Long Haul to Acceptance

30 Years On, Gains and Trials for Women at Annapolis

The words were spoken 30 years ago, and yet they are as jarring as they were the day when Sharon Hanley arrived at the U.S. Naval Academy -- 17 years old and about to make history as one of the first female undergraduates.

"I don't like you here," she recalls an upperclassman telling her. "I don't like women at my school, and so I'm going to be on your butt every waking minute. . . . If my plan works, you're going to be long gone before I graduate. Is that clear?"

She remembers her shock and dismay, then her momentary confusion about how to answer. As a plebe, she was not allowed to object or comment.

"Yes, sir," was all she could say.

Now, on the 30th anniversary of the integration of women in the Naval Academy, Sharon Hanley Disher finds herself in history's view again, the first of the earliest female graduates to be followed to Annapolis by a daughter. She watched teary-eyed in the late June heat as her daughter and son, who are twins, stood solemnly in Navy whites for their swearing-in on the campus's tree-lined grounds.

They are part of an academy class that includes a record number of women -- 22.4 percent, compared with 6 percent in the beginning -- and comes together as the country is at war, with women serving on destroyers and in fighter planes.

But though much has improved since women first arrived -- and many female graduates express great loyalty to the storied 161-year-old institution -- a complex and sometimes troubling portrait of student life emerges from three recent studies sponsored by the Defense Department.

The most recent study found that in the 2004-05 school year, 59 percent of female midshipmen and 14 percent of men reported sexual harassment, defined as crude and offensive behavior, unwanted sexual attention or sexual coercion. Sexist behavior -- put-downs and offensive comments -- was reported by 93 percent of women and 50 percent of men.

What the academy experience is like for young women is coming into greater focus as Congress looks into the subject and as the quarterback on the academy's football team faces a court-martial trial starting tomorrow on a charge of raping a female midshipman.

All of this happens as three decades of gender integration are marked this month, with women recalling their unsettling early days in a college dedicated to the making of military men.

"The name of our game was survival," Disher said. The attitude was "boys will be boys and 'You're coming to an all-male school; what did you expect?' " At her home in Annapolis last week, Disher happened upon a C-SPAN broadcast of Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, the academy's superintendent, testifying before Congress.

"Sexual harassment and misconduct and assault should not be tolerated in the Navy-Marine Corps," he said, "and I can assure you that they are not tolerated at your Naval Academy."