Expelled Air Force Cadet Talks About Abuse

Only a year ago, Andrea Prasse was a star in the elite Air Force Academy.In the top third of her class with a high-ranking leadership position, she was soon to graduate and begin training as a fighter pilot. Now she’s a woman of 22 who has no diploma, is an outcast among her former classmates, and has been the subject of death threats over the Internet……..She was found guilty of violating the academy’s sacrosanct honor code that enjoins cadets not to lie, cheat or steal or tolerate others who do so. Prasse says school officials allowed a male cadet to stalk and harass her for almost a year and tht they refused to intervene in any meaningful way. It was this student who was largely responsible for the honor-code accusastions, which Prasse contends were vindictive and unfounded.

Submitted by: Jerry Schwarz, American University

The article went on to document the stories of 47 cadets at the academy who reported being raped or sexually assaulted. In Andrea’s case eight days before graduation the ‘honor’ board punished this whistle-blower by ruling she would be denied a diploma, unable to serve in the military, and and required to repay the government for the cost of her education. In David’s case, another boy had seen the true cheater who had falsely accused him. Andrea wasn’t so lucky. Two US Senators came to her defense and the Air Force decided she could return to the school if she agreed to a six-month probation. She declined of course on the grounds that she had done nothing wrong.

I was amazed that one day after viewing School Ties, which was made in 1992 about life in the 1950’s, here was an article in the national press that had at its heart the major themes of the movie with anti-Semitism replaced by gender bias. As the French say, The more things change, the more they stay the same.