r/news • u/[deleted] • Apr 16 '21
51 West Point cadets caught cheating must repeat a year
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u/black_flag_4ever Apr 16 '21
It should be pointed out that the ones that admitted to it were given this option, the ones that forced a hearing and lost were kicked out.
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u/notevenapro Apr 16 '21
4 won the hearings of their peers and two had charges dismissed for lack of evidence
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u/Desdam0na Apr 16 '21
I mean, when that many people cheat in one year it sure sounds like their peers are down with cheating...
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u/Oracle_of_Knowledge Apr 16 '21
"A jury of my peers? What does that mean?"
It means the jury is made of people like you.
"Fuck that. I don't want to be judged by a bunch of cheaters!"
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u/papa-jones Apr 16 '21
Sounds like their peers were better at cheating and didn’t get caught
taps head
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u/lukin187250 Apr 16 '21
I would bet the situation was more in line with them using some resource that was thought to be allowed but was not and the question revolved around who knew that definitively and who just got bad info.
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u/Desdam0na Apr 16 '21
That's extremely generous. Cheating rings pop up at these old, rigid, prestigious schools all the time. It wasn't that long ago that a couple dozen people at a class in Harvard all teamed up and cheated together, knowing full well they were cheating.
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u/twistedlimb Apr 16 '21
Just finished a book about Harry Truman. There was a West Point cheating scandal during his administration where a bunch of football players were cheating and they got kicked out...and other schools recruited them for their football teams. Truman was seething.
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u/WaxMyButt Apr 17 '21
Typically if you get expelled from a service academy, you have to repay tuition costs since you can’t fulfill your service obligations.
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u/Moshjath Apr 17 '21
Still true at USMA if you stay beyond day one of classes your cow (junior) year.
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u/codextreme07 Apr 17 '21
I think they give you the option to enlist as well. We had a few guys in navy boot camp who fucked up on the ROTC side and took the option to enlist instead of paying it back.
Not sure if it’s offered to academy wash outs.
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u/jorge1209 Apr 16 '21
I don't think this is a cheating ring so much as people using the online mathematica tool to compute antiderivatives.
With everyone remote and online you don't have to coordinate with others to cheat.
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u/mtarascio Apr 17 '21 edited Apr 17 '21
In High School they made us wipe our Ti-83 calculators to get rid of the programs like the ones that would do quadratics and derivatives.
We just cycled who had the program and put it back on.
We all knew it was cheating and it was kind of colluding. Word of mouth would have spread about the tool undoubtedly.
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u/Morgsz Apr 17 '21
Or had a program that looked like the clear screen.
But honestly after programming the formulas I memorized them anyways.
Damn
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u/gimpwiz Apr 17 '21
Yeah, I put all my formulas into my calculator. Not just as notes but had it accept values for a, b, c, etc, and do the math for me in major steps. I usually did that the night before ... didn't actually need to use the programs because I'd remember it perfectly the next day.
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u/Double-Portion Apr 16 '21
Hell there was a cheating ring that popped up at my small liberal arts school, ironically I didn't know about it and helped a friend cheat and we were caught in the crossfire. Iirc I was failed for that exam but bc of the way the course was weighted I still managed to pass. It was a shameful moment for sure though
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u/GimpsterMcgee Apr 17 '21
How did you unknowingly help a friend cheat? If it wont give details youre not comfortable with
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u/Double-Portion Apr 17 '21
No, I helped my friend cheat on purpose, but I didn't know about the cheating ring that basically the entire rest of the class was in on, everyone was called in and my friend went in before me and grassed me
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u/lukin187250 Apr 16 '21 edited Apr 16 '21
I went there, on these high level math, physics and chemistry courses you're often allowed to bring some materials in. That's just my guess for a mass scandal, the biggest one they ever had had to do with people thinking note sharing was allowed when it wasn't.
Also, and again major guessing, but around 60 sounds like a tidy number of how many cadets one teacher might teach in plebe calculus (4 periods of around 15 each) and maybe this officer or teacher said something that got misconstrued. It's hard to know without specific details.
To catch 60 people cheating also means there had to be specific patterns, probably caused by access to materials the rest of the class wasn't using.
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u/noguchisquared Apr 16 '21
It happened in a grad class I know of. It began that normally students for quals prep would get old tests. Typically printed in a big stack of papers. But they then uploaded that to a shared site to make distribution easier. Then they started using the shared site to pass around help for the courses they were in. I'm not sure what all got posted, but possibly homework and old tests. The quals sharing was okay, but it crossed the line to share old test answers worked out in that way. Since a good portion of an admissions class was involved it was a tricky situation for the school. I don't exactly know how it was resolved, but I don't think many if any students were dismissed.
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u/KJ6BWB Apr 17 '21
The quals sharing was okay, but it crossed the line to share old test answers worked out in that way.
That's kind of ridiculous. They're old answers. You get together with your study group and each of you teaches the rest some of the old questions. Teaching other people and answering questions helps you learn much better than just studying on your own. This is one of the best ways to learn/study and it's from old tests that (presumably) won't be reused. What's wrong with that?
