Posted on 03/29/2003 1:23:04 AM PST by sarcasm
Saturday, March 29, 2003 - AIR FORCE ACADEMY - With the clinking of hammers, one of the most recognizable images in Colorado disappeared Friday.
It was only 10 letters, each of them two feet tall: "Bring Me Men." The words stood at the base of a ramp that cadets walk up on their first day at the academy - a symbolic threshold between an old life and a new one.
For 39 years, the words stood at the base of the ramp. They came down Friday in less than two hours, culminating a historic week of change at the 4,100-cadet academy.
Cadets were on spring break and only a few people watched as the letters were stuffed in the back of a four-wheel-drive vehicle. They will be safeguarded and preserved, but no one yet knows what ultimately will become of them.
Air Force Secretary James Roche and Air Force chief of staff Gen. John Jumper called for removal of the sign in a report - "Agenda for Change" - released Wednesday to address a sexual assault scandal. The report came after dozens of current and former female cadets stepped forward in recent weeks to say they were discouraged from reporting sexual assault, and when they did, they were punished or ostracized.
As part of the shake-up, four top leaders were reassigned and new policies were drafted to overhaul the academy's system for addressing sexual assault allegations.
The Bring Me Men sign, according to the report, will be replaced with something that "more suitably represents" the coed nature of the academy, where women account for 18 percent of the cadets.
Bring Me Men went up in 1964, five years after the first academy class graduated. The words are part of a poem, "The Coming American," written in 1894 by Sam Walter Foss.
Bring me men to match my mountains
Bring me men to match my plains
Men with empires in their purpose
And new eras in their brains
After women came to the academy in 1976, the sign was viewed by some as chauvinistic, an outdated symbol that showed disrespect to female cadets who met the rigorous academic, athletic and character standards at the academy.
In June 1993, rumors were rampant in Colorado Springs that the phrase would come down. But Lt. Gen. Bradley Hosmer, then superintendent, and coincidentally the man who initiated changes in a sexual assault program after a woman reported she was gang-raped on Valentine's Day 1993, rejected arguments for removing the sign.
"It is not for us to erase our heritage or to rewrite our history," Hosmer said at the time. "It is our deeds which must speak for the attitudes we want to instill in our cadets and portray to the country."
Since the Air Force announced last week that the sign would come down, graduates began petitioning the academy through e-mails. The majority of the 70 e-mails sent to public affairs, and another 15 graduates who contacted the Association of Graduates on Friday, were unhappy with the change.
"Basically, they said it's a knee-jerk reaction to political correctness," said Chuck Denham, vice president of information services for the association that represents the academy's nearly 35,000 graduates.
Travis Lippert, a 1995 graduate who is president of a company in San Antonio, said he was never wedded to the words when he was a cadet, but he doesn't understand how they have anything to do with correcting problems in the way sexual assaults are reported.
"The words above the 'Bring Me Men' ramp have nothing to do with the recent scandals at the USAFA. I know you are all under pressure to make changes right now, but taking those words down is not the answer. This is exactly the same thing as trying to end nationwide misogyny by altering the words of Lincoln's Gettysburg address to say 'Four score and seven years ago, our parents brought forth on this continent. ...'
"Knee-jerk, meaningless reaction to the scrutiny of the press will serve only to alienate USAFA's graduates," Lippert said.
A 1982 graduate who asked that she not be identified because she works as a civilian in the Air Force and fears she would be inundated with hate mail wrote this e-mail to the academy:
"'Bring Me Men' - I love the poem; I loved singing the song. It's beautiful. It's majestic, it's heartfelt. If the whole poem was mounted up there (with the lyrics changed to 'Bring me those who match my mountains'), I'd be inspired. But (I'm ducking my head here), 'Bring Me Men' is out of context as it's mounted, and it bugged me the day I arrived and it bugged me for the four years I was there. I think I'm one of a small minority here, but it's past its time."
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