The Predictable Citadel

Kim Messer and Jeanie Mentavlos knew they weren’t going to an ordinary school when they joined The Citadel’s freshman class last September. Along with two others, and a woman who dropped out after five days the year before, they were the first women to enroll at the previously all-male school, and Mentavlos said administrators promised “me and my family that knob [freshman] life would be rough but safe.” Apparently, safe it was not.

The two women announced Sunday that they will not return to Charleston for The Citadel’s spring semester. They said the harassment, hazing and physical threats they suffered were too much. The FBI and South Carolina state police are now investigating the allegations.

Messer and Mentavlos say male cadets dampened the fronts of their sweatshirts with nail polish remover and set them afire. When the flames were extinguished, a superior cadet officer allegedly ordered, “Light her up again.” In other incidents of alleged abuse, a cadet put cleanser in the women’s mouths and another rubbed his pelvis against Messer as she stood in formation. On Monday, The Citadel’s interim president, Clifton R. Poole, said that although some cadets probably had overstepped their bounds, “the incidents of alleged hazing were not really gender-based. . . . When it was occurring to females, it was occurring to males at exactly the same time. . . .”

But these are not the good-natured high jinks of college fraternity rites. If true, they are, as Messer put it, “criminal assaults, sadistic illegal hazing and disgusting incidents of sexual harassment.” It should be obvious that this is no way to train military leaders--The Citadel’s self-proclaimed mission. The fact that the two other women have reported no such harassment and plan to continue their studies should in no way diminish the charges by Messer and Mentavlos. Two male cadets have been suspended and nine face the prospect of disciplinary action in the case.

These alleged incidents and the school’s response to them are predictable. The Citadel fiercely fought the court-ordered admission of women for years. When the four women finally did enroll last September, school officials were unwilling or unprepared to meet the challenge. Initial complaints by Messer and Mentavlos and their parents went unanswered or were trivialized.

Poole said he had spoken to the 1,700 cadets, promising increased vigilance against hazing and warning that disobedience would result in dismissal. He also promised greater security for the two remaining women and a review of the system by which freshmen must take orders from upperclassmen. That’s a good start.

Pursued vigorously, these policies will lead to a radical change in The Citadel’s long-standing training program, which is based on intimidation and unthinking obedience. Change of this sort is probably what some administrators, cadets and alumni feared all along.