Congressional nominations at USCGA

rjb

rjb

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https://ctmirror.org/2019/07/01/key...-minority-recruitment-at-coast-guard-academy/

I don't think Congressional nominations are the answer.

The reason USCGA does not require a congressional nomination is due to the fervent objections of Captain John A. Henriques, the first Superintendent of the Revenue Cutter School of Instruction (later the Revenue Cutter Academy). His objection stemmed from years of poor political appointments in the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service's bureaucracy.
 
This appears to be nothing more than another political "power grab". IMHO the USCG admissions policy, whether it be for enlisted or officer has worked perfectly fine for years. This looks like another was for politicians to weld power and do favors, and NOT to find the best and most highly qualified personnel for the CG. The CG is probably the one service that never has shortages of candidates, and those candidates come from all ethnicities and races, so to have a Congressman or Congresswoman start meddling in a system that works really well is a mess. Don't fix something that isn't broken. The CG already recruits minorities into enlisted ranks via aggressive efforts by recruiters, many of whom are minorities, and via the college and Academy ranks by the CSPI and CSPI-Loan Repayment Programs as well as MARGRAD, and actively seeking to appoint as many highly qualified diversified candidates as possible, congressional intervention and "principle" NOMS guaranteeing appointment is asking for trouble. The CG is under DHS and NOT DOD for a reason, all Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers are Federal Law Enforcement Officers and do narcotics enforcement, migrant interdiction, and fisheries enforcement. These areas are ripe with opportunities for problems with bribes or monetary pressure and you want the same standards that other Federal Law Enforcement agencies use, not having some politico appointing people they know little about.

This very much reminds me of the Federal Congressional Order that ultimately resulted in the City of Miami FL being required under "affirmative action" to hire a "boatload" of unqualified minorities just because someone thought they should have diversity back in the 1970's. Bad idea....led to the infamous "Miami River Cops" scandal where hundreds of members of the Department were convicted of international drug smuggling on a huge scale, simply because the Department did not have the ability to say no because not enough highly qualified candidates were available. The CG is unique in its' Law Enforcement Mission and basing recruitment whether it be enlisted personnel or officers on a "need for diversity" is scary. I witnessed first hand (had left the service a year earlier in the same town) the effects of having to hire people that either did not really want to be there or did not have the ethics to do the job. A four man USCG Fast Coastal Interceptor crew thought they would make some extra money and the ONLY reason they got caught is one of the crews wives attempted to sell the coke to an undercover FBI agent up north.
 
So it’s ok for officers in non-law enforcement services to be nominated but not CG? Plenty of opportunities for people of bad character in all services to take advantage of the system for their benefit. Can you describe more about why the CG mission is so different? This is an honest question as my experience is only in and around the AF.

The other academies essentially provide oversight of congressional nominations through their application and admission process...so unqualified people can’t automatically enter just because they were nominated.

I have issues with the congressional nomination process but I don’t see how the CGA has any special reason to have a different method. I actually would prefer all academies to have a mix of nomination sources, maybe 50% Congress and 50% other.

As far as your story about scandal resulting from affirmative action, there has been plenty of scandal in the uniform services from all different sources and all different levels.
 
MKlap said:
So it’s ok for officers in non-law enforcement services to be nominated but not CG? Plenty of opportunities for people of bad character in all services to take advantage of the system for their benefit. Can you describe more about why the CG mission is so different? This is an honest question as my experience is only in and around the AF.

The other academies essentially provide oversight of congressional nominations through their application and admission process...so unqualified people can’t automatically enter just because they were nominated.

I have issues with the congressional nomination process but I don’t see how the CGA has any special reason to have a different method. I actually would prefer all academies to have a mix of nomination sources, maybe 50% Congress and 50% other.

As far as your story about scandal resulting from affirmative action, there has been plenty of scandal in the uniform services from all different sources and all different levels.
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A typical class at USCGA is 280 - that makes it pretty hard to have congressional nominations where you have more than 400 congressmen and 100 senators. Also, the CG has much more regional interest than other branches - every state is not represented in each incoming class. Because of its size and need to fill so many different roles - (athletes, band, other special interests) and in order to maintain their status as the most diverse academy (the other academies aren't even close), CGA needs to be able to handpick their entering class each year.

The other academies are already 50% congress and 50% other. About 550 in each class come from congressional and senatorial slates. The remainder come from presidential, VP and superintendent's nominations, which are controlled by the academies and allow them to fill out the class as they see fit.
 
