International Journal of Naval History

“Revolutionary Change at Evolutionary Speed”:

Women and the United States Naval Academy 

H. Michael Gelfand, University of Arizona

On the evening of 4 May 1972, the Brigade of Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy hurriedly left their mess hall.[1] As they usually did every night, many midshipmen took pieces of fruit for evening snacks.[2] But that night, instead of returning to their rooms or going to study, the midshipmen filed in to the Academy’s Field House. There, Superintendent James Calvert introduced a guest lecturer, feminist leader Gloria Steinem.[3] Steinem approached the podium, and began her speech by remarking that “women have been much too docile and too law abiding for too long, but I think that era is about to end.”[4] Once the laughter subsided, Steinem declared that “there are very few jobs that require a penis or a vagina, and all other jobs should be open to everyone.”[5] Some midshipmen reacted to these comments, “tossing fruit in the air.” [6] Others threw oranges onto the stage, but as one alumnus recalled, “we were just yanking her chain.”[7]

Steinem, in fact, enjoyed the “excitement and high spirits” of the midshipmen.[8] She concluded by telling them that the Academy would be a different place in ten years; “some day,” she predicted, “there will be 50 percent female cadets here and some day the mystique will have changed.”[9] Although her estimated percentage was off, Steinem was correct in her prophecy: by the early 1980s, women were indeed both midshipmen and Naval Academy graduates. The U.S. Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, Maryland, has trained and educated professional officers for the Navy since 1845, and for the Marine Corps beginning in 1887.[10] Although it was not until 1976 that women entered the Academy as midshipmen, the evolution of a Naval Academy with women has deep roots. This paper will examine the role of women, as well as male midshipmen’s conceptions of, and reactions to, women at the Naval Academy from 1930 until the present.

1930–1957

Women have been involved with the Academy from its foundation as the wives of officers and as the dates of male midshipmen.[11] The origin of women who were more active in their relation to the Naval Academy, however, dates to 1930 when two Washington, DC, “debutantes” with “bobbed hair,” Mary Eleanor Hayden and Lorette Taylor, donned the midshipmen’s white works uniform and began to eat breakfast in the Academy’s mess hall.[12] When midshipmen leaders present realized the potential for trouble, the women quickly departed “on their hands and knees.”[13] One alumnus stated that he would not have been surprised if the women had spent the night in Bancroft Hall, the midshipmen’s dormitory, the night before, although the media never mentioned that possibility.[14] Rather, the newspapers focused on the congressional investigation, which ensued when the Academy punished two midshipmen and dismissed two others for their roles in the incident.[15]

Officials at the Naval Academy were equally concerned when a high school junior, Mary Ann Bonalsky, wrote her congressman to seek admission to the Academy in 1956.[16] She told New Jersey Congressman James Tumulty that “I am a girl [and] . . . have equal rights with the man as far as intelligence is concerned.”[17] Tumulty found “a certain amount of logic in her stand,” and contacted the Navy to seek an appointment for her.[18] Secretary of the Navy Charles Thomas responded that he would not accept any plan to accept Bonalsky at Annapolis, confessing “I can’t conceive of one girl over there with all of those midshipmen.”[19] Thomas told Tumulty that the “question” of women attending the Naval Academy “would be answered ‘in due course.’”[20]

1958–1975

From the 1950s into the 1970s, when that “question” would again be addressed, The LOG, the midshipmen’s entertainment magazine, demonstrates that midshipmen thought of women primarily as girlfriends and as objects of desire.[21] Perhaps the best example of these sentiments is The LOG’s photograph section of midshipmen’s girlfriends entitled “Company Cuties,” which began in 1965.[22] Even as New York Senator Jacob Javits attempted to have a female nominee admitted to the Naval Academy, and California Congressman Jerome Waldie sued the Naval Academy to assist a young woman in her attempt to become a midshipman, The LOG served as a sounding board for ideas on women.[23] When Congress passed the defense appropriations bill with provisions for the entry of women to service academies and President Gerald Ford signed the bill into law in October of 1975, The LOG took several jabs at women.[24] In an interview, actor George C. Scott, of Patton fame, shared his opinion of the impending arrival of women. “I think it is tragic,” he told The LOG.[25] Forecasting the advent of female midshipmen and commenting on the perceived idea that women were stealing men’s places at Annapolis, The LOG featured a cartoon in which a female plebe arrives at the Academy with an astronaut’s helmet. When an officer questions her about the helmet, the midshipman replies that her uncle “said all of us girls at the Academy would be taking up space.”[26]

