Standards in Free Fall

... so if the above posts are true, 1000X SHAME on USAFA. Google Search USAFA rapes, religious intolerance, and racism... shame on the the leadership.
I'm a war college graduate 30-year vet... if I'm the commandant, I'll kick those 18-22 year old Cadets' bu++$ without leaving a derogatory remarks in their military records. For every shenanigan, I'll make the cadet dig a 4x4x4 foxhole during a downpour, 32 Fahrenheit degrees. For the 2nd shenanigan, dig two foxholes. The most arrogant cadet(s) will likely DOR..."I ain't putting up with this $h1+." Excellent! Period! All these minor violations such as uniform/haircut violations, conduct unbecoming, disrespectful to senior officers without getting check by the commandant can lead to extreme arrogance resulting in rapes, religious intolerance, and racism. The destructive immoral behaviors are observed by impressionable plebes who will emulate them.
Last Spring Semester at USNA the Commandant addressed the entire Brigade of Midshipmen about their uniform/haircut violations and football games/DTA conduct unbecoming. My DS '26 was a Plebe at that time. He was glad that the USNA Commandant told the Brigade to get squared away. Prior to this, he was telling me all the conduct violations. True he was only a Plebe, but he knew what's acceptable or not. ✝️
 
flieger83 said:
The OP is not wrong, IMHO.

I recently took my JROTC cadets to USAFA and two weeks later went back for my class reunion. My cadets commented on the "hair out of regs, uniforms not really looking good (wrinkled badly if in blues), and a lot of other things." I took a bunch of pictures of cadets and when I had a chance to speak with General Marks, I showed him my phone. He got a serious look on his face and simply said "yes, this is a problem; it's one I'm going to fix."

'Nuff said, thank you sir!"

I spoke with a senior NCO in a squadron and asked him about this. He said it's a real problem. The new grooming standards...cadets push to the limits, especially if they're not Caucasian because they are sure they won't be called out. The females push the ponytail limits, again, because they believe the males are too unsure/afraid to challenge them. This from a squadron NCO (there's the AOC and an NCO in each cadet squadron, this one was an E7). The AOC confirmed these comments. She said, "we're working on this issue, Wing wide."

Will things swing back? Oh, most likely. Until then, my class's conclusion was: "It's become Wild Blue U... a nice college in Colorado with a funny dress code."

And now I sound like one of those "old brown shoe grads..."
(Back when Dino's roamed the Terrazzo...)
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A lot of the issues (from a cadet’s perspective) come from the inconsistency we get from our Leadership. It’s been around since I got here but it’s become more apparent since our new comm came in. Things like saying we’re going to go back to how things were before Covid (limited passes for all 4 classes, CQ shifts every day), but then doing a 180 on freshman training and making it a skeleton of what it used to be. I understand that the only thing guaranteed here is change, but if every two years we change the standards, where is the continuity?

There are some issues that need some resolving, it doesn’t seem like the CW is doing enough to solve them. If it makes the grads feel any better things here are still hard. There are numerous GR’s we have to wake up for just about every other week, PE classes such as water survival eating up our precious time, and some pretty sick summer programs such as Combat Survival Training (aka SERE). Anyways I wouldn’t say standards are in free fall, that seems like a bit of a gross exaggeration. The standards are just unclear and always changing. It’s worth pointing out that this is a CW that’s been caught in the middle of many “scandals”, we lost three of our peers in the last year alone, we’ve seen a rise in reported assaults (like all other service academies), not to mention the unwanted media attention we’ve received from providing diversity and inclusion training (that in reality wasn’t that controversial). This place is still producing great officers, I’m sure if you went back 30 years ago you’d hear the same types of complaints with subtle differences to fit the time period.
 
