THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 16, 1997 TAG: 9701160243
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 75 lines
In a springtime marked by drug busts, the discovery of a campus car-theft ring and sexual harassment charges against a high-ranking midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, few people noticed when Jennifer Della Barba was booted from school for lying to two of her classmates last April.
But this week, as Navy Secretary John H. Dalton considers the 22-year-old woman's plea to reverse her expulsion, Della Barba's case is shaping up as an unusual test of the academy's honor system and of Dalton's backing for Adm. Charles R. Larson, its superintendent.
Members of Dalton's staff met privately at the Pentagon with Della Barba on Tuesday, hearing her account of how a comedic misunderstanding of what her boyfriend was doing in her dorm room last April 14 spawned allegations that she lied to her classmates, violating the academy's honor code.
Through her lawyer, Della Barba declined Wednesday to comment on the case. She has been on leave since July, when Larson recommended her dismissal from school and the service.
But Della Barba repeatedly has denied any wrongdoing and has accused a student honor board and Capt. William T.R. ``Randy'' Bogle, the commandant of midshipmen, of unfairly judging her.
Della Barba was a 1st classman, just weeks away from graduation and commissioning as an ensign, when her boyfriend, fellow midshipman James Steidle, came to her room in Bancroft Hall for an all-night study session on April 13.
Around 5:30 a.m. on the 14th, the pair has said, they drove to the academy hospital so that Della Barba could talk to a medical corpsman about whether she should go on a field trip that day to Assateague Island, Va.
Della Barba had undergone knee surgery just a few days earlier and has said she was concerned about whether she should be out walking on a beach.
Finding the hospital closed, the pair returned to Della Barba's room. She decided to go on the field trip anyway, leaving around 6:30, and other mids have confirmed that she was on the bus.
In the meantime, Steidle, still studying in Della Barba's room, decided to stretch out on her bed. He was resting there, along with several of Della Barba's stuffed animals, when two other mids - both men - came by a short time later.
Seeing Steidle, the other mids deduced that lumps under the covers with him - the stuffed animals - were Della Barba. They said nothing to Steidle, but confronted her late that day with allegations of sexual misconduct.
Those two mids and a third who overheard their conversation with her have said that Della Barba told them she ``went and saw'' a therapist that morning. When they found the hospital was closed at the time, the mids charged Della Barba with lying.
Della Barba claims she said - or intended to say - she ``went to see'' a corpsman. At worst, she misspoke or the other mids misunderstood her, she asserted to Dalton in a letter last July.
An honor board found Della Barba guilty of lying in late April, as the Annapolis campus was being rocked by more sensational allegations of misconduct by other mids and as Larson was trying to rebut a veteran professor's nationally published indictment of the school's moral climate.
Larson has reviewed the case twice since then, recommending in July that she be expelled from school and defending that decision in a letter to Dalton in August. He also has urged that she be ordered to repay the government $87,381, the cost of her schooling.
Steidle meanwhile, graduated with the rest of his class and is now a Marine 2nd lieutenant.
``All of the peripheral issues'' Della Barba has raised ``do not focus on the fact that on the afternoon of the 14th of April, Midshipman Della Barba, by herself, told a direct lie to three other midshipmen,'' Capt. Tom Jurkowsky, an academy spokesman, said after Larson's last review of the case.
Dalton's involvement this week comes as a much-publicized independent panel is beginning its assessment of problems at the academy. Larson, who has said publicly that he welcomes the group's inquiry, is understood to have fought it in private for months.
The veteran admiral was persuaded almost three years ago to delay his retirement and come to Annapolis on a clean-up-the-mess assignment after a cheating scandal rocked the school.
KEYWORDS: U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY HONOR SYSTEM