ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 17, 1997 TAG: 9702170093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLESTON, S.C.
SOURCE: Associated Press
A female cadet who left The Citadel paints a picture of a campus where male cadets entered women's rooms in the middle of the night, booed them in the mess hall and forced them to drink alcohol.
The allegations by Jeanie Mentavlos of Charlotte, N.C., were in a 230-page deposition released Friday.
In her statement, Mentavlos said she and Kim Messer of Clover started thinking of leaving the state military college in late October, after a doctor diagnosed them with pelvic stress fractures.
Both women left the school after last semester, alleging they had been hazed and harassed. State and federal agencies are investigating and 10 cadets face disciplinary action. Two other female cadets remain at the college.
The statement was given to college Commandant Joseph Trez, who will hold disciplinary hearings for cadets next week.
Mentavlos also described how one male cadet, against school rules, would enter her room in the middle of the night and she would have to jump out of bed at attention.
Noting she wore bicycle shorts and a T-shirt to sleep, she said the cadet ``repeatedly made sexual comments about me in my Spandex shorts.''
She said another male cadet routinely came into her room wearing nothing but boxer shorts and flip-flops.
Other male cadets entered women's rooms when the women had just returned from showers and were wearing only bathrobes, she said. Sometimes, they would enter the rooms alone, in violation of college rules.
Mentavlos also described incidents in which her T-shirt was set afire with nail polish remover and in which she and Messer were forced to stand in a metal clothes cabinet while being punched and kicked.
She also told how a male cadet rubbed his body against her in formation. Another cadet saw what was happening and spoke to the male cadet.
``Mentavlos, I checked that out,'' she said the other cadet later told her. ``He said he didn't mean anything by that so I am going to let it go.''
Freshmen cadets also were taken by upperclassmen to a meeting room where there was alcohol, she said.
Mentavlos also described having to get down on her knees and sing ``You've Lost That Loving Feeling'' to the girlfriends of a male cadet. At other times, freshmen had to chew tobacco or were forced to eat food.
She said she felt like she couldn't tell anybody in authority, even a female military officer assigned to the corps, about her experiences.
``All of these people were, like, connected,'' she said.
She added she and Messer were singled out more than the other female cadets to the point that one of them, Petra Lovetinska, was concerned about it.
``She was crying, really crying, and saying she couldn't understand why I was catching all this hell and she wasn't getting anything,'' the statement said.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB