The Last Class with Balls

[littlemissmartypants]

Bringing women into the military service academy system
Women arrive at West Point, July 7, 1976 Department of Defense

West Point’s class of 1979 witnessed what they viewed as the tragic end to their all-male power structure. They called themselves the “Last Class with Balls,” or, conversely, the “Last Class Without Bitches.” Some memorialized this grubby distinction on their class rings, with the acronym “LCWB.”

Over the preceding decades, lawmakers and military leaders had worked desperately to keep feminine energy out of the officer class. In 1944, Georgia’s Democratic representative E.E. Cox floated legislation to establish a separate service academy for women, one in which they were educated in “clerical, scientific and other duties” so that, once fighting broke out, “the able-bodied man may do the advanced work of fighting in the front lines.” The military later concocted a harebrained scheme to integrate the service academies that involved injecting female cadets with testosterone to make them more aggressive. By the time the Air Force Academy was constructed, in the late 1950s, women had been serving in official military capacities for decades, and yet still the school hung a large plaque at its entrance reading “Bring Me Men.”

The service academies were ultimately opened to women only thanks to hard-fought federal legislation first introduced in 1972 by Senator Jacob Javits of New York. After years of opposition, it was ratified in late 1975 with a stroke of President Gerald Ford’s pen. This was partly a push toward equity, but also a practical response to the personnel problems created two years prior with the end of military conscription.

Every academy superintendent opposed Javits’s bill, with West Point superintendent Sidney Berry personally lobbying President Ford against its passage, trying his damnedest to keep women from joining his secretive fraternity of military elites. Another powerful opponent was Army secretary and West Point alum Howard “Bo” Callaway, who argued that women would dilute the system’s “spartan atmosphere.” A lawmaker supporting integration responded that, on the contrary, women might help tame the system’s “Neanderthal” traditions. The public seemed mostly to be on the military’s side. Ahead of the law’s passage, one constituent argued in a missive to Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona that the world had seen only one successful female combat officer. “That was Jeanne D’Arc,” he wrote, “and she was a saint. Also, she did not menstrate [sic].”
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https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-last-class-with-balls-craven

“An internal West Point study from this time found that at least forty female cadets had been visited by late-night intruders. Brass responded to these numbers with relief. ‘I thought it was more than that!’”

— The Baffler (@thebaffler.com) 2026-05-23T19:03:03.410Z

“An internal West Point study from this time found that at least forty female cadets had been visited by late-night intruders. Brass responded to these numbers with relief. ‘I thought it was more than that!’”

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Archive Link, no paywall:

https://archive.is/2026.05.19-164943/https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-last-class-with-balls-craven

[Norrrm]

2. Much like minorities with Truman and even before that.

[cloudbase]

3. The first women admitted to a service academy entered in July, 1974

for their plebe indoctrination (class of 1978) at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY.