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Merged Women pass day 1 of Ranger School

Ranb

Penultimate Amazing
Ranb
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/04/20/sixteen-women-pass-day-one-army-ranger-school/
Nineteen women took part in the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade's first co-ed Ranger course Monday at Fort Benning, Ga. The female candidates joined 380 male soldiers to take on the Ranger Physical Fitness Assessment – a pass-fail event that prevents many from entering the course.

Students must perform 49 push-ups in two minutes, 59 sit-ups in two minutes and six chin-ups to a strict standard, Ranger officials maintain. They also must complete a five-mile run in 40 minutes.

At the end of the day, three females did not meet the standard to continue, a 16-percent failure rate. By contrast, 78 male candidates didn't meet the standard to continue, a 20-percent failure rate.
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I wonder how the failure rates will compare by the end?

Ranb
 
Nowadays everybody goes through the RIP (Ranger Indoctrination Program) before they get to the Ranger school, and they've already made it through Jump school, so it's a good bet the majority of the dead wood is already gone.
 
Ranb said:
Students must perform 49 push-ups in two minutes, 59 sit-ups in two minutes and six chin-ups to a strict standard, Ranger officials maintain. They also must complete a five-mile run in 40 minutes.
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That sounds pretty easy (says a 40 year-old civilian). I imagine most folks usually drop out during the course?
 
Monketey Ghost said:
I'm curious to see.
I'll bet the women do pretty well.
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Depends on what you mean by pretty well I guess. When you put highly athletic men up against highly athletic women it is always clear cut. It's why they have to lower the standards in so many physical tests like this. It's not sexism to say this, it's just biology.
 
To be completely honest, I think our society puts itself into the zone of being outright clownish by even entertaining the idea of female police officers, firefighters, or soldiers of any kind.

I certainly think there are important roles women can play in police work and the military, but I think a rational society that wasn't trying to pretend sexual dimorphism isn't a thing, would limit this to logistical and support roles and never anything that involves combat.

I also think women should only be able to work as prison guards at female prisons. It is laughable how often there are sex scandals with female prison guards at male prisons. More laughable is the idea that they can physically control male inmates if things go south.

I cannot wait until our society starts acknowledging biological realities again. They aren't something that can be pretended away indefinitely.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
To be completely honest, I think our society puts itself into the zone of being outright clownish by even entertaining the idea of female police officers, firefighters, or soldiers of any kind.

I certainly think there are important roles women can play in police work and the military, but I think a rational society that wasn't trying to pretend sexual dimorphism isn't a thing, would limit this to logistical and support roles and never anything that involves combat.

I also think women should only be able to work as prison guards at female prisons. It is laughable how often there are sex scandals with female prison guards at male prisons. More laughable is the idea that they can physically control male inmates if things go south.

I cannot wait until our society starts acknowledging biological realities again. They aren't something that can be pretended away indefinitely.
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That sounds well thought out. Complete garbage, but well thought out garbage.
 
On Hulu+ you can see a US Army-produced film on the VietNam era ranger school

Battleground Specials, season 1, episode 21.
 
Edx said:
Depends on what you mean by pretty well I guess. When you put highly athletic men up against highly athletic women it is always clear cut. It's why they have to lower the standards in so many physical tests like this. It's not sexism to say this, it's just biology.
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Moreover, the U.S. military has studied this numerous times, and the results have been the same each time. If the same physical standards are applied to women that are used for men, only a small percentage of women pass.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Moreover, the U.S. military has studied this numerous times, and the results have been the same each time. If the same physical standards are applied to women that are used for men, only a small percentage of women pass.
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In this case the testing seems to be the same for both sexes and the woman failed slightly less than the men.

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2015/04/20/3678744/16-of-19-female-ranger-candidates.html
Col. David Fivecoat, commander of the Airborne Ranger Training Brigade, said this Ranger class will be treated like any other.

