ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The U.S. Naval Academy’s prestigious summer seminar, once known for instilling leadership, discipline, and an inexplicable obsession with boats, has unveiled its latest addition to the curriculum: Personnel Optimization Strategy (POS), a program designed to help high school students “recognize prejudice by reenacting it in excruciating detail.”
The course, launched in collaboration with the Naval Office of Book Burning (NOOB), features modules such as “Why Diversity Matters (But Not in 1943),” “Segregation: A Leadership Challenge,” and a live-action simulation where participants must write personnel evaluations using 1950s Navy standards and a pack of Lucky Strikes.
“We really want to foster critical thinking,” said Capt. Gilbert E. Clark, Jr., who coordinates the program between rounds of golf and pretending he’s still in command. “If students walk away realizing how awful things used to be, that’s a win. If they walk away thinking it wasn’t so bad — well, the fleet always needs more officers.”
