Kings Point Must Change
By Chelsea Tapper, USMMA Class of 2014
One evening during my plebe (freshman) year at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, a female first classman (senior) came to my room and asked me if I had been “sleeping around.” She was a friend, an ally, my teammate on both the Academy’s cross country and softball teams, and someone I trusted. I told her that I was not “sleeping around,” and she believed me.
The truth was that I was sleeping with one second classman (junior), and he was the only person I had slept with at Kings Point. Our relationship was technically in violation of the Academy’s rules against “fraternization,” which prohibit relationships between plebes and upper classmen, but we were never caught. He was one of the good guys at Kings Point, someone who never talked about our relationship and kept it secret for the protection of both us.
When I told my friend I was not sleeping around, she pulled out a black Sharpie marker and took me into several of the male bathrooms where she showed me graffiti written in permanent marker that said “I tapped Tapper.” My friend and I used her marker to mark over these sick messages. “I tapped Tapper” was written in countless male stalls on the entire campus, including in the academic buildings, where teachers and other Academy employees could see.
One night I asked a male classmate to escort me around the campus, and we went into male stalls all over the Academy where I again used a marker to mark over the sickening graffiti. We visited every single male stall on campus that night.
I believe there was more than one person behind this coordinated campaign of character assassination. However, I suspect it was instigated by the man who had been subjecting me to a humiliating pattern of sexual harassment and sexual assault, and he was ruining my reputation because I had attempted to report him to Academy officials.
D, the man who sexually assaulted me, was a first classman, my teammate on the cross country team and, unfortunately, also in Fifth Company with me. At practices, D would always look for opportunities to try to talk to me one-on-one. He was always showing off in front of me, trying to make himself seem way cooler than he actually was, and he would ask me endless questions about myself.
Initially, I did not have a problem with his behavior, but I soon began to realize that he was trying to pursue a physical relationship with me. But I had no interest in any kind of relationship with D. When I began making it clear to him that I had no interest in him, he became mean and abusive and cruel. He came off like the kind of man who cannot handle the word “No,” especially when it came from a female plebe.
At first it was verbal harassment, but his behavior quickly escalated beyond verbal harassment to physical intimidation and assault. One day during Cross Country practice, our team was in the weight room and I was put in D’s group. I was bench pressing under a squat rack, and D was supposed to be standing behind me and spotting me. He instead decided that was the perfect time to reach up above the bench, grab the pull-up bar at the top of the squat rack, and start doing pull ups directly over my face. Every time his arms were fully extended, his crotch lowered down only inches from my face. I stopped benching, stood up, and looked around the weight room in shock. No one noticed, and he was getting away with this behavior in a room full of people.
After that incident, I began to intentionally keep my distance from D, which is difficult at a small school like Kings Point, especially when we were both on the cross country team and both living in the same company. At Kings Point plebes are generally not allowed to leave the campus, and it feels like a minimum security prison. To enforce these regulations, the administration sends midshipmen officers around at night to make sure that no one has left on unapproved liberty. Kings Point actually allowed male students to enter the bedrooms of women late at night to check to see if they were in their beds or not. This is what Kings Point thought was normal and acceptable.
D was a midshipman officer, and one night he was in charge of performing bunk checks for our company. It was around midnight, and my two roommates and I were in our respective beds, simply talking and having a good time. We could hear D coming around doing bunk checks, and we could hear him knocking on every door before entering, but when D came to our room he very aggressively kicked our door. The noise was terrifying because it was completely unexpected. We were all awake, but once he opened the door and came inside we pretended to be asleep. D entered the room and approached my roommate’s bed. When he reached her bed he put his face within two feet of her and just stared at her without saying anything. This incident showed how willing he was to abuse the power this Academy gave him.
