Some Lawmakers Send Few to Academies

As the nation’s military academies try to recruit more minorities, they aren’t getting much help from members of Congress from big-city districts with large numbers of blacks, Hispanics and Asians.

From New York to Chicago to Los Angeles, lawmakers from heavily minority areas rank at or near the bottom in the number of students they have nominated for appointment to West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy or the U.S. Air Force Academy, according to an Associated Press review of records from the past five years.

High school students applying to the academies must be nominated by a member of Congress or another high-ranking federal official. Congressional nominations account for about 75 percent of all students at the academies.

Academy records obtained by the AP through the Freedom of Information Act show that lawmakers in roughly half of the 435 House districts nominated more than 100 students each during the five-year period.

But Rep. Nydia Velazquez of New York City, chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, nominated only four students, the lowest among House members who served the entire five-year period. Rep. Charles Rangel, whose New York City district includes Harlem, was second-lowest, with eight nominations. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose San Francisco district is 29 percent Asian, was also near the bottom, with 19.

In fact, the bottom 20 House members were all from districts where whites make up less than a majority.

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He noted what an academy appointment means: a free four-year education and a guaranteed job as an officer for at least five years after graduation.

Velazquez, Rangel and Pelosi would not comment or did not return calls.

Academy leaders and some on Capitol Hill do not put all the blame on the politicians, pointing out that some districts might have a shortage of qualified candidates, either because students have not gotten the necessary academic preparation from their struggling schools, they are unaware of the opportunity, or they are uninterested.

But while the burden is ultimately on students to apply, academy leaders and others said elected officials should be doing more to publicize the opportunity by doing such things as visiting schools.

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Rep. Maxine Waters, whose district includes heavily Hispanic and black south Los Angeles and who is among the 20 lowest in nominations, said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made young people in her district question military service. She said her efforts to reach out to high school students have not been very successful.

“In the olden days, parents would even say to young African-Americans, ‘You aren’t doing anything. You don’t have a job. Why don’t you join the service?'” said Waters, who has nominated 14 students in the past five years. “They don’t quite do that anymore.”

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Academy leaders have struggled to make the racial makeup of the military’s officer corps more closely resemble that of its enlisted ranks. The disparity is greatest in the Navy, with minorities making up about 48 percent of the enlisted ranks and just 21 percent of the officer corps.

The academies can cite some recent progress. The freshman class of 1,230 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., includes 435 students who are black, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American or part of another minority group. That is about 35 percent, up from 28 percent the year before.

At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., there are 330 minorities in the freshman class of about 1,300, or about 25 percent, up from 22 percent in 2008. The freshman class of 1,376 at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., includes 312 minorities, or 23 percent, also a slight increase from the previous class.

House members are limited to nominating students in their districts. Lawmakers can have five students from their districts at each academy at a time, and they can nominate up to 10 students for each vacant seat. That makes it possible to nominate up to 150 students for 15 seats over four years, if all of the seats are vacant.

The bottom 20 members of Congress include Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago, an Army veteran who has nominated just 12 students in five years. Sharon Jenkins, a spokeswoman for Rush, said that he wants to raise awareness in his inner-city district but that people rarely apply for nominations.

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