arrival, learn to march in formation, and occasionally wear combat fatigues, much of their summer experience is more oriented toward simply having fun, boy-style.

The favorite activity seems to be paintball battles, although driving go-carts is a close second. "The most severe punishment you can hand out here is to say: 'No paintball, no go-carts,' " says Martin Kus, a counselor from Krakow, Poland, rolling his eyes.

Also popular are swimming and occasional field trips to adventure parks. And some boys thrive on more-militaristic activities like learning to perform on ropes courses, exercises designed to teach trust and team-building.

There is plenty of adult supervision in all these activities. The camp maintains a camper-counselor ratio of 8 to 1.

A handful of the counselors are women, but they work only with boys under 11. "The younger boys are sometimes homesick and they need a softer voice, a different perspective," Williams says.

About one-quarter of the camp staff are current or past cadets at Valley Forge, another quarter are US college students, and about half - due to a tight US labor market - are university students recruited from abroad.

The international flavor of the counselor corps is a good match for the geographic diversity of the campers themselves, who this year come from 34 states and 14 countries.

A summer month at Valley Forge does not come cheap. Although the academy itself offers scholarships for the school year, there are no scholarships for camp. Tuition ranges from $ 2,180 to $ 2,760, with additional fees charged for activities like riflery, horseback riding, Tae Kwan Do, and tutoring in math and English.

Parents who send their children to the Valley Forge camp may be interested in military discipline, but the motives of the boys themselves vary widely.

"I came here to get a piece of military life," says Raymond Hernandez, a seventh-grader from Engelwood, N.J., who proclaims himself very satisfied with the experience.

"I wanted to come because the camp is fun," says his companion Matt Booth, from Lower Burella, Pa.

But Nathan Sanet, a local eighth-grader, finds the activities less to his liking. "It's like a boot camp," he complains. "We have to do push-ups. It gets boring. My parents made me come."

Counselors, too, vary in their reactions to the value of the military approach for young boys. "It's sort of a totalitarian regime," says Mark John Davies, a counselor from Wales. "It's hard for the ones who don't conform."

But Aaron Pedrick, a student from Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., has returned to the camp three times as a counselor after spending five years as a camper.

"I love it," he says, citing the order, discipline, and outdoor activities as some of the camp's most appealing elements. "There are so many things I learned here that I carry with me now in my daily life."

Thirty percent come back for more

For Williams, one mark of the camp's success has been a 30 percent return rate, higher than in recent years. He estimates that while the majority of boys at the camp are favorably predisposed toward physical challenges and military-style structure, at least 10 to 15 percent are children whose parents sent them here precisely because they shrink from such demands.

"That's why we offer variety," he says. In general, he adds, "Parents want discipline and structure, and kids want fun things."

His job, Williams says, is to create a four-week adventure that achieves a balance between the two.

E-mail marjorie@csmonitor.com

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

Reorganization draws near for Kemper Military School
BYLINE: DAN MARGOLIES; The Kansas City Star

Kemper Military School will soldier on.

On Wednesday, the oldest military academy west of the Mississippi River cleared the last obstacle standing in the way of its Chapter 11 reorganization plan.

A settlement secured by its alumni association all but assured court approval of the plan, possibly as early as next week.

"This is a good-news story," said Larry Frazen, a lawyer for the Friends of Kemper Foundation, an alumni support group.

Confirmation of the reorganization plan will allow the Boonville, Mo., school to reopen in September. About 140 students are expected to attend the 157-year-old school, which offers classes in grades seven through 12.

"This means Kemper will continue in operation," said Stan Lentz, the school's bankruptcy attorney.

Kemper filed for Chapter 11 protection in May 2000 after cash became increasingly tight and the school's primary lender, Boonslick Bank, declared it in default on more than $2 million in loans.

Like other military schools, Kemper experienced declining enrollment in the wake of the Vietnam War.

The school's pre-bankruptcy enrollment was about 250, down from 338 in 1997 and more than 500 during its pre-World War II heyday.

Founded as a private boarding and day school for boys in 1844 by Frederick Thomas Kemper, Kemper was originally known as the New Boonville Male Collegiate Institute. The school's campus has 12 buildings, some of them dating to its early years, on nearly 48 acres of land. The school offers year-round schooling and boarding to its cadets.

Kemper's revenue has steadily declined in recent years, falling from $7.9 million in 1998 to $5.8 million in 1999 and $5.17 million last year. The school ran a deficit of more than $1 million in 2000.

After Boonslick Bank demanded payment, Kemper said it would close its doors unless it came up with $1.3 million to meet its obligations. A student-led fund-raising drive netted $650,000 in pledges - enough to keep it afloat while it tried to puts its finances in order.

To pare expenses, the school closed its junior college program for freshman- and sophomore-age students. That program is not expected to be revived.

The reorganization plan calls for unsecured creditors to receive up to $100,000 over three years and for Boonslick Bank to be paid $12,718 per month over 30 years at an annual interest rate of 6 percent.

The reorganization plan was opposed by one creditor, Debt Acquisition Inc., which had purchased about $175,000 in outstanding unsecured claims against Kemper. The company argued that Kemper had undervalued its real estate and should have agreed to pay creditors more than it proposed under the reorganization plan.

The matter was resolved when, midway through Wednesday's court hearing on the reorganization plan, Kemper's alumni association agreed to buy out Debt Acquisition for about $30,000. With no other creditors objecting to the plan, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Frank Koger indicated he will confirm the plan as soon as the transaction between the alumni association and Debt Acquisition is completed, probably by the end of next week.

Wednesday's hearing featured testimony from two cadets who told the court how Kemper had helped straighten out their lives.

After the hearing, one of the cadets, Dan Hammack of Dallas, said his parents sent him to Kemper four years ago "because I was hanging out with the wrong crowd."

