Articles by Andy Simpson, KP '82

The whole soccer team issue sidetracked me from the post that I’ve been preparing about how MARAD calculates the restoration of sea year. I’ll try […]

Update:  At today’s court hearing, the parties reached an agreement that will allow the senior midshipmen on the soccer team to participate in graduation and […]

Dear Secretary Chao: We at KingsPointSentry.com welcomed your nomination as the Secretary of Transportation and we were particularly heartened during your confirmation hearing when Senator […]

In two weeks, B-Splits at the Academy are scheduled to depart on sea year. Unfortunately, 90% of the Class of 2020 B-Splits will be getting […]

Owen Doherty, ’81, an Associate Administrator at MARAD, reached out to me today to provide data on how MARAD calculates the percentage of restoration of […]

Spoiler alert:  Because my source’s data was accurate. Two weeks ago, in a deliberately provocative post entitled  “84% of all MARAD employees who testify before […]

Two days ago, we revealed the true statistics about the restoration of sea year. They were bleak — and not nearly as rosy as the […]

There’s an old saying that figures don’t lie but liars can figure. MARAD is doing a lot of figuring when it comes to calculating the […]

[Updated with a direct link to the video of the testimony instead of taking you to the web page where the video could be found.] […]

As reported here, the permanent, entrenched, bureaucracy in MARAD has refused to make public any of the actions that the Academy has taken to address […]

Spoiler alert: whole lotta’ nothing  . . . so far. In the continuing quest to provide Academy stakeholders with basic information about the ongoing threat […]

(Update has a link to prepared testimony from a House hearing yesterday at the bottom of the page.) At 10:00 a.m. today, the Acting Maritime […]

UPDATE:  After this post was posted on April 4, 2017, the Academy finally updated the reaccreditation page on its website to provide the following information: […]

I asked MARAD to expedite the KingsPointSentry FOIA request for the copy of the Monitoring Report that the Academy submitted to the Middle States Commission […]

Since the Academy refuses to update its stakeholders on the status of its efforts to avoid losing accreditation (today marks 270 days since the last […]

In the recent posts (here and here) about the hijacking of the mission of the Congressional Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (“SAPR”) Working Group, I’ve […]

Why the hijacking of the SAPR Working Group could threaten the reaccreditation of USMMA. On April 20, 2016, seemingly innocuous legislation proposed by MARAD was […]

It is critical that Secretary Chao ask Congress to delay the delivery deadline for the USMMA Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Working Group report […]

Yesterday, March 1, 2017, was the deadline for the Academy to provide a “monitoring report” to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that would […]

Last June, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) put USMMA on accreditation warning. It is the only federal academy ever to be placed […]

Four. Keep that number in your head.  Four.  That is the number of graduates from New York (SUNY) Maritime in 2010 (the last, and only, […]

[UPDATE: In this post, we  put together the pieces of the puzzle that showed how MARAD was attempting to manipulate Congress. Another piece of the […]

Joseph Keefe writes a regular column for MaritimeProfessional.com  and his column regularly reports on various aspects of the state of maritime education.  His most recent […]

Introduction: Last Friday, the Office of Student Activities (“OSA”) published a Facebook post (now removed, but a screen capture is here) about possible weekend activities […]

Earlier this week, Representative Peter T. King and Senator Roger F. Wicker wrote Jim Tobin, the president of the USMMA Alumni Association and Foundation, to […]

An alert alumnus has pointed out an anomaly about the LMI culture study that was commissioned by former Secretary Foxx at a cost of $363,000 […]

A reliable source from within DOT advises me that there are five other commercial shipping companies (in addition to the three that were initially approved […]

If it weren’t for double standards, Academy leadership wouldn’t have any standards at all. This is from the the Facebook page for the USMMA Office […]

After the November elections, the outgoing MARAD and DOT political appointees were forced to scramble. First, they had to confront the reality that neither they […]

Here’s the text of the email released  by MARAD: MARAD 01-17 Wednesday, February 15, 2017 Contact:  Kim Strong Tel.:  (202) 366-5807 United States Merchant Marine […]