Around this time, we had an out of town Cross Country meet, and I had to ride to and from the meet on the same bus with D. After the meet our team was getting back on the bus, and D was sitting near the front of the bus. As I entered the bus and attempted to walk past his seat towards the back of the bus, D reached out and grabbed my left hand, pulled my hand down and forcefully placed it on his penis. He pulled my arm with such force that I actually fell down to the ground. I was in shock, not only because he did something disgusting to me again, but because he did it in another public place with people all around us.
This was the last straw for me. I eventually went to the Fifth Company’s Company Officer, CDR David Mund, and told him about all of the things D had done to me. Commander Mund did nothing to help me. I told other “higher ups” at the Academy, but no one believed me, no one cared, and no one did a single thing about it.
I did not tell a single family member or friend outside of Kings Point about any of this. My mom believed Kings Point was the best thing ever to happen to me, and I did not want her opinion of Kings Point to be tarnished. I also did not want my family members and friends to worry about me and my safety while I was in college. I did not want to be a burden on anyone. Even though I was young, I was an extremely independent person and I believed I could handle the situation on my own.
As I asked around trying to get someone at the school to help me, someone told me that the Company Officer of First Company, an Academy official named LCDR Eddie Ragin, believed female accusations of sexual assault and would protect women, but always with strings attached. I did not care about the strings. I needed to get away from D and out of Fifth Company where he had me trapped. I went to speak with LCDR Ragin, and he believed me. LCDR Ragin asked me to write up a report listing out all of the incidents of sexual harassment and assault involving D, which I did. LCDR Ragin then maneuvered to have me removed from Fifth Company and transferred into First Company, the company he was in charge of.
When I transferred out of Fifth Company, D knew something was up. Somehow, he found out about the incident report I was putting together at the request of LCDR Ragin, and he convinced K, my female Team Leader and teammate, to get a copy of it for him. K came to me and asked me for a copy of the incident report. She told me that she wanted to help me with my situation and that she would proofread the statement for me. Naively, I gave her a copy. I had no idea that was a lie. I had no idea she would give that copy to D. I thought she was a friend who wanted to help me.
I had also told both of my Cross Country coaches about what D was doing to me. The two coaches scheduled a meeting for the four of us to meet and talk things through. Even though D was the perpetrator, the coaches empowered him by allowing him to notify me via email about when and where the meeting would take place.
I knew the meeting would take place soon, but I did not know exactly when, so for days I was constantly checking my email. On the day of the meeting, I had to muster for lunch, so I checked my email on my laptop in my room right before lunch muster. There were no new emails. When I arrived in Delano Hall for lunch, I saw D leaving Delano without eating. I knew that something was up. I went back to my room as quickly as possible to check my email again.
Since I was a plebe, I had to “square” my way back to my room. Plebes were required to walk six inches away from the starboard bulkhead at all times, and to always “give way” to upperclassmen. When I came to a corner where two walls met, I had to “square the corner,” by coming to the position of attention before pivoting both feet 90 degrees in the direction of the turn. A gradual, rounded turn across the middle of the hallway like a normal human, or like an upperclassman, was not permitted.
This is how much power I had. I was nothing, so I just squared my way back to my room as quickly as I could, checked my email, and of course, there was the email from D regarding the meeting that I was now already ten minutes late for. He had purposely sent the email while I was at lunch muster, only minutes before the scheduled time, knowing I would not check my email again until after lunch, which would be at least 30 minutes later.
So off I went, squaring my little plebe self to the coaches’ office as quickly as I could. When I arrived, I was 20 minutes late. I stupidly never told the coaches why I was late. I simply played along with D’s game. At this meeting I learned that my “friend” K, who had offered to help me with the report, had actually given a copy of my report to D. He had been able to use this report to prepare a flawless explanation for every single incident I had written about. The meeting went absolutely nowhere, and nothing was done. The coaches did not believe me, and D got away with it all.
Before this meeting, a female first classman had asked me if I wanted her to attend the meeting with me, and I will forever regret telling her no. I truly believe things would have ended differently if she had been there because she knew everything that D had put me through, and she believed and supported me. Her presence at the meeting would have given me the extra confidence I needed to speak up for myself against D. I was an independent person, so I never thought I needed people standing behind me. I naively believed that the truth was enough.