"I was making the wrong decisions," he said. "Everyone makes mistakes, and (Kemper) turned things around for me."

Hammack, who will be a senior in the fall, said he has been provisionally accepted by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

A rebel son becomes a Rhodes scholar in military school
BYLINE: Marjorie Coeyman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
DATELINE: NEW YORK

When his mother first dropped him off at Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pa., Westley Moore told her, "Why bother? I won't stay." As a 12-year-old, Mr. Moore recalls, "I was so disrespectful and insubordinate. Nobody could handle me."

True to his word, Moore ran away five times in his first four days at the academy. He and his teachers alike were ready to call it quits. But then a five-minute phone call with his mother changed everything, ultimately transforming him into one of the school's leaders - and its first Rhodes scholar.

His mother's words in those moments were simple but powerful. "She talked to me about the sacrifices she had made to send me to the school," he recalls. "She said that she would be so proud of me if I would just make even a small effort to try. I decided I could do that for her."

The biggest surprise for Moore was that when he did try, "it wasn't even hard."

In the past few years, there's been an upswing in the number of parents turning to military school as a solution for children with discipline problems. Certainly it is not a panacea, but for some students, the rigorous environment offers a new framework for success.

Before Valley Forge, Moore was a boy in trouble.

His father, a television reporter, died when Moore was only 3, and his mother, Joy (who now works as an executive at a nonprofit organization), struggled to raise him and his two sisters on her own.

The girls were both good students with positive attitudes, but Moore, the middle child, developed disciplinary and academic problems. In public school in the Bronx borough of New York, he gravitated toward other kids in trouble, and his grades slipped to Ds and Fs. A year at a nearby private school failed to loose the hold of negative habits and friendships.

Eventually, a colleague at work spoke to Moore's mother about Valley Forge Academy and the impact that military school can have on boys in need of discipline. The idea appealed to her. Without telling him her ultimate plan, she sent him to the school's four-week summer camp.

Moore enjoyed the camp. "I did paintball and go-carts. I thought that part was great," he says. "But when she told me she was sending me to the school, I said: 'No way!'"

In those days, Moore's dismal school record made an academic scholarship an impossibility. And although he displayed considerable athletic ability, his poor grades had kept him off school teams. The only way for his mother to cover the $ 20,000-plus annual tuition at Valley Forge was to take on another job and appeal to various close family members and friends for help. (At one point she worked three jobs to keep her son in school.)

But even after his tuition was covered, there remained the nagging problem of keeping Moore at the school.

The chaplain, Brig. Gen. Alfred Sanelli, says the school's formula for turning around rebellious boys doesn't succeed in every case. After Moore's rocky beginning, he says, "We thought he might just have to go."

But before putting him on the train back to New York, one of Moore's squad leaders suggested that he make a call to someone he cared about back home.

After that call to his mom, young Moore's turnaround was almost immediate.

"A lot of doors suddenly opened up for me," he says. "The first one was athletics. My grades had always kept me off teams, but when I could finally play and do well, it felt great."

Academics - after years of not applying himself - came more slowly. But the small classes at Valley Forge helped. "Once my teachers saw I was trying, they were really willing to work with me," he says. "They would say, for instance, 'I see you're having trouble with decimals. Stay after class and I'll help you.' "

But perhaps the biggest turning point, he says, was being given a new level of responsibility. Halfway through his first year, he and three other cadets were made assistant squad leaders. "That changed my whole mentality," he says. "I went at that moment from being a follower to being a leader."

After his successful first year, Valley Forge offered Moore scholarships, and he stayed on through his second year of college (the last year of instruction offered by the school). Starting in his sophomore year of high school, he was elected class president every year, and in his last year he became regimental commander, the highest honor the school bestows.

After Valley Forge, Moore went on to graduate from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Before being selected as a Rhodes scholar, he won a fellowship from Princeton University that allowed him to travel to five countries, studying the impact of music on social change.

But there is an accomplishment that Moore is perhaps even more proud of: the establishment of STAND! (Students Taking a New Direction), a Baltimore-based project that teams up troubled young boys with college students who can tutor, coach, and befriend them.

The need for boys on the edge to receive such guidance is only too clear to Moore.

"The inner city is full of kids like me," he says - children who could learn to excel in life with the proper support and encouragement, but who might sink without that help. "I was blessed, and I want to give back."

Moore heads off to England's Oxford University this September - along with Chelsea Clinton - to begin a three-year doctoral program in international relations. Then he'll fulfill the military obligations from his ROTC college scholarship.

He hopes his mother will enjoy watching him continue to progress in life.

"She was proud of me, even when I didn't give her any reason to be," he says. "Now it's her turn to relax and smile."

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Monitor

San Marcos educator guilty of sex abuse
By Roger Croteau
San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted : 08/01/2001

SAN MARCOS — A middle school dormitory director at San Marcos Baptist Academy was found guilty Tuesday of sexually abusing students.

The jury deliberated for about five hours before finding Bradley Wayne Dixon, 36, guilty on two charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child, one charge of sexual performance by a child and four counts of indecency with a child.

Dixon was found not guilty of two counts of indecency with a child, but the jury found him guilty of the lesser offense of assault for those two incidents.

"This is a case about whether or not you are going to believe the testimony of four brave little boys," prosecutor Tate Saunders said in his closing argument. "These boys were up there because they had the strength to get up and tell you the truth about what happened."

But defense attorney Paul Parash claimed the boys' stories were inconsistent and unbelievable.

"This case is infected with reasonable doubt," he said. "It's a military school. What kinds of kids get sent to a military school? Draw your own conclusions."

Parash suggested the 12- and 13-year-old boys made up the stories about being molested by Dixon in order to leave the school or to build a case for a lawsuit.

Dixon was arrested in January 2000 after boys at the school began claiming they had been molested. The number of charges grew as the investigation progressed over the next few weeks. He was tried on nine counts involving four boys.