“All Ranger students will be treated equally and they will be graded to the same standards,” Fivecoat said.
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From the OP:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/04/20...ranger-school/
At the end of the day, three females did not meet the standard to continue, a 16-percent failure rate. By contrast, 78 male candidates didn't meet the standard to continue, a 20-percent failure rate.
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Corsair 115 said:
Moreover, the U.S. military has studied this numerous times, and the results have been the same each time. If the same physical standards are applied to women that are used for men, only a small percentage of women pass.
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Those same studies have shown that those old standards are unrelated to modern combat and if standards were modernized many women could pass. The old standards have been maintained strictly to keep women out.

As for police forces, are people really trying to say a woman can't shoot an unarmed suspect as easily as a man? Have you seen many male police officers out their? They are so old and out of shape they couldn't meet the physical requirements for a girl scout troop.

There are women serving in combat rolls around the world that prove your arguments wrong. And there are many U.S. military commanders who feel women do a better job in many cases than men do and request them for combat roles under the guise of filling a support roll.
 
That's 'role' not 'roll' & 'there' not 'their'.
/grammarnazi
 
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qayak said:
Those same studies have shown that those old standards are unrelated to modern combat and if standards were modernized many women could pass. The old standards have been maintained strictly to keep women out.
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I don't really think that's true. I've seen some persuasive arguments about how and why the military should change its fitness criteria, such as this:
http://startingstrength.com/articles/combat_worst_case_whittemore.pdf
The basic argument is that the army is too focused on endurance training, and not sufficiently focused on strength training. Prioritizing strength rather than endurance is unlikely to increase the rate of acceptance for women.
 
BStrong said:
Nowadays everybody goes through the RIP (Ranger Indoctrination Program) before they get to the Ranger school, and they've already made it through Jump school, so it's a good bet the majority of the dead wood is already gone.
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So is RIP now a prerequisite for Ranger School? It was not that way when I was in the US Army.
Probably confusing to people not familiar with the place that Ranger School has in the US Army. It's job is not to produce Rangers for the Ranger Regiment...that was RIP's job...but to produce good leaders for all of the combat arms,infantry in particular. That ranger patch on you shoulder is sort of an unofficial prerequisite for advancement in any of the combat arms. Even during the 50's and 60's when the US Army did not have ranger units, they retained the Ranger School .
RIP is about training Rangers in the basic Ranger skills for he Ranger Regiments. If you pass RIP, and serve sucessfully in the Ranger Regiments, then,if you have leadership potential, you are sent to Ranger School.

Anyway, if half the women make it through Ranger school, that will be about the expected wash out rate. It's very high,period. Designedly so.
And if Ranger School is accepting women, it will not be too long before GI Jane will become a reality for the Navy Seals:

"Gentlemen and Ladies, HIT THE SURF,GET OUT,AND GET SANDY!".
 
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Ziggurat said:
The basic argument is that the army is too focused on endurance training, and not sufficiently focused on strength training. Prioritizing strength rather than endurance is unlikely to increase the rate of acceptance for women.
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I was wondering about that -- a five-mile run in 40 minutes? I don't know if I could've qualified even when I was in the Marine Corps, even though I always got top scores for physical requirements, and running a lot.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
To be completely honest, I think our society puts itself into the zone of being outright clownish by even entertaining the idea of female police officers, firefighters, or soldiers of any kind.
Click to expand...

I've never been in the military, so I can't comment on that aspect of it, but I have worked with many female Law Enforcement and Firefighters. I know the firefighters are held to the same physical standards regardless of gender; I don't know about LE standards.

What I do know is that I saw the women doing the same work as the men, and doing it well. Much of the LE work was dealing with very hostile people very far from backup or support - but they did it, and they did it very well.
 
alfaniner said:
I was wondering about that -- a five-mile run in 40 minutes? I don't know if I could've qualified even when I was in the Marine Corps, even though I always got top scores for physical requirements, and running a lot.
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Ranger School is only slightly less demanding then Navy SEAL BUDS when it comes to physical demands.
Top scores in physical requirments are required before they even look at you;the point of both is to push you beyond your endurance;to see if you have the will to go on even when physically exhausted.
 
