West Point Honor Code II

In 1976, the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy faced the consequences of a cheating scandal. The junior class had been given take-home assignments in an electrical engineering course. After investigation, some 150 cadets of the class of 1977 were dismissed or had resigned for cheating. Allegations at the time were that possibly half the class had violated the Code. After intense political pressure, the Academy reinstated some 98 of the dismissed cadets. Having taken the relatively identical electrical engineering course (called "Juice") about ten years earlier, I can attest not only to the difficulty of the course but the extreme anxiety cadets felt about the exam.

During my four years the West Point Honor Code stated simply "A Cadet will not lie, cheat or steal." As presented to me as a Plebe: "The Cadet Honor Code requires complete integrity in both word and deed of all members of the Corps of cadets and permits no deviation from those standards....These exacting standards are complied with to the letter, and if any cadet violates them he is immediately discharged from the Corps of Cadets." I was aware during my cadet days of a few outstanding young men who reported their own violations and resigned out of respect for the Corps and and Code. In 1951 some 90 cadets, 37 of whom were football players under Coach Earl Blaik, were dismissed from the Academy. The only change to the Code by 1976 had been the addition of "or tolerate those who do," a corollary that was fully accepted, though unstated, as part of the Code during my time.

The Honor System, suspect and challenged also in 1976, applied the Code within the Corps and has radically changed since those times but the Honor Code remains the standard to be achieved and carried into a career in the U.S. Army and throughout life. It was within the context of my cadet experience and that of an Army officer that I wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post when the story of the cadet reinstatement was announced. Politics seemed to have accomplished in 1976 what even the revered Earl Blaik could not in 1951. My letter was published alongside of a letter from a member of the Class of 1942 that expressed the same sentiment and opinion. I have not changed my mind.

There has been no other stimulus to my adding this to my blog other than finding a copy of the letter among some old files.

"Secretary of the Army Martin Hoffman and West Point Superintendent Lt. General Berry, by their lowering of the penalty traditionally and justifiably associated with cheating at the military academy, have seriously undercut the very foundation of the honor code. They have shown that integrity and honesty should be judged not as ideal virtues to be fostered and sought but rather as variables rising only to the level of the average acceptable behavior. That responsibility to a fellowship consisting of not merely a junior class but of those thousands of graduates and former cadets who through mutual agreement, mutual ambition and mutual respect set and maintained personally difficult high standards of integrity, means less than the attainment of selfish personal objectives.

"The harshest indictment should not be now directed at the suspended cadets for I am confident that the majority of them will, in the end, be their own most exacting critic. I suggest that the real evil is not in a system that attempts to uphold the highest standards embodied in the code, nor in those who have transgressed the code, but in the hypocrisy and lack of moral strength evidenced in the governmental officials. The government that decries the lack of personal integrity shown by the Watergate actors, that condemns the practice of bribery by persons in our nation's most successful corporations, and that criminally prosecutes the very consequences of low standards of integrity and honesty - more specifically, the white collar crimes, announces, not a reaffirmation of its demand for the highest personal standards embodied in a code of honor, but rather a politically expedient capitulation."

CADET PRAYER

O God, our Father, Thou Searcher of human hearts, help us to draw near to Thee in sincerity and truth. May our religion be filled with gladness and may our worship of Thee be natural.
Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretence ever to diminish. Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won. Endow us with courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy. Guard us against flippancy and irreverence in the sacred things of life. Grant us new ties of friendship and new opportunities of service. Kindle our hearts in fellowship with those of a cheerful countenance, and soften our hearts with sympathy for those who sorrow and suffer. Help us to maintain the honor of the Corps untarnished and unsullied and to show forth in our lives the ideals of West Point in doing our duty to Thee and to our Country. All of which we ask in the name of the Great Friend and Master of all. - Amen

Amen.

West Point Honor Code

As you have framed the issue, my friend, I believe the topic [the viability of an honor code] is the most important one we can discuss as grads and I hope it generates a broad response on this Class forum. You wrote that “[t]he goal of absolute honesty would not seem to be debatable.” In another context, self-interest in the market, on the Class forum, I said “Idealism in an aspect of human conduct may be an admirable goal where it has a viable foundation in the nature of man.” Is it in the nature of humanity (more encompassing than “man”) to be able to subdue desires and suppress self-preservation to the point of absolute honesty as defined by a code not to lie, cheat or steal? I believe that it is difficult yet attainable and maintainable.

Putting aside for the moment the concept of individual virtue in an ideal man, absolute honesty under a code seems to me maintainable over individual interests within a community of committed individuals. I have personally (anecdotally) found this to have substantively existed while a cadet and while dealing with fellow grads. To a slightly lesser degree, I have expected and been satisfied to find, in the practice of criminal law, a community of lawyers and judges practicing and applying law in the courts under a strict, statutory code that sanctions lying, cheating and stealing. To this point, I believe that sanctions are a necessary part of any human community code of conduct. The conscience of an ideal man may provide a sufficient punishment within, but I know of no “ideal man.” Accordingly, a “System” has to exist to enforce compliance with the agreed upon code.

I would think that a community of eighteen to twenty-three year olds could have the capacity to judge and sanction one of its own. The peer consciousness should be supplemented with training in, as examples, bias recognition and elimination, due-process concepts, and reliability in evidence. The objective would not be a mini-law school experience but education sufficient for them to provide a just (not necessarily fair in the bigger picture inclusive of life outside of the community) resolution to enforce the code and sanction the transgressor. As far as any application of “wisdom,” I haven’t seen it applied enough (if at all) to be able to argue for it as a prerequisite for any sanctioning entity. If ever attained, it would come, I expect, with maturity which I agree is a limited quality in young people. The Corps now however has within it a significant number of combat veterans who, presumably, have attained a higher level of maturity (more, I would argue, than any number of young jurists now sitting on the bench meting out relatively draconian punishments in the outside world). I would support, however, a gradual application of standards and sanctions to insure that the understanding of and appreciation for the Honor Code and the need for absolute honesty in the service to follow is first instilled in each cadet.

As far as the comment of Gen Maxwell Taylor, I disagree that the formative period need include exceptions to the Honor Code to teach them “early in life to inject toleration, judgment of human factors, and appreciation of sincere repentance into their decisions affecting the careers of their fellow cadets.” There will be ample opportunity in their growth at the Academy and beyond to build on earlier values and experience to that end. The Honor Code should become within their Academy experience an absolute standard. Truth is elusive, as you said, and the justice system deals more in probabilities than in the delivery of “truth.” But it does work to produce a just and often fair result at least often enough to continue to refine it.

It seems to me that the difficulties in enforcement within the Honor system arise with imposition of political and legal intrusions from outside the community of cadets whose code this is presumed to belong to. I do recognize that the Academy is a public entity bound by Constitutional and statutory constraints. Yet, as you point to my friend, “the military profession is fundamentally different.” More so than in the market or social or other civilian communities, absolute honesty is essential, demanded and expected. As you said there are no second chances in combat. Accordingly, the Academy and other leader development venues should be permitted to set and enforce the standard of absolute honesty.