<p>Reining In Academy Drinking
Shore Patrol Tries to Curb Midshipmen’s Off-Campus Alcohol Excesses</p>
<p>By Ray Rivera
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 25, 2006; B01</p>
<p>It’s Tuesday night at Riordan’s Saloon, a popular hangout for U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen. They muster in their black-and-gold uniforms along the wooden bar, drawn here by $2 drafts and specials on Buffalo wings and chicken melts.</p>
<p>A few do shots: Jager Bombs are a favorite, a syrupy mixture of Jagermeister liqueur and Red Bull. Only one midshipman appears drunk: His jacket is off, his white blouse untucked. He’s thrown up once already, one of his comrades says.</p>
<p>By midnight they clear out, due back on campus before lights out.</p>
<p>The Naval Academy is unlikely to make the list of top party schools anytime soon: On a campus renowned for discipline and honor, students are held to a strict behavioral code. Only seniors are allowed to drink on academy grounds, and underage drinking can be punished with demerits, even expulsion.</p>
<p>But the academy has not escaped the problems – and tragedies – that alcohol has brought to many other campuses. Last year, a junior accidentally fell to his death from a fifth-floor dorm window after a night of drinking. Another, also intoxicated, fell and died in 2002.</p>
<p>More frequently, drinking plays a role in sexual assaults: It was a factor in two-thirds of the 45 cases The Washington Post was able to review in detail.</p>
<p>Aware of its problem, the Naval Academy started sending patrols onto Annapolis streets last fall to look for drunken midshipmen and conduct random Breathalyzer tests to ferret out underage drinkers. The academy has also launched ethics training that addresses the connections between drinking and sexual assault.</p>
<p>But the problem persists, with the rape case against Lamar S. Owens Jr., last season’s starting quarterback, as the latest example. Owens, a 22-year-old senior, and his 20-year-old accuser were both intoxicated in January when he entered her dorm room and allegedly sexually assaulted her, according to witness testimony. Evidence is still being evaluated to decide whether Owens should be tried by court-martial.</p>
<p>The case bears striking similarities to many of the those reviewed by The Post: a victim so drunk her memory is hazy; the alleged perpetrator, usually an acquaintance, insistent that the act was consensual. Investigators often cannot determine the truth: Of the 72 cases reported since 1998, only two have led to convictions.</p>
<p>The military’s rape law states that if the suspect knows the victim is drunk beyond the ability to give consent, the act is rape.</p>
<p>Even so, “when you have extraordinarily high levels of alcohol involved, you can imagine how difficult it is for a prosecutor to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that [the accused] knew the victim was so incapacitated she could not have consented,” said University of Florida law professor Diane H. Mazur, an expert in military law and a former Air Force officer.</p>
<p>The Naval Academy is hardly alone. A senior cadet at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy is facing a court-martial on charges of raping a female classmate who passed out after a night of drinking.</p>
<p>Nationally, 72 percent of sexual assaults on college women occur while they are drunk, a Harvard study of 119 colleges found. “Women who binge-drink have a higher risk of being sexually assaulted than women who don’t drink or who drink less,” said Henry Wechsler, a co-author of the study. “This is not blaming the victim; this is saying that losing control in situations that are heavily involved in alcohol is dangerous.”</p>
<p>Binge drinking is defined as five drinks in a row for men, four drinks in a row for women.</p>
<p>The message for men, said Wechsler, is “when a woman cannot consent because she’s under the influence, the effect is rape.”</p>
<p>Naval Academy officials incorporate those lessons into ethics and leadership classes and into the frequent seminars midshipmen are required to attend on sexual assault and harassment. “We talk about consent, decision analysis, how does alcohol affect your brain when you’re involved in man-and-woman relationships. What is sexual coercion?” Capt. Bruce Grooms, the school’s commandant, or dean of students, told the school’s Board of Visitors last month.</p>
<p>The midshipmen’s task on shore patrol is to peek into bars to ensure their classmates do not get so drunk that they hurt or embarrass themselves – or the academy.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, a crew escorted a drunk student back to campus. But on a recent Friday night, the shift was slow. “Not much happens, but you’re there just in case,” said Rudy Mansell, 25, a senior from Chicago.</p>
<p>Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt, the school’s superintendent since 2003, said the number of midshipmen who drink isn’t increasing, but the amount they drink is. “We have sensed the change in the last two years,” he said. “But this is not unique to the Naval Academy. This is common to all colleges and universities.”</p>
<p>Although military academies draw from the same age pool as other colleges, few campuses wield the same level of control over students. At the Naval Academy, freshmen are forbidden to drink, even if they’re older than 21, and there is no alcohol allowed in the only dorm, Bancroft Hall, or at football games, where midshipmen are “on duty” until after the game.</p>
<p>The stern regulations, however, can have a backlash. Some sexual assault victims remain silent rather than risk punishment for comparatively minor misconduct, such as drinking or attending an unsanctioned party.</p>
<p>"A lot of times, it’s not so much their alcohol use or ‘Am I going to get in trouble for drinking?,’ it’s ‘Will my friends get in trouble?’ " said Jay Michael, a senior who runs a program that assists classmates who want to report sexual assaults.</p>
<p>Academy officials offer no amnesty for these so-called collateral charges. To avoid added trauma, however, they wait to pursue such charges against a victim until at least four months after the sexual assault case concludes.</p>
<p>Defense attorneys, on the other hand, say a false charge of rape can be used to avoid punishment. They often argue that a woman who has engaged in consensual sex on campus-- strictly forbidden – cries rape to avoid expulsion.</p>
<p>Academy officials say false accusations under those circumstances occur rarely, if at all. “A lot of the time, these collateral misconduct violations would not have come out had the person not come forward with the sexual assault,” said Karen Gentile, an academy counselor.</p>
<p>Some have also suggested that the pressures of academy life and the tight controls on students might cause them to cut dangerously loose on nights off. Rempt said he has seen no evidence of that. “In fact, they’re very disciplined,” he said. “They’re top kids, they’re smart, but they’re still kids.”</p>
<p>Annapolis lawyer William Ferris, a 1970 academy graduate who has represented dozens of midshipmen, agrees. “Do I think midshipmen have more pressure on them than typical college students? Yes, I do,” Ferris said. “But is there a correlation between that and their drinking habits? I don’t see it.”</p>
<p>The Owens case has also raised the question of whether the relationship between local tavern owners and the academy has grown too cozy. At a hearing last month, Owens’s accuser and her friend, both 20 at the time of the incident, said they regularly used their own IDs to get into Annapolis bars, including the Acme Bar & Grill, where they drank heavily the night of the alleged incident.</p>
<p>“They don’t really check” IDs, the friend testified.</p>
<p>Acme owner Roy Dunshee said that is not true. In more than a decade of owning the bar, Dunshee has had only one infraction for serving a minor, despite routine police checks, according to city records.</p>
<p>He and other bar owners say that they welcome midshipmen and that as college students go, they’re well-behaved. Some owners say they take pride in catering to the young men and women who will one day serve as Navy and Marine officers, but not to the point of risking their liquor licenses.</p>
<p>“We have to be responsible, because there’s a lot on the line,” Dunshee said. “We have no interest in serving underage people, because they’re a liability in every sense of the word.”</p>