That's probably for the best. She probably would have gotten her whole unit killed on her first day, even if she was assigned stateside during peacetime.
There was once an LT of my acquaintance who almost got a bunch of people in his platoon killed by being a squirrelly little fucker who wanted to be a hero. Not long after, he was found dangling upside down in his sleeping bag, which had been carefully hung in a nearby tree. Some unknown villains had taped up his bag, dragged him into the wilderness, hung him up and beaten him with a wooden tee ball bat. It was disgraceful, I tell you. That poor man resigned his commission after that. But hey, it's not as if anyone died.
At least with ROTC you get a mixed bag of clueless cadets mixed with prior enlisted trying to commission. Either way they are more inclined to listen to their SNCOs and experienced NCOs.
At least with the Air Force I'd take my chances with a ROTC cadet over the type of officer that often comes out of the Academy.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Butter Bars don't know their own ass from a hole in the ground and are usually far too HOOAH for anyone with any sense in their head.
I was in the US Army, but I worked with officers from many other countries, too. Lots of American colonels do have aides, though to the best of my knowledge, it's based on their specific roles more than their ranks. I was stuck in protocol my last couple of years in and had to deal with enough foreign and domestic brass to last forever.
The irony being that her being the first female cadet, is TOTALLY DEI, and yet now she rails against it. Such hypocrisy. And pulling up the ladder behind oneself so the next generation can't follow
by the sounds of it she wasn't the first female cadet, someone 4 years earlier attended, had to fight a lawsuit to get admission and then also matriculated, Nancy followed in her footsteps 4 years later but also had her daddy as the guy in charge.
No, you were right. Dropped out after a week. My possibly faulty recollection is that VMI looked at all the hate and harassment that was going on at the Citadel and said nope, we're not letting that happen here, and did a better job. But i was living in South Carolina at the time and not Virginia, so I was paying a lot closer attention to the Citadel.
In terms of actual affiliation of course not. But they absolutely do try to brand themselves as private military academies comparable to the real thing. Well at least they did when I was at the Naval Academy 😃
You're correct it is public. My apologies. But as a public school it is forced to take women. If it were private it definitely would not, or at least would fight it tooth and nail probably very successfully
Her father was commandant. Her tuition was free. Guessing that also applies to Norwich faculty brats. For everybody else, you damn right it ain't free.
As an ex-soldier who spent 20 years with nerve damage thanks to fuckwit nepo babies making command decisions, I would like to thank her for not serving.
In all fairness, roughly a third of all graduates of The Citadel end up commissioning at graduation. It's a public, state-funded university, whereas West Point or the Naval Academy are federal service academies that require all graduates to commission as officers and serve 4-5 years of mandatory service after graduation.
If you attend a traditional college/university and participate in ROTC, that same commisioning and service obligation is required if you choose to continue beyond your sophomore year.
The Citadel is a military college, but not one of the Service Academies operated by the US government. Military service is not a requirement, though about 1/3 of graduates join the military. It's just another state college, though with a military training focus. At the time she enrolled her dad wasn't the commandant, or even on the faculty- he came in halfway through her sophomore year. At the time she enrolled, it was also all male, and even today only about 20% of the student body is female.
Hate Nancy Mace all you like - and there's plenty about her to hate- but I personally have to respect her role in desegregating the Citadel (for women), even if Shannon Faulkner laid the groundwork.
It's kinda like congratulating someone on being the first woman serial killer. It's not an accomplishment worth admiring.
The Citadel is still pretty much a bunch of idiots who play at being soldiers. It's not a college, it's LARP West Point with high school level class work. And it's *always attracted the detritus of Southern culture.
I respect your average community College a he'll of a lot more than Citadel grads. At least the CC folks wanted to go there and paid for it themselves.
It's kinda like congratulating someone on being the first woman serial killer. It's not an accomplishment worth admiring.
it's more like congratulating the second woman who also had a far easier time being accepted.