Be advised: here comes a scorching hot take/rant. USAFA standards have been falling and if you've recently visited the wing that much is obvious. However, IMHO the core issue is with the athletic department. Recent years have seen USAFA place more and more emphasis on its D1 sports programs. A shining (and disgusting) example is that the three highest-paid individuals in the entire Department of Defense are the three Service Academy football coaches. Where are the DoD's priorities you ask? Take a look at the budget breakdown. This allocation of funds/priorities trickles down into USAFA culture. A fine example of this phenomenon is the multi-million dollar addition to our football stadium (which we were never completely filling), while the Sijan dormitory is actively falling apart. Cadets will frequently mention the "Tzo gap" which describes the growing social gap between recruited athletes and "normal" cadets. I want to be crystal clear in that I do not place the blame on the athletes. At least not on all of them. Some of my good friends are on the numerous sports teams here and their lives are significantly different than that of the normal cadets. Notice I say "different" and not "harder." I always think it's funny when people try to compare their lives and daily routines to see who has it worse because it's a fruitless argument. All of our lives are challenging in different ways, and arguing about the specifics is pointless. Back to the main issue, athletes and cadets on club teams have practice after school every day. This means that they cannot come to training sessions or DDTs that are specifically designed to develop them. For instance, this year my squadron has 28 freshmen, and there are only 4 of them not on LOS or IC status. That means that after school when we do training sessions, there are only FOUR freshmen in attendance. How are we supposed to develop the 4-degree class if I only see 4 of them at our DDTs? The result is that many 4-degrees, whether willingly or unwillingly, miss all of the heritage and military instruction that is supposed to go on during 4-degree year and carry more of a care-free attitude into their upperclassmen years. Again, this issue stems from the fact that USAFA and the DoD as a whole have drifted away from their core missions. USAFA should not be a D1 school. Our focus should be on developing officers ready to lead Airmen in the coming fight. I think the U.S. as a whole has been spoiled by the wars in the Middle East in which we suffered minimal losses and maintained air superiority for the duration of the conflict. People are not ready to see what a real fight looks like, specifically one where we're losing hundreds of people, ships, and planes per day. I can only hope that the DoD and USAFA make a massive course correction, returning to our core mission of defense before it's too late.
 
USAFA_86 said:
Be advised: here comes a scorching hot take/rant. USAFA standards have been falling and if you've recently visited the wing that much is obvious. However, IMHO the core issue is with the athletic department. Recent years have seen USAFA place more and more emphasis on its D1 sports programs. A shining (and disgusting) example is that the three highest-paid individuals in the entire Department of Defense are the three Service Academy football coaches. Where are the DoD's priorities you ask? Take a look at the budget breakdown. This allocation of funds/priorities trickles down into USAFA culture. A fine example of this phenomenon is the multi-million dollar addition to our football stadium (which we were never completely filling), while the Sijan dormitory is actively falling apart. Cadets will frequently mention the "Tzo gap" which describes the growing social gap between recruited athletes and "normal" cadets. I want to be crystal clear in that I do not place the blame on the athletes. At least not on all of them. Some of my good friends are on the numerous sports teams here and their lives are significantly different than that of the normal cadets. Notice I say "different" and not "harder." I always think it's funny when people try to compare their lives and daily routines to see who has it worse because it's a fruitless argument. All of our lives are challenging in different ways, and arguing about the specifics is pointless. Back to the main issue, athletes and cadets on club teams have practice after school every day. This means that they cannot come to training sessions or DDTs that are specifically designed to develop them. For instance, this year my squadron has 28 freshmen, and there are only 4 of them not on LOS or IC status. That means that after school when we do training sessions, there are only FOUR freshmen in attendance. How are we supposed to develop the 4-degree class if I only see 4 of them at our DDTs? The result is that many 4-degrees, whether willingly or unwillingly, miss all of the heritage and military instruction that is supposed to go on during 4-degree year and carry more of a care-free attitude into their upperclassmen years. Again, this issue stems from the fact that USAFA and the DoD as a whole have drifted away from their core missions. USAFA should not be a D1 school. Our focus should be on developing officers ready to lead Airmen in the coming fight. I think the U.S. as a whole has been spoiled by the wars in the Middle East in which we suffered minimal losses and maintained air superiority for the duration of the conflict. People are not ready to see what a real fight looks like, specifically one where we're losing hundreds of people, ships, and planes per day. I can only hope that the DoD and USAFA make a massive course correction, returning to our core mission of defense before it's too late.
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Does USNA or USMA place less emphasis on sports than USAFA?

Does USNA or USMA have the same problems described in this thread?
 
Not saying this isn't an issue at USNA but my DS (a recent graduate), as a plebe, had a uniform issue while on watch in his company area and spent four weeks doing nightly "tours" and uniform muster 5 times a day. Seemed harsh at the time but he is really grateful that he was being held to a standard and he takes that with now.
 
