WHAT PRICE HONOR?
It is the most traditional of ceremonies at one of the nation's most hallowed shrines. On the broad green plain high above the Hudson River, where Baron von Steuben drilled minutemen 200 years ago, thousands of proud parents and nostalgic graduates will assemble this week to watch the corps of cadets pass in review: 4,400 young men in swallow-tailed gray coats, white trousers and black shakos stepping out with crisp precision while their brilliant regimental flags snap in the breeze.
As always, the Long Gray Line will provide a magnificent and stirring spectacle. But this year the excitement of graduation day at West Point will be marred by doubts, confusion, bitterness and fear. Dozens of the marching cadets may be dismissed from the United States Military Academy within weeks. There is talk that scores, even hundreds of others may be in deep trouble before the current investigations have run their course. The most serious cheating scandal in its history is shaking West Point--a furor that has set cadet against cadet and threatens the basic nature of the institution itself.
The scandal revolves around the honor code of the corps, which states with neither equivocation nor mercy: "A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do." The "toleration clause" includes those who know that others have cheated but have not turned them in. For all found guilty, there is only one punishment: quick and automatic dismissal from the academy. Times may change and values fade, but West Point continues to rely on its uncompromising code, no matter how impossible to attain it may seem to the rest of society.
Honor committees composed of cadets hear 100 or so cases a year. Most are for violations of the code in dealing with absurdly picayune incidents, such as a cadet's lying about having shined his shoes. When he was Secretary of the Army, Howard ("Bo") Callaway complained, "The honor code often deals with trivia." No matter: the trivial could get a cadet "separated"--expelled--as surely and swiftly as the significant.
The current violations grew out of a take-home electrical-engineering examination in March. A total of 823 second classmen--or juniors--took the test. So far, four cadets have resigned after being charged with cheating on the exam. Forty-eight others have been found guilty by honor committees; these cadets are awaiting review of their cases by 13 boards composed of officers. At the same time, instructors are going over the papers submitted by nearly 100 other cadets.
All this would be bad enough, but last week the situation worsened when members of the junior class said they were giving authorities the names of literally hundreds of their classmates who, they claimed, had violated the code. The avowed aim of this rush to judgment: to implicate so many cadets that West Point could not possibly dismiss all the guilty ones without virtually wiping out the entire junior class.
Captain Arthur Lincoln, a lawyer and West Point graduate who represented some of the cadets at one point during the proceedings, estimates that 90% to 95% of all cheating incidents are not reported. Cadet Timothy Ringgold, who is accused of tolerating cheating, claims that "roughly one-third of my junior class cheated, and the other two-thirds tolerated it."
Some cadets are pressing their case against the honor code with astonishing frankness--for West Point. Not only are they appearing on television and granting interviews, but they are also seeking out newsmen who will listen to their stories. Now that campuses elsewhere are quiet, and have been for several years, a wave of delayed-action student revolt is washing over the 174-year-old institution, where the best way to survive has been to conform. Cadets are demanding that they be given the same rights of due process that civilians enjoy under the law. Some young legal officers at West Point are siding with the cadets, claiming that hearings on code violations are often nothing more than kangaroo courts that flout the 14th Amendment.
As the scandal rumbled across West Point, Lieut. General Sidney B. Berry, 50, the academy's superintendent, fought to get the situation under control. A tough, erect veteran of two wars, Berry confessed to TIME, "I've never been in more of a combat situation than I am now. There are things that make me heartsick in the whole situation--so many young men may have violated the honor code. But, by God, I've been heartsick in battle and done what I have to do."
What Berry has done to cope with the scandal and get at its causes is take control of the honor code away from the cadets. Berry gave Colonel Hal B. Rhyne, deputy commandant, a new full-time job: handling honor code questions and issues. He then replaced the cadets' honor committees with an "internal review panel" that will conduct the initial hearings in cases of alleged violations. The panel is made up of three field-grade officers (major and above) and two cadets who next year will be first classmen (seniors). Still not satisfied, Berry created four separate subcommittees to investigate cheating in the junior class, where the scandal is centered. Finally, he ordered the entire junior class to stay on at the Point after graduation to be available to testify if necessary.