crescent said:
I know the firefighters are held to the same physical standards regardless of gender
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Reminds me of a story. Ed Koch was asked about gay firefighters, and he said that he didn't care about their sexuality, as long as they were able to carry a 210-pound mayor out of a burning building.
 
dudalb said:
So is RIP now a prerequisite for Ranger School? It was not that way when I was in the US Army.
Probably confusing to people not familiar with the place that Ranger School has in the US Army. It's job is not to produce Rangers for the Ranger Regiment...that was RIP's job...but to produce good leaders for all of the combat arms,infantry in particular. That ranger patch on you shoulder is sort of an unofficial prerequisite for advancement in any of the combat arms. Even during the 50's and 60's when the US Army did not have ranger units, they retained the Ranger School .
RIP is about training Rangers in the basic Ranger skills for he Ranger Regiments. If you pass RIP, and serve sucessfully in the Ranger Regiments, then,if you have leadership potential, you are sent to Ranger School.

Anyway, if half the women make it through Ranger school, that will be about the expected wash out rate. It's very high,period. Designedly so.
And if Ranger School is accepting women, it will not be too long before GI Jane will become a reality for the Navy Seals:

"Gentlemen and Ladies, HIT THE SURF,GET OUT,AND GET SANDY!".
Click to expand...

Yeah - RIP first, Ranger school second, and everybody has to be jump qualified before RIP.

I was still in when the first women began going through jump school, and I've heard some stories about what went down as far as the black hats being required to change their approach with trainees.

I wish the ladies luck.

War sucks enough as it is with just men in the combat arms, I wish we could at least try to keep one gender out of the worst of it, but it appears that I'm just in the way of history.
 
Ziggurat said:
Reminds me of a story. Ed Koch was asked about gay firefighters, and he said that he didn't care about their sexuality, as long as they were able to carry a 210-pound mayor out of a burning building.
Click to expand...

Actually he specifically referenced women, not gays.

I know because it's one of my favorite quotes of all time.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Moreover, the U.S. military has studied this numerous times, and the results have been the same each time. If the same physical standards are applied to women that are used for men, only a small percentage of women pass.
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IIRC, certain fireman and police tests had their standards lowered by courts when the test makers could not justify why the test required such-and-such a capacity.

Notably though, fireman tests still can require being able to carry a person of X weight out of a building. Turns out women who are by no means Herculettes can do it just fine.
 
Ziggurat said:
Reminds me of a story. Ed Koch was asked about gay firefighters, and he said that he didn't care about their sexuality, as long as they were able to carry a 210-pound mayor out of a burning building.
Click to expand...

I loved Koch.
 
BStrong said:
Yeah - RIP first, Ranger school second, and everybody has to be jump qualified before RIP.

I was still in when the first women began going through jump school, and I've heard some stories about what went down as far as the black hats being required to change their approach with trainees.

I wish the ladies luck.

War sucks enough as it is with just men in the combat arms, I wish we could at least try to keep one gender out of the worst of it, but it appears that I'm just in the way of history.
Click to expand...

When I was in,RIP was strictly for those going into the Ranger Batallion ;it was not a prereq for the Ranger School if you did not intend on going into the Rangers.
Probably a bit confusing to people,but although the Army Rangers run the Ranger School it is not just to supply leaders to the Ranger Batallions, but to the Army Combat Arms as a whole. The Ranger Indoctrnation Program is strictly for those going into the Ranger Batallions.with ranger school following if you show leadership potential in the Ranger Batallions.
 
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BStrong said:
Actually he specifically referenced women, not gays.

I know because it's one of my favorite quotes of all time.
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Fair enough. It would work for either scenario, though, and for the same reason.
 
paulhutch said:
In this case the testing seems to be the same for both sexes and the woman failed slightly less than the men.

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2015/04/20/3678744/16-of-19-female-ranger-candidates.html


From the OP:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/04/20...ranger-school/
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I suspect that's because they did a better job of weeding out the women who couldn't cut it beforehand. Note these details from the first link in your post:

The training course mirrors the first couple of weeks of Ranger School with the physical fitness test, land navigation and marching.

“The senior leaders of the Army want to set the women up for success, best we could,” Butler said. “We wanted everybody to have a common reference and common framework. That is why we brought all of the women who wanted to come to the course to this pre-Ranger course.”

There were 113 women who went through the pre-Ranger course, taking up 138 slots because some of the women went through the course multiple times. One woman who began Ranger School on Monday went through the course three times.
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So 113 women went through the pre-Ranger course and apparently 19 moved on to the next level. That's an 83% washout level already. No mention of how many guys failed the pre-Ranger course, but it's pretty obvious that not all men went to that before taking the Ranger School from the quote, "...we brought all of the women who wanted to come to the course to this pre-Ranger course."
 
dudalb said:
So is RIP now a prerequisite for Ranger School? It was not that way when I was in the US Army.
Probably confusing to people not familiar with the place that Ranger School has in the US Army. It's job is not to produce Rangers for the Ranger Regiment...that was RIP's job...but to produce good leaders for all of the combat arms,infantry in particular. That ranger patch on you shoulder is sort of an unofficial prerequisite for advancement in any of the combat arms. Even during the 50's and 60's when the US Army did not have ranger units, they retained the Ranger School .
RIP is about training Rangers in the basic Ranger skills for he Ranger Regiments. If you pass RIP, and serve sucessfully in the Ranger Regiments, then,if you have leadership potential, you are sent to Ranger School.



Anyway, if half the women make it through Ranger school, that will be about the expected wash out rate. It's very high,period. Designedly so.
And if Ranger School is accepting women, it will not be too long before GI Jane will become a reality for the Navy Seals:

"Gentlemen and Ladies, HIT THE SURF,GET OUT,AND GET SANDY!".
Click to expand...
A woman that could pass through Seal training , without it being dumbed down in any way in consideration of gender differences, would be an impressive woman. This alone would earn her the respect of other Seals.
 
RIP is for Soldiers already in the Ranger Regiment bound for Ranger School. The Pre-Rager course is for everyone not in the Ranger Regiment that desires to attend Ranger School. Much of the content of the courses is identical, except that RIP also provides Ranger Regiment specific Standard Operating Procedures.

The first day of Ranger School is not difficult. It is a discriminator, however. Once the class is full, the push-ups become impossible to properly execute. Those that fail are allowed to return the following class without having to re-attend RIP or pre-Ranger.

A 40 minute 5 mile run is slow. Unless, of course, you've already been up for 20 hours, haven't eaten, completed endless push-ups and a PT test, have been stressed by impossible to follow instructions, etc.

The ladies will fail at a significantly higher rate than the men unless the standards change. Ranger School is (was?) 72 days long and very demanding of physical strength.

If the women fail at a very high rate but the standards remain the same, cool.

If the standards change because the standards are outdated and the women pass at a rate close to that of the men, cool.

Ranger school isn't about providing the Ranger Regiment with new members. Ranger School is for leaders. It is hard because being in charge in combat units is exceedingly demanding. Ranger school is hard because you don't eat and you don't sleep and you are constantly engaged in situations that require you to use good judgement and make decisions that have serious consequences. Minus these aspects, the physical demands of Ranger School would be greatly diminished.


Sarge
Ranger School grad (but never a Ranger) and career Infantryman and Paratrooper.
 
BStrong said:
Yeah - RIP first, Ranger school second, and everybody has to be jump qualified before RIP.

I was still in when the first women began going through jump school, and I've heard some stories about what went down as far as the black hats being required to change their approach with trainees.

I wish the ladies luck.

War sucks enough as it is with just men in the combat arms, I wish we could at least try to keep one gender out of the worst of it, but it appears that I'm just in the way of history.
Click to expand...

Is that a change?

Assignment to The Regimemt was a prerequisite for RIP, but graduating jump school was not a prerequisite for either RIP or Ranger School, nor was RIP a prerequisite for Ranger School unless assigned to The Regiment. We had "Leg" Rangers often.
 
