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Spoilers Starfleet Academy General Discussion Thread

And if you violate those regulations you get written up.

They dont hold you down and shave you.
And you also get ordered to get a haircut, shave, etc. And if you don't follow that order? You get further action taken, like the brig, lost pay or rank, court martial, etc.

Why? Because you aren't following the rules AND you are not following orders, which in itself is a worse problem. Means discipline is broken down.

Caleb knowingly signed up for Starfleet, and therefore is subject to its rules and discipline.

Getting a haircut is hardly losing 'body autonomy'. Neither is being ordered to do the same.
 
And you also get ordered to get a haircut, shave, etc. And if you don't follow that order? You get further action taken, like the brig, lost pay or rank, court martial, etc.

Why? Because you aren't following the rules AND you are not following orders, which in itself is a worse problem. Means discipline is broken down.

Caleb knowingly signed up for Starfleet, and therefore is subject to its rules and discipline.

Getting a haircut is hardly losing 'body autonomy'. Neither is being ordered to do the same.
I'm guessing you dont know about the massive amounts of trouble various military's have in real life with their hair policies?
 
You sign up to serve, that means you follow the regulations. And that's part of it.

Shouldn't be an issue.
So no...

Would it surprise you too know that real life military's have been forced to adjust their hair policies multiple times because they were deemed to be discriminatory?
 
How is it discriminatory to have everyone follow the same set of rules? Rules that you agreed to by signing up for service to begin with.

It's the same with any job. If you're hired by a job you applied for, you are beholden to follow their appearance standards and rules. If you don't and you keep not following said rules, you're going to find yourself without a job pretty quickly. You aren't special.

So, again... no, I don't think it should be an issue.
 
So no...

Would it surprise you too know that real life military's have been forced to adjust their hair policies multiple times because they were deemed to be discriminatory?
Those are details, the specific policies related personal grooming and appearance standards. Some of them are infamously unfair, such as policies with regard to beards, but grooming standards are not necessarily unfair or meaningless.
 
For a long time, Star Trek has gotten away with not defining how Starfleet is not like a military, enough so that many people can't see the its military aspects. To that extent, Starfleet Academy has generally been abstract, and it seems to me that people tend to insert their own ideas about what happens there with their own experiences of studying at colleges and universities. Indeed, it seems that SFA is nothing more than a college, like Sisko saying he would beam into his house every evening for dinner. Other things were more accurate, things like the desire to serve along with having some element of adventure. Kids I've know who have been accepted worked hard to get there, but the application process was itself easier than what appears on screen.

This series is confronting more head how Starfleet is military, or at least performs the functions of a military. These cadets aren't going to college. They are getting an education that will make them useful and usable by the government to project policy. They are there to serve the Federation. Cadets getting their hair cut--BTW, a certain Klingon needs a trim--serves multiple purposes, some sanitary, some practical, some psychological. In the end, the standards are not what the individual wants, but what is needed.

I suspect there will be points when the series explores this tension between individual and group, something which would actually be less present in actual service academies. This is television for people, who will have trouble relating to life in a military academy. I would give it leeway in this. Indeed, I laughed that the Doctor thought he could get raw cadets to perform opera: they wouldn't have the time.
 
Nobody loved ENT, either. Until some did. Which was pretty quickly. During the original UPN run.

I stopped watching ENT during its first run after the 2nd season. I absolutely hated that show. But I did watch season 4 because of Manny Coto. Then I hated it all over again with TATV.
 
So no...

Would it surprise you too know that real life military's have been forced to adjust their hair policies multiple times because they were deemed to be discriminatory?
Sounds like complaining just to have something to complain about. Early military training (Boots. Cadets)is about uniformity and conformity. That said, its clear that Starfleet takes culture and species into consideration when it comes to grooming. Otherwise Jay-den would have the haircut as Caleb. Caleb seems to be a bog standard human, so he gets the bog-standard haircut.
 
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