Quote:
Air Force probes religious bias charges at academy
Cadet complaints are rising at Colorado school, officials say
From Mike Mount
CNN Washington Bureau
Thursday, May 5, 2005 Posted: 12:17 PM EDT (1617 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Air Force said Tuesday it will appoint a task force to investigate allegations of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy.
Among the items to be reviewed will be Air Force policy and guidance concerning religious respect and tolerance at the academy, said acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael Dominguez.
Some 55 complaints of religious discrimination have been filed going back to 2001, prompting school officials to require that all 9,000 cadets and faculty and staff members take a 50-minute course on religious sensitivity, academy officials said.
In addition, a report last week by a Washington-based religious liberty group accused cadets and staff members of creating a climate that discriminated against non-Christians at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
"We have concluded that both the specific violations and the promotion of a culture of official religious intolerance are pervasive, systematic and evident at the very highest levels of the academy's command structure," said the report from Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The group, which according to its Web site is a nonpartisan, nonsectarian organization founded in 1947 to defend the principle of religious freedom, said its investigation and report were based on "numerous complaints from a variety of sources."
Among the allegations are that cadets are frequently pressured to attend chapel and take religious instruction, particularly in the evangelical Christian faith; that prayer is a part of mandatory events at the academy; and that in at least one case a teacher ordered students to pray before beginning their final examination.
The report said it found that non-Christian cadets are subjected to "proselytization or religious harassment" by more senior cadets; and that cadets of other religions are subject to discrimination, such as being denied passes off-campus to attend religious services.
The report said that in at least two cases "highly qualified individuals were dissuaded from attending the academy ... after learning of the official culture of religious intolerance and hostility toward those who do not subscribe to and practice evangelical Christianity.
"When the Air Force is denied the service of the country's best and brightest young people because they feel excluded from the academy by religious intolerance, the armed forces and the nation as a whole are weakened," the report said.
The Air Force said its investigating task force will comprise Air Force officials, including a representative of the general counsel's office and a chaplain. The team is expected to report to the academy in about a week.
The task force is expected to examine academy commanders who may "enhance or detract from a climate that respects both the free exercise of religion and the establishment clauses of the First Amendment," according to an Air Force statement.
The investigation follows a sexual assault scandal that rocked the academy in 2003.
Rising complaints
More than 90 percent of the academy's students identify themselves as Christians, with 60 percent saying they were Protestant and 30 percent Catholic.
About 1 percent are Jewish and the rest is made up of Hindus and Buddhists, among others, according to academy officials.
Complaints ranging from anti-Semitic slurs to teachers preaching in class were mounting with the school's chaplain last summer, according to school officials.
In one case, students promoted the Mel Gibson movie "Passion of the Christ" by plastering hundreds of movie posters in the cafeteria.
Students also used their school e-mail accounts to promote the movie, prompting the superintendent of the school, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, to clarify that students could not use government e-mail to promote their religion.
In another instance, the commandant of the academy, Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, a born-again-Christian, drew fire from at least one student who said the general put God in front of the Constitution in a speech to students.
The student who filed the complaint noted that as a member of the military one first swears allegiance to the Constitution and then to God.
An academy official said Weida's messages must now be approved by Rosa and other commanders.
Officials said none of the complaints appeared to have involved physical attacks and none were reported at the time they occurred.
Officials said most of the incidents were either verbal or actions that insulted another religion.
None of the complaints involved broken laws or violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but officials said that several students have been counseled for their actions.
No punishments have been handed down for religious intolerance issues, but one case is being investigated by the Air Force inspector general and they could not comment on it, academy officials said.
Cadet survey
The Air Force has said that a survey of cadets in 2004 uncovered "perceptions of religious bias."
Of the more than 3,500 cadets who responded, more than 50 percent agreed that religious slurs and jokes are used.
Conversely, just fewer than 50 percent reported they "never" heard demeaning comments.
Nearly 50 percent of non-Christian cadets surveyed said classmates have a low tolerance for those who do not "follow a religion" or "believe in a divine being.
