B4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 , 2019
BY SUSAN SVRLUGAThe U.S. Naval Academy is not
allowing a professor to return to
teaching despite a judge’s ruling
reversing the school’s decision to
fire the educator for “unprofes-
sional conduct.”
Bruce Fleming, a tenured Eng-
lish professor known for his criti-
cism of the school, was fired last
summer after academy officials
investigated complaints about al-
leged behavior, including sharing
shirtless photos of himself and
touching students.
Fleming has called his dismiss-
al revenge, and has denied doing
anything inappropriate.
In July, an administrative
judge with the U.S. Merit Systems
Protection Board, which consid-
ers appeals of federal agencies’
personnel decisions, ruled in
Fleming’s favor and ordered him
to be reinstated.
The Naval Academy intends to
appeal the judge’s decision,
Cmdr. Alana Garas, a U.S. Naval
Academy spokeswoman, said in a
written statement.
Fleming was reinstated as an
employee of the Department of
the Navy, with all pay and ben-
efits to which he is entitled, Garas
said, effective July 24. Those will
continue throughout the period
specified in the judge’s ruling, she
said.
“While the appeal is pending,
Fleming will be assigned duty
assignments such as scholarly
research and writing, and service
to the school,” Garas said. “His
duties will not include teaching
or advising midshipmen, as his
presence in the classroom and
engaging with midshipmen in
any advisory role would be an
undue disruption to the aca-
demic environment.”
Fleming has been critical of
the Naval Academy during his
31 years as a civilian member of
the faculty, writing in 2011 that
the school had dramatically over-
stated the selectivity of its admis-
sions.
He has been sanctioned by the
academy in the past. The current
case began when a midshipman
filed a complaint about Fleming’s
behavior in a class called “Rheto-
ric and Introduction to Litera-
ture.” Four other midshipmen
also filed complaints about Flem-ing, with concerns including
treating students unfairly be-
cause of their political beliefs,
mispronouncing an Asian stu-
dent’s last name, and touching
students on the neck, back and
shoulders in class.
Administrative Judge Mark
Syska found significant credibili-
ty issues with a primary witness,
noted that most of Fleming’s
“victims” weren’t offended by
him and wrote that much of the
behavior at issue didn’t seem to
be misconduct in the context of
freewheeling classroom discus-
sions. Syska said the class was
apparently popular with stu-
dents, who enjoyed Fleming’s ir-
reverent, dramatic teaching
style.
Fleming shared a recent letter
from a school official that ex-plained the professor would not
be allowed to advise or teach
midshipmen because that would
“ignore the seriousness of the
charged misconduct.”
He got his campus access card
back Wednesday and his acad-
emy email, and he is on a couple
of committees this fall, he said,
“but basically I’m on sabbatical
again... wasting taxpayer dol-
lars.”
Fleming said he is eager to
return to teaching because he
feels he has a mission to give
midshipmen a perspective they
won’t otherwise get at the acad-
emy — to question what they’re
told.
“That’s precisely why they
want to keep me out of the
classroom,” he said.
[email protected]MARY F. CALVERT FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Bruce Fleming, a past critic of the Naval Academy, has called his dismissal revenge and has denied
doing anything inappropriate. A judge ordered his reinstatement, which the academy plans to appeal.BY PETER HERMANNA man with a permit to carry a
firearm in the District shot and
wounded someone he thought
was about to rob him Tuesday
afternoon at a bus stop in North-
east Washington, according to
D.C. police.
Police said the wounded man
and a second suspect have been
charged with assault with intent
to commit robbery. They were
identified as Nigel Pulliam, 26,
and Keith Lamont Blue, also 26.
Both are from Southeast Wash-
ington.
Police did not identify which of
the men had been shot.
The incident occurred shortly
before 2 p.m. when police said
two men approached the victim
in the 500 block of H Street NE,
blocked his path and made state-
ments indicating a possible rob-
bery.
An arrest affidavit filed in D.C.
Superior Court says one of the
men was armed with a handgun
with an extended magazine, and
the other man held his hand
under his shirt as if he had a
firearm.
The victim told police he tried
to walk away but was again
blocked by one of the men whosaid, “Don’t move,” the affidavit
says.
Police said the intended victim
“brandished his lawfully pos-
sessed firearm and shot at the
suspect, striking him in the arm.”
Police said they recovered 10 bul-
let casings.
A police report made public on
Wednesday says the windows of
four businesses on the H Street
commercial strip were damaged
— two restaurants, a clothing
store and a cash express shop.
Police said the man who fired
his gun called 911.
In October 2017, the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the D.C. Circuitstruck down a key provision of the
city law that had required resi-
dents to show a “good reason” to
carry a firearm outside the home.
Since then, D.C. police said
4,448 people have applied for a
conceal carry license, and 3,387
have been approved. Shootings
involving a person with a legal
gun in the District remain rare.