In the face of accusations that the Point was trying to cover up the whole story, Berry last week assembled 300 members of his staff and declared: "That's a pile of horse manure. It's going to be a long summer. Somehow we've got to get ourselves organized to get this traumatic experience over as quickly as possible. It's a painful thing, but we are paid to do tough things in the soldier business."
What drives Berry to get at the root of the problem is his firm conviction that the honor code is the "archstone" of West Point's stern motto: Duty, Honor, Country. Says he: "I do not think the code is anachronistic. Integrity is essential in the development of leader-soldiers." Indeed, Berry and many other high-ranking officers, including non-West Pointers, agree that the honor code serves an absolutely irreplaceable function, as do the more lenient codes at Annapolis and the Air Force Academy. All three academies accomplish their main purpose: they produce well-trained and dedicated officers.
Graduates of the academies may form only 11% of the corps of commissioned officers on active duty in the armed forces (10% in the Army, 17% in the Navy, 9% in the Air Force), and the military may be getting steadily more democratic. But a man wearing the heavy and instantly recognizable class ring of one of the academies starts with a tremendous advantage. Fully 43% of the Army's generals are West Point "ringknockers"; 56% of the Navy's admirals went to Annapolis; 34% of the Air Force's generals attended one of the academies. Says General Melvin Zais, 60, an ROTC graduate from the University of New Hampshire: "The West Point influence is like a drop of blue ink in a glass of water. It isn't much in volume, but it influences the coloring of the whole glass. West Point permeates our resource."
With impressive unanimity, graduates of the three academies agree that the honor codes helped greatly to prepare them for a life in the military. Air Force Colonel Bradley P. Hosmer, top man in the class of 1959 at the Air Force Academy, goes one step further: "The honor code was the most important influence on my life, period. It affects your standards of self, my expectations, and even how I raise my kids." In all three services, academy graduates emphasize the importance of being able to trust the word of a fellow officer.
The honor code that has become so important to West Point --and the U.S. Army--began under Colonel Sylvanus Thayer, superintendent from 1817 to 1833. A Dartmouth man with a backbone of iron, Thayer changed West Point from a humdrum school for the sons of wealthy families into a first-class engineering institution. After studying European military systems, he also imposed on the cadets a kind of Prussian discipline that lingers today. Thayer had strict rules against lying and stealing, and what was called "irregular or immoral practices."
Shortly before the turn of the century, cadets set up their own vigilance committee and conducted covert "trials" of those who breached the code. When he was superintendent in 1922, Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur created the honor system, with an official board of review composed of cadets.
The first major scandal at West Point occurred in 1951, when 90 cadets were forced out for cribbing on examinations, including 37 members of the football team. In 1966, 42 cadets departed after having been accused of cheating. Four years later, West Point's honor code was amended to include the phrase forbidding any cadet to tolerate wrongdoing by another. In 1973, 21 cadets were sacked for cheating or condoning cheating.
The toleration clause has caused severe problems since it was introduced. Admits Brigadier General Walter F. Ulmer Jr., commandant of cadets: "It's not natural for an 18-year-old to tell on his friends. It's something that has to be instilled." Accordingly, cadets get 25 hours of formal instruction in the intricacies of the honor code.
As a prime reason for having an honor code, instructors frequently note that one combat officer must always be able to rely on the word of another. To illustrate this point, the cadets are often told a story--perhaps apocryphal--of a company commander who radioed one of his platoon leaders to move his unit out of a particular area. The platoon leader, deciding that his men were too tired to stir, later radioed back that the maneuver had been completed--but he actually let his troops stay in place. Relying on this false statement, the company commander ordered an artillery unit to open fire on the area. The entire platoon was blasted away.
The present scandal began with an exam that required juniors to design a voltage-regulator circuit. When an instructor began looking over the completed papers, he found a handwritten footnote on one that stated: "I have received assistance on this paper."
Later the same day, the instructor found another test paper with wording identical to the one that bore the footnoted confession. The hunt was on. Soon 117 papers with suspiciously similar phrasing and matching misspellings were discovered. The Honor Committee, composed of 88 cadets from the top two classes, formed seven subcommittees of three students each to study the suspect papers and interview their authors.
fter the initial screening, 101 cadets were under deep suspicion. They were next called before boards composed of twelve Honor Committee cadets for further examination.