In his closing argument, Saunders described what he called "haunting similarities" in the children's stories of abuse, including Dixon's "smirk" when he was done.

Parash argued that the similarities suggested the boys talked to each other to concoct their stories.

Some of the incidents were alleged to have occurred in a discount store or other locations full of potential witnesses, making the stories unbelievable, he said.

One witness changed his story on the stand, saying he exaggerated his claims because he hated the school and wanted his parents to take him out.

To bring back a guilty verdict the jurors "would have to ignore too much in this case," Parash said.

Prosecutors said it is unlikely young boys would make up stories so embarrassing, especially about Dixon, who was very popular among the students.

The boys did what they were supposed to do — they came forward and told the truth, prosecutor Cathy Compton said.

"Your verdict is an answer to them, and my question to you is, what is your answer?" she said. "Is it, 'Don't bother because nobody is going to believe you anyway?' The only answer you can give these kids, this community and most of all this man (Dixon), is guilty on every one of these counts."

The punishment phase of the trial starts at 10 a.m. today. Dixon faces up to 99 years in prison.

For One Day, Life Among the Plebes; Reporter Experiences Induction at Academy With New Midshipmen
Nelson Hernandez, Washington Post Staff Writer

A ragged column of teenagers and their anxious parents wait as the gray dawn sky over the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis begins to brighten.

It's 6 a.m., and these young men and women are about to undergo the most important transition of their lives. When they pass the doors of Alumni Hall, they will be stripped of their civilian clothes, their hair, their old identity. They will emerge as plebes, freshman midshipmen, the lowest-ranking creatures at this fiercely hierarchical school -- and, in most cases, future naval officers.

At the academy's invitation, I am not only witnessing this transformation on an oppressively hot last Friday in June but also participating in it. The officers have promised me that with only a few exceptions -- no shots during the medical screening, no name tag, no oath taking -- I will be treated like any other plebe on this day, the first of Plebe Summer, a tough, six-week session designed to introduce new students to the rigors of military discipline and prepare them for the challenges of the academic year beginning in August.

I've never been in the military, but for years I watched the midshipmen with fascination while a student at St. John's College, the small, liberal arts school just a cannon shot away from the Naval Academy.

More than 11,000 people between ages 18 and 22 apply to the academy every year; barely more than one in 10 are admitted. I'm paired with one of those lucky 1,200: 18-year-old Nathan Cox, of Arlington.

Cox, an H-B Woodlawn graduate, is 5 feet, 7 inches of wiry muscles developed during three years of rowing crew, the sport he wants to pursue at the academy. Coming to Annapolis was a lifelong dream.

"I always wanted to be in the Navy since as long as I can remember," Cox tells me. "This is a great place to live, and I feel it is worth protecting."

His parents, Jim Cox and Judy Hijikata, aren't quite as gung-ho, but they try to balance their feelings with support for their son.

"He's happy, he's really happy," his mother says. "It has to be what he wants."

There is a pause while his father thinks. "It's not our choice," he says slowly, "but it's not our choice to make, and we're supporting him in every way we can. We are very proud of him. He did it on his own."

Cox was initially rejected because of his eyesight, which requires him to wear glasses. But he managed to gain an exemption and learned at the end of April that he had been admitted.

"It was the best day of my life," Cox says. "I mostly just jumped and screamed."

His mother becomes glassy-eyed when Cox and I enter Alumni Hall. We will see them again in 12 hours, but by then, a lot will have happened.

"Fix this over your right breast, parallel to the deck," an upperclassman midshipman says, handing Cox his name tag. This is the first order we receive as plebes. "From now on, the first and last words out of your mouth will be 'sir' or 'ma'am,' " he continues.

"Yes, sir," Cox replies.

"What did I just tell you?" The midshipman is not yelling, but he is firm.

"Sir, yes, sir," Cox corrects himself haltingly. It takes some getting used to.

"Tuck in your shirt," a nearby plebe is told.

"Don't talk in line," another midshipman snaps.

Gone is civilian life. This is the Navy. Anchors aweigh.

We shuttle through paperwork, a medical screening, greetings by the athletic and alumni associations. Everywhere, we're being told to advance faster, faster down the yellow tape on the blue floor, which shows us where we're supposed to go. When we get there, we find that there's already a long line, and we have to stand idly.

Cox is keeping up a brave front. "Sometimes, the thing that is best for you isn't the thing that is most pleasant or easiest," he says, more to himself than to me.

We are assigned to Papa Company (pronounced "pa-PA"), 30th Platoon. He gets his "alpha code," or identification number, and I get mine. Next stop: the barber shop.

"You still want to do this?" my escort, Cmdr. Bill Spann, asks me with a chuckle. He's been keeping his eye on me throughout the process to make sure that things go smoothly. I nod and take my seat.

I don't have much time to reconsider my options. The young men are shorn to within a few millimeters of their scalp; women can keep their hair down to the top of their collar. I take a seat and after a few minutes of buzzing -- no barbershop banter here -- I look like a raw recruit.

After we're issued big white laundry bags, we walk through a corridor of people who fill our bags with clothing and gear: hats, multiple uniforms, two dozen T-shirts, boots, running shoes, shower slippers and about a billion pairs of socks. By the time we come out, the bag feels as if it is full of bricks.

We lug the bags into the changing room, where we are ordered to change into our uniforms. A midshipman comes to me and rapidly explains the mission. I am supposed to try out my camouflage uniform.

"I haven't been issued that, sir," I say, forgetting the first "sir." "I'm with the media, with Commander Spann."

"Well, I don't see any Commander Spann here," the midshipman barks, looking greatly annoyed. "You're in my house. Change into your white works," the plebe's all-white uniform. I sit down on a bench to take off my shoes.

