From Military.com:
“51 West Point Cadets Caught
Cheating Must Repeat a Year”
(In this June 13, 2020 photo,
United States Military Academy graduating cadets, wearing face masks, march to
their socially-distanced seating during commencement ceremonies in West Point,
N.Y. )
Most of the 73 West Point cadets
accused in the biggest cheating scandal in decades at the U.S. Military Academy
are being required to repeat a year, and eight were expelled, academy officials
said Friday. The cadets were accused of cheating on an online freshman calculus
exam in May while students were studying remotely because of the coronavirus
pandemic. An investigation was launched after instructors noticed
irregularities in answers. All but one were freshmen, or plebes, in a class of
1,200. The other was a sophomore.
Cadets at the centuries-old
officer training academy on the Hudson River are bound by an honor code that
they “will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” The cheating
scandal is the biggest at West Point since 1976 and preceded the tightening of
an academy policy that spared many cadets in this case from being kicked out. West
Point said that of the 73 cases investigated by the cadet honor committee, six
cadets resigned during the investigation, four were acquitted by a board of
their peers, and two cases were dropped due to insufficient evidence. Most of
the cadets, 51, were “turned back” one full year after admitting to cheating,
and two were turned back six months. Those cadets are under probation until
graduation. “The tenets of honorable living remain immutable, and the outcomes
of our leader development system remain the same, to graduate Army officers
that live honorably, lead honorably, and demonstrate excellence,” Williams said
in a prepared release. “West Point must be the gold standard for developing
Army officers. We demand nothing less than impeccable character from our
graduates.” Eight cadets were removed from the academy. Of those, three
accepted the chance to take part in an “academy mentorship program” that allows
them to reapply to the academy after serving for up to a year as an enlisted
soldier.
The academy also said it will end
its 6-year-old “willful admission process,” which was used by 55 cadets and is
designed to protect cadets who promptly admit to wrongdoing from being kicked
out. Officials determined the process was not meeting its goal of increasing
self-reporting and decreasing toleration for violations of the honor code. West
Point said that 52 of the cadets were athletes, but that none of the guilty
cadets are currently representing the academy on teams.
The 1976 scandal involved 153
upperclassmen who resigned or were expelled for cheating on an electrical
engineering exam. The secretary of the Army appointed a select commission
headed by former astronaut Frank Borman to review the case, and more than 90 of
those caught cheating were reinstated and allowed to graduate.
^ Anyone at West Point who is
found guilty of cheating should not be held-back, but should be expelled. These
are supposed to be the best-of-the-best in the US Army and the Officers of
tomorrow and by only holding-them back West Point and the US Army is only
tainted the Class of 2022. I personally would not respect or follow orders from
an Officer that I knew was involved in a cheating or honor-code scandal like this.
This is not only a dark stain on West Point’s History or on the US Army’s
History, but also on America’s History – since those found guilty will continue
to serve our country. ^
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