Some appearances lasted three hours, some three days. At the end of a week, the Honor Committee decided that 49 cadets were innocent and 52 guilty.
Four have already resigned (their names are still kept secret); the other 48 are now having their cases reviewed by five-member officer boards, each chaired by a full colonel, which have the power to reverse the findings of the Honor Committee and declare a cadet innocent.
The final court of appeals at West Point is Berry. As superintendent, he has the power to overturn the findings of the review board and decide that a cadet is innocent. But even then, the absolved cadet's classmates may shun him as a pariah. To some zealots who swear by the honor code, the very fact that a cadet is accused of wrongdoing is reason enough to condemn him --a situation that shows how a system designed to develop honor can be warped to foster dishonor.
A case in point, which coincidentally is causing a furor this spring, involves Steven Verr, 19, a slight (5 ft. 9 in., 140 Ibs.), mild-mannered fourth classman, or freshman. Verr's troubles began last August while he was attending "Beast Barracks," the summer of rigorous training and hazing given to incoming plebes (a word derived from plebeians). Verr was subjected to a traditional form of harassment: upperclassmen ordered him not to put certain foods on his tray, or made him sit at attention while others ate. After going hungry for two days, Verr had tears in his eyes as he left the dining hall. When an upperclassman demanded, "Mister, what are you crying about?" Verr told a disjointed story about his parents' having been in an automobile accident. Verr's lie was discovered, and he was found guilty of violating the honor code by both the Honor Committee and the officers' reviewing board.
Berry reversed the findings, saying that Verr had had "no intent to deceive." But it was an unpopular decision, and Verr's troubles were only beginning. He found himself shunned by many of his classmates, although the practice--known as "the silence"--has been officially banned at West Point since 1973. In that year, wide publicity was given to the case of Cadet James J. Pelosi, who was subjected to this treatment for 19 months after having been reinstated on a legal technicality, although he had been convicted of an honor code violation. Referring to Verr's experience, Cadet William Andersen, the present head of the Honor Committee, issued a statement declaring that "a significant number of us disagree with Berry's decision." Added Andersen, who is considered a zealot and a martinet by a number of cadets as well as officers, and has been accused of conducting vendettas against those who do not measure up to his rigid standards: "While we have no authority or right to infringe on the human dignity [of individuals], we have the right to choose who we associate with and who to speak to."
Verr claims that his mail has been intercepted and his room ransacked, and there have been vague reports that his life has been threatened. The academy has assigned him a bodyguard. Verr has complained to newsmen about his treatment, much to the disgust of some cadets. Says one: "Verr is getting every ounce of publicity he can out of this and is doing the academy a disservice."
The case of Cadet Timothy Ringgold shows how absurd the honor system can be. After the engineering-exam scandal broke, Ringgold, who was not accused of cheating, and other cadets happened to meet with Army Under Secretary Norman R. Augustine. During the talk, which was supposedly off-the-record, Ringgold said he felt cheating was "widespread" at the Point. Another cadet who was present felt duty-bound to charge Ringgold with toleration.
After the incident was publicized, Ringgold was cleared by academy authorities. Ringgold then sought out General Ulmer and asked just why he had been acquitted. Ulmer explained that he had not referred to any specific case in his conversation with Augustine, nor was there any evidence to back up what he had said. According to Ulmer, the outspoken Ringgold then told him the authorities were looking in the wrong place for culprits. Asked Ulmer: "Are you telling me that you have firsthand knowledge of cadets who have violated the honor code apart from what we know?" "Yes, sir," said Ringgold. Ulmer promptly advised him that he would have to go before an honor code review board once again. Ulmer later explained that he was "morally obligated" to turn Ringgold in after the cadet had volunteered the information. Ringgold's case is still pending.
Even as they search for reasons for the mass violations of the honor code, academy officials are convinced there is no basic flaw in the nature of the cadets who are attracted to West Point. Indeed the quality of the cadet corps is impressive, as is the incoming class of 900 men--and for the first time, nearly 100 women--that will attend Beast Barracks this summer.