"Did I say you could sit down?" he bellows. He's starting to enjoy this. I jump back up and fumble with my clothes. Four minutes later, he says: "Hurry up! You're supposed to do this in five minutes, and it's taken you 10." I'm too busy stuffing my civilian clothes back into my bag to protest the injustice. I again attempt to sit down to put on my Navy shoes -- white New Balance cross-trainers.

"Stand up!" he shouts.

We file into a bus that takes us to Bancroft Hall, where all midshipmen live. A midshipman comes aboard, and the bus begins to move.

"Okay, I don't want to hear any sound in this bus but your lungs taking in the air," he says. "We will be passing by your parents. On the command, 'eyes left,' I want you to look left, grin and wave."

"Eyes left!" he orders. We look left, waving and smiling mechanically.

"That's enough. Eyes front!" he says, 15 seconds later. Our heads snap forward.

The bus trip ends, and we fall in next to our bags. The instructors do a head count, and we form up to march off. In the back, a young woman is struggling to pick up her bag.

"Why aren't you helping your shipmate?" an instructor asks. Four plebes spring out of formation to help her. Together, we march into Bancroft Hall.

Bancroft, the biggest dormitory in the world, is treated like a ship. In the building, the floors are decks, the walls are bulkheads, the halls are passageways, the stairs are ladders, the restroom is the head and the bed is a rack.

Plebes have to observe special rules within Bancroft. We are required to walk in the center of passageways, "squaring corners" -- that is, making 90-degree turns, being sure to step on a silver tile in the floor when we do so -- and are allowed to use only certain ladders. Later, the plebes will have to "chop," which is a half-run, half-walk, and sound off or shout when squaring corners. Everyone is required to greet superiors.

"You're going to get someone killed someday," an upperclassman tells a plebe who forgets one of these rules.

The warning is a blunt way of explaining some of these strange customs. The lesson drummed into our heads, even on the first day, is that attention to detail is just as important here as it will be aboard a ship or a Navy jet.

Cox is shown to Room 1236, where he will live for the summer. For a few hours, the Naval Academy is like any other college as the plebes unpack the mountains of gear -- almost $ 2,000 worth -- that they have been issued and adjust to the surroundings. The small but neat room has three combination desk/bunk beds, cabinets for storing clothes and a shower.

I'm ordered to help out, carrying some packages to other plebes' rooms. I make sure to quietly wish each of them good luck; they'll need it.

They seize on the words. The plebes seem incredibly lonely and already homesick; they've been thrust into an unfriendly world. The discipline, which keeps the plebes silently facing forward so much of the time, prevents them from getting to know their classmates. That will come later, as they are tested and forced to help each other persevere.

Somehow, I thought life inside Bancroft Hall, especially during Plebe Summer, would be full of public humiliation and hazing. But on this day, the instructors -- by now, I've figured out that they're called "detailers" -- deal with us patiently, correcting us when we make mistakes. Their point is not to torment but to build our confidence.

Soon, it is time to take the oath of office. To avoid having anyone get out of place, we grab the shoulder of the person in front, stumbling forward like, well, drunken sailors.

Four gray F/A-18 jets streak low over the courtyard. I want to stand up and cheer, which is what the assembled parents do lustily. We remain seated at attention.

We raise our right hands. Someone reads the oath of office, asking us to defend our country and its constitution, essentially to commit the next 10 years of our lives to the U.S. Navy.

The plebes say, "I do."

I don't.

Public school tries out military-style discipline
Leila Wombacher Knox Special to The Christian Science Monitor
OAKLAND, CALIF

Starting next month, approximately 160 uniformed seventh-graders will march, drill, and drop for push-ups at a controversial new academy. While military schools have been drilling discipline into students for decades, the Oakland Military Institute (OMI) is one of the first public schools of its kind in the country.

As such, it is also one of the first tests of whether push-ups and marching, in between English and physics classes, can turn around a troubled urban school district. And some see a certain irony in the fact that the college preparatory academy is the inspiration of Mayor Jerry Brown, the iconoclastic California liberal who has embraced a number of traditionally conservative ideas during his tenure as Oakland chief.

"The schools where these kids come out of are mediocre at best," Mr. Brown says. "There's no competition and there's inadequate discipline, and therefore they are failing."

Brown believes this educational experiment will improve test scores, instill morals, and produce students that are ready for top universities. But critics say the school is simultaneously too tough on kids and too expensive. With 54,000 students in the Oakland district, they argue, it's a waste to spend millions of dollars on fewer than 200 children per grade.

But Brown has been undeterred by both controversy and roadblocks. Rejected by two East Bay school boards, Mr. Brown went to the state Board of Education, which approved the school. He garnered $ 3.3 million in financial support from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) and Gov. Gray Davis (D).

There are no strict admission standards. Kids just had to be willing to show up for an interview and write an essay. While OMI will be composed just of seventh-graders this first year, the school plans to expand one grade level a year until it's a complete high school.

The 196 kids who made the first round of cuts started their new academic life by attending a two-week National Guard camp near San Luis Obispo earlier this summer.

Forced to rise with the sun each morning, the kids endured daily marches, rigorous workouts, and tough platoon leaders.

For incoming seventh-grader Tara Miller, doing push-ups every day took some getting used to, but what really bothered her was that the camp cut off contact with parents to punish students for misbehaving. "I feel like they are a little too mean because when someone messes up, everyone suffers," she says.

Students were also taught the basics of discipline by the National Guard. At least 23 kids were sent home before the boot camp finished, and will not be allowed to attend the academy.

"We were able in a very short period of time to get them focused on their future and select those kids who were not serious enough to continue at the school," says National Guard Col. Jeff Davis. "It's a way of instilling in the kids that, if they want to be successful in this world and in the classroom, that they learn to follow instructions."

