ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 1, 1997 TAG: 9703030027
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: Associated Press
A MAJORITY of those polled say they wouldn't discourage young women from joining any of the armed services despite recent scandals.
Americans are pessimistic about the military ever rooting out sexual harassment but not dissuaded from entrusting daughters to the armed services, according to an Associated Press poll.
By 65 percent to 31 percent, they said recent allegations of sexual misconduct would not be sufficient reason to tell their daughter or another young woman to stay out of the military.
Fifty-five percent think sexual harassment will always be present in the military. That is far more than the 37 percent who say hazing is ingrained and the 44 percent who think sexual assault cannot be done away with.
The armed services have endured a series of scandals involving all three kinds of wrongdoing. And since several drill sergeants were charged with rape and harassment of young trainees at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, some have suggested men and women should be trained separately.
Confronting the issue during his first visits to bases as defense secretary this week, William Cohen said he was inclined to let the services set their own course.
On Friday, he toured the Army's largest training base, Fort Jackson in South Carolina, and pronounced its coed training as ``working quite well.''
Army officials say they need the program and ``in order to overrule that particular judgment, I'd have to have some pretty compelling evidence that it's not working and needs to be changed,'' Cohen said.
In the poll, 53 percent support sexually integrated training, which is common in the Army and Air Force, and 39 percent want separate training for men and women. Veterans, Republicans and women are split more evenly, and a majority of Americans born before World War II favor separate training.
The poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
The public tends to have more confidence in the military than other major U.S. institutions, such as organized religion, medicine, the media and Congress, said a pollster whose company has measured those opinions regularly for 30 years.
``It is important to the military leaders themselves,'' said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of Louis Harris and Associates. ``It affects their standing in the world, how they are treated by Congress, how they are treated by the media and the difficulty they have in trying to recruit good people.''
Cohen said the poll shows that the military still has a pretty good reputation, and he expressed confidence that Army officials ``are trying to get out in front of this issue'' of sexual harassment.
``We need to find out how deeply ingrained, if it is deeply ingrained; we need to find out whether or not it is confined to specific installations or facilities or whether it's more endemic,'' Cohen said. ``I don't think we know the answers to that yet.''
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB