Latest news with #CoastGuardAcademy
San Francisco Chronicle
22-05-2025
- General
- San Francisco Chronicle
Coast Guard commander removed from Bay Area post due to ‘loss of confidence'
Coast Guard Captain David Melton was 'relieved' of his post of commander of the military branch's Alameda base over a 'loss of confidence,' the Coast Guard announced Tuesday. Rear Admiral Carola List, the commander of the Coast Guard's Operational Logistics Command, 'temporarily relieved' Melton of his command, the Coast Guard announced. The dismissal was not due to misconduct, the agency said. Captain Brian Winburn has temporarily taken over the post of commander at Base Alameda, the Coast Guard said, which remains fully operational without any impact to public safety. The base on the San Francisco Bay provides services in 'direct support' of Coast Guard activities across the West Coast, the agency said, and is home to various Coast Guard vessels. The Alameda base is also home to 700 housing units belonging to the Coast Guard, as well as other community services to families and members of the military branch. Melton has served in various positions in the Coast Guard after graduating from the Coast Guard Academy in 1999, according to his biography on the agency's website. Melton has also received numerous awards, including at least one meritorious service medal, three commendation medals, five achievement medals and awards for marksmanship. Before working out of the Alameda base, Melton worked for three years in Oakland focusing on extending the service life of CGC Polar Star, an ice breaker ship considered to be the most powerful ship in the Coast Guard, with 75,000 horsepower, the agency said. Melton also worked for three years as Commanding Officer of Sector Field Office in Galveston, Texas and previously served in Coast Guard positions in Alaska and captained ships across the West Coast, according to his biography. Melton could not be reached for comment on Wednesday evening.
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Yahoo
Seven more sex assault claims filed against Coast Guard Academy
Attorneys representing former U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets filed seven more sexual assault complaints against the Coast Guard on Thursday, bringing to 29 the number of such complaints they've filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The latest complaints were filed on behalf of women who allege they were sexually assaulted while they were cadets at the academy in New London or, in one case, while attending the Naval Academy Preparatory School, or NAPS, in Newport, R.I. That cadet had been accepted to the Coast Guard Academy provided she first attend NAPS, according to court documents. Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, the national law firm representing the former cadets, provided redacted copies of their complaints. According to the firm, several of the cadets were sexually assaulted in their dorm rooms by classmates who entered with the help of an academy policy that prohibited cadets from locking their doors. One cadet woke up on several occasions during her tenure at the academy to find a drunk, naked male classmate lying on top of her, sexually assaulting her, the firm said. Another complaint details how a cadet was drugged while attending a party, accepted a ride home from fellow cadets and woke up the next morning having been raped. Another was repeatedly sexually assaulted in a single night while staying at an academy lieutenant's house with fellow cadets, the firm said. 'Additional Coast Guard Academy sexual assault survivors continue to reach out to me,' Christine Dunn, a Sanford Heisler attorney, said in a news release Thursday. 'I've heard story after story of the sexual violence they endured at the academy and how the academy turned a blind eye. The Coast Guard can no longer be allowed to sweep sexual assault under the rug.' The academy referred a request for comment to the Coast Guard's media relations office, where a spokesman said the Coast Guard had yet to receive the latest claims. In any event, federal law would prevent it from discussing them, the spokesman said. The Coast Guard will resolve these claims in accordance with the Federal Tort Claims Act and any other applicable law, he said. Sanford Heisler filed Thursday's tort claims as well as the 22 previous claims it filed last September and October against the Coast Guard; its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and its former parent agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation. The claims, each of which seeks $10 million in damages, are believed to be the first collective action by sexual violence survivors against a U.S. service academy. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA, an individual can bring legal claims against federal agencies for torts, or wrongful acts, committed by their employees. Before filing an FTCA complaint in court, an individual must first file an administrative complaint with the agency at fault. The agency has six months to investigate the claim. The complaints against the Coast Guard have come in the wake of the service's mishandling of 'Operation Fouled Anchor,' its internal investigation of decades of sexual misconduct at the academy. CNN, the cable news network, revealed the existence of the report in 2023, prompting hearings and ongoing investigations by congressional panels. Adm. Linda Fagan, the former Coast Guard commandant, was removed from her post in January, soon after President Donald Trump's second inauguration, in part because of her handling of the 'Operation Fouled Anchor' scandal.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
US Coast Guard Academy censors ‘climate change' from its curriculum