ChaggyC17 said:
I'm a grad and I was shocked at all the beards and unkempt uniforms. A squadronmate of mine was at his Reunion and during the football game, he went to use the restroom when a group of cadets were using profanity and acting in a less than respectable manner. Buddy said something to him and they squared up to him and told him to "F-Off." He said.."Hey..I'm a grad and a Lt Col." They told him to "F-off" and then walked away. He was simply rendered speechless.
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That is an interesting comment, especially about the manners. I have a similar perspective from seeing the classmates of our sponsored cadets and through my son. My son is an AFROTC Lt stationed near us and he has come up with 5 or 6 Lts a few times. The group is mostly Academy grads. Of the group, the Academy grads tended to be the ones with poor manners - swearing inappropriately in front of my wife and me, acting a bit pompous, telling inappropriate stories, talking loudly, etc.
(I want to add our sponsored cadets have been great, I am not trying to infer all cadets we meet are like this. And I'm sure there are arrogant, ill-mannered ROTC grads as well.)
One more example: once in a while there'll be a Lt we haven't met and we ask him where he went to college. Sometimes the reply is "oh a little college in Colorado." This burns me - come off it, we're an AF family, we live near the Academy, so just say "I went to the Academy." It really comes off as pompous, even if they don't mean it to.
As a closing general comment, I agree with people above that students everywhere try to push limits (like Paul Newma's line in Hud: "I always say the law was meant to be interpreted in a lenient manner. And that's what I try to do: sometimes I lean to one side of it, sometimes I lean to the other). And I'm okay with that. We don't want robots coming out of the Academy, but adults who can think for themselves. And cultural norms change (male cadets showing earrings at some point?). But basic manners and respect for others shouldn't be overlooked.
 
A1Janitor said:
Interesting about the little college in Colorado.

My son doesn’t say he went to USNA. When asked, he says in Maryland. USNA grads have a reputation of ring knockers where he is, and he learned quickly not to mention it.
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I can understand that. But I think if you say it politely then it doesn't come off as ring knocking.
 
USAFA_86 said:
A shining (and disgusting) example is that the three highest-paid individuals in the entire Department of Defense are the three Service Academy football coaches.
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Not sure how USAFA and for that matter, USMA are funding their sports and staffs but I do know that the USNA football coach is NOT a government employee. He is paid by the NAAA, the Naval Academy Athletic Association which is NOT funded by the government.

USAFA_86 said:
A fine example of this phenomenon is the multi-million dollar addition to our football stadium (which we were never completely filling), while the Sijan dormitory is actively falling apart.
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Again my knowledge of how it works at USNA is that Bancroft Hall is in fact a government installation and repairs are funded (or not funded) by the DoD budget. On the other hand, Navy and Marine Corps Stadium isn't on government land and is also owned by NAAA.
 
I think that the respect issue is only getting worse with the 4degs due to the way training is being run this year. The current 27ers are so much worse than I could have imagined before this year (at least in my squad). I think a large part of it is when they gutted training they didn't teach us how to effectively remediate in other ways. For upper 3, the only real way most of us know to fix an attitude is with physical training or harsher ROEs. When a lot of that was taken away this year most people are kind of just floundering when they need to correct because they either don't want to deal with punitive paperwork or straight up just don't know what to do. So training is almost completely gone and the 4degs are acting so entitled it's insane.
 
Cadets will rise to the level of expectations they are held to. Admittedly, I have high hopes that the current Comm will reign it in and the pendulum will swing in the appropriate direction. By nature, cadets will push back against the establishment. This has happened since the school opened. However, the Comm should be at liberty to remind them where they are and the level of professionalism expected of them both today @USAFA and tomorrow in the USAF.

The current Comm was the BCT commander when I was a 4* and was one super scary dude at the time. Having seen and heard the current behavior, I was excited when he was named Commandant but the initial reports are not good and I find that a bit sad.
 
shiner said:
Cadets will rise to the level of expectations they are held to. Admittedly, I have high hopes that the current Comm will reign it in and the pendulum will swing in the appropriate direction. By nature, cadets will push back against the establishment. This has happened since the school opened. However, the Comm should be at liberty to remind them where they are and the level of professionalism expected of them both today @USAFA and tomorrow in the USAF.

