On Friday, the Army is expected to announce that all the women who attempted to graduate from Ranger School had officially failed to meet the standards, according to a military source.
Ranger School, which grooms the Army’s most elite special operations fighting force, opened its doors to women for the first time this year. Eight of the 20 women who originally entered the school's first co-ed class were allowed to recycle through the program after they fell out in their first go-round. The Friday announcement will confirm that this happened again.
To many, this means the system is working as it should.
The Rangers are the best of the best, and being a Ranger means passing a physical test that pushes body and mind to the breaking point. If women can’t do it, the argument goes, then they shouldn’t be Rangers.
But there is another opinion quietly being voiced as well: that Ranger School is more akin to a rite of passage – an opportunity for men to “thump their chest,” as one Ranger puts it – than a realistic preparation for leading in war. That women can actually make Ranger units more effective. And that the standards that keep them out are outdated.
It is an opinion, perhaps surprisingly, that comes from two current Rangers.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