Women are going to be in combat roles in all branches of the military because there are a lot of women deciding who gets funding. Those branches that don't have women will not be well funded. The air force saw the writing on the wall first, the navy soon after. Army and marines are playing catch up.

The wominz is coming. Better get used to it.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Moreover, the U.S. military has studied this numerous times, and the results have been the same each time. If the same physical standards are applied to women that are used for men, only a small percentage of women pass.
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What people are actually asking is that those women who do pass, be allowed to then serve in the positions they've demonstrated they're qualified to serve in.
 
MG1962 said:
Who cares, the fact they turned up there to begin with makes them better men than most of us
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I agree. I'm curious about the final washout rate. Women are also finally making it into the submarine force, something I'm completely in favor of.

Ranb
 
If they can get the job done, fine, but do we have to pretend to be impressed by 6 chinups? Do we have to call that historic?
 
Checkmite said:
What people are actually asking is that those women who do pass, be allowed to then serve in the positions they've demonstrated they're qualified to serve in.
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And no rational, reasonable person would disagree. Provided the same physical standards are applied to both males and females, and provided further those physical standards are genuinely reflective of the kinds of physical demands and abilities that are required for the job, then anyone who can pass them should be able to hold the position.
 
Skeptic Tank said:
To be completely honest, I think our society puts itself into the zone of being outright clownish by even entertaining the idea of female police officers, firefighters, or soldiers of any kind.

I certainly think there are important roles women can play in police work and the military, but I think a rational society that wasn't trying to pretend sexual dimorphism isn't a thing, would limit this to logistical and support roles and never anything that involves combat.

I also think women should only be able to work as prison guards at female prisons. It is laughable how often there are sex scandals with female prison guards at male prisons. More laughable is the idea that they can physically control male inmates if things go south.

I cannot wait until our society starts acknowledging biological realities again. They aren't something that can be pretended away indefinitely.
Click to expand...

Some of what you say makes sense to me. I do agree that there are significant differences between men and women, and we ignore them at our peril. I also agree that there are people who leap through all sorts of mental hoops to ignore or minimize the realities of gender dimorphism, and that's a bad thing.

However, you seem to go a bit too far when you assert that no woman should ever be a policeman, or a firefighter, or a soldier.

There are a lot of roles for soldiers (and I'm including anyone who participates in combat) where physical strength just isn't the primary factor that it once was. Also, there is some overlap between women and men on strength, speed, and endurance levels.

When it comes to flying airplanes and helicopters, I want the best pilots in the air. If those are women, then why wouldn't I want them to fly? For radar operators that are near the front line, why wouldn't I want them to be women?

For elite forces trained in hand to hand combat, I don't see women doing so well, but those slots are pretty rare. Army rangers? I would be a bit surprised if any made it through.

And I have heard people argue that a front line radar operator may be overwhelmed and need to participate in hand to hand combat, or a pilot may be shot down. What then? My answer is that at that point, the mission is a failure and there might be some humanitarian concern about having someone who can't cut it at the front line, but that's a secondary concern. I want people who can make the mission succeed. If a woman can do it better than a man, then sign her up.
 
crescent said:
I've never been in the military, so I can't comment on that aspect of it, but I have worked with many female Law Enforcement and Firefighters. I know the firefighters are held to the same physical standards regardless of gender; I don't know about LE standards.

What I do know is that I saw the women doing the same work as the men, and doing it well. Much of the LE work was dealing with very hostile people very far from backup or support - but they did it, and they did it very well.
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False.

