Marine accused of hazing faces separation despite victory in court

Having served long ago when the Corps was a "hands-on" experience with regard to discipline, I have to ask: Just what is hazing today? When I was a junior troop, our leaders could make things mighty rough for us, in lieu of formal discipline, if we screwed up. It was just part of the routine, and it made us hard so that we could be pretty immune to such treatment. There was racial hazing, hazing because the Sergeant didn't appreciate how you did (or didn't do) something, or just because he didn't like the way you parted your hair. When I was a DI, hazing was more formally defined - we couldn't call a recruit anything but "Private," "Recruit," or his last name. We couldn't make them do stupid things so they could be laughed at. If we called one of the duty hut privates a "house mouse," that was technically hazing. Nobody did anything about it - we all knew when it got out of hand and then the perpetrator would get a little unofficial counselling to cool him off. There were a few crybabies, but not many. Today that seems to be different. One thing we were taught as NCOs was that if we wanted to get rid of somebody, first we had to formally document what he was doing wrong. That meant formal counselling, Page 11 entries in his SRB, and maybe one or more Article 15's. Once a pattern of misbehavior had been established, then action could be started to get the guy an Administrative Separation, usually with a General (under honorable conditions) discharge. It seems that since this combat engineer's CG failed to get him a boot out of the Corps via court-martial, other ways are being tried. The problem is, the Marine has a spotless record - if he was misbehaving, nobody documented it. One commenter was right - if the Corps doesn't get you one way, there are other ways to do it. In the case of this Marine's battalion CO trying to get rid of him via Admin Separation, there isn't much he can do about it, unless his lawyer can find a way. And even if that works, the command will probably find other ways to lay traps for the guy. I hope he overcomes his military difficulties - if I was him, I'd be requesting PCS, just to get away from the poisoned atmosphere he's in at Camp Pendleton.

When I was at Ft. Eustis I shared a room with a guy who had been accused of rape but the charges were dropped due to an obviously prejudicial witness and the lack of any other evidence. He was given a misconduct discharge anyway and left only after over 6 months of virtual house arrest.
Later my own discharge followed after a surprise recommendation from a psych evaluation. I was never accused of anything but the cpt kept screaming about how was a sociopath, a weakling, and mentally I'll all at the same time. My efforts to overturn the decision only elicited more punishment and the logic of the NCOs was that if my discharge was recommended I must of done something horrible. I later got ahold of my medical records and found out that this captain that I hardly knew had repeated insisted to the psychiatrist that I had to be discharged, I guess she needed a new little dog to torment...

That was a year ago, and writing this still extremely difficult.

Something stinks in the 1st Division