NEW LONDON, Conn. >> The grueling basic training for fledgling cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, known as swab summer, has been revamped this year in light of a sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the prestigious service academy.

Gone is the shock-and-awe on Day 1 of the seven-week boot camp when rising juniors, known as cadre, shout in the faces of the roughly 300 incoming freshmen students when they first arrive at the New London, Connecticut, campus for future U.S. Coast Guard officers. This year, the cadre read forcefully from a prepared script, avoiding improvisation and yelling.

The goal is to drain the adrenaline of the cadre and make the boot camp more about mentorship and respect than browbeating and bullying, hopefully creating a positive ripple effect throughout the Coast Guard.

“When you don’t have a script, you end up just resorting to volume,” said retired Cmdr. John Heller, the deputy commandant of cadets for strategy and leadership, who has worked at the academy in various roles for about 25 years and helped to oversee the latest changes mirrored after the U.S. Military Academy’s cadet training. “What ends up happening is, we had been onboarding our cadets for decades, unintentionally perhaps, in a climate of fear and intimidation.”

Changing the climate of swab summer is one of seven actions the academy was instructed to take following revelations the Coast Guard kept secret a probe called Operation Fouled Anchor. The investigation found that dozens of sexual assault and harassment cases involving cadets from 1990 to 2006 had been mishandled by the school, including the prevention of some perpetrators from being prosecuted.

The revelation, first reported by CNN, sparked calls for major reforms and long-awaited accountability for the offenders and those who protected them. There are multiple government and congressional investigations underway looking into the mishandling of serious misbehavior at the school and beyond.

A damning majority staff report released Wednesday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found “systemic failures” that “continue to this day” at the academy and in the wider Coast Guard. At a field hearing the committee held Thursday in New London, past and present enlisted personnel spoke of abuse and harassment they experienced and how a “culture of coverup” ultimately protected their perpetrators.

Shannon Norenberg, a former sexual assault response coordinator at the academy who resigned in June and turned whistleblower, said 20-year-old cadets training and having power over swabs a couple years younger, with minimal supervision, was an issue she raised during last year’s review that the commandant ordered following the revelations of Operation Fouled Anchor.

“Sometimes the cadets just are not mature enough to handle that role of being in charge and they go too far” and get personal, such as making comments about a swab’s intelligence or appearance, said Norenberg, who has since rescinded her resignation and is trying to return to her campus position. “Instead of correcting swabs’ behavior, they would insult their character or attack their worthiness to be there.”

Months later, the swabs have learned that the cadre, whom they still call sir and ma’am, can tell them what to do and get them in trouble.

“You can imagine the misuse of power that has been taken advantage of over and over,” said Norenberg, who noted that during her 11 years at the academy, she dealt with more than 150 reported sexual assault cases, including many that involved the abuse of power.

As ordered by the commandant, there’s more oversight of the cadre this summer. Drill instructors from Training Center Cape May in New Jersey, where enlisted personnel are trained, have been tasked with mentoring the cadre. Outside experts have been invited to campus to talk about issues such as power dynamics.