1976–1980

Before women arrived at Annapolis, however, some of the first Academy-bound women went to the Naval Academy’s Preparatory School in Newport, Rhode Island, in January 1976.[27] The experiences of those women forecasted later events at the Academy itself. The school’s commanding officer ordered the men to treat the women “as if they were his daughters,” and as a result, the men ignored the women. Although one midshipman candidate, who was African-American, eventually spoke with the women, most of the other men said nothing beyond comments about women being out of place in that environment. When the women received the required nominations to the Naval Academy, and some men did not, the men’s silence ceased and hostile actions began. In one instance, men set a woman’s uniform on fire in her room, and in a second incident, men stabbed a female uniform, covered it with ketchup to resemble blood, and hung it from a woman’s ceiling. One of the women consulted with a Preparatory School administrator, who explained to her that Navy leaders had ordered him to “see what happened with no controls over the men.”

Naval Academy administrators, however, made definite attempts to keep the integration of women under close supervision. Anticipating the potential arrival of women, Commandant D. K. Forbes initiated an Academy-wide study of every possible change necessary to accommodate female midshipmen beginning in August of 1975.[28] Dean of Admissions Robert McNitt oversaw the selection of the eighty-one women who became part of the 1,294 plebes whom the Naval Academy swore in on 6 July 1976, and he frequently checked in on, and looked after, those women.[29] Forbes’ successor, Commandant James Winnefeld, also showed great personal concern for the women in the Class of 1980.[30] Winnefeld worked closely with the seniors to ensure that the midshipmen leaders of the Class of 1977 would make the entry of women as seamless as possible.[31]

In spite of these efforts, the Academy’s first women still faced obstacles. One menace appeared instantly: the media. Television and newspaper personnel, obsessed with covering the gender integration of the Naval Academy, were oblivious to the women’s wishes to be left alone. As one alumna remembered, “you didn’t want to stand out, you just wanted to be a mid. . . .”[32] Another factor causing women to stand out were ill-fitting uniforms, which, in spite of numerous corrective efforts, required repeated alterations.[33] Due to the small number of women, most were the only female in their classrooms and became subject to civilian and military professors’ derogatory comments about women not belonging at the Academy.[34] By the time their class prepared for its ritualistic Herndon ceremony, the symbolic end of the plebe year, women felt that they had earned their place at the Academy. When women rose in the human pyramid, climbing a 21-foot tall monument to replace its crowning plebe cap with a midshipman’s cover, some of their male classmates pulled the women down.[35]

Male midshipmen’s reactions to women varied at the Naval Academy. As had been the case at the Preparatory School, African-American midshipmen encouraged, befriended, and helped the women of the Class of 1980.[36] Other midshipmen were indifferent to the women, while some displayed mannered civility.[37] But, as was also the case at the Prep School, some male midshipmen subjected the women to antics ranging from seemingly harmless pranks to overtly cruel and disheartening abuses. Men threw pies in the women’s faces and attacked women with manicotti and with shaving cream “bombs.”[38] When the women in the Class of 1980 served as cheerleaders for the Academy’s athletic teams, men booed them repeatedly, threw empty soda cans at them, and yelled not cheers but questions normally reserved for plebes.[39] An occasional dead rat in a woman’s mailbox may not have been as sharply hurtful as the continual male midshipmen’s “derisive comments about women.”[40] Among the terms used for women, the acronym “WUBA” had the most derogatory insinuation. A reference to an Academy uniform, “Working Uniform Blue ‘Alpha,’” male midshipmen utilized “WUBA” to mean “Women with Unusually Big Asses” and “Women Used By All,” overt references to exaggerated perceptions of women’s weight and sexual promiscuity.[41]

