Academy prof: Admissions easier on minorities

Graduation Day at the Naval Academy.  Has it been made easier for some than others?  

The U.S. Naval Academy was my not-so-secret dream when I was 12-years old.  At the local high school graduation ceremony that year I stood at the end of the line of the graduating Seniors in order to ask the guest speaker, Senator Frank Church, what I needed to do in order to get an appointment to the Naval Academy.  When he saw me he was most gracious and stood talking to me about the appointments process for a good 5 minutes while members of the local Democrat party fidgeted in background.  I’m certain they wanted their precious time with the Senator but he wouldn’t leave me until he had answered all my questions.  I remember my mother smiling at my chutzpah.  I don’t think she really liked the local Democrats all that much.  

With that background you can see why I was exceedingly pleased last year when my grand-nephew got a letter of interest from the U.S. Naval Academy.  He’s a fine young man and a tremendous athlete and almost a 4.0 average well into his Junior year in high school.  While I’m proud of him--and his younger brother and sisters--I’m even more proud of his mother.  She’s been divorced from his father for a long time and has struggled as a working mother, ensuring her children are clothed, fed and taught good, common sense and wholesome family values.  She also goes to college and is inching closer to having her own degree.  She sets a living example for her children to emulate and it is clear that they love and respect her.  (She’s much like her late Grandmother in that regard.)

While I was exceedingly pleased that my grand-nephew got a letter from Annapolis--and was kind of secretly hoping he’d go there even though I was Army--I was thrilled when Boise State showed interest in him along with Oregon State and the University of Oregon.  Imagine, two of the top football schools in the nation looking at my grand-nephew based on what he has accomplished through hard work, sweat, effort and study.  He’s an outstanding young man who is working towards achieving his dreams.  No one is giving him anything.  He is earning it and that’s what makes me proud.

The linked article about the Naval Academy in which Academy English Professor Bruce Fleming alleges that the Navy has set a lower standard for non-white students is both disappointing and insulting.  You see, my grand-nephew’s father, like President Obama’s, is black, and it is extremely insulting to my grand-nephew, to his mother and to his whole family that a government institution like the Naval Academy would show an interest in him because of his bi-racial heritage rather than his own actual accomplishments.  In lowering standards to become more diverse they have de-valued his efforts when they need no devaluing.  I can look anyone in the eye and say that this young man takes a back seat to no one either physically or mentally.  I admit that it saddens me, though, as I always thought that the goal of the Naval Academy was to produce Officers and Gentlemen.  Now I find out that they are a social studies school interested less in educating war time leaders than in appearing to be diverse.   It is clear that the Naval Academy as it stands today is not good enough for my grand-nephew.  It is certainly not the same institution as it was when Joe Bellino and Roger Staubach were Midshipmen.  

My niece has raised a very fine young man.  He has character and natural leadership abilities beyond that which can be taught in any military academy, much less one that is more worried about appearing politically correct than producing polished leaders.  He can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in academics and sports and that and his character, not his skin color, are what are important.  My grand-nephew deserves the right to rise as far as he can on his own abilities so that when he is my age he can look back on his life with pride and say, “I did all that on my own” without having the nagging thought in the back of his head that he was given the chance to accomplish it only because of the color of his skin.  I am confident that he will go far on his God-given abilities–farther than any of us now imagine–and it won’t be because anyone, or anything, had to use lower standards to fit him in.  

That being said, I have a feeling that he’s going to become an Oregon Duck and I think that’s a great choice.  I just hope that the Ducks realize what an outstanding young man, both athletically and as a student scholar, they will getting if he goes there.  

Follow the title link for the story about the decline of Annapolis.