He added that OMI is unlike the harsh correctional boot camps that have received national attention in recent months. Earlier this month, a 14-year-old boy died at an Arizona camp after falling unconscious in the hot desert. At least 30 children have died at such camps since 1980.

"What we're after is education," Colonel Davis says. "If a kid is unruly in class, they are not going to take him outside and march in the desert until he collapses from lack of water."

Davis says that once the school year starts, the Guard's role will be secondary to the trained and credentialed educators who will teach the kids in the classroom. But a National Guard commandant and a civilian assistant principal will have equal say over the kids' discipline, according to Davis.

School, six days a week

The uniformed kids will spend 10 hours at the school five days a week, and also will attend on Saturdays. In addition to math and English, they will learn military ceremony and how to march. The last 90 minutes of each day will be a designated study hall so the kids can concentrate on their homework before going home. Their school year will run 200 days, which is 20 more than most schools.

"We're going to demand mastery as far as the curriculum goes," says OMI Principal Rick Moniz, noting that the grading scale will be tougher than at traditional schools.

Moniz adds that the military will provide a controlled environment that will enable teachers to focus on academics. The day will be very structured, and the students will be organized into platoons, with students appointed as junior platoon leaders.

In search of discipline

Onyinyechi Ikeme says she didn't get that much out of sixth grade at her former Oakland public school. "The kids are all wild, the teachers aren't that good because they don't have any control over the kids, and we hardly learn anything," she says.

Her father, Nigerian-born Diala Ikeme, hopes OMI will offer a structured education similar to the one he received from Catholic missionaries in Africa. "The status of the public schools here leaves a little to be desired, and that's putting it mildly," he says.

But critics worry about the effect an education structured around the military will have on young minds like Onyinyechi's.

"We feel very strongly that this school, if not promotes, at least legitimizes violence as a legitimate response," says Wilson Riles Jr., regional director of the American Friends Service Committee, a pacifist Quaker organization, in San Francisco. Mr. Riles, who organized opposition to the school, believes that it's inappropriate for 11 and 12-year-olds to be exposed to a military environment and is concerned the kids will learn that shouting and harsh punishments are legitimate solutions to resolving problems.

Riles also says OMI will cost more than $ 20,000 per student per year - more than twice the amount spent at traditional public schools. He predicts that, without continued financial support from the federal and state level, the school will fade from existence, and Oakland will be left with the same schools that Brown set out to fix.

But Brown disputes the claim, saying that the institute will force other schools to live up to OMI's high academic standards.

"It will put competitive pressure on them, so hopefully the other students will do well," Mr. Brown says.

The mayor acknowledges that he is under pressure to find other funding sources for the school. "The idea is to create excellence and then gather support for that solid program," Brown says.

Famous, to a degree: Shattuck Military Academy to grant belated high school deploma

"Maybe he can get a decent job now," joked Randy Merriman's daughter Susan Niefeld. Merriman, a vaudevillian and alum of WCCO and KSTP who cohosted "The Big Payoff" with Bess Myerson in NYC, is receiving an honorary high school diploma from Shattuck Military Academy, now Shattuck-St. Mary's School, in Faribault. He didn't get his diploma when he was in the class of 1930 because he ran off to join Ringling Bros. Peter Mansfield, Shattuck's director of development and alum affairs, said that when Niefeld contacted the school, "We decided anybody clever enough to run away and join the circus absolutely was deserving of a Shattuck diploma." When Niefeld told Mansfield about the Myerson connection, he thought, " 'I don't remember this guy?' She sent me a picture of her dad with Bess Myerson. I recognized him right away. Maybe all of my attention was on Bess Myerson." Mansfield is trying to locate Shattuck alums living near Merriman in Boca Raton, Fla., for the Aug. 4 celebration. "They've got the cap and gown for him," Mansfield said. Niefeld, a MnDOT dispatcher, said her dad is "kind of proud of the fact that he's almost 90."

New public military high school in Maryland

Prince George's County will be converting one of its high schools to a full-time military high school. What Washington Business Journal wants a fee to link to the story, so I won't. But here's the URL: http://washington.bcentral.com/washington/stories/2001/07/23/focus3.html It's worth the read as it talks about the movement for public military schools.

HEADLINE: La Salle's Last Graduates;
118-year-old school to close

BYLINE: By Hoa Nguyen; STAFF WRITER

At the stroke of 3 p.m. each day last spring, 13 juniors at the La Salle Center, formerly known as La Salle Military Academy in Oakdale, could call themselves seniors.

Because of mounting financial difficulties, La Salle was set to close its doors on June 16 when the official school year ended. But while most students left campus with a diploma or plans to transfer to another school, 13 juniors stayed on and continued their classes so they could graduate with a La Salle diploma.

And Friday, the Class of 2001 and a half, as they called themselves, became the last graduating class of an 118-year tradition.

"He was thrilled," said Joann Carter of Brentwood, of her son William. "That kid wanted a La Salle diploma so badly."

But even as these graduates strutted off the 175-acre campus with their diplomas Friday evening, the Christian Brothers who ran and then decided to close La Salle are looking to open a new school and are conducting a feasibility study.

While La Salle was funded mainly through tuition and had students in kindergarten through 12th grade, the new school would raise its own funds through donations and private grants, catering only to poor boys in grades six to eight who have had difficulty learning in public schools, said La Salle's former headmaster, Brother Dennis Cronin, who is now principal of a Brooklyn school. Following on the model of other "San Miguel" schools run by Christian Brothers in cities like Providence and Chicago, the new school "would be administered by the Christian Brothers but not necessarily the same ones at La Salle," said retiring administrator Brother Anthony Scotto.

But some parents are skeptical and think that the De La Salle Christian Brothers, which runs Catholic schools all over the world, had been planning to open the new school even as they were working to close La Salle. "It would be interesting to see this time next year who is involved," said Carter.