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I agree with what @Korab says, the size or the CG makes it difficult to use MOC's NOM's. The limitations of it's very being as to structure and mission is different from ANY other service, and its budget is reflective of being the smallest service. Having small class sizes at the Academy and having to appoint even 100 Senatorial Nominees every year would absolutely restrict the CG's ability to do it's missions as that would be 1/3 of every class mandated by the Senate and not necessarily meeting CG billet requirements, and if the CG is unable to recruit or Commission people in the fields they need their overall performance of their missions would be adversely affected.

Many CG units have NO Officers, by the very nature of their jobs or crew. If you were to place an Ensign or LTJG in charge of every Patrol Boat, ATON Team, or small SAR station, even then you would not find enough billets to accommodate the number of new Officers every year that would graduate. I cannot speak to the number of Officers on AD in the CG at one point, but since a lot of them are Direct Commission (engineers, lawyers, and medical) unless you want to fund grad school directly out of the Academy you would need a really big infusion of money to pay for buildings, staff, training, and pay for undergraduate education and then graduate education that is currently filled by Direct COmmission without cost to the CG.

Unless major "structural" changes were to occur within the CG, there just isn't enough billets for even 500 new graduates every year, unless 40% of the graduating class was satisfied with being administrative officers for their whole career. The reason for that is currently EVERY graduate of OCS and the Academy goes "operational" (to learn their trade) out of the Academy (the exception is flight school where directly after school they go operational) for at least one full tour, to learn navigation and law enforcement, aids to navigation, or search and rescue. If an officer does not get that initial qualifications it is virtually impossible to take a LT or LT Commander and begin to train them, the rank structure would cause a problem (an Ensign or BMC training an O-4).
 
Thanks for your thoughts on the structural differences with the CGA. It definitely seems like the population is already diverse without congressional involvement, maybe concerns from congress could be resolved with more education about how candidates are chosen. I could also see a scenario where the size of the cadet population is kept the same but some percentage are selected from a congressionally chosen pool.

You mentioned both higher regional interest and athletics. One issue could be the lack of recruitment availability outside of the region, presumably due to budget constraints. I’ve heard of athletes being interested but living in areas too far away to be effectively recruited. The other academies have resources to recruit nationally so their teams seem to represent more states. If an athlete from far away can’t afford to attend sports camp on site, they may not ever get seen by coaches.

The previous post about scandal, unqualified candidates, and “affirmative action” was surprising to me. The idea that other academies are forced to accept unqualified candidates and that their missions don’t demand the same character of person doesn’t fit with my experiences.
 
Does anyone know the history of when West Point and Annapolis started requiring nominations? For some reason I was thinking this was fall out from the civil war where the southern states were concerned both about who would be accepted.
 
See the footnotes on Page 1, dates are mentioned:
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33213.pdf


Mods: Since the report at the link above is a 2017 Congressional report prepared by the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, I nominate (!) it for consideration as a Stickie in the Nominations forum.
 
IMO congressional nominationshsould be removed as a requirement from all service academies. There is an extremely small chance that the person giving the nomination has any first hand knowledge whatsoever of the candidate. So they add no value.
 
I think the past benefit of the nomination process was to ensure nationwide representation. Currently, in more competitive districts it acts as an initial check to reduce the candidate pool. Since the nomination standards are set by the academies, it may make more sense to have the academies ensure to fill slots according to congressional seating instead of making the applicant go through the extra step of applying for a nomination. Many of the volunteer review boards that representatives and senators use already have a strong relationship with the academy and only forward candidates that the academy would want. On the other hand, some districts have so little interest that all applicants are nominated despite the fact that they have no chance in meeting the academy's minimum requirements. Many of these applicants who receive these "participation trophy" nominations do not understand the process and do not understand why the did not receive an appointment. It is not politically smart for a MOC to not use all ten of there nominations. Why risk annoying a constituent?
 
MKlap said:
You mentioned both higher regional interest and athletics. One issue could be the lack of recruitment availability outside of the region, presumably due to budget constraints. I’ve heard of athletes being interested but living in areas too far away to be effectively recruited. The other academies have resources to recruit nationally so their teams seem to represent more states. If an athlete from far away can’t afford to attend sports camp on site, they may not ever get seen by coaches.
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As for athletic recruitment, I don't think CGA is any different than any other school - they are D3, not D1, so they they don't have an unlimited budget, but I know many of the coaches travel to scout players. As a service academy, there is also a significant percentage of athletes that won't consider them. Despite this, CGA is generally competitive in athletics, and getting more competitive all the time - they had their highest Learfield score ever this year (http://www.uscgasports.com/general/2018-19/releases/20190614ij16oo).