The woman before her had to go to court to get enrolled at the place because they wouldn't take women. She won her battle, did her four years, graduated then Nancy enrolled normally because women were already allowed due to the actual actions of the women who won that right for her.
It's also just a college with some military larping going on.
Not accurate. It's not a top tier University and can't hold a candle to the national service academies, but it's academically a solid school. Academically, it's on the same level as Clemson.
The one part I do agree with is the Southern culture piece... I served with guys who went to the Citadel and their vibe was pretty neo-Confederate.
The Citadel should have been disbanded and burned to the ground during Reconstruction for their cadets firing some of the first shots of the Civil War.
Again, the Citadel academically is no different than Wintrop or Clemson or the University of South Carolina. It's just another state school. Students who go there don't get a free ride because of the military focus. Tuition is about average for state schools, and a good bit higher than community colleges in South Carolina. Students go there because they want to, and other than scholarships or ROTC, they pay for it themselves.
Though as a graduate of a rival school, I'm not going to challenge your characterization of their students and graduates.
That like saying "oh Boston Community College is no different than MIT" because they are both universities.
It's not "just another state school". It's a high school play acting as a college. The level of class work is abysmally poor, and the students show it.
They pay for the connections to the other Lost Cause KKK wannabes. That's the "attraction". It's certainly not the academics.
And notice that it's Mommy & Daddy paying to go to The Citadel. Not the students. Which is very much unlike Communjty Colleges.
Clemson, the University of South Carolina, The Citadel, and Winthrop are all state funded, state supported, public colleges in South Carolina. The former two are research institutions, and the latter two are four year universities but not research institutions so yeah, you got me. But the Citadel has real degree programs in things like physics, chemistry, the humanities, and engineering. Their engineering programs are supposed to be quite good.
And if you think Mommy & Daddy aren't paying for their kids at Clemson, you've never been to South Carolina.
Who cares where they get their funding or if they're state schools? That's completely irrelevant to the discussion.
The point is that the academics are shit. Litetally no one hires a Citadel for any serious work - because the quality of their graduates is bargain basement. A Citadel Engineering degree will get you hired at McDonald's. Their graduates get placed with other Citadel alum companies and in positions where their complete lack of competence isn't a drag on the firm.
In anything serious, it's on a level with Phoenix University. Both are accredited schools. But neither produce anything like folks you'd hire.
You know where the vast majority of the Engineering grads from The Citadel go? The US military. Where that degree is almost completely pointless as they teach you explicitly what the military needs which has very little to do with anything else.
And the relevance of who funded them is in my original post: I respect people who self funded going through Community Colleges (which have similar or better academics) than I do to The Citadel, where admission is heavily alumni (i.e legacy) driven and solely paid for by parents.
If by laying the groundwork you mean she had to fight a legal battle to get enrolled and after her legal battle forced them to let her enroll, that Nancy Mace did nothing to desegregate a place that was already desegregated? Then sure.
If by "already desegregated" you mean there were ZERO women enrolled at the Citadel because Shannon Faulkner, the woman who's legal battle forced them to let her enroll, dropped out after her first week, then sure.
I was in college in South Carolina when all this was going on. I read the papers, and the letters to the editor, and there were a LOT of stories and letters to the editor. The levels of hate directed at Shannon Faulkner were absolutely insane, and I say that based only on what I read that people were willing to sign their names to. When Faulkner dropped out these people were ecstatic, gloating, overjoyed that they had forced her out.
What Nancy Mace did was enroll the following year. I'm sure she had it a little bit easier. People had another year to get used to the idea. She had female classmates who enrolled when she did, to commiserate with (though half of them dropped out), so the hate wasn't focused all on one person. The school itself made adjustments so things would go more smoothly. But that hate did not go away. And she was the first to graduate.
You can say Shannon Faulkner's role was more important, and I'll agree with you. You can despise Nancy Mace, and I'll agree with you. But she was one of the first two women to last a full year at the Citadel, and the first woman to graduate from a state supported school that, previously, half the state couldn't attend...and I don't think that's nothing.