Carter's son, William, along with 12 other juniors, began doubling up their classes in March. While the rest of the students ended school at 3 p.m., these juniors stayed for three more hours, taking the classes they needed to graduate. When everyone left for the summer in June, the juniors-turned-seniors continued their regular school day routine for another month.

"I regret not having a senior year," said Brian Jenkins, 17, who always wanted to drive to school during his senior year but instead had to take the train from his home in Massapequa Park. "But I'll get over it."

Brian decided to graduate early because his mother threatened to send him for his last year to Minnesota, where there is another La Salle school and where the Jenkins have relatives. Carol Jenkins said that after watching her son maintain an 85 average at La Salle when he was failing classes at his former high school she would only consider sending Brian to a La Salle school.

"What they did for him was beyond extraordinary," Jenkins said of the school.

Jenkins was surprised to learn that the Christian Brothers were looking to start a new school. "But you know what?" she said. "If they can work with younger kids and do what they did with Brian, I think it's marvelous."

Jerry Brown's military coup
'Boot camp' preps students for Oakland's new charter school, opening in fall despite its detractors

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, July 8, 2001
©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

San Luis Obispo -- For Phillip Mar, 11, the best thing about joining Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown's new military charter school was the khaki uniform. San Luis Obispo -- For Phillip Mar, 11, the best thing about joining Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown's new military charter school was the khaki uniform.

Until he tried it on.

The sleeves dangled off his hands. He stuffed a foot of pant leg into each combat boot. He forgot the belt, and when he finally stood, his pants came billowing down.

"Argh! I look ridiculous," he said.

Mar and nearly 200 other Bay Area middle schoolers who signed up for the Oakland Military Institute got their first taste of a soldier's life at a two- week California National Guard "boot camp" that ended Friday. The academy, an alternative to Oakland's troubled public schools, will open this fall at the former Oakland Army Base. It promises to turn out disciplined, college-bound students.

Rising at 4:30 a.m., the "cadets" marched for their meals, addressed adults with their hands behind their backs and took lengthy academic skills tests. Even the fun was strenuous -- kayaking for an hour in Morro Bay or using a compass on all-day nature hikes.

"This will put competitive pressure on the Oakland schools and force them to get better," said Brown, who donned a windbreaker with the school's logo as he shook every student's hand at the camp's closing ceremony. "It's been hard on a lot of the kids. Their feet hurt, and they're homesick. But they are learning to live and work together."

The crash course at Camp San Luis Obispo proved too much for 36 students who bailed out or were dismissed for disruptive behavior. Most were willing to cope with the rigors to avoid the failure and boredom they've known in former classrooms. Some, like Phillip, weren't sure how they felt about the experience.

"I don't know if I'm going to last. I'm lazy; I'm not used to all this exercise," he said.

When classes begin in August, students will be required to show up in uniform at 7:30 a.m., six mornings a week. The school day will start with military drills, and end at 6 p.m. after a full schedule of academic classes taught by credentialed teachers.

With a National Guard brigadier general as its superintendent, the school is the first in California to marry the military with college preparatory classes. Unlike the scared-straight military schools for dropouts and delinquents, Oakland Military Institute students need good attendance records to get in.

Hotly debated by adults for the past year, Brown's idea was so popular with youngsters that nearly 250 students applied for 162 spots in the inaugural seventh-grade class. About 200 were accepted for camp and officials predict about 160 will decide to go to the school.

Many students signed themselves up, hoping to make a break from the crowded and low-scoring Oakland public schools.

"I want to go to a school where the teacher pays attention to me," said 11- year-old Anita Lopez, who plans to be a doctor. She's worried that won't happen if she stays in the Oakland public schools.

Last year, only 20 percent of the city's 1,716 graduating seniors had mastered the classes needed to enroll in a state university. Those who made it to graduation watched their class shrink by half during their four years of high school.

The statistics are not lost on Anita, who is willing to put up with the military rules to chase her dreams. At an hour when even the sun is still sleeping, she pulled on her new sweatshirt, which bears the school's logo, a California bear encircled by a Latin phrase chosen by Mayor Brown: Age Quod Agis, or "do what you are doing, and do it well."

Outside the barracks, Anita found a spot in her platoon, and stole a secret nod to Jacqueline Torres, her friend in the row behind. Pals since first grade, they decided to go to training camp together after getting recruitment letters from Brown, who sent 4,000, one to each of the sixth-graders in Oakland public schools.

"We wanted to join together, because it's not as scary that way," Jacqueline said. She and Anita were relieved to see so many girls at camp.

One-third of the enrollees are female. Of the total group, 70 percent are African American, 20 percent Latino and the rest Asian and white. Most come from Oakland, with a few from Richmond, Berkeley, Modesto and out of state.

Justin Jones of Oakland was among those who enrolled because their parents liked the idea more than they did. Two weeks ago, the tearful boy refused to get on the school bus headed for San Luis Obispo. He relented only when National Guard Brig. Gen. Ralph Marinaro, the school's superintendent, promised to let Justin use his cell phone to call home after a week at camp.

Marinaro kept his word, pulling Justin out of the pack for a secret phone call to Mom.

"I told her I was doing OK," said Justin. After saying goodbye, he took a few deep breaths to hold back his tears, rejoined the platoon and resumed pillow-fighting with his bunk mates.

Others, like aspiring archaeologist Nick Barnes, begged their parents to go.

"My mom doesn't want me to go to public school, but I do," said Nick, who attends a private school in Texas. "So this was a compromise." He kayaked past a sleeping sea otter, rode a sandboard down the dunes and collected shells and a bone fragment on a camp outing.

"The teachers are too strict in private school, and give you demerits for dumb things like forgetting a pencil," Nick said. "Here you get yelled at, too, but it's for good reasons."

