WEST POINT, N.Y. — West Point wants more women.
With female cadets representing less than one in five cadets in the Long Gray Line, the U.S. Military Academy is taking steps to boost the number of women arriving here this summer and beyond.
West Point’s new superintendent said the moves, which include more outreach and the cultivation of candidates, will help keep the storied academy ahead of the curve now that the Pentagon is lifting restrictions for women in combat jobs.
“We obviously have to increase the female population for a number of reasons,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr. “One is because there are more opportunities in the branches for the females.”
Women have been a presence at the nation’s military academies since 1976. Female cadets here can grow their hair longer than the standard military buzz-cut and can wear stud earrings.
But they carry the same heavy packs, march the same miles and graduate with the same second lieutenant bars the men here do.
“I carry the heavy weapons whenever we do field training exercises,” said Cadet Austen Boroff, a woman who refuses to be out-soldiered by her male peers. “I’ll take the machine guns, so I’m taking more weight.”
Cadets like Boroff remain in the minority, just as they are in the broader military. The Air Force and Naval academies say their student bodies are about 22 percent female. West Point is at 16 percent, mirroring the gender breakdown in the larger Army.
Caslen, who became superintendent last year, said more female cadets will do more than serve the Army when thousands of combat positions are slated to open to both sexes by 2016. It will also help integrate women at the academy, he said.
The academy has created new recruitment mailings written for girls in their freshman, sophomore and junior years of high school that note female West Point graduates have gone on to become generals, astronauts, executives and government leaders. The letter asks: “Do you have what it takes to follow in their footsteps?”
The mailings will not bear fruit for this year’s incoming class, but director of admissions Col. Deborah McDonald said there has been an increase in the number of female nominees. And the academy has begun targeting top-tier female candidates and guiding them through the demanding application process.
16 percent
Percentage of the West Point student body that is female
22 percent
Percentage of the Air Force and Naval academies that is female229Women admitted to West Point for the Class of 2018
