A 1990s cheating scandal at the Naval Academy dragged in 125 midshipmen. Some had their lives ruined.
Simms is turning his experience into a lesson for his students.
“I was asked to leave the Naval Academy thirty days from graduation,” he tells them. “Thirty days, this close to a dream, a childhood dream. Was I wrong for cheating? Yes, that was my first mistake. And I will be the first person to tell you that cheating is wrong ’cause you gotta pay the piper.”
And if, in the end, Simms can keep some students on the straight and narrow, his experience will have “achieved something special,” he says.
Others seem to have done pretty well for themselves by going into politics.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, was barred from walking with her class at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 as a punishment connected to the massive cheating scandal that implicated over 130 midshipmen in her class.
A copy of the commencement program from May 25, 1994, obtained by the New Jersey Globe, does not include Sherrill’s name. Sherrill said that her absence from the ceremony was a consequence of failing to report classmates who had been involved in the scandal.
“I didn’t turn in some of my classmates, so I didn’t walk, but graduated and was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving for nearly ten years with the highest level of distinction and honor,” Sherrill said.
However, the Sherrill campaign rejected a request that she permit public inspection of any disciplinary records from her time at the academy. Only Sherrill could authorize the release of those sealed records.
If the only thing that happened was that Mikie Sherrill maintained a code of silence, why not allow the discipline records to be made public?
Instead of asking that question, her fellow House Dems are outraged that anything was made public at all.
House Democrats called for an investigation into the release of Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s (D-N.J.) military records Thursday, following reports that her personal information was errantly distributed.
The ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), called the release of the record a “stunning failure” to protect the privacy of a veteran and member of Congress. In a letter shared first with POLITICO, he called for an investigation of what he called an “illegal and likely politically motivated disclosure.”
“This raises serious questions about whether NARA, currently headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, released the comprehensive record in a politically motivated effort to aid Rep. Sherrill’s gubernatorial opponent,” the Californian wrote in a Wednesday letter to the archives’ acting inspector general, William Brown.
Yes, Rubio holding down 30 positions, went down and got Sherill’s records. Rep. Garcia never says what exactly it is in the records that he objects to being released. They don’t object to the cheating, but getting caught.