After the meeting, I quit the Cross Country team, but the Head Coach, Gregory Lott, guilted me into returning by telling me that the team needed me—a female body—so that the team could meet the gender diversity numbers required to compete in athletic events. I am an extremely loyal person and I hate disappointing others, so I returned to the team, but nothing about the situation improved. In fact, things only got worse.
During the second Regimental rotation, D was promoted to Fifth Company Commander, the midshipman leader of an entire company. He was approved for that position by CDR Mund, the man to whom I originally reported D’s behavior. He apparently did not think what he had done to me disqualified D from becoming a high ranking midshipman officer.
Once D gained more power, he was determined to use his power to get revenge on me for having the audacity and strength to report him. One of the things he did was instruct his friends and fellow Regimental officers to file bogus regimental disciplinary reports against me. I was “stuck” (put on disciplinary report) with a Class One for disrespecting a midshipman officer (D’s friend), and I was stuck on another occasion with a Class One for disobeying another midshipman officer (also D’s friend). Each of these sticks would at a minimum have required me to be restricted to the Academy for 12 weeks and to complete 100 hours of extra duty, and cumulatively they had the potential to get me kicked out of the school. These sticks were completely and utterly fabricated by men abusing the power the Academy had given them to harass and destroy me.
Thankfully, LCDR Ragin was my Company Officer and he knew that the sticks were bogus. He made these sticks go away, but without him I would have been sunk. D had set off on a coordinated campaign to destroy my reputation and my life. D and his minions harassed me and spread malicious and completely false rumors about me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Our plebe class was “recognized” in April 2011 as members of the regiment, and after recognition the fraternization rule was no longer enforced. I began dating a first classman and he took me on the “Senior Cruise,” a major event for midshipmen at the end of their last year at the Academy. After the cruise we went to a bar in Manhattan. I was 19 years old at the time. In New York City, you are legally allowed to enter a bar under the age of 21 as long as that bar serves food, which this bar did. When we got into the bar, I saw D was also there. I told my then boyfriend that I did not want to be around D and that I wanted to leave, but he refused to leave.
Even though the seniors were days away from graduating, I knew D would do anything and everything in his power to try to screw me over one last time with a Class One alcohol offense. Therefore, I had everyone in my group take a sip of my drink to confirm it was just Pepsi and that I was not drinking alcohol. D walked past me once at the bar and I kept my eye on him the whole time. Then I saw him walk past me again. I took my eye off of him for a second, and when I did, he dumped an entire glass of beer on my face. There were many witnesses to this incident. I was enraged, and I tried to go after him, but one of the females I was present with held me back. I left the bar and called my brother who lived in Brooklyn at the time. My brother arrived and then drove me back to Kings Point. My dress was soaked and reeked of beer.
D had publicly humiliated me and assaulted me one final time and his destruction of my reputation was permanent. Even though I did not sleep around, everyone thought I did because of D’s slander, and that tarnished reputation would follow me through my four years at Kings Point.
After Plebe year I was assigned to a ship and began my Sea Year. I had a great Sea Year and I loved every second of it. I was on four ships as both a deck and an engine cadet, and the only inappropriate thing that happened to me was when an older unlicensed male crewmember slid a note under my door. The note said he had noticed me and would like to get to know me more, and asked if he could take me out when we got to port. I told him I was not interested, and he was offended, but he left me alone.
My sea year experience was definitely better for me personally than being at Kings Point. However, I know of horror stories from females who had a much worse time out at sea than at Kings Point. It is unfortunately simply the luck of the draw.
After I finished my sea time I returned to the Academy for my senior year and that year turned out to be my worst year at Kings Point. There was a female classmate who was a bully and she did not like me. She came from a family of prominent Kings Pointers and I supposed she believed she was special, or needed someone to put down to make herself feel special. During my senior year she began to bully me for no other reason than that she did not like me, and roughly a dozen of my own classmates joined her.
