THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997 TAG: 9701250287
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 84 lines
A U.S. Naval Academy midshipman, who proved her mettle by fighting her expulsion all the way up the service's chain of command, won her battle Friday.
Navy Secretary John H. Dalton ordered that Jennifer N. Della Barba be awarded a diploma and commissioned as an ensign. He wrote that he had concluded her dismissal from school last spring, on charges of lying, was not ``reasonable and well-founded.''
The ruling cheered Della Barba, a 22-year-old aspiring aviator whose struggle to clear her name attracted national attention.
And it was an embarrassing rebuke to Adm. Charles R. Larson, the academy's superintendent, who twice recommended that Della Barba be bounced from the Navy and last summer urged that she be ordered to repay the service for the cost of her education.
``I have concluded that the evidence does not establish that Midshipman Della Barba intended to deceive'' two classmates who confronted her last April 15 with accusations of sexual misconduct, Dalton said in a memo to Larson.
The sexual allegations proved groundless - Della Barba was on a bus, miles from the academy, at the time her classmates contended she was in bed with her boyfriend, fellow midshipman James Steidle.
Shapes seen under the covers alongside Steidle, and assumed by other mids to be a hiding Della Barba, turned out to be several of her stuffed animals.
But in defending herself, Della Barba allegedly lied about her whereabouts earlier in the day; lying is a violation of the academy's honor code.
The case hinged on Della Barba's testimony that she and Steidle went to the academy's medical clinic around 5:30 a.m. on April 15 after a night of studying in her dormitory room.
The mids who quizzed Della Barba later that day about her movements insisted she told them she ``went and saw'' a therapist about a knee that had been operated on several days earlier. When they learned later that the clinic was closed at the time, the mids accused her of lying.
But Della Barba was equally insistent that she told her classmates she ``went to see'' a therapist, and never claimed she actually got into the clinic. At most, she insisted, she either misspoke or her classmates misunderstood her.
Dalton said he was satisfied that Della Barba and Steidle went to the clinic. He also noted that she was on ``a prescribed medication which could have confused her think-ing. . . and that she corrected the statements at issue very shortly thereafter.''
In a statement issued after the ruling, Della Barba said she had always been confident that when all the facts were known ``it would become obvious that only a simple, unintentional miscommunication had occurred.'' She suggested that she had been victimized by the academy's attempt to wrap up the case before May 24, graduation day.
``I did not believe then nor do I believe now that the charges. . . arose out of any malicious or wrongful intent or motivation,'' Della Barba added. ``Rather, I believe that the individuals who brought the charges and the officers who reviewed them honorably believed they were doing their duty.''
Della Barba's dismissal was largely unnoticed last spring, as it came amid a flurry of other embarrassments for the academy. The school was rocked by drug busts, the exposure of a campus car-theft ring and a veteran professor's written indictment of its moral climate.
But as Della Barba doggedly pursued her case through the summer it began to attract attention from the media and members of Congress. Della Barba, a Massachusetts resident, thanked her home-state lawmakers Friday for their support but also expressed appreciation to Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a member of the academy's board of visitors, and Virginia Sen. John W. Warner, a former Navy secretary.
The academy's troublesome springtime came after more than two years of efforts by Larson to repair the school's image in the wake of a cheating scandal that broke in late 1992. The four-star admiral was persuaded to delay his retirement and return to the academy, where he had served as superintendent earlier in his career.
A spokesman for Larson, Capt. Tom Jurkowsky, said Friday that the superintendent was untroubled by Dalton's denial of his recommendation that Della Barba be expelled and ordered to repay the Navy more than $87,000, the cost of her schooling.
``Much, too much has been made'' of the Della Barba case, Jurkowsky suggested.
``This is in the rear-view mirror. We're looking forward.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Jennifer N. Della Barba was vindicated by the findings of Navy
Secretary John H. Dalton. She had been charged with lying at the
Naval Academy.
KEYWORDS: NAVAL ACADEMY