The nation’s maritime academies have served as the bedrocks of deck and engine officer training for many years.
The list is comprised of the federal U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at King’s Point, N.Y., as well as six state academies: State University of New York Maritime College at Fort Schuyler, N.Y.; Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, Mich.; Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine; Massachusetts Maritime Academy at Buzzards Bay, Mass.; Texas A&M Maritime Academy in Galveston, Texas; and my alma mater, California State University Maritime Academy in Vallejo, Calif.
Like my classmates and those who graduated before us, when I began my career at Cal Maritime in the 1980s, my focus was on the professional aspects of what I needed to learn to graduate and earn my license as an officer in the merchant marine.
Things like sexual harassment and assault, hate crimes and gender discrimination simply weren’t part of our education.
Times have indeed changed and today, largely because of a piece of legislation called the Clery Act, every administrator, teacher and cadet at the federal and state level needs to be very familiar with what those terms mean.
The Clery Act, established in 1990 and signed by President George H.W. Bush, was named after a 19-year-old Lehigh University student who was assaulted and murdered in 1986 — a tragedy that was one of 38 reported violent crimes that occurred at the school in the three years prior to her death.
The act applies nationwide to colleges and universities receiving federal financial aid, a purview that includes both the federal and state maritime academies. It mandates that when a student is sexually assaulted, harassed or attacked, that individual should inform campus security, and the incident must be entered into the school’s crime log within two days.
Every reported incident must also be included in an Annual Campus Security Report to be published each year by Oct. 1 and made available to the public. Any college or university ignoring those rules can be fined $67,544 for every offense that isn’t reported promptly and recorded properly. In addition, the offending school can have its federal financial support cut — a penalty that would likely close the doors at any maritime academy found to have a longstanding pattern of willful violations of the act.
While, in my opinion, the Clery Act has gone a long way toward reducing sexual assault and harassment on U.S. college, university and maritime academy campuses, serious shortcomings remain.
For example, a number of schools haven’t always followed all mandates laid out in the Clery Act or been fined when they were found in violation of the law. Also, since every one of the 50 states has its own legal definition of what constitutes sexual assault and harassment, inaccurate or misleading data reporting is the norm, as the Clery Act is based on federal definitions of those acts.
Thirdly, there have been accounts of colleges questioning or even ignoring complaints made by students so they wouldn’t be included in any official crime reports, something which some cadets at Cal Maritime have recently claimed. In late 2021, dozens of students at the school openly protested that sexual harassment and misconduct and even rape have been happening on campus and on the training ship Golden Bear and that the academy administration officials have been turning a blind eye for years.
While the federal government only occasionally conducts a general “review” of a college or university’s Clery Act procedures, some state audits of universities have been shown to be very effective in pointing out serious omissions.
For example, in 2022, the Massachusetts state auditor performed an audit of Mass Maritime to see if it was complying with requirements stipulated in the Clery Act. It showed that from 2017-2020, various criminal offenses, acts of violence against women and certain hate crimes were not even recorded.
In addition, a complete and current crime log hadn’t been maintained, and a large percentage of new students and faculty members had not received the hate crime and sexual assault training they were supposed to in accordance with the law.
The federal maritime academy at King’s Point has not enforced its obligations either. From 2019-2021, 26 sexual assault cases were reported, the vast majority of which were perpetrated by one cadet on another. An assessment released at the end of 2021 by the U.S. Maritime Administration (MarAd), which oversees the operation of the academy, stated that “USMMA has long struggled to manage sexual assault and sexual harassment issues.”
Consequently, MarAd announced a number of new changes at the school to reinforce its “no tolerance” policy regarding such crimes, including improved training, increased prevention measures and expulsion of students who do not adhere to these policies.
Maritime academy graduates will become the leaders of our industry, which is why I consider it an egregious oversight that Cal Maritime, Mass Maritime and USMMA have yet to be fined for not following the law. In my opinion, the Clery Act needs to be strictly enforced. It is not enough for school officials to “look into” problems like these and do nothing, create requirements that are not fully complied with, or simply remain silent and hope they go away.
An independent panel should be established where every reported sex crime at the seven maritime academies is impartially investigated for Clery Act violations.
Depending on whether the violation involves a student, faculty member or the school itself, complaints determined to be valid should result in expulsion, firing or the levying of a fine, and then, if applicable, sent on to an appropriate court for adjudication.
Till next time, I wish you all smooth sailin’. •
Capt. Kelly Sweeney holds the license of master (oceans, any gross tons) and has held a master of towing vessels (oceans) license as well. He has sailed on more than 40 commercial vessels and lives on an island near Seattle. He can be contacted by email at captsweeney@outlook.com