spirit of 75 = USNA class of 75? Yours? & was it the last with women?
Ah! Negative: My "Spirit of '75" tag I use because of my deep admiration for the revolutionaries who started the ball rolling up here in Massachusetts in 1775: Adams (2), Otis, Warren, Edes, etc. I was graduated from the Academy shortly before Bill Clinton was elected president.
Women were admitted to USNA (Class of 1980), commencing in the summer of 1976. As a Firstie, I was on Plebe Detail that summer.
During one of our training sessions, we were addressed by a female LT who was being assigned as the first female Company Officer. Now, understand, this was long before sexual harassment had become defined and codified, as we know it today: Heck, I didn't even know "harass" was one word.
But she must have been on the cutting edge of intellectual feminism in that arena because I clearly remember that that was the first time I had ever heard the concept of "unwelcome sexual advances" with respect to prohibited behavior. I clearly remember, because I was dumbfounded that the Academy would make such a distinction between "unwelcome" and "welcome". Certainly, with Plebe Indoctrination on the horizon for these women, that would not be an immediate issue; but still, even a 21 year old Mid could understand that if the Academy was going to eventually allow de facto fraternization merely by defining it to be something else, they were playing with fire.
When I brought up my skepticism, I was told that what I touched on was something she called "sexual politics", which was not what the Navy was trying to regulate. (Again, cutting edge feminism). While I had no idea at the time of what she was referring to, later on I came to understand that concept referred to power and patriarchy, and the theory that unless women were provided normal interaction with their male contemporaries, they would become ostracized and never be really integrated and would not achieve equality. To be sure, the Academy did provide lay down certain restraints, but to this day, sexual advances among Midshipmen that are not within the narrow definition of "unwelcome" are not necessarily taboo.
I thought it was nuts then, and I think it's nuts now.