The current Comm was the BCT commander when I was a 4* and was one super scary dude at the time. Having seen and heard the current behavior, I was excited when he was named Commandant but the initial reports are not good and I find that a bit sad.
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Agree 100%.
 
asap.airman said:
A lot of the issues (from a cadet’s perspective) come from the inconsistency we get from our Leadership. It’s been around since I got here but it’s become more apparent since our new comm came in. Things like saying we’re going to go back to how things were before Covid (limited passes for all 4 classes, CQ shifts every day), but then doing a 180 on freshman training and making it a skeleton of what it used to be. I understand that the only thing guaranteed here is change, but if every two years we change the standards, where is the continuity?

There are some issues that need some resolving, it doesn’t seem like the CW is doing enough to solve them. If it makes the grads feel any better things here are still hard. There are numerous GR’s we have to wake up for just about every other week, PE classes such as water survival eating up our precious time, and some pretty sick summer programs such as Combat Survival Training (aka SERE). Anyways I wouldn’t say standards are in free fall, that seems like a bit of a gross exaggeration. The standards are just unclear and always changing. It’s worth pointing out that this is a CW that’s been caught in the middle of many “scandals”, we lost three of our peers in the last year alone, we’ve seen a rise in reported assaults (like all other service academies), not to mention the unwanted media attention we’ve received from providing diversity and inclusion training (that in reality wasn’t that controversial). This place is still producing great officers, I’m sure if you went back 30 years ago you’d hear the same types of complaints with subtle differences to fit the time period.
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When I see cadets having to read and sign off on every honor board, weekly, and that violators are being out processed, then I'll think things are getting back to normal.

I tossed SEVEN academy graduate lieutenants out of RTU (well, actually my boss the OG/CC did, but I reported them; I caught them!). Why? They cheated on a class test that had ZERO bearing on their training. If you busted an academic test you sat with an IP and went over it and ultimately you corrected it to 100%. DONE.

They stole the answer sheet, copied it, and when I caught them they were in a classroom passing it around.

Care to guess what happens to 2Lt's that receive a punitive Article 15 from an OG/CC and are removed from RTU?
 
Related?
nationalinterest.org

The U.S. Air Force Is in Serious Decline

The Air Force today would struggle to execute another Desert Storm, much less take on a peer adversary like China.
nationalinterest.org nationalinterest.org

Washout rates for flight schools exceeded 20 percent in the 1980s, and the bar was high for every successive school beyond. . . . In 2021, just 0.27 percent of flight school candidates were eliminated because of performance. Screening beyond flight school is effectively non-existent, even for promotions.

Every Air Force captain without legal or ethical issues has been promoted to Major since 2017, which means even poor performers graduate and advance.
* * *
At the height of the Cold War, the average fighter pilot flew more than 160 sorties/200 hours a year. In 2022, Air Force fighter pilots averaged just seventy-four sorties/129 hours a year. . . . By the service’s own definition, there isn’t a squadron in the Air Force that could be considered mission-ready.
 
shiner said:
Cadets will rise to the level of expectations they are held to. Admittedly, I have high hopes that the current Comm will reign it in and the pendulum will swing in the appropriate direction. By nature, cadets will push back against the establishment. This has happened since the school opened. However, the Comm should be at liberty to remind them where they are and the level of professionalism expected of them both today @USAFA and tomorrow in the USAF.

The current Comm was the BCT commander when I was a 4* and was one super scary dude at the time. Having seen and heard the current behavior, I was excited when he was named Commandant but the initial reports are not good and I find that a bit sad.
Click to expand...
I really do hate to say this, but the current comm has left the wing confused and demoralized. I’ve had freshman tell me they wish they had it harder like some of their upperclassmen had it. Going back to the root of this thread, “standards in free fall” you can blame us cadets all you want but the reality is we were promised a new set of regs (CS&D) by the comm early in the school year. A lot of us were eagerly waited to see how things would change, it is now December and we’ve been told they won’t be published until this spring at the earliest.

I can relate to what Shiner said, we all thought he was going to be a scary dude, I mean the guy was on the honor guard! That has not been the case so far. Every time he speaks to us he uses lots of buzz words and it becomes very hard to dissect what he’s actually trying to say. Couple that with all the other issues mentioned earlier and what you get is the current state of the wing. I personally feel like we were headed towards the right direction under the previous comm, who everyone respected. It felt like he was a modern day Robin Olds! The exact kind of guy you looked up to and wanted to impress. Those feelings have been lost with the new leadership.