Faulkner said that what precipitated her leaving so abruptly was a threat to kill her parents by a person present when she entered.[24] Her parents' home was vandalized.[7]
Yeah, she had it just a little bit easier, no one was threatening to murder her father especially when he took over at the head of the college.
She had an immense amount of protection due to who her father was even before he took over the college, because when they vandalised Shannon's parents home they didn't care who they were and when they made threats they didn't care who she or her family were. With Mace they did.
And as we all know, once the first person gets it, they’re have defeated discrimination forever and everyone who follows in their footsteps has an easy time.
didn't say that, but she wasn't having her home vandalised during her court fight to get admitted nor having her parents lives threatened if she didn't quit.
Also students are less intent on beating you up or showing you a lesson when her dad is the guy in charge of the college and can expel you easily.
There are levels to things, she was at a 2 or 3/10 while the person who was actually first to attend there was at a 13/10.
Trump went to an ersatz military academy (really just a boarding school) because his behavior was atrocious. It wasn’t really a military academy—it was a place for him to better learn how to bully others, but with no redeeming characteristics or anything more than the merest pretense of serving country.
To be clear, she went to A FAKE military academy. The citadel is not one of the military academy. While some people are in ROTC I don't think that's more than a quarter of the students.
Most citadel grads are nepo babies who's parents make them go because they went and grandaddy went. And then they graduate and go to work for their parent's company.
She started in the fall of 1996 and he became commandant in February of 1997. So he wasn't there when she was accepted. Of course her dad being a 1-star general I'm sure helped immensely and most likely guaranteed that she was accepted. But it's also possible that he said this before she left for her first year and he hadn't been offered the position yet( I didn't see any info on the exact timeline of his hiring, so he may or may not have been aware that he was going to take the job 6 months later)
Its not an actual military school, lol. By which I mean it has no actual connection to an actual military. "Military school" in the sense that it is has nothing to do with military service and never has.
It's a military school. It dresses up in uniforms, does drill, etc. it provides military education. The fact there is this level of misunderstanding is part of the reason I consider their institutional lack of commitment to be stolen valor.
It’s cosplay at best. Play military with little to no actual sacrifice. Meanwhile, people like me grew up poor and couldn’t afford college so we joined the actual military to pay for it.
I suppose if you wish to play word Nazi, it calls itself a "military college" these days.
The school was originally established in 1842 as the South Carolina Military Academy, but the name was legally changed by the state general assembly in 1910
The problem is not around what it calls itself, but that there exist legitimate service academies which have mandatory service obligations and much higher standards
In what way? There's plenty of non Mormons that go to BYU. Plenty of atheists in catholic school. Its a super good opportunity for the people that can get in to a military school. Sounds like you're mad at something else
In what way is going to a school that allows non military students stolen valor? I mean even in this exact instance that's got your panties all in a bunch, she claimed zero military service. Literally just a post about going to this school. You've got some real anger issues , and some other stuff
So apparently English comprehension isn't your strong suit. I get it. But cheer up. You're obviously very young, so you should have time to catch up. I did notice how you avoided the cosplay part. Is that because they words were too hard? Too many words by that point? Passive aggreement? All of the above?
Hey, I don't know who she is, so idk anything about her, but since I'm a good liberal and not a fking worthless MAGA, I'm going to give her a bit of benefit of the doubt. Maybe she did make it through without nepo'ing.
Edit: I'm not being sarcastic - the only thing that separates us from those animals in MAGA is the fact that we still have kindness. Don't let their hate infect you and assume that anyone who could have nepo'd did. They assume everyone of color is a diversity hire. Don't assume all of them are incompetent until they've proven themselves such.
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u/Fan_of_Clio 2d ago
Just another Nepo baby. Went to a military academy, where her dad was in charge, for college, but didn't join any armed service after graduation.
All talk, no follow through