Word: calvert
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...superintendent at Annapolis, Admiral James F. Calvert, believes that Zumwalt is "the best thing that's happened to the Navy in a long time," but he does not want his academy to adapt too completely to the world outside its walls. Calvert praises "team spirit, the battle cry, camaraderie, heroism, the desperate fight against impossible odds," and deplores the fact that higher education in the U.S. tends to reject "authority, tradition, moral values?anything that smacks of absolutes. Annapolis cannot go along with that." And if a midshipman does not believe "in the essential goodness of the country...
Dumb Dedication. Last fall Calvert unveiled a new curriculum that included 24 majors-17 of them non-engineering. For the first time, a midshipman could work toward a liberal arts degree. A black-literature course was set up. Even the required military courses were spruced up: navigation and naval tactics, for example, are now based on actual fleet situations rather than textbook theory. The new majors program attracted 7,000 applicants for the class of '74, more than 1,000 above the previous record...
...Calvert is seeking a balanced approach. "If you allow military training to get downtrodden and produce only intellectuals, you have officers who can't work with enlisted men. But if you emphasize the production of officers to the exclusion of everything else, you'll end up with fine-looking, dedicated people who are a little vacant...
...Calvert's new broom has also swept aside a number of nonacademic traditions, such as freshman hazing. No longer do upperclassmen make a plebe stand at attention and jab at his breastbone until he passes out; gone are the impromptu push-ups and relay races through the endless corridors of the middie dormitory, Bancroft Hall. Plebes are still made to perform menial tasks for upperclassmen, but Calvert firmly maintains that harassment and degradation will not produce respect for authority...
...Calvert and Captain Robert Coogan, 48, commandant of the brigade of mid shipmen, encourage their charges to question the rules they live by. Calvert thinks a regulation with no purpose should be jettisoned. Coogan tossed out the rule requiring seniors on liberty to stay within seven miles of the campus. "It didn't make much sense," he says. "Seven miles was purely arbitrary -probably how far Dewey could get down the road in his horse and buggy...