Katherine Miller, a sociology student at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Monday filed a request to resign from the academy, citing the antigay attitudes of some classmates and her refusal to hide her sexual orientation.
“I intend for my resignation to offer a concrete example of the consequences of a failed law and social policy,” she wrote in her resignation letter, referring to the law against gays serving openly in the military, according to The Huffington Post.
Miller, a 2010 Point Foundation scholarship recipient, has an impressive background. She is ranked in the top 1% of the corps of cadets, was designated a distinguished cadet, was awarded the Superintendent’s Award for Excellence, and graduated from the U.S. Army Airborne School. She also has a strong history of advocacy as a member of Knights Out, Service Academy Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association, and a past intern of Service Members Legal Defense Network and the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. She also designed a research project titled, “A Network Evaluation of Attitudes Toward Gays in the Military in Preparation for the Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” which she presented in July.
In her resignation letter, Miller wrote about the perils of her life at West Point where she was “coerced into ignoring derogatory comments towards homosexuals for fear of being alienated for my viewpoint” and “endured sexual harassment for fear of being accused as a lesbian." She also explained that she had invented a fictional straight dating history to tell people in order to cover up her identity. She summarized, “In short, I have lied to my classmates and compromised my integrity and identity by adhering to existing military policy.”
The cadet plans to return to West Point after DADT is repealed and hopes to be back as early as the 2011-2012 academic year. Until then she plans to continue her studies at Yale University.
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