Senior Madeleine Genia never considered enlisting in the military until she received an email last year from the U.S. Naval Academy inviting her to apply to their 2025 Summer Seminar, a weeklong program meant to introduce rising high school seniors to the Naval Academy.
Genia was accepted into the program, and her experience—5:15 a.m. wake-ups, rigorous physical exercises, classes and bonding with peers—led her to apply to the Naval Academy.
“I loved the structure of everything [at Summer Seminar],” Genia said, citing family-style meals as an example. “I just loved that everyone was pushing each other to work towards being better. It wasn’t just being better, but being better for everyone’s sake.”
While there, Genia said much of the focus was on physical training and exercise, as well as a secret mental component she said she can’t disclose, for fear of “spoiling it.”
During Sea Trials, a full day of intense challenges meant to test strength and endurance, she participated in both individual and team-based exercises. “There was this beach, and we had to link arms and all do sit-ups and pushups and hold a plank and do all this physical stuff as the waves are crashing over us on the shoreline,” she said. “And if one person can’t do the sit-up with everyone else, then no one can do it.”
Senior Marc Liebowitz also attended the Navy’s Summer Seminar and applied to the Naval Academy last summer. Liebowitz had wanted to join the Marines since he was a little kid, but because the Marines do not have their own service academy, prospective officers must enroll in the Naval Academy.
This winter, Liebowitz withdrew his application to the Naval Academy. Initially, when interviewed by the Bit, he said, “Due to some current political tensions, I decided to withdraw my application, number one due to really questioning what I would be fighting for.” But in a subsequent interview, he said he changed his point of view on military service after some more reflection. “You’re not serving the commander-in-chief; you’re serving the people,” he said.
Liebowitz said his thinking began to shift when he learned of the U.S. strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs in international waters. Liebowitz thought the soldiers who carried out the strikes should have refused the orders, and said when he joined the military, he would try to uphold the Constitution to the best of his ability, even if it meant defying the orders of the commander-in-chief.
“I’m prepared to not just accept orders, but if they go against basic moral standing, like if I’m told to bomb a village full of innocent civilians, then I’ll take the court martial, I’ll take the dishonorable discharge, I’ll take 12 years in the brig or whatever it is, because that’s just not the person I am,” he said. “That’s not how I want to be representing the Armed Forces of the United States.”
Liebowitz plans to join the Naval ROTC program (NROTC). ROTC is a program that allows college students to train as military officers while completing a traditional college degree, while service academies are fully immersive, military-structured federal institutions. Both service academies and ROTC require students to serve as an officer in the military after graduation.
“I just found that the route of NROTC might be a little easier than trying to apply to the [Naval] Academy,” he said. The Naval Academy’s application process requires a nomination, generally from a member of Congress (though five nominations per year can come from the vice president); an SAT or ACT score; essays; a fitness assessment and an interview. ROTC applications also require standardized test scores, interviews and a fitness assessment but do not require a Congressional nomination.
Liebowitz also said NROTC would allow him to study any major he chooses, which would impact the role he is assigned to in the military after he graduates. While the Naval Academy allows students to choose their own major, it requires that 65 percent of graduates choose majors relating to science, technology, engineering or mathematics, and the types of majors offered are limited. Liebowitz said he wants to major in business administration.
Liebowitz said he has not decided what specifically he wants to do in the Marines but that he’s considering a combat position. “Obviously combat is a scary thing, and, you know, you don’t want to die, but it’s less about the combat and more about the commitment to my country and the things that I can do for the people back home if I were to take that route.”
Genia also recently withdrew her application from the Naval Academy because of fears about the current administration’s attitude towards the armed forces of the military. She said she was already hesitant about military service going into the Summer Seminar after the Academy removed almost 400 books relating to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) last April following orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office. The following month, the Pentagon ordered all military leaders to remove and review any books containing “divisive concepts and gender ideology” from their libraries. The order flagged books with terms including “affirmative action,” “discrimination,” “diversity,” “gender identity” and “white privilege” for removal, among others. A list of 381 books removed from the Naval Academy’s library includes Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “The hate u give” by Angie Thomas and a book called “Memorializing the Holocaust” by Janet Jacobs.
However, Genia said her fears about censorship and a lack of diversity were “put to bed” during a class discussion at Summer Seminar. “One of the teachers for one of the class previews that I went to addressed that [the removal of books] head on, and he actually invited us to have a discussion about what we thought about it.”
