Military academies: Make 'em all-male again

The latest sex case at the United States Naval Academy involves Midshipman Lamar Owens, last fall's starting quarterback for the school's bowl-winning varsity football team.

Washington Post writer Ray Rivera cites the following unmentionable-at-the-Academy problems of co-educationalizing anything as rigid as Bancroft Hall, where all Mids are residents – both male and female (but not with any males rooming with females). At least there's some restraint on the 1976 policy change to "Boys & Girls Must Be Together In The Same Dormitory."

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Will anybody in Congress make the badly needed move to return Bancroft, West Point and Colorado Springs to what they were before 1976?

Since all three of these federal institutions existed for a century, in the first two cases, and for decades at the Air Force Academy, as all-male, why on earth can't there be a return to virtually no-rapes on-deck, with women having their own Military-Naval Academy – since women continue to be such a minority in the ranks of our armed forces?

After a preliminary hearing last month, Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt also added two charges of committing an indecent act by having intercourse in the presence of another midshipman, the sleeping roommate of Owens' accuser, and for violating a military protective order requiring him to stay at least 100 feet away from his accuser.

The charges stem from a Jan. 29th incident in which Owens is suspected of entering his accuser's dorm room and raping her.

Rempt ordered Owens to face trial by general court-martial, which is reserved for the most serious crimes in the military. If found guilty, he could face several years in prison and a dishonorable discharge from the military. A trial date has not been set. Owens' civilian attorney did not return phone calls.

Owens and his accuser, a junior, remain in school.

There have always been some serious cadet or midshipmen sexual misbehaviorists. But during the nearly two centuries of all-males at West Point and Annapolis, were there, in only five years, ever 56 rape cases on campus?

There are reports of large numbers of cases of sexual misbehavior coming from the absurd practice of rooming males and females together on the same dormitory floors – which makes little more sense than co-ed rooming, which – thank heaven – they refuse to do.

It is surely time to re-think the co-ed policies at our nation's service academies.

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