About USAFA Admissions

STARRS recently received information from people regarding Admissions at the Air Force Academy.

The first were parents questioning why their high-excelling son (who is a white male) was rejected by USAFA (even though he was accepted at the other service academies as well as top Ivy League colleges) and wondered how many other high-achieving white males were also rejected or placed on the waitlist. They noted that the USAFA Director of Admissions, Candice Pipes, has a history of advocating for DEI ideology.

STARRS covered this in August 2025: DEI Admissions Gatekeeper Gives Briefing at USAFA BOV Meeting. When she briefed the Board of Visitors, it was surprising that she was still at USAFA since the Pentagon has worked to eliminate the DEI agenda and those who pushed it. But Pipes is still there, seen most recently in a USAFA article about Air Force Secretary Meink’s visit to the Academy.

In 2021, she wrote an article in Air Force Times titled, “We need radical change to fix the racial disparity in our Air Force“, that was very angry, had radical language throughout and was very pro-DEI.

Scott Sturman’s (USAFA ’72) article, The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy, said about Pipes:

. . . . In an article in the Air Force Times, newly appointed AFA Director of Admissions, Colonel Candice Pipes, called for radical changes to address perceived disparities in the Air Force.

Her commentary calls for restorative justice that emphasizes identity, victimhood, and correcting inequities by the application of quotas.

She dismisses or ignores merit, the primary predictor of success, in accordance with identity-focused psychologists, who assert that merit-based hiring is unfair.

In her new role Colonel Pipes stands as a gatekeeper, a liminal deity, who wields immense power to politicize the applicant selection process and mold the next generation of Air Force officers. . . .

Another person suggested STARRS take a look at the USAFA Admissions website (and the Admissions Instagram page) under Pipe’s Admissions office. With a fighter pilot photo as his icon, he noted the statistically improbable point that both of these would show so many photos of female and black cadets.

Besides seeing this image at the top of the page as the first impression of the warfighting academy when someone clicks on the Admissions website,

here are other photos seen on the home page and other pages:

Perhaps this explains why the parent’s son was rejected to attend USAFA even though the other service academies accepted him.

We saw this same kind of thing in recruiting, but during the last administration that pushed CRT/DEI ideology into the military. See examples in these two articles of Navy and Army recruiting pages:

The Navy and Diversity

Army Sees Sharp Decline in White Recruits

Restoration America’s “Restore the Military” site, which keeps tabs on personnel in the military who pushed woke DEI, has a page on Candice Pipes, Director of Admissions, USAFA, with this information:

Colonel Pipes was a defendant in the case, Students For Fair Admissions vs The United States Air Force Academy as she was the head of USAFA admissions. SFFA alleges deliberate considerations placed on race rather than academic merit when considering admissions. Their primary evidence came about when the demographics of the incoming class of 2028 were released to the public, of which, over 38% of the cadets were ethnic minorities – the most diverse class in the academy’s history.
In 2021 Colonel Pipes authored an opinion piece titled, “We need radical change to fix the racial disparity in our Air Force” that was published in Air Force Times.
- Claims that she pays a “diversity tax” because she is a black woman.“We underrepresented airmen often pay what I call a diversity tax. In my case, I pay a Black tax, a woman tax, and a Black woman tax. And while I believe we should all pay our fair share of taxes for the greater good — that’s a lot of taxes and it becomes taxing.”“If you don’t understand what I mean by this tax, just ask your average white male colonel how many Black History Month luncheons or MLK services he’s put on; how many Making Excellence Inclusive committees he’s chaired, how many diversity panels he’s led or participated in. Ask him how many times he’s been charged to lead Diversity and Inclusion efforts, or initiatives or discussions in his career. Then ask me. As with all inequitable taxation, the result is inequality.”

Her article argued that the Air Force should tackle “racial disparities” in their leadership by implementing reinforced, pro-DEI policies. Among her proposed solutions were to:
- Emulate the DEI policies of NASA
  - “NASA has been extremely successful in increasing its diversity and creating more inclusive environments by changing the messages sent and making the Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan the responsibility of every employee. NASA elevated the authority of its Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, and the ODEO has a seat at the table for all high-level agency decisions, briefings and forums with the charge of bringing issues affecting equality, equity, and diversity to the attention of senior leaders in all cases.”
- Required Leadership To Create and Enforce A DEI Strategy.
  - “NASA’s executive leaders (general officer equivalents) are required to champion a strategy outlined in the plan and brief progress to the administrator.”
- Requiring the USAF to partner with HBCUs and “Hispanic-serving institutions”
  - “…strengthening the Air Force’s partnership with local institutions of higher learning including, but not limited to, historically Black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions and being held accountable by the Air Force chief of staff for those lines of effort.”
Pipes told reporters in 2023 that it was her goal to attract more women to USAFA.