Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m Latina. My parents were both Army. My DH is a Marine. His father was in the Navy.

I don’t think there should be affirmative action in the service academies.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t think the academies should be diverse. I do think they should be diverse. Latinos - or my family at least- are service oriented. But I don’t think affirmative action, or even the mere appearance of affirmative action, does us any favors.

One of the reasons the military worked so well in the past is because they (generally) used the same criteria and expectations for everyone. When people think everyone gets a fair shake, regardless of external criteria it leads to a much stronger organization.

The military hasn’t been even handed for a while, and it hasn’t been good for the services.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/08/03/navys-personnel-boss-says-getting-rid-of-photos-promotion-boards-hurt-diversity.html

For example, in order to combat assumed discrimination during Navy promotions considerations, they removed the picture from the informational package. This led to fewer diverse candidates getting promotions. So there was discrimination, it was just being practiced against white male candidates. They immediately added the picture back of course; can’t have merit being the primary metric in Biden’s military!

They added the picture back so that they could continue to discriminate.

Anonymous wrote:I’m Latina. My parents were both Army. My DH is a Marine. His father was in the Navy.

I don’t think there should be affirmative action in the service academies.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t think the academies should be diverse. I do think they should be diverse. Latinos - or my family at least- are service oriented. But I don’t think affirmative action, or even the mere appearance of affirmative action, does us any favors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact is that the government isn't making it very appealing for the talented academy, ROTC, and OCS officers to stay.

And they have good options in the private sector. Hegseth has been awful for officer retention.

Hegseth has been great for retention and recruitment - the military services are FINALLY exceeding their recruitment goals not just meeting them unlike the previous administration which had difficulty meeting the goals. Do not provide disinformation and do not politicize educational topics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact is that the government isn't making it very appealing for the talented academy, ROTC, and OCS officers to stay.

And they have good options in the private sector. Hegseth has been awful for officer retention.

Hegseth has been great for retention and recruitment - the military services are FINALLY exceeding their recruitment goals not just meeting them unlike the previous administration which had difficulty meeting the goals. Do not provide disinformation and do not politicize educational topics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the academies aren’t Harvard or Yale.Getting into an Ivy really does give you a leg up in the private sector. Goldman, McKinsey, Big Law, Silicon Valley—they all recruit heavily from those schools and the name brand opens doors. A state school grad with the same GPA and resume is starting behind. That’s why those admissions battles are so cutthroat.The service academies are completely different. Their only job is to produce military officers. A brand-new 2nd Lieutenant or Ensign from West Point has the exact same starting pay, job, and career path as someone commissioned through ROTC at a random state school, an HBCU, or straight out of OCS. The military doesn’t give extra points for having gone to Annapolis.

You’re all in the same boat. The troops these officers lead—the enlisted force—are already way more diverse and look a lot more like America than the officer corps does. Unless someone is actually proposing we scrap ROTC and OCS completely and make the academies the only way to become an officer—which nobody is—then why single out the academies and strip away their ability to build a more representative class? ROTC and OCS will keep producing diverse officers because they draw from a much wider pool of colleges.


You’d just be making one small commissioning source less diverse while the majority stay the same.The military itself keeps saying a diverse officer corps is essential for unit cohesion, recruitment, retention, and national security. The academies are a tiny fraction of total officers, but they punch above their weight in producing senior leaders 20-30 years down the road.So yeah, I think the academies should keep using race-conscious admissions (within whatever narrow lane the Court left open for national security reasons) to look more like the country. Otherwise we’re just making the problem worse for no reason.

You do not want incompetent (DEI hire) officer in command in battles or wars. Elimination of DEI for the military is even more important than for civilian universities.

80% of Black Military officers come from HBCU

100%

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the academies aren’t Harvard or Yale.Getting into an Ivy really does give you a leg up in the private sector. Goldman, McKinsey, Big Law, Silicon Valley—they all recruit heavily from those schools and the name brand opens doors. A state school grad with the same GPA and resume is starting behind. That’s why those admissions battles are so cutthroat.The service academies are completely different. Their only job is to produce military officers. A brand-new 2nd Lieutenant or Ensign from West Point has the exact same starting pay, job, and career path as someone commissioned through ROTC at a random state school, an HBCU, or straight out of OCS. The military doesn’t give extra points for having gone to Annapolis.

You’re all in the same boat. The troops these officers lead—the enlisted force—are already way more diverse and look a lot more like America than the officer corps does. Unless someone is actually proposing we scrap ROTC and OCS completely and make the academies the only way to become an officer—which nobody is—then why single out the academies and strip away their ability to build a more representative class? ROTC and OCS will keep producing diverse officers because they draw from a much wider pool of colleges.


You’d just be making one small commissioning source less diverse while the majority stay the same.The military itself keeps saying a diverse officer corps is essential for unit cohesion, recruitment, retention, and national security. The academies are a tiny fraction of total officers, but they punch above their weight in producing senior leaders 20-30 years down the road.So yeah, I think the academies should keep using race-conscious admissions (within whatever narrow lane the Court left open for national security reasons) to look more like the country. Otherwise we’re just making the problem worse for no reason.

You do not want incompetent (DEI hire) officer in command in battles or wars. Elimination of DEI for the military is even more important than for civilian universities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact is that the government isn't making it very appealing for the talented academy, ROTC, and OCS officers to stay.

And they have good options in the private sector. Hegseth has been awful for officer retention.

Hegseth has been great for retention and recruitment - the military services are FINALLY exceeding their recruitment goals not just meeting them unlike the previous administration which had difficulty meeting the goals. Do not provide disinformation and do not politicize educational topics.