Ownership of our shortcomings should be shared among cadets and leadership, but as I stated in an earlier post it hasn’t all gone down the drain. I think it’s easy to point at a few bad grads and say this place isn’t what it used to be, but it’s far more complex than any cadet/grad/parent sees at face value.
 
USAFA has a cadet cynicism problem, but it has always had one in some form or another. And it has always been blamed on the cadet, the AOC, the Comm, or the latest generation. As such, I think it should be viewed as a product of the system that is USAFA, and how it selects Comms, AOCs, and cadets. As each Comm is fed into the system every 2 years, each AOC every 2 years, and every cadet for 4 years, they fall into place and behave they way the system suggests they should. The system perpectuates itself.

Rather than blaming any one person or group, the OP should focus on understanding that this is the system, and decide how to respond. If your values, beliefs, and habits are comfortable with a stubbled face, wrinkled uniform, and disrespectful talk, then have fun blaming everyone but yourself for USAFA not living up to your high expectations before you arrived for BCT. If your values, beliefs and habits are more comfortable with continuing your past history of hard work, excelling, and achievement, then you will love USAFA because it offers so much to help you grow and stand out. Maybe you'll even inspire others to do the same. Stop thinking about others and remember you want to learn how to excel in an enviornment where your boss has things that need to be done with your help, and you will be rewarded with increasing rank and responsibility if you excel above your peers. Even if USAFA has a cynical cadet culture, it can still be a leadership laboratory.

The only other thing I will say is that in my experience, once cadets leave USAFA, many of them leave the worst of USAFA cynicism behind, and start acting like AF officers in response to AF (rather than USAFA) culture. So this is a (mostly) temporary problem. (I know, the AF has its problems too, but I am trying to isolate this discussion to the root of the problem and a workable solution for the OP).
 
I agree that the standards are slipping at USAFA and Gen Marks is doing what he can to try and fix it. However, the reason no on is willing to correct is because everything that was once considered training is now hazing. People are just letting things go out of fear of getting caught up with mal training hits. Over time it has just dominoed into people failing to correct one another. Its just apart of the culture now unfortunately.
 
asap.airman said:
I really do hate to say this, but the current comm has left the wing confused and demoralized. I’ve had freshman tell me they wish they had it harder like some of their upperclassmen had it. Going back to the root of this thread, “standards in free fall” you can blame us cadets all you want but the reality is we were promised a new set of regs (CS&D) by the comm early in the school year. A lot of us were eagerly waited to see how things would change, it is now December and we’ve been told they won’t be published until this spring at the earliest.

I can relate to what Shiner said, we all thought he was going to be a scary dude, I mean the guy was on the honor guard! That has not been the case so far. Every time he speaks to us he uses lots of buzz words and it becomes very hard to dissect what he’s actually trying to say. Couple that with all the other issues mentioned earlier and what you get is the current state of the wing. I personally feel like we were headed towards the right direction under the previous comm, who everyone respected. It felt like he was a modern day Robin Olds! The exact kind of guy you looked up to and wanted to impress. Those feelings have been lost with the new leadership.

Ownership of our shortcomings should be shared among cadets and leadership, but as I stated in an earlier post it hasn’t all gone down the drain. I think it’s easy to point at a few bad grads and say this place isn’t what it used to be, but it’s far more complex than any cadet/grad/parent sees at face value.
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I don't think its completely Gen. Marks' fault, either. I think he legitimately wanted things/traditions to go back to how they used to be. Then a Congressional report came out with the recommendation that the 4 class system that USAFA has always had needs to be changed to what USNA & USMA have. That's why the sudden change in how 4 degs are treated & trained.
 
SpiritCommitteeLiaison said:
I don't think its completely Gen. Marks' fault, either. I think he legitimately wanted things/traditions to go back to how they used to be. Then a Congressional report came out with the recommendation that the 4 class system that USAFA has always had needs to be changed to what USNA & USMA have. That's why the sudden change in how 4 degs are treated & trained.
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In general, how different are USAFA and USNA/USMA in that regard?
 
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