ANNAPOLIS, Md.
After protests from civil rights groups, questions about racial and religious preference have been removed from the U.S. Naval Academy’s application form that allows local families to sponsor midshipmen.
Administrators of the academy decided late last month to change the six-page application, which collects personal and professional information from residents who want to open their homes to incoming academy freshmen.
The online form disappeared from the academy Web site shortly after July 11 news reports revealed complaints over the questions.
“The concern was raised, and so we decided to take a look at it,” Cmdr. Edward Austin, a spokesman for the Annapolis institution, told The Washington Post.
Chris Ledoux, an Annapolis resident, sparked the controversy this summer when he began calling local politicians to complain about the questions, which he discovered while perusing the form as a prospective sponsor. His inquiries prompted news reports and a letter to the academy superintendent from the Anne Arundel chapter of the NAACP.
