US Coast Guard Academy works to change its culture following sexual abuse and harassment scandal

NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — The grueling basic training for fledgling cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, known as swab summer, has been revamped this year in light of a sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the prestigious service academy.

Gone is the shock-and-awe on Day 1 of the seven-week boot camp when rising juniors, known as cadre, shout in the faces of the roughly 300 incoming freshmen students when they first arrive at the New London, Connecticut, campus for future U.S. Coast Guard officers. This year, the cadre read forcefully from a prepared script, avoiding improvisation and yelling.

The goal is to drain the adrenaline of the cadre and make the boot camp more about mentorship and respect than browbeating and bullying, hopefully creating a positive ripple effect throughout the Coast Guard.

“When you don’t have a script, you end up just resorting to volume,” said retired Cmdr. John Heller, the deputy commandant of cadets for strategy and leadership, who has worked at the academy in various roles for about 25 years and helped to oversee the latest changes mirrored after the U.S. Military Academy’s cadet training. “What ends up happening is, we had been onboarding our cadets for decades, unintentionally perhaps, in a climate of fear and intimidation.”

Changing the climate of swab summer is one of seven actions the academy was instructed to take following revelations the Coast Guard kept secret a probe called Operation Fouled Anchor. The investigation found that dozens of sexual assault and harassment cases involving cadets from 1990 to 2006 had been mishandled by the school, including the prevention of some perpetrators from being prosecuted.