Team Whitewash reports

The lack of urgency in the U.S. Air Force Academy's report on its "religious climate" explains how obvious acts of religious bias and intolerance have gone unchecked.

Cadets were encouraged to pray for and proselytize those who did not worship. A senior Air Force leader who led cadets in a "Jesus Rocks!" cheer at a voluntary Christian retreat continued to do so later among cadets of mixed faiths. Bible verses were appended to e-mail messages that Air Force administrators sent to cadets. The football coach hung a "Team Jesus" banner in the locker room. Kosher meals were not always available for Jewish cadets during religious observances. An atheist described being placed in "Heathen Flight," the nickname for the group of cadets who were escorted back to their rooms because they chose not to attend an evening service.

The 100-page, June 22 report documents dozens of complaints, including concerns by a visiting Yale Divinity School professor of "stridently Evangelical themes," but denies any "overt religious discrimination." The report downplays the acts as though the "roughly 13 people" who reported them over four years were just a handful of overly sensitive -- instead of justly offended -- cadets, recent graduates, faculty and staff. The report attempts to distinguish between "a perception of intolerance" and actual intolerance. Those who complained perceived intolerance because they received intolerance.

The offensive expressions, as the report described, were merely from the "well-intentioned" who suffer simply from a "lack of awareness that their position as instructors and government officials made these expressions inappropriate in a particular setting." The religious bias, like the much-documented gender bias, will continue as long as Air Force officials excuse it.

Training programs started late last year. A few incidents of religious slurs and other disparaging acts are being investigated. Investigators said surveys and interviews with cadets "indicate the environment has improved over the last two years." A team that visited the Colorado Springs, Colo., campus in December "validated that there was evidence of some inter-religious insensitivity/intolerance among cadets," the report said, "... but that the intolerance did not appear to rise to the level of 'rampant discrimination' or a 'crisis.' " The report's attempts to minimize the disrespect confirm otherwise.