Lowering The Bar

Let us be clear up front. The Ranger Instructors who graded the students executed their mission as expected — objectively, professionally, and honestly. They deserve much credit for not bowing to the pressures, explicit or implicit, that were no doubt heaped upon them. By all accounts they evaluated the students fairly and when all the females failed to meet the standards, the Ranger Instructors gave them “No-Gos” — failing them. In short, they are not responsible for the lowered standard. The sole responsibility for that lies with the leadership of the ARTB, which allowed these students to continue on where it had previously dropped all others.

This article will not focus on rumors, though there are many. Havok Journal detailed a few of these recently: 
“Aside from the reports the past few months about increased sleep, the lack of “smoke sessions,” lighter packing lists, the ridiculous requirement for male candidates to assist in constructing complex “poncho shelters” over slit trenches while trying to remain tactical in a patrol base, questionable “recycle” policies, and two-star generals walking squad patrols…

Most of these claims have been debunked by leadership at the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade (ARTB). However, the ARTB response is, in at least one assertion, false as well.

In response to the claim that, “The females were afforded unprecedented recycle opportunities,” a senior officer wrote that,

The women were not afforded any advantage on recycles. They went through Darby Phase, recycled and were Darby inserts. Upon a second failure they were offered a Day 1 recycle. This means they started Day 1 and had to complete the Ranger Assessment Phase a second time. There is no advantage to this. Would any of you volunteered to go through RAP week twice and take a Day 1 recycle? Most people would not as evident by the several men who were also offered a Day 1, but declined. The Day 1 recycle precedent has been in place for many years, and is nothing new. Unless you have been part of the RTB leadership… and have sat on the academic boards you would not know how common it actually is.

This statement is misleading.

First, despite what ARTB leadership has stated — that there is no advantage to being allowed to start over at Day 1 — it is blatantly obvious that there is absolutely an advantage to allowing students an exception to the recycle policy: The students stay in the course and don’t go home. Ranger school is, like anything, imperfect and in every class a few who shouldn’t graduate slip through. Given enough chances, anyone will eventually make it through it, this is simple probabilities. That these female students were offered the opportunity to stay under conditions that had previously sent students home is undeniably an advantage. Further, many students have taken a Day 1 and gone through RAP Week twice.

Second, and more importantly, according the Brigade Standard Operating Procedures, the tome which explicitly lays out the administrative requirements and standards for Ranger School, a student who fails the same requirement twice in a single phase, as the females did, should be dropped from the course. Over the years, countless students have been dropped for precisely this reason. The author knows of no cases where any student has been allowed to stay under these circumstances. This is certainly unprecedented.

While it is true that Day 1 recycles are often given in the course, it is not for two-time failures in the same event. Students who performed this terribly in the course are told to return to their units, work on their leadership skills and return when they are ready (generally not before 6–12 months).

This time, however, a few privileged students were offered a Day 1 recycle to join the next class despite failing to advance twice in a row, in contravention of the standard.

Even the students themselves understood this standard. In a recent article, one of the graduates was quoted discussing it directly:

“‘I thought we were going to be dropped after we failed Darby [part of the Benning Phase of the course] the second time,’ Griest said at a press conference before graduation. ‘[But] We were offered a Day One Recycle.’”

And why would she think this? Because that is the standard to which students had been previously held up to this point…that is the standard that was disregarded so that she could stay in the course.

Apparently, two male students who had failed in the same manner were offered the same deal. This only demonstrates that in order to prevent the perception of privileging the female students, standards will be lowered for all students, an arguably even worse result.

And yet, the males did not accept. We will never know if they quit because they simply lacked heart…or because they had integrity. Perhaps, knowing that they didn’t meet the true standard, and as likely advised by the cadre recommending them to be dropped (students are counseled multiple times at multiple levels throughout the process), they decided to go back to their units and improve themselves and their leadership skills and return when they were truly ready to meet the standard.

What we do know is that three females, when offered a chance to meet a lower standard and get a pass where so many others had been dropped, took it wholeheartedly — proving that the claims that the female students do not want the standard to be lowered for them are demonstrable lies.

People magazine recently published an article by Susan Keating which also noted this special recycle exception. In a quick retort, the Chief of Army Public Affairs has published a statement addressing the claims made in the People article. The statement repeats the same untruth put out by ARTB, “She [Keating] claimed that women were allowed to repeat a Ranger training class until they passed, while men were held to a strict pass/fail standard. That is false.”

That is a very disingenuous and deceptive way of wording an answer. The fact that males were also held to the reduced standard does not change the fact that this class saw the standard change, it only demonstrates it. The truth is that up until the inclusion of females, the standard was one thing, and after inclusion, the standard for students of all genders has become another. Offering special treatment to students of both genders and not just one is still lowering the standard.

There are those who will point out that technically, the ARTB Commander sees all students recommended to be dropped and has final say in whether they stay or not. This is true. These people will argue that because the Brigade Commander approved the exception to precedent, the standard wasn’t violated. This is also technically true.

But whether you wish to call it precedent instead of standard, in any practical manner, previous guidelines that had been adhered to were not applied, an exception was made to how the course had formerly been operating, and a new, lower standard was set, despite how it is portrayed.

There are those who will claim that the sky hasn’t fallen, that the world hasn’t changed, that catastrophe hasn’t occurred because women graduated Ranger School and this is true. Will the Army collapse tomorrow because of it? Of course not.

But to use that to dismiss concerns about the integrity of the course and what it bodes for the Army in general is naive and shortsighted. The Army won’t collapse tomorrow, but will it weaken, slowly, almost imperceptibly over time, in the same manner that the frog boils? One might argue that it has been doing so, in certain aspects for along while already. Ranger school simply provides an example — as has already been demonstrated, the standard has indeed been lowered, not just for females, but for all students. And while declines in standards have occurred over time, we should not be adding to them, rather we should be trying to reverse them.

Because when these types of declines have happened before, they have always taken their toll in blood. Writing about one of those times, a someone once lamented of a weakened Army that, “What they lacked couldn’t be seen…not until the guns sounded.”