Faithless
05-05-2005, 06:57 AM
Air Force Sets New Inquiry at Academy (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/05/education/05academy.html)
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN * Published: May 5, 2005
The Pentagon is sending investigators to the Air Force Academy to look into complaints that evangelical Christian faculty members, officers and cadets routinely proselytize and intimidate those on campus who do not hold the same religious beliefs.
The inquiry follows accusations that these other cadets have long been subject to a climate of religious intolerance. To address the problem, the academy, in Colorado Springs, began requiring its faculty and students in March to attend 50-minute sensitivity training classes.
But last week the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent a report to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld saying the problem remained and was systemic.
Among the accusations are that cadets who declined to attend chapel after dinner were marched back to their dormitories in a procession called the "heathen flight," that a history professor ordered students to pray before their final exam and that two weeks after the religious sensitivity program was announced, the football coach placed a banner in the locker room that said, "I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."
"This is the worst systemic series of religiously discriminatory acts I've ever seen in any federal government context," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who charged "a clear pattern of misconduct that was overlooked for years."
The inquiry is the second major investigation of the academy in the last two years. The earlier one was undertaken after nearly 150 women there said they had been sexually assaulted by fellow cadets. That investigation led to the replacement of the academy's top commanders.
The new inquiry will be headed by Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, deputy Air Force chief of staff for personnel. Jennifer Stephens, an Air Force spokeswoman, said the service had not yet decided who else would serve on the investigative task force, which is to issue a preliminary report by May 23.
Concerns about the religious environment on the campus first surfaced after the academy conducted a survey of staff and faculty early last year on the broader culture there. When the academy solicited further expressions of concern over religious influences, about eight people came forward with accusations of 55 specific incidents of bias spanning four years, said Lt. Col. Laurent Fox, the academy's director of public affairs.
About that time, Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and Reagan administration official, visited Colorado Springs and discovered that his son, a cadet, was frequently a target of slurs because he is Jewish. Mr. Weinstein took his complaints to the academy, Americans United and the news media.
"It hurts because I love the academy," Mr. Weinstein said in an interview yesterday. "But it is suffering from a terrible constitutional cancer right now."
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN * Published: May 5, 2005
The Pentagon is sending investigators to the Air Force Academy to look into complaints that evangelical Christian faculty members, officers and cadets routinely proselytize and intimidate those on campus who do not hold the same religious beliefs.
The inquiry follows accusations that these other cadets have long been subject to a climate of religious intolerance. To address the problem, the academy, in Colorado Springs, began requiring its faculty and students in March to attend 50-minute sensitivity training classes.
But last week the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent a report to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld saying the problem remained and was systemic.
Among the accusations are that cadets who declined to attend chapel after dinner were marched back to their dormitories in a procession called the "heathen flight," that a history professor ordered students to pray before their final exam and that two weeks after the religious sensitivity program was announced, the football coach placed a banner in the locker room that said, "I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."
"This is the worst systemic series of religiously discriminatory acts I've ever seen in any federal government context," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who charged "a clear pattern of misconduct that was overlooked for years."
The inquiry is the second major investigation of the academy in the last two years. The earlier one was undertaken after nearly 150 women there said they had been sexually assaulted by fellow cadets. That investigation led to the replacement of the academy's top commanders.
The new inquiry will be headed by Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, deputy Air Force chief of staff for personnel. Jennifer Stephens, an Air Force spokeswoman, said the service had not yet decided who else would serve on the investigative task force, which is to issue a preliminary report by May 23.
Concerns about the religious environment on the campus first surfaced after the academy conducted a survey of staff and faculty early last year on the broader culture there. When the academy solicited further expressions of concern over religious influences, about eight people came forward with accusations of 55 specific incidents of bias spanning four years, said Lt. Col. Laurent Fox, the academy's director of public affairs.
About that time, Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and Reagan administration official, visited Colorado Springs and discovered that his son, a cadet, was frequently a target of slurs because he is Jewish. Mr. Weinstein took his complaints to the academy, Americans United and the news media.
"It hurts because I love the academy," Mr. Weinstein said in an interview yesterday. "But it is suffering from a terrible constitutional cancer right now."