Police said they are still investi-
gating the circumstances sur-
rounding the shooting to deter-
mine if it was justified.
The man who fired the gun
could not be reached for com-
ment on Wednesday.
[email protected]THE DISTRICT
Police: Legal gun owner shoots would-be robber
with 532 children were housed
there.
Larson, a former school social
worker, said that transportation
is not part of the nonprofit
group’s mission but that this
issue is too important for
agencies and organizations to
“stay in their lane.”
“Can’t we just collectively, as a
city, help them get to school?”
she said. “So much of what they
face every day is hard. Can’t we
just make this one piece easier?
Can’t we just set them up for
success?”
She pitched a potential
solution to city officials in letters
she sent this month, outlining
the “dire need.”
“The solution we recommend
is providing a shuttle bus service
from the shelter hotels to the
nearest Metro station, just like
these hotels did for tourists
(Maybe even dispatch a
circulator bus down there
during the schoolyear?),” reads
the letter she sent to several
council members.
In the letter, she cited a law
intended to remove
transportation barriers for
homeless children and indicated
that she had alerted the Office of
the Deputy Mayor for Education,
the D.C. Department of Human
Services and the Office of the
State Superintendent of
Education about the issue.
“Transportation is a basic
amenity,” Larson told me when
we spoke this week. “If we
understand that tourists need to
get to the monuments and
business executives need to get
to conferences, why don’t we
understand kids need to get to
school?”
In a city that fought over
whether the D.C. Circulator
should offer free rides
indefinitely, a shuttle service to
get homeless children to and
from school seems like a
reasonable request.
It also seems to fall in line
with previous statements made
by top city officials about the
importance of access to public
transportation.
“No child should miss a
minute or a day of school
because of transportation
challenges, and no family should
be in a position where money is
a barrier to getting their
children to school on time,”
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said
in a recent statement about the
Kids Ride Free cards that allow
D.C. students to ride public
transportation free to and from
school.
As city officials consider
Larson’s suggestion and where
they want to stand on this issue,
they should know that the
families at the hotels are
watching, waiting and hoping
for help.
I spoke to three families, and
all of them said that a shuttle to
the Metro would greatly improve
their commutes. The nearest
Metro stop is 1.7 miles away, and
the closest bus stop requires
crossing traffic-heavy New YorkVARGAS FROM B1 Avenue and Bladensburg Road.
“Sometimes I see kids taking
kids to school, and it’s really
scary,” said Erica Cubbage-
Person, 39. She recalled seeing a
girl leading her two younger
siblings across the middle of the
road. “They had to be under 7.
All three of them.”
Her husband is an Army
veteran, and she said the family
ended up at the Days Inn in
April after one of their sons was
a victim of a crime and they had
to move for safety concerns.
Since arriving, Cubbage-Person
has changed her children’s
doctors so they won’t have to
travel far, and she has enrolled
her youngest son, who is 12, in a
new school to shorten his
commute. Even then, he will
have to take several buses to get
there.
She said she hopes to buy him
a bicycle to further reduce his
trip.
“I would do anything for my
kids,” she said, “and I’m sure
there are a lot of other mothers
here who would do the same.”
Fathers, too.
Carlo Blount describes his 6-
year-old son, Kyrie, as “a shining
star.” He said the boy excels in
school and won a spelling bee
last year. He added that he has
arrived late to school many days
because of public transportation.
“It’s frustrating because if
you’re tardy, it opens it up to
people just questioning, ‘Why is
he always late?’ ” said Blount, 39.
“It’s not for lack of trying. It’s
just the commute.”
The family also has a 4-
month-old and a 2-year-old.
Blount said the toddler missed
so many days of day care last
year that she lost her place
there.
Families at the hotels need
help with transportation, he
said, and the city should find a
way to provide it because “it’s
the human thing to do.”
When the water began rising
on July 8 in Gaddis’s apartment,
she grabbed everything that held
sentimental value. Almost
everything else was destroyed,
including her children’s coats
and all but one pair of her shoes.
She still gets choked up when
she thinks about what was lost.
Gaddis said she wants for her
children what other parents do.
She wants them to have a home
and feel safe walking in their
neighborhood. She wants them
to go to college and find success.
And she wants to eventually give
them that without the city’s
help. She is studying
information technology and
cybersecurity at Strayer
University. She said she saw a
job in that field advertise a
$90,000 yearly salary and set
that as her goal.
“We’re not uneducated, and
we’re not lazy,” she said. “We just
need a little help because of our
situation right now.”
And she could really use that
help starting Monday, when she
will drop off two little boys for
their first day of kindergarten
and first grade.
[email protected]THERESA VARGASGroup asks city o∞cials
to help kids get to school
serious about this investigation. If
there is criminal activity here, it
will be fully prosecuted.”
