When I attended Texas A&M University in the mid to late sixties, retired Major General James Earl Rudder was serving as the 16th president of that great university. It was during his tenure that Texas A&M welcomed its first African American student, made membership in the Corps of Cadets voluntary and opened admission to undergraduate programs to women.
These were monumental changes for a tradition-heavy, originally all-male, all-military school. They were courageous and foresighted decisions that put Texas A&M on the road to tremendous growth and national prominence.
They were also very controversial and unpopular decisions, especially the admission of African Americans and women. I clearly remember the skeptics, the naysayers and, yes, the just plain bigots.
Resistance to allowing women to join the Corps of Cadets persisted for several more years. According to Wikipedia:
The Corps welcomed its first female members in the fall of 1974. At the time, the women were segregated into a special unit, known as W-1, and suffered harassment from many of their male counterparts. Women were originally prohibited from serving in leadership positions or in the more elite Corps units such as the band and Ross Volunteers. These groups were opened to female participation in 1988, following a federal court decision in a class-action lawsuit filed by a female cadet. Two years later, in 1990, female-only units were eliminated.
While the changes at Texas A&M were significant, they are just a microcosm of changes for the better with respect to discrimination and denial of equal opportunities that have occurred and continue to take place in our society—and of the resistance to them.
We continue to see the skeptics, the naysayers, the detractors and the just plain…
In the military, the “unofficial” policy to allow women to serve in combat, the ongoing efforts to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation and the recently announced decision by the U.S. Navy (now blessed by Congress) to allow women to serve aboard our nuclear submarines, are some examples of progress according to most, or of the “unraveling of our military” according to others.
Regardless, the Navy under the military leadership of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, and the civilian leadership of Secretary Robert Gates is steaming full speed ahead with preparations for the implementation of the latest policy changes.
You have heard the news, here are some of those bright, new faces—the future trailblazers.
The first women to serve aboard submarines will be officers and the Navy will start training 20 women to become submarine officers. After a 15-month training course, the first group of women will start serving aboard the more “roomy” guided-missile and ballistic missile submarines sometime in 2012.
According to the Baltimore Sun, eleven female midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy who have already been accepted into the Navy’s training program “feel ecstatic, thankful and blessed by the chance to break one of the military’s last gender barriers.”
One of the future submarine officers, Midshipman Jessica Wilcox, said that she has wanted to be an officer on a submarine since her first year at the academy and was drawn “by the highly technical and skilled professionalism she saw in both the officer and enlisted ranks during a 24-hour submarine tour.”
Other future female submarine officers will come from Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps programs, such as Midshipman Megan Bittner, 22, from North Carolina State University, where she will receive her Navy commission this Friday, just one day prior to graduating magna cum laude from North Carolina State University with a degree in chemical engineering.
Naval service is a tradition in Bittner’s family. According to The Virginian-Pilot, Bittner’s older brother is a Naval Academy graduate and her father is a retired Navy commander who served as a surface nuclear officer. The Virginian-Pilot:
“My family has been 100 percent supportive,” [Bittner] said. “Both my mother and father and older brother made sure it was something I wanted to do for myself. I wanted to do something for my country and do something that would challenge me. It’s definitely a great opportunity.”
As to the rigorous training these future submarine officers will undergo:
After graduating, Bittner will attend Nuclear Power School in Charleston, S.C., followed by six months of hands-on operational training on a nuclear prototype. The final phase will be naval submarine school in Groton, Conn., meaning she would set foot on a submarine in either the fall of 2011 or the spring of 2012.
And then we’ll have 20 bright, young trailblazers taking down yet another barrier.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.