A famous World War I recruitment poster at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Md., shows a young woman wearing a low-cut uniform. “Gee! I wish I were a man. I’d join the Navy,” the poster reads.
Things have gotten better for women in the military, but as recent Congressional hearings have borne out, sexual assault is a stubborn and pervasive problem in military culture.
When Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert visited the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey in February, he said sexual assault was a number-one priority: “It is probably our top problem out there.”
Now the Navy is taking action. A fleet-wide sexual assault awareness “stand-down” is happening June 10 through July 1. That means enlisted and civilian personnel will receive training on sexual assault prevention and response, and respectful workplace protocol. At military installations including NPS, it also means a thorough search, by June 28, for material that’s sexual in nature.
“They’ll go crawling around some of the labs,” Adm. Jan Tighe, NPS’ interim president, says. “We’re going to inspect and make sure we’re not creating an environment that is sexually provocative.” (The NPS campus is non-residential.)
The directives from Washington come after the Department of Defense (DOD) released its 2012 annual report on sexual assault last month, noting an increase in reported crimes.
In a May 6 memo accompanying DOD’s strategic plan, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel wrote, “We must ensure that every service member understands that sexist behaviors, sexual harassment and sexual assault are not tolerated, condoned or ignored.”
Considering the military as a whole, Tighe says, “Our population is generally older and more mature. I think it’s not as big a problem here.”
Figures on sexual assault in the military are reported on a national level only, so local data is not available. Just across town from NPS, the Defense Language Institute (DLI) is also integrating new rules, theirs coming down from the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.
As of June 7, new Army recruits have a 9pm curfew (it used to be 10), no more privileges allowing them to sleep off-post, and a prohibition on alcohol. Soldiers 21 and older used to be allowed to keep small amounts of alcohol in their barracks.
According to DOD’s report, 47 percent of enlisted women who had experienced unwanted sexual contact reported the offender had consumed alcohol.
But Clare Mounteer, executive director of the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center, worries the new rules could have the wrong effect and actually discourage victims from coming forward.
“We’ve had military service members come to our agency for counseling services who have been reluctant to report to the authorities because they and their friends were engaged in underage drinking,” she says. “If it can get them kicked out, it’s a huge deterrent for reporting.”
DLI officials are pushing back and plan to request more lenient restrictions for students who have spent more time on post. Other changes at DLI include more training and the assignment of sexual assault counselors to each unit, rather than requiring victims to report to a higher rank.
“[Soldiers] go to boot camp in a very controlled environment,” DLI spokesman Dan Carpenter says. “This latest change is trying to give those recent boot-camp graduates a little bit more time to acclimate to Army culture.”