The mayor added, “There is no
amount of cheap housing that’s
worth losing a child.”
Property records and authori-
ties identified the property owner
as James G. Walker. Efforts to
reach him on Tuesday
and Wednesday were un-
successful.
Police identified the
boy as Yafety Solomon.
Tenants interviewed ear-
lier this week said he
lived in the basement
with his mother. She was
staying Wednesday with
a friend who described
her as too distraught to
speak publicly. The friend said all
the family’s photos were de-
stroyed in the blaze.
The other victim was identified
by his brother and sister as Fit-
sum Kebede. Authorities have not
yet released his name, though his
brother shared an email from the
D.C. medical examiner’s office in-
forming the family in Ethiopia
that Kebede had been identified
through fingerprints.
The victim’s sister, Sawit Ke-
bede, 36, who lives in South Afri-
ca, vowed to press for answers.
FIRE FROM B1 “People die, but this is a very
inhumane way of dying,” she said
by telephone. “We will do whatev-
er it takes to get answers. This is
not fair. We’re not going to let this
go. We’re not.”
In addition to contacting the
U.S. attorney’s office, the mayor
also said she would refer the case
to the D.C. Office of the Attorney
General, which handles criminal
cases arising out of
building code or licens-
ing infractions. Attorney
General Karl A. Racine
said on Twitter that his
office was “pursuing the
matter.” A spokeswoman
for the U.S. attorney’s of-
fice did not immediately
respond to inquiries
about the request.
The federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives has been involved in
the investigation from the start as
part of an existing agreement to
assist on all serious and fatal fires
in the District. A cause has not yet
been determined.
At Wednesday’s news confer-
ence, D.C. Fire Chief Gregory M.
Dean described how rescue ef-
forts were hampered as firefight-
ers worked to find tenants and
extinguish the fire. He said when
firefighters broke through the
front door, they encountered a
second door, and then bars block-
ing a hallway that they had to
saw through to reach people in-
side.
Fire officials have described a
complex layout, and tenants said
doors to some adjacent rooms
could not open at the same time in
the cramped hallways. Dean said
the “illegal occupancy means reg-
ular exiting is not the same. Try-
ing to provide locked areas for
everybody... plays against you
when you have a fire.”
Many of the occupants of theKennedy Street rowhouse wor-
shiped at Debre Selam Kidist
Mariam Ethiopian Orthodox
Church in Northwest. Kebede did
odd jobs for the church and put
the money toward his rent, other
tenants said.
While many of the people who
lived there had come to the Unit-
ed States seeking work to provide
for their families in Ethiopia, Ke-
bede had come about 14 years ago
for a far different reason. He and
his then-wife hoped he could con-
tinue the successful career in in-formation technology he had be-
gun in Ethiopia.
Sawit Kebede said her brother
was the brightest in the family,
excelling at math and among the
top of his class at private schools
and at a university. His father
worked for four decades for Ethio-
pian Airlines, developing new
cargo routes, and for a time the
family lived in India. He had a son,
had a good job and built his own
house.
“He was the kid who had it all,”
Sawit Kebede said.She said he sold his belongings
and the couple moved to the Unit-
ed States sometime around 2005,
against the wishes of other rela-
tives. They divorced about five
years later. He lived in several
states and returned to Ethiopia to
visit in 2017.
Kebede returned to the United
States, telling relatives he had
been accepted into a master’s pro-
gram, though no one knew if he
ever took classes. He moved to the
District and gradually lost touch
with his family. Word of his death
came slowly.
Police initially had little infor-
mation and his brother, Brook
Kebede, said the family first heard
through a member of the church
in the District that their relative
may have died. He said authori-
ties at first only provided a last
name, and they described agoniz-
ing days believing their brother
had died, but not knowing with
certainty.
They were thousands of miles
away and unsure of investigative
protocols in the United States. It
wasn’t until Wednesday they
could confirm Kebede had died.
Now, they are unsure if they
should try to come to the District
and meet with detectives.
The siblings said their parents
are elderly and their father is
ailing. “It’s really tough,” Brook
Kebede said. “He has a son he
hasn’t been in contact with for a
while, and all of a sudden you hear
he’s not alive.”
Added Sawit Kebede: “We have
a lot of questions that need to be
answered.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Family of victim
demands answers
SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST
The rowhouse on Kennedy Street NW had many impediments to evacuation during the fire. Mayor
Muriel E. Bowser warned D.C. landlords: “If there is criminal activity here, it will be fully prosecuted.”“Basically I’m on
sabbatical again ...
wasting taxpayer
dollars.”
Bruce Fleming, tenured English
professor who was fired and then
reinstated at the Annapolis academyFitsum
KebedeSo handy. So reliable. Home delivery. 1-800-753-POST washingtonpost.com/subscribe
SFMARYLAND
Naval Academy professor is back but not teaching