THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170674
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
The Navy will be ``standing down'' for a day because a chief petty officer messed up. He allegedly pawed an enlisted woman who had the seat next to his on a commercial flight to Washington.
Now, a less civilized society would try the jerk in Judge Wapner's court and, upon conviction, flog him on ``Inside Edition.''
This more civilized society, however, needs to find out exactly what he, she and maybe 20 other sailors on that airliner did/didn't do. Were they in uniform, therefore readily identifiable as Navy? They weren't required to be. Was assistance offered? Was assistance refused? Those questions are now grist for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The incident is also grist for the media, primarily as one more sample of just what to expect from what's still this man's Navy.
That's bushwa.
Ninety-nine percent of Navy personnel, chief of naval operations Michael Boorda reiterated the other day, behave properly. In short, maybe 1% of sailors get in trouble at all, and most of their troubles have zilch to do with sexual harassment. Fewer than 1% of sailors need to be reminded to keep their horny hands to themselves and, not incidentally, to keep their alcohol intake to levels that impair neither their judgment nor their career.
The stand down, as I understand it, is not for a day of sensitivity training, of warning grizzly senior salts against groping junior seatmates. It's a day for reminding Navy personnel that under the Navy's unwritten code as well as the Uniform Code of Military Justice they've a responsibility to intercede when the actions of other Navy personnel risk harming themselves and/or others.
Admiral Boorda has been careful to add that he doesn't yet know the facts of the in-flight incident. But he is troubled by the suggestion in this case, as in others recently, that sailors would stand by while one of their own dived into disaster by abusing another of their own. You don't let a shipmate drown in his own drink, or let him drown somebody else in his drunkenness, any more than you let him drown in the Med. The Navy has no interest in letting usually smart people do dumb stuff.
That's an admirable buddy system. But hardly infallible.
It's possible, for example, that the buddy system occasionally moves from keeping a buddy out of trouble into exacting a punishment his buddies find appropriate and keeping authorities entirely out of it. As when, say, a recruit accosts a woman and his pals hustle him out, knock him around, then clean him up for duty.
It's possible, too, that the old buddy system is the genesis of the old-boy network that military careers and military justice are frequently, if often erroneously, perceived to be. Bad as an overt sexual assault is for a woman, it can be easier to detect, deflect and document than more subtle sexual discrimination: the lowering glass ceiling, for example, or the men's room door closing on a decision-making conversation.
It's also possible that the buddy system clashes with another Navy tradition: the ability to fend for oneself. A tough outfit, the Navy. No place for dirty old men, no, but also no place for damsels in dis-tress.
A female sailor seated by random pick of an airline computer next to a male sailor drunk enough to grope her - there's a situation that screams not only for the admiral's group-responsibility reminder: With the right kind of leadership at every level, a sailor in trouble within hearing distance of other sailors shouldn't have to shout for help.
This situation screams as well, however, for some personal-responsibility campaigns. The Navy's done wonders against illegal-substance abuse. Like the rest of society, it needs to try harder to curb the nation's No. 1 legal drug and No. 1 abused substance. Meantime, why not give every woman sailor the martial arts skills to depaw a drunk single-handed?
It's as close as legal comes to a flogging.
KEYWORDS: SEXUAL HARASSMENT U.S. NAVY by CNB