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. The missions of the U.S. Coast Guard propel its members across changing and sometimes perilous waters, into neighborhoods damaged by ever-more-intense hurricanes and around the melting ice of the Arctic. But the academy that trains most of the officers of the nation's sea-going law enforcement and search and rescue force has eliminated 'climate change' and related terminology from its curriculum in an effort to conform to President Donald Trump's policies. Amy Donahue, the provost and chief academic officer of the academy, confirmed the moves in a statement posted last week on the Coast Guard Academy alumni association's website. The association said in an online post that it had reached out to her office after receiving 'several letters of concern' on how climate policy was playing out at the New London, Connecticut, institution. Donahue wrote that the academy was required to make the changes because of the president's executive order withdrawing past climate change policies as well as a Feb. 14 directive from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem had ordered department officials to 'eliminate all climate change activities and the use of climate change terminology in DHS policies and programs.' The Coast Guard falls under the authority of DHS in peacetime, making it the only branch of the military not under the Department of Defense. Donahue maintained that the quality of education at the academy would not be harmed by removal of terminology on 'human-induced rise in global temperatures' from class assignments and materials, or the revisions she said were made to 'certain aspects of some courses,' which she did not specify. The Coast Guard Academy did not respond to requests for further details, and DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 'We have not and will not abandon science education,' Donahue wrote. But others who know the Coast Guard and the role of the academy in shaping its future are concerned. Retired Adm. Paul Zukunft, who served as commandant of the Coast Guard from 2014 to 2018, said in an interview that cadets need to be educated about climate change in order to effectively undertake missions in harsh maritime environments and to participate in decision-making with other federal agencies, for example, when confronting disasters. 'If we're not smart about the environment that we operate in, we're going to be a much less capable Coast Guard,' Zukunft said. 'I think even more importantly, we become marginal players across the interagency process … and I think we have a lot to contribute because we are out there on a regular basis.' Under the motto 'Semper Paratus,' or 'Always Ready,' the 43,000 active-duty members of the Coast Guard patrol the nation's waters for illegal activity, rescue thousands of people each year, respond to hurricanes, floods, oil and hazardous waste spills and more. They endure heat exposure in the tropics and perform perilous operations in Arctic waters, where shipping is surging due to the retreat of polar ice. Coast Guard Academy-trained engineers build and maintain coastal infrastructure that is battered by more frequent and severe extreme weather. 'Impacts of climate change will influence every Coast Guard mission,' wrote the service's former commandant, Adm. Linda Fagan, in a 2023 framework meant to guide how the force would address the increasing challenges to its operations. But that document has been removed from the Coast Guard website and Fagan was relieved of her command on Trump's first full day in office. At the time, a Department of Homeland Security official said in a statement to that Fagan was terminated for reasons that included concerns over border security, acquisitions, recruiting and leadership. The unnamed official also criticized her for 'excessive focus on diversity' policies. In the following days, the Coast Guard began shutting down programs and offices at the academy that were related to 'diversity, equity and inclusion,' including an Office of Culture and Climate and an Affinity Group program that had been in place for more than 50 years. But the latest moves, which came after Noem's directive, appear to be the Coast Guard's first changes to academic curriculum in response to Trump's effort to upend federal policy. Zukunft believes the academy's administration has little choice in the matter. 'Where we're at right now, I think they have very little latitude,' he said. 'There's so much scrutiny, and I would say 'DEI' and 'climate change' have become almost synonymous. If you're an advocate for one or the other, you're at great risk of losing the support of — in this case — your service secretary.' About 1,000 cadets attend the 149-year-old academy on the banks of the Thames River just north of Long Island Sound, which has received honors for its academic programs. With no ROTC program, the Coast Guard relies on the academy as a launching pad for 80% of its officers, a far greater percentage than the other military service branches draw from their own academies. Zukunft, who serves on the advisory board of the nonprofit Center for Climate & Security, said the Coast Guard could be hobbled in its work around the world if its leaders are not grounded in an understanding of climate change. He gave the example of Micronesia, where the Coast Guard operates under one of scores of bilateral maritime law enforcement agreements that the force has with other nations. The U.S. has seen the Coast Guard's presence in these islands as an important counterweight to China, which has sought to expand its influence throughout the Pacific. 'We're building relationships,' Zukunft said. 'And people there are concerned about saltwater intrusion. They're losing their aquifer, they're losing their fish, and do you want a Coast Guard lieutenant who says, 'I have no idea why that's happening. Maybe it's just a bad luck fishing day?' 'We know exactly why it's happening,' Zukunft said. 'Sea water is rising and the fish are moving to cooler waters. And so, [the Coast Guard officers] should be able to be making informed decisions, especially in some of these islands.' The impacts of climate change are also manifest for the Coast Guard at home, Zukunft added. 'Our training base for our recruits in Cape May, New Jersey — they're taking on water,' he said. 