I think this article says a lot about our industry culture as a whole. Cal Maritime is often seen as a liberal bastard stepchild of the state academy’s. This article is damaging. Curious as to other people’s thought. ‘Always have a knife with you’: Women and trans students fear harassment, hate at CSU campus
Upon reading the title, I think we should all be carrying a knife, a sailor without a knife is a sailor without a life after all. But we shouldn’t be carrying these knifes to cut people.
But It’s another news story shining a light on a rusty spot in our Industry, but despite our best efforts, and depressing as it is, I don’t see a solution to the Industry’s SASH problems.
The fact of the matter is, the folks we need on ships will work shoreside because they can, and the folks that are the problem work on ships because they don’t “fit in” on land. If we got rid of all the horny old men, the bigots and random homeless people we dragged in off the street, We might have enough mariners to crew about three ships. I’m a firm believer in the survival bias that the old timers with long careers are all a little… “off” because the well adjusted folks who could go shoreside, did.
The part the media can never wrap their heads around, whether its this story or the KP situation, they always are saying “the school isn’t doing anything to protect them” “there is no plan to protect the students” and ignore the fact that once the cadets graduate, it’s not like the harassment stops! Whose there to protect you when your crazy ass watch partner is telling you how horny he is at 0200 in a dark bridge? It’s unfortunate to hear about this at the academy level, I was really hoping this problem would go away as folks retired.
I’ve sat though RAINN’s trauma informed responder class, and everything they described about a perfect storm for SASH abuse described life on a ship to a tee, and when asked for solutions, they had none. The only hope our industry has at a meaningful change is arming mariners with the ability to report crimes directly to CGIS, and then hoping CGIS has the manpower and resources to investigate and revoke the licenses of the folks causing trouble.
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