Yet male midshipmen had a consistent habit of informing individual women that they were not like those perceptions. In cases where friendships between men and women developed, men admitted that individual women were succeeding at the Academy and were not like “other” female midshipmen.[42] Women learned that once individual men were away from a “group-thinking” mass, they could be nice guys.[43] Some women garnered men’s respect by meeting or exceeding the men’s physical standards, whereas other women cite their ability to work side-by-side with men during their first summer cruise as the source of positive relations with men.[44]

The single factor that undid much of the established cohesion of the female and male midshipmen, however, was the publication, midway through their senior year, of James Webb’s article “Women Can’t Fight.”[45] A 1968 graduate who spent two months as a “writer-in-residence” at Annapolis, Webb argued that the presence of women “sterilized” the Academy by turning it in to “a test tube for social experimentation.”[46] Webb hit a powerful chord in the minds of many Naval Academy alumni, particularly those who, like him, had battle experience and believed that women did not belong in combat and, by extension, at Annapolis.[47] Claiming that women “poisoned” the institution, Webb declared that he would never want to be in combat with any of the female midshipmen he knew.[48] As male midshipmen pasted copies of the article on the walls of Bancroft Hall, the women realized that Webb had undermined any respect and acceptance that they had managed to achieve during their four years at the Academy.[49]

1980–Present

Because the women in the Class of 1980 spent much of their time at Annapolis in “survival mode”—looking out for themselves, demonstrating their talents, and arriving at graduation and commissioning—many of them chose to distance themselves from the women in the Class of 1981.[50] Without question, the eighty-one women who entered USNA in 1976 and the fifty-five who graduated in 1980 blazed a path for the female midshipmen in subsequent classes.[51] Much of the overt hostility of male midshipmen, faculty, officers, and alumni has subsided, yet remains present. One recent graduate remarked that the “balls only” mentality endures for some men, but that those men simply “do not feel good about themselves. I just don’t take them very seriously.”[52]

However, a number of issues, like some men’s ideas, have continued since the women of the Class of 1980 were midshipmen. Men still make remarks about women not belonging at the Naval Academy, and the term “WUBA” has not disappeared from the Academy’s vernacular.[53] The relatively small number of women per company maintains the problem of women’s limited choice in roommates; female midshipmen face forced “trades” of undesirable company mates and semesters in which personality conflicts fester.[54] Women’s uniforms are an enduring cause of uneasiness as the midshipmen attempt to maintain their feminine appearance, and the quest to “look good” in the various military and athletic uniforms has helped to fuel widespread eating disorders.[55] Lastly, the tendency to remove or discourage female plebes from climbing the Herndon monument diminished only with effective administrative intervention before the Class of 2003’s ceremony.[56]

In spite of resistance to their presence, women have experienced success at USNA. The continued integration is best demonstrated in two manners. First, women have thrived at USNA in academics, athletics, and leadership, proving beyond question that they are capable of handling the Academy’s training program and, as Navy leader Michael Boorda told male midshipmen during a 1990 speech, “women belong here.”[57] Second, women appear to have found a significant, exclusively female realm within the overwhelmingly male-dominated Naval Academy environment: the athletic team and its related long hours of practice and competition.[58] As one women’s team coach explained, “Females definitely have an easier time here at the Academy being on an athletic team. They have a ‘sisterhood’ support group; they can share emotions, thoughts, and opinions openly without being criticized or judged. . . . When they are with women, they feel accepted.”[59] Furthermore, male midshipmen give successful female athletes unbounded support, giving women greater acceptance in the Brigade.[60] The evolution of the Naval Academy’s most revolutionary change continues steadily, unremittingly incorporating women into the Naval Academy’s “mystique.”[61]