The typical cadet in the class of 1976, which is graduating this week, had a B+ average in high school. He was a letterman in some sport (33.8% captained a team) and scored 554 on the verbal scholastic aptitude test and 624 on the mathematics test--not up to the average scores of Harvard or Yale, but well within the reach of such excellent schools as the University of Michigan or Georgia Tech. All of the cadets were nominated for a place in the class by authorized officials, notably U.S. Senators and Congressmen. Many had wanted to enter West Point since early in their high school days or even before, and 13.4% had fathers who were career military officers.
The attrition rate at West Point is roughly comparable to that at Ivy League schools: last year's graduating class lost 36% of its members along the way. If they follow the general pattern, some 70% of the class will eventually get an advanced degree. Most West Pointers now stay in the service for 20 years before re-entering civilian life (they are required to serve for at least five years after graduating). The cadets get a solid education in mathematics and engineering, though the liberal arts curriculum has been broadened in recent years. Understandably, the cadets who are more at home with the mysteries of hydraulics still far outnumber those with a taste for the imagery of T.S. Eliot.
The pace at the Point can be brutal. Reveille at 6:10 a.m., duties or study at 6:40 a.m., classes from 7:50 a.m. until 11:55 a.m., and on through the day at double time until taps at 11 p.m. For many exhausted cadets, the major recreation is sleeping. There is still some hazing at the Point, such as forcing plebes to know the number of lights in Cullun Hall (340) and the capacity of Luck Reservoir ("Seventy-eight million gallons, sir, when the water is flowing over the spillway"). But the sadistic practices of the past have been abolished--doing deep knee bends over the point of a bayonet or forcing a cadet to run up five floors of the barracks, don a new uniform and get back down in 21/2 minutes.
As is the case at many U.S. colleges and universities, there is constant pressure to get good grades (see following story). The "goats," with the low marks, sit at the back of a classroom, while the "engineers" sit up front and get special privileges. Still the electrical engineering exam that is at the root of the current scandal was worth only 5% of the final grade in that course. Indeed the students being hauled before the Honor Committee included good students as well as borderline cases.
West Pointer Berry (class of 1948) suspects that the main reason for the incident has been the rapid expansion of the academy from 2,496 cadets to 4,417 during the turbulent decade from 1964 to 1974 that included Watergate and Viet Nam. In this period, Berry points out, American teen-agers became more questioning and skeptical, including those who enrolled at West Point. "There has been great discussion about integrity in the Army itself, most of it arising out of My Lai," says Berry. "Frankly, this is a terribly difficult time for the academy."
The cadets who violated the honor code by cheating on a relatively insignificant exam knew that West Point graduates had not hesitated to lie in Viet Nam--falsifying body counts, concealing the bombing of Cambodia, covering up My Lai. Indeed the commander of the Americal Division, which included the platoon led by Lieut. William Galley at My Lai, was headed by Major General Samuel Koster, who became superintendent of West Point in 1968. Two years later, Koster resigned after he was accused of taking part in the campaign to cover up the facts about the massacre at My Lai. Koster was demoted, censured and retired in disgrace in 1973.
"All adolescents are skeptical to some extent," says Ulmer, "and the line between skepticism and cynicism is a thin line." There is mounting evidence that many cadets in the junior class--if not in the corps as a whole--are becoming increasingly cynical about the honor code and system. Part of the reason is the code's extreme rigidity. Part is the growing feeling among some cadets that their fellow students on the Honor Committee are as sternly self-righteous--and occasionally as sadistic--as a Puritan elder in early Massachusetts. Says a high Pentagon official: "We have to moderate their enthusiasm to be inquisitors."
Important as these problems are, many critics of the honor system believe the fundamental fault lies in the nature of the code itself and the way it dovetails with life at West Point. In addition to having to live by the honor code, a cadet has to conform to hundreds of regulations contained in a manual known as the Blue Book. Life at West Point consists in large part of finding ways around the regulations; if a cadet is caught, he is disciplined. But, strictly speaking, many violations of the regulations could be interpreted as violations of the honor code. A cadet who misses a parade under false pretenses, for example, could be accused of cheating. According to Dr. Richard C. U'Ren, 37, who was chief of psychiatry at West Point from 1970 to 1972, this dichotomy gives cadets an unfortunate point of view: it is all right to violate the regulations as long as you do not lie about it. "Ethics," says U'Ren, "is often divorced from honor at West Point."
