Editorial: Owens deserves degree - Navy Community - discussions, photos, video - Navy Times

Editorial: Owens deserves degree

Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt has recommended that embattled Academy quarterback Lamar Owens be expelled from the school with neither a commission nor a degree.

Owens is the former star quarterback who was charged last year with — and later acquitted of — raping a fellow midshipman in her barracks room. While not convicted of the rape, Owens was convicted of two lesser counts: conduct unbecoming an officer (for having sex in the dorm) and disobeying a lawful order (for having contact with the accuser). However, the jury recommended that Owens receive no punishment. His accuser will graduate this May.

In his role as judge and jury in a separate administrative hearing held at the Naval Academy, Rempt has recommended to Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter that Owens be booted from the school with neither the economics degree he earned nor an ensign’s commission.

Rempt justified his controversial decision this way: “Having been convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer as a midshipman, it is disingenuous to commission him as an ensign in the Navy. Based on his lack of suitability for commissioning, he is not eligible to graduate,” he wrote.

While logical, the decision to not grant a degree is unfair and unwarranted.

One can more easily understand the reasoning for not making Owens an officer — at the most basic level, his ability to lead others has been severely compromised — than the decision to withhold the academic degree he justly earned. At this point, it just seems spiteful.