Coaches generally go to events or watch video - CGA is too small to host showcases and scout for athletes on site, and they can't control the level of competition. If an athlete feels they are too far from CGA to be recruited that is their perception, not reality. There are plenty of west coast kids competing for CGA. When I was talking about regional awareness, I was referring to the middle of the country. I don't think CGA is high on the list for many kids in Nebraska - no coast, no Coast Guard.
 
Nominations are just power grabs by MOCs who never get into the weeds of an application anyway. It offers no benefit to the academies, and no benefits to the country. The only thing nominations to is limit the academies in accepting the best qualified applicants. That’s it.
 
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I’m always amazed where I find CG. West Virginia, some interesting commands. Major navigable river cities, Great Lakes. But agreed - smaller presences and overall visibility, compared to, say, Ft. Hood.

Back to thread topic.
 
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LineInTheSand said:
Nominations are just power grabs by MOCs who never get into the weeds of an application anyway. It offers no benefit to the academies, and no benefits to the country. The only thing nominations to is limit the academies in accepting the best qualified applicants. That’s it
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I agree with LITS and others that the Coast Guard is best served without adding congressional nominations to the admissions process. The size of the USCGA class just prohibits it.

However, I support the nomination process for at least USMA, USNA and USAFA (USMMA could be debatable). The law requiring nominations ensures geographic diversity, which builds an officer corps that represents the whole of the country. Elimination of the requirement could skew the military leadership toward the most populous, or wealthiest regions.

The Constitution was written to create representation from the entire nation. I believe that our military benefits similarly from the congressional nomination requirement
 
I’d like the principal nom thing to go away. No disrespect intended to the many SAF members who sit on elected rep nom boards. I think the elected rep can pull together a great slate, ranked or unranked, but then let the SA pick the best matches for their current needs without the constraint of the principal.

Back to CGA discussion. Sorry.
 
Interesting article. This isn't so much about Congressional noms as it is about the CGA addressing their Congressional overseer's concerns about the number of black students admitted, graduated, and the climate for them while at the Academy. It appears that the noms is simply their way of saying if you don't fix it, we'll fix it for you ,and you may not like the way we chose to do it.
 
I would be pained to learn that the CGA or the USCG as a whole had racial issues. It was, when I was in, never who your were as to male/female, black/white, BM or MK, or any other "identifier", but ALL about HOW YOUR PERFORMED! When your life depends on someone else almost daily, you cannot have bias or problems with ANYONE, you just need to insure they can do their job 150%! You were family...….and family looks out for each other, I never heard of or experienced ANY TYPE OF DISCRIMINATION, and if it occurs now, I would feel betrayed and want those who caused such a problem to be handled appropriately.
 
Impulsive said:
I would be pained to learn that the CGA or the USCG as a whole had racial issues. It was, when I was in, never who your were as to male/female, black/white, BM or MK, or any other "identifier", but ALL about HOW YOUR PERFORMED! When your life depends on someone else almost daily, you cannot have bias or problems with ANYONE, you just need to insure they can do their job 150%! You were family...….and family looks out for each other, I never heard of or experienced ANY TYPE OF DISCRIMINATION, and if it occurs now, I would feel betrayed and want those who caused such a problem to be handled appropriately.
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Well said!
 
Impulsive said:
I would be pained to learn that the CGA or the USCG as a whole had racial issues. It was, when I was in, never who your were as to male/female, black/white, BM or MK, or any other "identifier", but ALL about HOW YOUR PERFORMED! When your life depends on someone else almost daily, you cannot have bias or problems with ANYONE, you just need to insure they can do their job 150%! You were family...….and family looks out for each other, I never heard of or experienced ANY TYPE OF DISCRIMINATION, and if it occurs now, I would feel betrayed and want those who caused such a problem to be handled appropriately.
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Are you a white male? I have no CG experience, but have found that those in the majority don’t always pick up on bias and discrimination that others must overcome. I’m not judging your experience, just encouraging you to acknowledge that you might not be aware of some obstacles that other groups face.
 
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