During the first week of camp, the boys were ordered to do push-ups in the middle of the night as punishment for squeezing toothpaste on a sleeping boy's head. The girls scrubbed the bathroom at 5 a.m. because they left too many paper towels and socks lying around. One boy was sent home for fighting.

They coped as best they could. Some students came up with wicked nicknames for their platoon sergeants, many of whom will serve as mentors and teacher's aides to the students until they graduate from high school. One homesick boy dropped out after the first week.

The point of the training camp, said platoon Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Ratley, is to get students used to military drills so that once school starts they won't waste time that should be spent on academics.

That means teaching students that they can't take pictures of themselves when they march, can't show up to morning formation in their pajamas, and can't sing along with the sergeant when he says, "left, left, left, right, left!"

"I said don't sing nothin'!" bellowed Ratley, stopping the group in its tracks. "I got eyes in the back of my head. The only attitude we're going to deal with here is mine, and you don't want to see me with a bad attitude, DO YOU?"

"No, SIR!"

The idea of having a ready-made group of disciplined students was appealing to teachers, and new principal Rick Moniz had 40 applications from which to choose his staff. He selected seven Bay Area teachers, two with doctoral degrees, one with a master's degree, all but one are veteran instructors and all have teaching credentials.

There is a math teacher from the Diocese of Oakland, a reading teacher from the Stockton schools and a poet with a Ph.D. who taught in Alameda County's juvenile hall.

Then there is Moniz, who spent 16 years teaching at Chabot Community College in Hayward. In addition to his other duties, Moniz will teach one history class.

The staff went to Camp San Luis Obispo to meet their new students and measure their skill levels.

"I'm looking forward to having a class with structure and the willingness to exceed expectations," said social studies teacher Gianna McFarthing-Polk, who is uprooting her husband and toddler from Clovis, in Fresno County, to take a chance on the Oakland Military Academy.

At camp, she and her colleagues ran students through a series of spelling, reading, writing and math tests to determine their skills.

"This would never happen in public school, you'd never know the abilities of your students until after the first month or so of school," she said. "All that time is wasted."

Student Jacqueline Torres never thought she'd be glad to take a test, but did so willingly because she wants her new teachers to know more about her. She gave them points for letting her choose a book to read after she finished the exam.

"I miss my family, and I won't get to see the fireworks with them, but I want to go to this new school to get my grades up," she said. "I want to be a veterinarian."

E-mail Meredith May at mmay@sfchronicle.com.

Murder suspect led quiet life at academy
Officials stunned to learn of man's arrest in slaying

Evadna Bartlett
Daily Mail Putnam reporter
Kristen Comer/Daily Mail Staff

Tuesday July 10, 2001; 10:30 AM

WINFIELD — Staff and students at a Virginia military academy were stunned when they learned an employee had been charged in the slaying of a 64-year-old Putnam County woman, a school official said today.

“The whole academy community is really shocked,” said Rhonda Lancaster, a spokeswoman for Massanutten Military Academy. “He certainly excelled while he was here. He was very quiet, but always had a smile on his face.”

Jonathan A. Tillman, 22, was arraigned Monday in Putnam County Magistrate Court on a first-degree murder charge in the shooting death of Delores Bates, the wife of a Nitro pastor.

Putnam County Sheriff Stan Farley said Tillman admitted to police that he killed Bates at her Hurricane Creek home Sunday evening.

Tillman graduated from the Woodstock, Va., military school in 1997 with a 4.25 grade point average. He later earned degrees in computer science and psychology from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

He returned to Massanutten this summer and had been working there as a teaching assistant and computer lab supervisor for about two weeks, Lancaster said.

She said Tillman showed no signs of violence during his time at the school, which serves students in the sixth through 12th grades.

“He showed us a very quiet and unassuming personality,” she said. “He always wanted to be involved with the kids and worked really well with them. There was never any indication of violence or drug use.”

She said school administrators reported Tillman missing after he did not appear for the afternoon shift Friday.

“We assumed something had happened to him,” she said.

Tillman earned a number of honors while attending the school, including a leadership award and letters in cross country and horseback riding. Lancaster said he did not have discipline problems on his record and never displayed evidence of psychological distress.

Police say they do not have a clear motive in Bates’ slaying.

Tillman, reported missing from his home in Arlington, Va., for three days, simply drove off Interstate 64 to the victim’s home, Detective John Dailey said.

“It was a random stop,” he said. “Her house was just off the road.”

Investigators haven’t determined all the details of the shooting.

“We think he maybe went in the house and fired. We think there was a confrontation between him and her. They spoke words,” Dailey said.

The state medical examiner Monday ruled that the victim was shot twice by a shotgun and died instantly from one of the wounds, Detective Lisa Arthur said.

Investigators have so far found no record of past offenses by Tillman, she said.

At his arraignment, Tillman, unshaven and in shorts, sandals, a T-shirt and handcuffs, requested a court-appointed attorney.

He was arrested at a rest area off W.Va. 20 near Hinton while sleeping in the victim’s Toyota 4-Runner, Dailey said. State Police Sgt. J.C. Miller, acting on information from the Putnam investigators, apprehended Tillman.

“The arrest was made without incident,” Miller said Monday. “He didn’t try to run. He didn’t try to fight.”

Miller said police found a weapon in the vehicle, but he would not provide further details.

Tillman was arraigned on a Putnam County warrant in Summers County before Dailey and Detective Scott Pauley transported him to Winfield for his arraignment here.

Tillman told detectives he had been westbound when he exited the interstate at Hurricane, but he then returned to the highway in an eastbound direction.

“He didn’t have a map; he didn’t know where he was at,” Dailey said.

Tillman left a Honda Civic registered in his name at the Bates’ home. He had apparently tried to burn the car, but the fire went out after he shut the door, Dailey said.

Farley said police recovered items the suspect allegedly took from Bates’ residence.