Genia said her teacher told her he didn’t expect the removal of books to impact the academics at the school, and that the change to the curriculum “didn’t change the heart of the Naval academy.”
As Genia progressed through the application process, though, she said her concerns intensified. “A lot of what was going on with it being very clear that women and diversity were not welcome in the military,” Genia said. “That was a huge shocking point for me.”
In October, Hegseth announced new fitness standards for the military, which he said could end up excluding women.
For Genia, the “final straw” came shortly after she returned from a vacation in Colombia over winter break. On Jan. 3, U.S. forces captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife in an early morning raid in Caracas.
After seeing the news, Genia said she was worried about being asked to carry out illegal orders if she were to join the Navy. “I can pledge allegiance to the Constitution, I can uphold the Constitution,” she said, “but I can’t obey the orders of the commander-in-chief of the chain of command if those orders break the Constitution.”
In November, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, posted a video with five other members of Congress urging those serving in the military to refuse illegal orders from the Trump administration. In response, the Pentagon announced it was taking steps to downgrade Kelly’s military retirement rank, but a federal judge blocked the order.
Genia said she has “no problem” with the idea that members of the military should follow all legal and constitutional orders. “I think that that’s just inherent to the military, and that was something I was ready to sign up for,” she said. “But when the lines start to blur,” Genia said, “that’s where I have to question if it’s something that I am okay with doing.”
According to Director of College Counseling Emily Livelli, each grade typically has one or two students who apply to service academies and between one and three who consider ROTC.
While Livelli cannot recall any students ever actually attending a service academy since she came to GDS in 2011, she said the number of students interested in joining the military has been fairly consistent during her tenure.
“Most people who get to that point, who are thinking about committing to a life of military service, think beyond the current administration, and it typically is not the type of thing that influences their decision,” she said. “Military career is longer than an administration.”
Sophomore Jack Gresens, who is currently in the Civil Air Patrol—a group of civilian volunteers who sometimes assist the U.S. Air Force in emergency missions—said he hopes to join the Air Force ROTC in college before joining the Air National Guard.
“I want to be a pilot, and [ROTC] is one of the ways I can fund my education and also get into the career field,” Gresens said. “It also allows me to serve my country.” In addition to offering scholarships, ROTC programs give students monthly stipends. Gresens wants to become a pilot for Delta, which requires at least 1500 flight hours, so he said the training and funding offered by the Air Force ROTC are “a huge benefit.”
But Gresens said he is concerned about new policies in the armed forces he views as discriminatory, such as a new rule enacted in December which will phase out permanent waivers that allow soldiers with certain medical conditions to avoid shaving. All men in the armed forces, barring special circumstances, are required to be clean-shaven. The Army said in a statement that men who were unable to comply with this standard within a certain timeframe—which it did not specify—could be kicked out of the military. A condition that qualifies for one such medical waiver is razor bumps, which disproportionately affect Black men.
Genia also became concerned about the removal of policies promoting diversity in the Armed Forces. She said if she had already been attending the Naval Academy, she could have justified staying and eventually serving, but she couldn’t in good faith apply to the Academy now given the military’s recent actions.
After talking to her family and her Blue and Gold officer—a Naval Academy liaison who guides applicants through the admissions process—Genia withdrew her application.
“I remember I was drafting the text to my Blue and Gold Officer, who had been nothing but supportive and amazing, and I was just totally bawling my eyes out, but I knew that it was better to make the decision now than to make it later, because if I were to make it later I would be taking up a spot for someone who would choose to go,” she said.
Genia said that after withdrawing her application, she spoke to her roommate from Summer Seminar, who was also considering withdrawing. “When I finally told her that I withdrew my application, she was so thrilled,” Genia said. That’s because while her roommate had wanted to go to the Naval Academy her entire life, the current political climate and anti-diversity efforts in the military had also caused her to reconsider. “I can’t be somewhere that doesn’t want me,” the roommate told Genia on a phone call.
“When I finally told my parents, ‘I think I have to withdraw my application,’ I was sitting at my kitchen counter just sobbing,” Genia said.
Despite his concerns, Liebowitz said he is still committed to serving his country. “I think the overall mission of the country that I currently reside in, the United States, has remained largely the same,” Liebowitz said. “I think that a few isolated instances or bad leadership doesn’t necessarily disqualify being part of something bigger than myself.”