Bring Me Men: Intertextual Identity Formation at the US Air Force Academy

摘要

This thesis presents the author's view on changes made at the Air Force Academy after the 2003 sex scandal. Some excerpts from the author's thesis follow: On 1 April 1954, Congress authorized the construction the US Air Force Academy. On July 11, 1955, the first class of 306 men was sworn in, and four years later, 207 graduated. It took twenty-one years from when the first class entered in 1955 before the Air Force Academy saw its first women, one walking famously on her first day in front of the 'Bring Me Men...' ramp (BMMR) ready to change the all-male Academy. Twenty-three years after the first woman graduated from the Air Force Academy, and forty years after Bring Me Men... went up to reinforce the ideals the Academy, multiple allegations of sexual assault and institutionally silenced rape cases brought a very public scandal upon the Academy. As a response in March of 2003, then Secretary the Air Force, James G. Roche, and then Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General John Jumper, issued the Agenda for Change. This document mandated many changes to cadet life and the organization of the Air Force Academy. During my four years at the Academy, my years were also fraught with tension and a resurfaced bitterness towards the women who were still seemingly unwelcome outsiders in an all male institution. From my first day of Basic Cadet Training (BCT), my class was hailed 'the Class of Change,' with none more visible a change than the empty ramp through which we entered. Throughout my Fourth Class year, my classmates and I struggled to find a place within the traditions of the Academy that we were suddenly denied access to because of the changes in training and procedure that accompanied the removal of 'Bring Me Men....in the Agenda for Change. The upper three classes resented the changes, viewing them as unnecessary outside interference in our institution, and they blamed our class for these changes over which we had no control.