Truly disturbing
Quote:
Panel Finds No Overt Religious Intolerance at Air Force Academy
* Sign In to E-Mail This
* Printer-Friendly
* Reprints
By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: June 22, 2005
A military panel looking into complaints of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy found no instances of overt discrimination, officials said today, but concluded that the academy failed to accommodate the diverse religious needs of cadets and staff.
Skip to next paragraph
Related Text: Religious Climate at the U. S. Air Force Academy (pdf)
At a Pentagon news conference, Michael Dominguez, the acting secretary of the Air Force, said that he had ordered a review of practices at the academy after hearing allegations of religious disrespect at the campus, located in Colorado Springs.
"Instances of disrespect, no matter how unintentional or limited, toward other cadets, staff or airmen are wrong and incompatible with what we do for this nation," he said.
A report by the 16-member panel, released today by the Pentagon, will require academy leaders to clarify their policies on what is appropriate religious expression. The report also cited a perception of intolerance among some cadets and staff.
"The team found a religious climate that does not involve overt religious discrimination, but a failure to fully accommodate all members' needs and a lack of awareness where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs," the report says.
The inquiry was ordered after an Air Force Academy chaplain accused superiors of improperly promoting evangelical Christianity among cadets. The Lutheran chaplain, Capt. MeLinda S. Morton, submitted her resignation from the military on Tuesday.
Captain Morton has said she was fired from an administrative job because of her public criticism and was ordered to deploy to Japan.
"Chaplain Morton has been an outspoken critic of the academy's willingness to tolerate a pervasive evangelical climate that is threatening to members of other faith groups and disregards the constitutional separation of church and state," her lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
In April, the Yale Divinity School issued a report that said some academy chaplains were insensitive to religious diversity among cadets. Captain Morton helped with that report.
Among the incidents reported by the Yale study, which said evangelical proselytizing was rife at the academy, was one involving a campus chaplain who warned cadets that if they were "not born again" they would "burn in the fires of hell."
Others have complained that members of the chaplains' office frequently pressured cadets to attend chapel and receive religious instruction. Still others have said prayers were frequently conducted before official events.
Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel, who headed the 16-member team, said they had found seven specific incidents of intolerance that would be referred to higher military officials for possible investigation. He did not provide any details, saying that "we were not there to investigate individual behavior per se."
But, he said, the problem seemed to lie more in the academy failing to clarify what is acceptable religious expression on campus, and what is not.
"I have no reason to believe that people who are doing things that I think were inappropriate were doing so maliciously," he said. "In fact, I think they thought they had the best intentions toward the cadets. I think in some cases they were wrong.
"But we have not provided guidance in that area," he said.
General Brady said the team met in open sessions with more than 300 people including staff, faculty and cadets. He told the Air Force Link, the news service of the Air Force, that the academy was in some cases not accommodating to cadets of other faiths.
"The academy was not addressing the issue up front, such as including holy days on the calendar," he said. "So in some cases, it made cadets feel like the academy was not as sensitive to those needs, and was putting the burden on the cadet to ask for the accommodation."
He also said that the team found instances of religious slurs, jokes and disparaging remarks among the youngest members of the student body.
"That is neither surprising nor acceptable," the general said. "We bring about 1,300 new young Americans into the academy every year. Some come from very diverse environments, but some of them have never lived with anybody who sounds different or looks different or believes differently than they do."
The general said that those instances had decreased in recent years, and is expected to be addressed even further by a new program put into place recently called "Respecting Spiritual Values of all People."
"This program, which is new, tells cadets that people believe different things and come from different places," the general told the Link. "We must respect that diversity in our force and use it as a strength in our force."
Religious and cultural diversity becomes even more important, General Brady said in his remarks, as the United States continues its war on terror that has taken its forces into parts of the world where people practice different religions.
"We must respect each other and respect and understand our coalition partners who may be of different cultures," he said. "It is not only the right thing to do, it's an operational imperative."