U'Ren also argues that the code has such strict penalties that cadets tend to cover up wrongdoing. During his time at West Point, he says he was told that only 10% of the cheating was reported. "It's a rather ironic fact," he says, "that the code weeds out some cadets who are honest enough to report themselves for honor violations."
IK AT nat is more, says U'Ren, "West Point does everything in its power to develop a sense of cohesiveness among the cadets. They strive to develop a sense of loyalty and belonging--community.
And then they ask these men to turn each other in on honor code violations. It really is a terrible bind for the cadets."
What is happening at West Point this spring seems to confirm the findings of a study of the honor code released last October by the Federal Government's General Accounting Office, which acts as an investigating agency for Congress. The G.A.O. study said "the toleration clause" is one of the biggest problems for the members of the corps, and the longer a cadet stays at West Point, the more tolerant he tends to become of wrongdoing. Some cadets felt that maintaining a friendship is more important than reporting a fellow student and that the penalty of banishment from West Point was too harsh for minor offenses.
As the magnitude of the problem becomes more apparent, high Pentagon officials are quietly deciding that perhaps the time has come for West Point to modify the code. When he heard what was going on, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld impatiently asked aides who was administering the system at the Point and whether there was any room for discretion in the system.
If West Point does decide that its present system is unrealistic and unfair, it has two models close at hand to copy. Both Annapolis and the Air Force Academy have systems that differ in important ways from the Point's. At Annapolis, midshipmen are not required to turn each other in for violations. At the Air
Force Academy, the cadets are not supposed to tolerate infractions, but they are encouraged to talk privately with a suspected wrongdoer to learn his side of the incident. If he has a reasonable excuse, the matter can be dropped then and there. Even if the reviewing committees eventually find a cadet guilty, they can mete out punishment short of dismissal.
Although these modified systems seem to be working well, both institutions have had scandals of their own. In 1974 seven midshipmen were forced to resign for cheating on a celestial navigation exam. At Colorado Springs, 109 cadets (including 29 football players) were forced out in 1965 for stealing and selling exams or tolerating the practice; 46 left after handing around test questions in 1967; and 39 were banished for cheating or tolerating those that did in 1972.
Well aware that the honor code and its system of justice were causing problems, West Point's Berry set up a special committee in 1974 to see how the two "could be strengthened and improved." Composed of 14 officers and 16 cadets, the committee produced a two-volume report ten months before the present scandal broke. The academy is already instituting recommended procedural reforms aimed at removing the secrecy of the hearings and improving the individual's right to due process. For example, cadets appearing before an honor committee are now allowed to be present while witnesses are being questioned.
In its most significant recommendation, the committee urged that the system be modified so that dismissal would no longer be automatic for any cadet found guilty of an honor violation. The committee urged that cadets be punished according to the seriousness of their offenses; if mitigating circumstances were strong enough, a cadet could be let off with no punishment at all. To be put into effect, the reform authorizing discretionary punishment needed to be approved by two-thirds of the cadets; only 54% voted in favor last spring.
Academy officials anticipate that the discretionary option will be approved when the proposal is next put to a vote, probably this fall.
The fact that little more than half of the corps voted for a flexible system of punishments shows how strongly the status quo is defended by many cadets, and their elders, despite the difficulties. "An officer who sees a fellow officer commit an atrocity has an obligation to report him, even if he's a friend," says Ulmer. "If you won't do that, you have no business at West Point." Over the decades, the code has helped to make West Point what George Patton Jr. called a "holy place," an institution that Maxwell Taylor describes as "something like the church; it is not for everyone, only for those with a true vocation." Agrees Berry: "The code's a statement of ideals that I think is sound. Imperfect human beings don't measure up to ideals. It's a pretty demanding code. But the battlefield is a pretty demanding place."
No one could quarrel with Berry's contention that West Point has to prepare young men to perform honorably and reliably on the battlefield. The problem that he and the U.S. Army confront is how to revise the code, and the system of justice that goes with it, to foster a sense of honor in the cadets--a system that they can uphold with honor themselves
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