After his arraignment before Magistrate Kylene Brown, Tillman was photographed by authorities in the holding room at the Putnam County Judicial Building before he was transported to South Central Regional Jail.

Brown could not set bond because Tillman is charged with murder, but she told Tillman he can seek a bond hearing before a circuit judge. A preliminary hearing will be scheduled in 10 days.

Writer Evadna Bartlett can be reached at 348-1756.

Wisconsin military school sues over Web sites posting police reports

By Alicia Benjamin-Samuels
freedomforum.org

07.17.01

A Wisconsin military academy has filed a lawsuit in Waukesha County Circuit Court claiming an Illinois man damaged the school's reputation by publishing crime reports on the Internet that detail alleged illegal campus activity.

In its suit filed May 16, St. John's Northwestern Military Academy claims Gary Meyers, father of a former academy cadet, and his attorney Terry Boesch, harmed the school by posting on two Web sites student claims that they were discriminated against and physically abused at the academy. The school wants the police reports posted on Meyers' site removed.

Named as defendants in the suit are Meyers, Boesch and Boesch's Indiana law firm, Boesch & Istrabadi.

The law firm provides on its Web site information about recent lawsuits that former students have filed this year, claiming school officials and other cadets mistreated them at the school in Delafield, Wis.

Meyers' site, titled "SJNMA Alternate Parents Club," includes police reports from the Delafield Police Department, news articles and copies of lawsuits that former St. John's students have filed against the school in the past two years.

Meyers and 11 other Chicago-area families filed a $20 million lawsuit in August 1999, claiming that their sons were harassed or mistreated at the school.

In the suit, parents alleged that "St. John's was aware of and acquiesced to physical assaults on students by other students" including branding, sexual assaults and death threats. The complaint states that the school did not try to stop any of the violent behavior or punish the offenders.

Meyers' son Aaron, now a high school junior, was expelled from St. John's in January 1999 for not doing his homework and lying about it, Meyers said. The school's claims are not true, he said.

Aaron decided to attend the academy because he "wanted to learn discipline and he wanted the clarity of an honor code that wasn't in the public school system," Meyers said.

Some students, including Aaron Meyers, also claim that the school discriminated against them because they are Jewish. According to the 1999 complaint, the school harassed Jewish cadets who wanted to observe religious holidays. The suit also alleges that school officials forced them to partake in nonreligious services and stopped them from studying Jewish texts.

The 1999 complaint was dismissed on a technicality in January because the parents did not have an attorney to represent them at a court date, Meyers said.

Several former St. John's students have filed lawsuits this year in federal and state courts alleging Academy staff members and students physically and mentally abused them.

In one case, 19-year-old Andrew Schut claims he was "held down and branded by two students with a hot coat hanger while attending St. John's." Schut's suit, filed in Wisconsin's Waukesha County Circuit Court March 15, also alleges that an academy student broke his jaw and that he was beaten 10 to 15 times by fellow students.

"Schut literally slept under his bed out of fear and to prevent further beating incidents," the suit claims.

"I want to assure you personally that St. John's Northwestern is committed to the well being of your son," St. John's President Ronald J. Kurth wrote in a letter to all students' parents, responding to television reports about the lawsuits filed by former cadets. Kurth's letter, dated May 14, was posted on St. John's Web site in May and is currently displayed on the parents' site.

"It is our view that the plaintiffs and their lawyers are attempting to use the media to challenge the long-standing integrity of the school, in part, because the original (1999) case brought against St. John's Northwestern has not resulted in the plaintiffs' favor," Kurth's letter states.

The students' allegations posted on the two Web sites harm St. John's reputation "so as to lower the plaintiff in the estimation of the community and deter [parents and students] from associating or dealing with St. John's," the suit contends. The school claims the allegations are false.

The academy's suit further argues that Meyers and Boesch published the information "with express malice in that they were motivated by ill will, revenge and bad intent."

"This is not being done out of malice," Meyers told freedomforum.org. "There's something fundamentally rotten about the school. We're standing up for what's right."

St. John's is seeking compensatory and punitive damages "in an amount to be determined at trial," court costs and attorneys' fees. The school also wants Meyers to withdraw the police reports from the Web site and return the reports to the Delafield Police Department.

St. John's attorney, Bruce C. O'Neil, told freedomforum.org that the Delafield Police Department should not have released the crime reports to Meyers because juveniles were involved in the cases. "I think [Meyers] knew the police shouldn't have disclosed the reports to him," O'Neil said. "The police didn't know the law."

St. John's suit argues that Wisconsin law prohibits police officers from releasing crime reports to citizens when juveniles are involved in the cases. "He has no right to publish those records to anybody," O'Neil said.

Delafield Police Chief Scott Taubel told freedomforum.org that Wisconsin's open-records statutes "allow for the majority of records to be released to the public, but records involving a juvenile in sexual assault cases are not to be released." Also, juvenile names in crime cases are not to be disclosed, Taubel said.

According to James A. Friedman, attorney with La Follette Godrey & Kahn in Madison, Wis., news reporters in Wisconsin may reveal the names of juveniles when the case is prosecuted in adult court or when the file is open to the public, "whether because the juvenile has previously been adjudicated delinquent and is charged with a violation that would be a felony if committed by an adult or because the juvenile is charged with a violation that would be a serious felony if committed by an adult."

"In all other cases heard in juvenile court, the news media may attend hearings and obtain access to law enforcement and court records only on condition that news reports not identify the child or family involved," said Friedman.

Former police chief Jack Arndt, now retired, gave Meyers the crime reports without "blacking out" or deleting all of the names of the juveniles, Taubel said.

Meyers said he followed Arndt's instructions in requesting the reports from the police department.

"We got the reports the way you're supposed to get them," Meyers said. "[Arndt] sent us the copies and we paid for them," he said. "How is that anybody's property but mine?"

Kurth could not be reached for comment.