I Graduated from Cal Maritime, and Every Day I Live With the Regret that I Didn’t Do More to Help Change Things. These Are a Few of the Troubling Stories I Remember.

*This account was submitted to MLAA by the author, a graduate of the California Maritime Academy.*

I was a student at Cal Maritime in the late 2010’s, and after reading some of the stories from former students who have come forward, I would just like to share a few snippets of things that happened while I was there. As a man who was in student leadership, I was blissfully unaware of the extent of the problems, and every day I live with the regret that I did not do more to help change things.

The first incident happened during my sophomore year. There was a freshman who transferred to CMA who was found to have repeatedly gone to female dorms and tried to gain access by checking to see if the doors were unlocked and finding out what the girls’ schedules were. Because this student was a transfer, he ended up in classes with an older cohort who were aware of his activities.

After he had been at the school about 1.5 semesters, the student leadership were able to gather information that at least 10 different freshmen women had reported him to the Title-IX Coordinator. He gained the nickname “Title-IX Kid,” which is something I was also guilty of calling him. 

One of the victims who reported him was told by the Title-IX department that “until he sexually assaults someone, we can’t do more than issue him verbal warnings.” His attitude and behavior went unchecked until one day someone cut the brakes on his bicycle, which caused him to slam into the ship’s gate at full speed. 

His parents then pulled him out of school over fears for his safety at CMA. Title-IX complaints never went anywhere while that Title-IX Coordinator was there.

A second story occurred during my senior year. There was an ROTC student who made women uncomfortable. He would text them explicit messages at night, and he would show up to their dorm rooms drunk, knocking on their doors. After several complaints to the Title-IX department went nowhere, several students wrote a formal complaint to the Commandant's office because the student was a member of the student leadership. 

Several of my friends were on the Cadet Disciplinary Board for his hearing, and they were absolutely disgusted by what came forward. The Cadet Disciplinary Board voted to remove him from his leadership position and to bar him from holding any future leadership positions at CMA. All the members of this board were seniors, and due to the nature of the case, we kept it private amongst those who already knew because we did not want to “out” the victims. 

The following year (or maybe two years later, I don’t remember), I was told that despite being found guilty by the Cadet Disciplinary Board, the abuser had been given a leadership position. Following the verdict, he appealed to the head Commandant, who he had always been in a boys club with, and because he and the Commandant were friends, the Commandant signed the waiver that allowed this abuser to serve in a position of power again. That thought sickens me.

There are countless stories about things that happened on the Cal Maritime training ship. Many of these stories involve the licensed officers the school hired to man the ship. These officers who signed up for the cruise often dropped out at the last minute, which led to CMA hiring some questionable characters. For example, one officer they hired was a CMA grad from the 90’s who owned a brothel in the Philippines. 

The school also often hired recent graduates to go on the cruises, and I heard stories about these recent grads sexually harassing the cadets. I heard stories about graduates who had been hired to serve as watch officers on the cruise who would buy alcohol for students in hopes of getting them into bed. Before my senior CMA cruise, I attended the pre-cruise faculty meeting because of my position in student leadership. The speaker specifically mentioned “no sleeping with students” and everyone then turned around to look at a certain group of faculty in the back who were all mostly recent grads. 

My last story isn’t really a CMA story. It’s from my cadet commercial cruise aboard a Matson ship, the M/V Manoa. I have a name that could potentially belong to either a male or a female, and after the crew received my name as I was preparing to join the ship, they would make sexual jokes and talk about how they hoped I was a woman. I know this because I knew the deck cadets who were on the ship before me, and they told me about this.

The first Chief Mate on that ship was a relief who had been hired on a temporary one-month basis. He didn't like to wear shirts or shoes, and he often wore a sweater that was 1/2 zipped-up instead of a shirt—exposing his chest. Almost all of his conversations were about Thailand where he spent most of his time with sex workers and drugs.

Early in the trip he approached a deck cadet on watch and asked him, “Have you ever fucked a girl while on heroin? It's the best.” That pretty much set the tone for everything related to him. This Chief Mate often offered porn to the cadets, including porn that would be illegal in the United States. He once approached me and showed me a video of him having sex with what was clearly an underage girl from overseas.

During that cruise I was repeatedly told that, as a man, I “was lucky not to be sexually harassed every day,” because they had been sexually harassed when they were cadets. Fortunately, I wasn’t sexually harassed. At least not severely.

I could go on and on with these stories, but this is getting long, and I’ll wrap it up here. Again, I wish I had done more to change things when I was a student at CMA, and I’m glad people are finally coming forward with their stories.