NORTHFIELD, Vt. ― Despite being the first woman allowed to wear a Muslim headscarf beneath her military uniform at the nation’s oldest private military college, Sana Hamze says she doesn’t feel like a pioneer. Her focus is on learning details of life as a “rook” at Vermont’s Norwich University, in the school’s Corps of Cadets and not running afoul of the many rules and customs new students are required to master.
As do all aspiring members of the corps, she’s learned to walk at the side of the pathways, make square corners when turning, line up before eating and sleep when she is told. Like her freshman classmates, she yearns for the time when her class is “recognized” and they become official members of the Corps of Cadets and the rook restrictions end.
But the uniform for the 18-year-old student from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is a little different. Unlike other female members of the corps, Hamze wears her Muslim hijab, or head covering, beneath.
As part of her effort to fulfill her lifelong dream of continuing her family’s legacy of military and public service while staying true to her devout religious beliefs, she asked for a uniform accommodation to wear the hijab when she was applying to colleges earlier this year. Norwich, one of the nation’s six senior military colleges, agreed to make the accommodation.
“I don’t really see it as me changing the world or changing the U.S., even,” she said during an interview on the Norwich parade ground. “I just kind of see it as the school allowing an American student to practice her faith while also training to be an officer in the Navy.”
Hamze’s great-grandmother was in the Air Force and two of her grandparents met while serving in the Navy in Puerto Rico. Her father is a police officer in Florida.
Hamze said that she has been subject to hostile stares and comments while wearing her hijab in public, but never at Norwich, where she is not the first Muslim to attend the school, or in Vermont. The hostility to her faith hasn’t made her bitter or curbed her dream of serving her country.
