Let Women Into the Citadel

As we look back to see how the status of women in the U.S. has changed, we find that women have both progressed towards equality as well as regressed in the military. Last year women were finally allowed to fly combat missions and serve aboard warships after the government lifted the ban against women in combat. But Shannon Faulkner, a woman who wished to join the all-male state-supported military school, the Citadel, was ultimately denied entrance by both the school and the government of South Carolina, which upheld the school's decision. The school and state formed a plan to donate $5 million to another college so that women could go someplace else.

Allowing women into the Citadel would be less expensive than using $5 million to create another version of the Citadel. Supporters of the Citadel decision would argue that the ideological underpinnings of this issue are stronger than any simple economic analysis. However, the support for the court decision is based on a misconception: that women cannot perform on the same level as men in the armed forces.

The board of the Citadel believes that women may ruin the morale of the school, the same way that the members of the Navy believed women would ruin the morale on aircraft carriers. But both men and women on the Eisenhower, the first gender-integrated aircraft carrier, praised the experiment and found no problems. Surely, the persons involved in the integration are the most qualified to point out difficulties in morale. If they find no difficulties, then we can place no credence in speculations about such problems.

The Citadel also believes that women may mar the excellence of the school. Although this has been a much cited problem, the evidence for it is strangely lacking. In the Navy these criticisms came to the forefront when one of two female F-14 fighter pilots was killed in a training accident. Opponents of women in the Navy immediately isolated gender as the single determining factor in the accident.

When Lieut. Kara Hultgreen was killed last October while flying, many anonymous claims were made that she had not been qualified to pilot the F-14 and that she had been placed as a token pilot in order to improve the image of the navy after the Tailhook scandal. These claims gained such momentum that they spurred her mother to release her training records after her death. The record showed that Lieut. Hultgreen had been third in her F-14 piloting class and above average as a pilot. Soon afterwards the crash was labeled a mechanical failure. All the claims had been false.

The Navy had always stood by Hultgreen's ability. She even convinced those who very nervous about allowing women to fly in combat. "We were a little apprehensive at first about women driving the plane, but she got hold of that thing and knew what she was doing," her training squadron commander, Capt. Tom Sobieck, told the New York Times. When given the same training and subjected to the same standards as men, women compete on an equal level. If women are subject to the same standards as men, as Shannon Faulkner was in her original Citadel application (when she was accepted without knowledge of her gender), then the admitting school's excellence will not be compromised in any way.

Hultgreen herself had always fought against any leniency in standards towards women. "If people let me slide through on a lower standard, it's my life on the line. I could get killed," she told Rear Adm. Robert Hickey. This lower standard could only be a result of lower quality skills in women. Subjecting women to a lower form of military education results in lower quality skills and ultimately dooms them in a military career. If they are admitted, then they are a danger to themselves; if they are not, then they are never given equal opportunities. The Citadel cannot be allowed to maintain this cycle of inequality by not admitting women. Even though the school plans to set up programs at other women's colleges, it is still not a cohesive program like the Citadel's

"This is treating women as second-class citizens. This makes a mockery of the desires of women who want to pursue a military education," Valorie K. Vojdik, Faulker's lawyer, told the New York Times. Although allowing women into the Citadel and Navy doesn't seem a primary issue, the ban against them hurts them at all levels.

"I want to be an astronaut," Lieut. Hultgreen had told the Miami Herald. "Most of the astronauts are Navy jet pilots first. If you aren't given the same opportunities, you can't compete on the same level." If military colleges persist in keeping women out, then they will always claim that women are not qualified to serve in the military. If the Citadel ever opens its doors to women as the United States armed forces has, then they too might realize that their fears about women in the military are unfounded.

The Citadel should be able to learn from the United States Navy. After all, if women are qualified to become part of the elite fighter pilot corps in the Navy, then surely they are also qualified to receive training from a military college.