Word: messer
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...will be interesting to see what Poole chooses to tell those alums. For until state and federal authorities complete their criminal investigation, it will remain unclear exactly how and why the new system fell apart so fast. Mentavlos and Messer, two of the four women who entered the Citadel last August after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public, male-only military academies were unconstitutional, claim that they were assaulted and sexually harassed. Despite a careful, court-approved assimilation plan intended to ensure the women's safety, Messer and Mentavlos say that fingernail polish was smeared on them and ignited...
From the point of view of Mentavlos and Messer, though, this is too little, too late. The Citadel fought a long and bitter battle against coeducation, with cadets sending up a great cheer of victory when Shannon Faulkner, the first female entrant, left campus in 1995 after only six days. And this entrenched attachment to its all-male traditions may have helped foster a belief on campus that hostility toward the new female knobs--as Citadel freshmen are called--would be tolerated, or at least overlooked, by the administration. For coeducation to work, more than a written plan was needed...
...insist they were monitoring the progress of the young women. Regimental Commander Bryant Butler says he takes what happened "very personally." The highest-ranking student, Butler spent hours working on the assimilation plan, which included a female-friendly chain of command to help with any concerns. According to Butler, Messer and Mentavlos did apparently use those channels--but then stopped. When a female supervisor checked in with them right before Thanksgiving and asked them if they had been experiencing any problems, they replied no, both Poole and Butler claim. "I don't understand why all of a sudden they chose...
Some students on campus also question Messer's and Mentavlos' accounts, pointing out that Nancy Mace and Petra Lovetinska, the two other female knobs, are doing well. These people argue that the hazing was not about gender but about perceived weakness, especially as two males were being hazed at the same time; and of the 581 entering freshmen, 81 so far have dropped out. "Because it happened to others doesn't make it right," responds Mentavlos' lawyer, Timothy Kulp, who says his current bedside reading includes both The Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy's famous novel about hazing...
Nevertheless, talk on campus persists that Messer and Mentavlos were not making the cut, while cadets commonly use superlatives when talking about Mace and Lovetinska. Says Brett Strand, a junior: "I've heard it from more than one person, they're some of the best knobs we've ever had." But Gibson insists that his client, Messer, a member of ROTC in high school, was as tough as they come. Adds Kulp: "Were this a situation where after the first week [Mentavlos] was calling it quits, as did a number of male cadets, maybe that might be worthy of analysis...