Naval Academy curbs midshipmen activities

The U.S. Naval Academy’s new superintendent on Friday announced stricter rules for midshipmen, declaring that students at the military academy need to spend more time preparing for war and less time on distracting extracurricular activities.

Students, who are returning to campus for Monday’s start of the school year, will have reduced off-campus liberty hours, more mandatory study hours and more limited extracurricular activities, Vice Adm. Jeffrey L. Fowler told reporters.

The new policies follow several incidents of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking, including high-profile sex-assault cases involving football players and reports of a raucous spring break cruise in the Caribbean.

Fowler cast the changes as having more to do with preparing future Navy and Marine officers for wartime duty than with cracking down on misbehavior: “We are a nation at war. If any campus should understand being a nation at war, it’s the United States Naval Academy.”

Fowler’s comments were echoed by his senior staff.

“We do not have the luxury of letting our midshipmen learn about life in the fleet and the Marine Corps once they get there,” Capt. Margaret Klein, the commandant of midshipmen, said in a statement released by the academy. “They need to be ready to lead sailors and Marines the day they graduate from this institution.”

Fowler, 50, also noted that the academy staff must focus on preparing midshipmen “morally, mentally and physically” to be officers and that he wanted to instill “a sense of urgency” to the job.

“I do not like wasting a single minute,” he said.