I'm not sure what specific location you saw this in but lowered standards for female firefighters have been prevalent all over the place for decades. Just a couple of examples:

New York Post: FDNY drops physical test requirement amid low female hiring rate (December 11, 2014)

"The Fire Department has stopped requiring probationary firefighters to pass a job-related physical-skills test before getting hired — a move that critics derided as a lowering of standards.
The move by first-year Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, which allows probies to fail components of the Functional Skills Training test but still graduate from the Fire Academy, comes amid criticism of the department’s low hiring rate of women.
“It’s a lowering of the standards across the board,” said one former FDNY official familiar with training protocol."
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And here's a quote from a 1987 book entitled Feminism & Freedom by author Michael Levin:

"When the eighty-eight women who took the New York City Fire Department's entrance examination in 1977 failed its physical strength component, they filed a class-action sex discrimination lawsuit in federal court. The court found for the plaintiffs ... and ordered the city to hire forty-five female firefighters and to construct a special, less demanding physical examination for female candidates, with males still to be held to the extant, more difficult-and ostensibly inappropriate-standard. In addition, the court ordered the city to provide special training to the eighty-eight female plaintiffs--but none for the 54 percent of the males who also failed the test."
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The book goes on to talk about female firefighters-in-training having the large, heavy ladders required to get into the higher areas of buildings be bolted to the ground on one end during the training session so that they could actually raise it in place, and many other truly infuriating details of how "equality" was achieved or attempted for.

And for every instance you believe you've seen of a rigid standard being maintained and only women who pass it being hired, I've seen enough cases in this realm to know that you're being lied to every single time. They always lower standards, but they are often (always?) motivated to obscure the fact that they've done this. There is a lot of smoke-screening done to try to generate the illusion of equality in our society. You'd be blown away by the amount of lying required to get non-Asian minorities into college and passing through it, for instance. It's breathtaking.

The Affirmative Action Hoax - video by Professor Steve Farron (You should really watch this, the stuff about lowered standards for supposedly rigorous post-education tests for doctors and lawyers is particularly frightening.)

I won't get off on a tangent but I'd just encourage you to do some research on lowered standards, bonuses on SAT score and other tests simply for being black, etc. Once the society sends down the directive that diversity must be achieved or funding will be pulled and scrutiny will increase, some horrific stuff is done in response to that.

Different types of people are different. Equality is a pipe dream, and pretending equality is real is incredibly dangerous and destructive to anything which depends on excellence and high standards to function properly (which is almost everything, though in some areas this is more immediately apparent than others, it is just as true in the legal profession as being a firefighter, it's just easier to do the smoke and mirrors for longer in one than the other.)

Btw, one final anecdote from my personal experience. I have been in the military and in going through boot camp it was absolutely amazing how reliably it was the black recruits who couldn't pass the swimming test while even whites who had no experience with swimming could pass it (the test was VERY basic and I was able to pass it while being an absolutely miserable swimmer with almost no experience just based on instinct really) I saw the remedial swim classes a few times and it was always entirely comprised of black recruits, never saw a white person in it.

I'm not sure you're familiar with this but the lack of competitive black swimmers in the Olympics is just as telling as their absolute dominance in sprinting and distance running. There is no doubt in my mind, especially after what I saw and how reliable it was in boot camp, that a genetic difference is at the heart of this. There's no question at all that's what's going on with sprinting. Greater concentration of certain muscle fibers, different skeletal structure, greater oxygen intake due to nostril shape, etc.

Equality is a dangerous myth.
 
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Skeptic Tank said:
Btw, one final anecdote from my personal experience. I have been in the military and in going through boot camp it was absolutely amazing how reliably it was the black recruits who couldn't pass the swimming test while even whites who had no experience with swimming could pass it (the test was VERY basic and I was able to pass it while being an absolutely miserable swimmer with almost no experience just based on instinct really) I saw the remedial swim classes a few times and it was always entirely comprised of black recruits, never saw a white person in it.

I'm not sure you're familiar with this but the lack of competitive black swimmers in the Olympics is just as telling as their absolute dominance in sprinting and distance running. There is no doubt in my mind, especially after what I saw and how reliable it was in boot camp, that a genetic difference is at the heart of this. There's no question at all that's what's going on with sprinting. Greater concentration of certain muscle fibers, different skeletal structure, greater oxygen intake due to nostril shape, etc.

Equality is a dangerous myth.
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I like that in a post about the sciencey differences you believe are at heart (for some unexplained reason) you state that swimming is an instinct. That's not how these things work.

There has been plenty of non-Racist study on these matters. See here, for example, for all the non-biological explanations of differences.
 
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