About a month ago, a junior enlisted soldier sought advice on Army Reddit about dating a noncommissioned officer within the unit but not in a supervisory role over the soldier. The relationship in question is explicitly prohibited by Army Regulation 600-32, but it raises the question of why prohibiting fraternization in the Army evolved from safeguarding the chain of command to the broad prohibition we enforce today. How did we get here? And are these restrictions appropriate for the nation’s largest employer?
Working together, commissioned officers, warrant officers, noncommissioned officers, and junior enlisted soldiers perform crucial military functions—but strict fraternization rules prohibit personal relationships between them. It wasn’t always this way. Popular perception presumes this rigid separation has been in place since the birth of the Continental Army, but this is not true. Army officers and enlisted personnel could freely date and socialize through 1997 so long as they were not in the same chain of command. That’s because America’s founders rejected Europe’s class-based societal structures as wholly un-American, radically departing from old customs that divided the landed nobility who composed the officer class from the peasants they commanded. In America’s military, prohibiting fraternization protected the integrity of the chain of command and avoided perceptions of favoritism—it was not intended to serve as a general penalty for social interactions. So, what happened?
In 1997, sexual misconduct in the military was at a boiling point. The secretary of defense at the time, William Cohen, responded to various issues by directing the Army to align with other branches and rigidly prohibit all personal relationships between officers and enlisted soldiers. This new change introduced the Army to “status-based fraternization” rules, which prohibited specific categories of soldiers from having personal relationships without any requirement to prove a negative impact on good order and discipline. The Army unsuccessfully fought against this change, arguing that officer and enlisted relationships were not the cause of sexual misconduct and that banning them would not fix any problems. The Army was right: criminalizing status-based fraternization did not “move the needle” on sexual misconduct—yet this prohibition on personal relationships between officers and enlisted personnel remains today.
In 2013, sexual misconduct in the military was at yet another boiling point. While there were complex fights in the Senate about how to solve the problem, the Army doubled down on status-based fraternization and added additional restrictions on personal relationships between noncommissioned officers and junior enlisted soldiers in 2014.
To be clear, prohibitions against fraternization are necessary to maintain the integrity of the chain of command or prevent the exploitation of supervisory authority; however, expanding fraternization to strictly prohibiting specific categories of soldiers from having personal relationships throughout every branch, at every duty location, and across both active and reserve components goes well beyond military necessity for an organization of this size. Furthermore, these status-based fraternization rules create unintended implications that contradict the message of strength in unity from the new secretary of defense. The deleterious impacts can be seen in three key areas.
The first is race relations. The US military reflects societal dynamics and, despite its challenges, has historically contributed to the advancement of racial relations. The Army was the largest employer of African Americans during World War II, the Pentagon was the first desegregated building in Virginia, and the military was a critical ally for breaking racial barriers throughout the civil rights movement and the early 1970s. In 1998, the military had a higher representation of minorities (36 percent) than the civilian labor force (30 percent). The introduction of status-based fraternization suddenly restricted the Army’s predominantly white officer population (80.2 percent) from having personal relationships with its largest minority group—enlisted soldiers. (Interestingly, the leader who introduced the Army to status-based fraternization, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, would later publish Love in Black and White, a memoir he coauthored with his wife about overcoming the social stigma of an interracial relationship.) Today, there continues to be more racial diversity “among enlisted members than officers in all service branches.”
The second corrosive impact of status-based fraternization rules is ostracization. In 1998, most officers were male (85.6 percent), and homosexual relationships were not permitted. The Department of Defense’s policy on homosexuality deemed it “incompatible with military service,” stating that the presence of individuals who engage in homosexual conduct “seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission.” Due to the restrictions on same-sex relationships, a policy prohibiting officers from romantic relationships with enlisted soldiers primarily applied to male officers and enlisted females. In theory, the new rule discouraged power-imbalanced relationships. In reality, enlisted females saw no tangible benefits from the change and continue to be the main targets of sexual harassment.
Finally, there is the issue of social isolation. The impact of your environment plays a significant role in shaping your personality. This impact is evident by the existence of accents: you develop an accent because you adopt the characteristics of the people you are surrounded with. While the Army encourages mentorship between ranks, this is separate from the impact of the people you choose to spend most of your time with. Junior enlisted soldiers living in the barracks belong to a high-risk population more susceptible to misconduct. Status-based fraternization rules deny junior enlisted soldiers an opportunity to engage with people beyond their immediate social circles. This is particularly harmful as more adults make friends and socialize online with platforms that recommend connections based on proximity and shared interests; if one of these connections occurs between soldiers in different rank categories, an otherwise healthy adult relationship is prohibited.
Over the past twenty-seven years, status-based fraternization rules have diverted commanders’ responsibility from maintaining the integrity of the chain of command to maintaining un-American social stratification. For the Army, expanding fraternization prohibitions was intended to reduce incidents of sexual misconduct. Instead, it merely imposed a punitive stigma on personal relationships between officers and enlisted soldiers and noncommissioned officers and junior enlisted personnel. The Independent Review Committee on Sexual Assault in the Military made it clear that the military “should stop doing what is not working.” If status-based fraternization rules have not addressed the issue that justified their implementation, what is the justification for keeping them?
All service members deserve the opportunity to build relationships with other service members based on shared values outside their chains of command. The current policy ostracizes categories of professionals, leading to stigmatization, devaluation, and exclusion. To attract the best talent, we must acknowledge not all our best leaders will pursue a path to commissioning. By eliminating the prohibition on status-based fraternization, we return fraternization rules to their original purpose of safeguarding the integrity of the chain of command—while also promoting the unity, shared purpose, and individual excellence the new administration aims to achieve.
Margaret G. Murphy is a master sergeant in the US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. She is currently serving as the operations and training NCO for the Office of Special Trial Counsel.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Office of Special Trial Counsel, United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Pfc. Alexandria Higgins, US Army National Guard