Looking Only at Merit on Military Promotion Boards

By Lt Col Richard Coe, USAF ret

Regarding military Officer Effectiveness Reports/Enlisted Performance Reports, all DoD branches should change their promotion Boards to eliminate all names, sex, race, ethnicity, etc. as well as photographs of the individual.

This will force the Boards to use only merit in analyzing an individual for promotion.

The following expands on what should be seen by a Board in an individual’s file:

• No Photograph
• Delete or black out all references to an individual’s name.
  • Use initials instead of name or pronoun.
• Delete or black out all references to an individual’s race.
• Delete or black out all references to an individual’s sex/gender.
• Delete or black out all references to an individual’s ethnicity/race/color.
• Delete or black out all references to an individual’s age
• Delete or black out all references to an individual’s religion.
• Delete or black out all references to an individual’s marital status.
• Add the following which bear on war-fighting:
  • Within standards for BMI.
  • Passed the PFT

For years Boards have struggled with promotions. With this system the rater will be forced to expand on the merits of the individual rather than allowing a “picture” or other non-merit based reason to be used to promote.

No doubt this will cause much consternation on the part of raters and Board members, but it will eliminate the “Quota-based promotions”.

As a result, the individual and everyone else who works with them will know the person was chosen solely based on the person’s experience and qualifications.

“If we can’t get rid of this DEI BS, none of us of color are ever going to know if we really earned the position we are promoted into.”—US Military Officer

 “Diversity and inclusion is making some things tougher for women, because management needs to check the box to fill positions with women. If women begin to internalize a belief that their selection for a key position was solely based on gender, it places Soldiers at risk for imposter syndrome: “the fact that I have questioned why I was selected is hard.”—From Army Report, Women in SOF

“It would be both demeaning and a disservice to my nation to only be at the Academy because I am a minority female.”—Military Cadet