'Norfolk, Virginia, is taking on water. We built a huge base in Charleston, South Carolina; it's taking on water.' He said it is impossible to have discussions with lawmakers about the need for budgets to make those bases more resilient without talking about where future conditions are heading due to climate change. Climate change did not come up at a congressional hearing Wednesday on the Coast Guard's infrastructure needs, but testimony of the Government Accountability Office showed that the service currently faces multiple backlogs of shore projects that will cost at least $7 billion to address — double the amount estimated just five years ago. A technical report out of the University of Washington in 2023 said one important infrastructure vulnerability is to the nation's Aids to Navigation system, the network of buoys, beacons, lighthouses and other signal equipment that guides ship traffic. The system is maintained by the Coast Guard and is experiencing increasing damage due to intensifying storms as waters warm. Complex calculations on wind speed, wave height and water elevation are needed to assess the increasing risks. Over the past five years, a team of professors at the Coast Guard Academy emphasized the need for climate change education for cadets in the school's engineering programs in presentations they have given at conferences of the American Society for Engineering Education. 'As the primary commissioning source for civil engineers for the U.S. Coast Guard, it is imperative that our graduates understand the projected impacts of climate change — sea level rise, altered hurricane patterns, and other associated hazards — on coastal infrastructure,' they wrote in a 2023 paper. The coastal resiliency course included work on vulnerability and risk assessments of the Coast Guard's own facilities. Exposure to the challenges of climate-related hazards, the teaching team wrote, was 'an issue of readiness, and therefore of the utmost importance.' No faculty members at the academy responded to queries from Inside Climate News about the removal of climate terminology from teaching materials or other curriculum changes. Donahue, the Coast Guard provost, emphasized in her statement that the academy will continue to turn out graduates who are educated on weather patterns, atmospheric phenomena, paleoclimatology, the conditions of sea ice and other studies relevant to their work. 'We will neither ignore nor defy directives from the President or Secretary,' she wrote. 'And we will continue to teach good science that prepares our cadets to lead and execute Coast Guard missions in a global maritime operating environment.' But some education experts say that restrictions on the language that can be used in the classroom can erode the quality of science education in insidious ways. Jennifer da Rosa, director of the graduate program in environmental sustainability and management at Goucher College in Baltimore, has studied efforts to restrict climate education in the United States. The direction putting certain words and terminology off-limits is similar to restrictions on the teaching of evolution in parts of the country in the 20th century, she said. 'When it comes to science, the students are tasked with essentially truth-finding and the research process of truth-finding,' she said. 'If we're censoring part of that process, then students aren't fully learning how to question and test and evaluate scientific information. It's not possible to just censor words without actually starting to censor the process.' Da Rosa questions how meteorology and oceanography can be taught without discussion of climate change. 'It is a foundational core to all these different disciplines,' she said. 'And if you remove that foundational core, it's like having a building without a frame, or, like a human body without a skeletal system. It just collapses. It doesn't make any sense without that framework.' Glenn Branch, deputy director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education, said the Coast Guard Academy's decision is not the only recent example of government restrictions on climate change terminology in education. Last year, Florida's Department of Education under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis told publishers they would have to remove references to climate change in order to have textbooks approved for use in public schools. Iowa's Department of Education, under Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, this year is considering removing 'climate change' and 'evolution' from the state's educational standards. Branch said the Coast Guard Academy's provost, in her statement, reflected an understanding of the need for future officers to be educated on the changing environment they will face. 'It's certainly encouraging that she says, despite the ban on uttering the dreaded three syllables, they're still going to be teaching these topics,' he said. 'But it's still a problem. Not using the right terminology makes it harder for students to understand and discuss and process the scientific literature they're supposed to be inspecting.' Zukunft, whose service as commandant spanned the end of the Obama administration and the start of the first Trump administration, said he witnessed the president recognize the important role of the Coast Guard in natural disasters. When Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 40 inches of rain in Houston over four days in August 2017, Coast Guard units raced to the scene from around the country and rescued more than 11,000 Texans by air and by boat. 'I ended up getting a call from President Trump, and he said, 'No stock has gone up like yours, way up,'' Zukunft recalled. 'I thought my stock was doing OK, but said, 'I'll take that as a compliment, sir.'' But at the start of Trump's second administration, Zukunft is concerned about what he sees as 'a complete unraveling' of prior policy that sets a dangerous precedent. He believes the cadets now at the academy need to be trained not just for the political realities of the next four years, but the realities they will face in the coming decades on seas and coastlines transformed by climate change. 'I think they need to stay very dialed in, because they're going to live with this on their watch, not over the period of just one administration,' Zukunft said. 'This is going to be multi-generational, and at some point, it becomes a train wreck.'
