Air Force needs woman as head of its academy

To the editor:

For 30 years, the U.S. Air Force has developed its leaders at its collegiate training facility, the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colo.

Officers trained there, the men and the women, man the spear, deploying our ultimate instruments of power, the defense arsenal of intelligence satellites with smart and nuclear weaponry.

The May 2003 survey of female cadets (as reported on MSNBC) demonstrates how shamefully broken the academy's leadership is and, indeed, has always been.

Now that official denials of pervasive, permissive and corrosive sexual harassment of women cadets have finally stopped, these undisputed occurrences must be abruptly arrested.

With all due and possible respect, I encourage The president to immediately appoint an exemplary female general officer (one never raped as a cadet, but one subjected to sexual harassment while there) to command and lead the institution onto better ground. Only that unmistakably clear message can stop the too-long-continuing, unjust travesty that systematic sexual harassment and rape of women cadets resides within the academy's honor code.

He need not search far to find a female leader for this special command. Many female officers, former academy graduates, stand today on the razor's edge, commanding our armed air forces throughout the world. If sexual harassment in the Air Force can be stopped, indeed if it is to be stopped in our culture, we must fearlessly condemn programmed, learned harassment at its source and unhesitatingly stand up for action that stops it.

T. ROBIN COLE

Cape Girardeau