These bullies spread vicious and false rumors about me. As they walked past my room, this gang of bullies would kick and bang on my door for no reason. These things happened multiple times a day for months and it was both women and men participating in this behavior. They would walk by my room and erase the things I had written on the whiteboard outside of my room. They would rip down my class schedule posted outside my room over and over again. When I passed the USCG license exam, they ripped down the triumphant sign on my door that said “Last Line.”
I never reported any of the bullying because absolutely nothing would have happened to them. In my time at Kings Point, the Academy never handled a single rape or sexual assault correctly, nevermind a case of mere bullying. I would have been laughed at if I tried reporting the constant bullying to someone. And yet it was horrible, and it made my life an absolute hell. The bullying was so constant and inescapable that I can honestly say without hesitation that my senior year was even worse than my plebe year.
These were not the only incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault I endured while at Kings Point, however, for editorial reasons, it was decided to leave other serious incidents out of this article.
In 2016, I was contacted by a journalist for Newsday who asked me if I would be interested in discussing my experiences with sexual harassment and sexual assault at Kings Point. This journalist had received my name and contact information from a future 2017 graduate who knew about my experiences. After the Newsday article came out there were people who accused me of doing it for money or to get attention, but there was only one reason I participated in that article and only one reason I am telling my story now: because I want the females who come to the Academy after me to avoid the same horrible experiences that I had suffered.
I refused to read the comments people were writing about me in the Newsday article. However, even though I did not read the comments, I was told by a friend that there were people saying horrible, untrue things about me. Another female from the Kings Point Class of 2013 was in a 2016 article in the Washington Post that detailed a sexual assault she experienced during Sea Year, a story she was brave enough to tell publicly. I read the comments people were writing about her on social media and on the newspaper’s website. They were absolutely disgusting. These people were discrediting her as if they had been in the taxi with her while she was being assaulted by the ship’s chief mate.
Another unfortunate incident was the Sea Year “stand down.” The female midshipmen at the Academy at that time were attacked left and right for the stand down, as if the stand down was personally their fault. These females were even being attacked by the mothers of the male midshipmen! It is a never-ending cycle of it always being the female’s fault. At this Academy and in this backwards industry, the females will always be blamed.
In the infamous Washington Post article, Charles Hill, former head of the school’s national alumni foundation, was quoted as saying, “The sexual harassment issue has been around for years, why cancel the sea year now? I have never talked to anybody who told me they were sexually assaulted at Kings Point.” Hill is only one of numerous high profile Academy alumni who have chosen to believe that sexual assault at Kings Point or at sea simply does not exist.
I am currently pregnant with my first child, a girl. I am completely terrified of the world I am bringing her into. Everything that happened to me when I was in college is water under the bridge, but I know I could not handle the same things happening to my daughter. I would rather it happen to me again than for it to happen to her. It seems that a majority of the women I know have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. I would guess that seven out of every ten female Kings Point graduates will have been the victim of at least one very bad experience by the time they walk out of the Academy gates after graduation.
Although I am grateful for the life I now have, which is largely due to graduating from Kings Point, my four-year experience at the Academy was miserable. Sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, and bullying are huge issues at Kings Point. Verbal and physical assaults are happening regularly, and the reporting system is not designed to protect the victim. This needs to change and this needs to change now.
I want equality on the Kings Point campus and in the broader maritime industry. I do not want females to have to fear the possibility of being sexually harassed or assaulted on campus or to fear reporting this conduct. I want sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape to end, I want victims to be treated fairly and not be re-victimized by the reporting system and I want the perpetrators to be held accountable and to be severely punished.
These unfortunate incidents not only happen, but happen often.
Recognize reality, and believe the victim.
—Chelsea Tapper, USMMA Class of 2014