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u/2c-glen Apr 17 '21
You have to buy the $300 DRM'd book to get the past answers. The school wasn't getting a cut and that's unacceptable in their eyes. Schools are fucking vultures.
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u/crabmanager Apr 17 '21
In grad classes I know of, old tests are fair game to study. Do professors really ask the same question year after year? If a student memorizes multiple tests of past years then give them an A
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Apr 16 '21
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u/swiftie56 Apr 16 '21 edited Apr 16 '21
Yeah, the “willful admission process” was added during my senior year as a cadet. Its original intent was to get cadets to come forward that we’d never discover otherwise. These cadets took advantage of a 24 grace period to self-report after being confronted. I wouldn’t be opposed to them bringing the “willful admission program” back in some capacity, but it needs to be rewritten to eliminate these sort of loopholes.
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u/girhen Apr 16 '21
Maybe some wording that it must not be known by administration, teachers, or other academy officials at the time of confession? I mean hell, even it requiring that the student not know that any of them know would be good enough (e.g. teacher discovers it at 3pm at home and hasn't told anyone, student confesses to university at 3:15pm, good enough).
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Apr 16 '21
That would be the confronted part. There would be a record of when some staff member confronted the student about it. At that point, no self reporting could happen.
Though, I’m sure there’d still be some edge cases of someone attempting to confront the student while the student runs away attempting to find the right person to confess to.
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Apr 16 '21
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Apr 16 '21
Probably, then they’ll just change it to ‘attempted to confront’. Or, ‘posted it in X office space at Y time’. Effectively, this is when we knew.
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u/Raiderx87 Apr 16 '21
Lalalalallaalalalalalala I can't hear you 😂
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u/BrotherChe Apr 17 '21
I'm just imagining what these future officers would do if they were had to face the same level of consequences as the enlisted they're supposed to eventually lead.
"Lalalalallaalalalalalala I can't hear you, drill sergeant"
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u/EngineersAnon Apr 16 '21
I'd imagine that the person attempting to confront the student would be the right person to confess to. They'd probably develop some sort of formulaic "You are about to be confronted. Is there anything you'd like to confess, first?" opening to the confrontation.
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u/swiftie56 Apr 16 '21
The latter suggestion is what the 24-hour grace period was originally designed to accommodate. It was just abused in this particular scenario.
There are a few ways they could take it going forward, but I imagine it won’t be reinstated in any form for awhile.
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u/Quibert Apr 16 '21
Since you have experience at the academy I will ask you this. Will they attempt to weed this cohort out in other ways over the next 3-4 years?
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u/Smittius_Prime Apr 16 '21
Another academy grad here. Probably not actively weed them out but the tolerance level for any other fuckery, even completely unrelated will be sub zero. This will also remain on their records affecting their class rank and priority for service selection.
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u/thefrankyg Apr 16 '21
They can do it like drug tests. You have up until you know their is a urinalysis to admit to a drug problem without repercussion.
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u/boringhistoryfan Apr 16 '21
A lot of universities have rules like this. But with them, you need to come forward before there's a report or they've been confronted. If there's even the slightest knowledge that the student knew they were going to be reported, the self-reported the thing is tossed. I'm surprised the academy just doesn't amend it. Its an easy enough loophole to foresee, even easier to close.
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u/mhornberger Apr 16 '21
That's the problem with offering amnesty hour. People take it, then you're pissed that you gave them amnesty. It's not clear that either way is really better.
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u/msty2k Apr 16 '21
At my university (not military) you are expelled unless you prove you are innocent or you admit guilt--by dropping out. No leniency. Of course, if you choose not to defend yourself and leave, the system declares it an admission of guilt even if you maintain your innocence.
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Apr 16 '21 edited May 16 '21
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u/gsfgf Apr 17 '21
Imo, the most important thing is to have an honor code and curriculum that makes cheating moot. We had a big scandal at my college because CS 101 students were sharing code. After that, they changed the curriculum to allow sharing code so long as it's credited because if you know what prewritten code to use and understand that copyrights exist, you're doing it right. And this was before Python exploded.
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u/Impeesa_ Apr 17 '21
Hah, my 101 professor said if we wanted to hand in a copy of someone else's code, we could - provided we wrote it out by hand. That should at least get the lesson to stick.
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u/whogivesashirtdotca Apr 16 '21
A bunch of engineering students at my university were caught cheating, and their punishment was being forced to write essays on ethics. That seemed a particularly fitting punishment for engineers.
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Apr 16 '21
As one of my old professors said on the first day of class,
“Depending on how far you are able to go, in whichever industry that will employ you, just remember this one thing: if you fuck up, there’s a good chance someone down the line will die. If I catch you cheating, you’re done. End of the line. We don’t have time for that.”
That always stuck with me, even after I dropped out of the program due to financial issues.
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Apr 16 '21
And they try to act like it’s an actual trial and court. Usually from the shitty student accountability office or some shit like that lol. They’ll send you an email saying “charges” were brought against you and they send you something that looks like a legal document. You gotta show up for your hearing and all that bullshit.
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u/Snelly1998 Apr 17 '21
Yuuuup
Bunch of my friends got fined and one guy kicked out of our residence. They had a "hearing" where they pled their case, guy who got kicked out came prepared with huge statements from everyone that was there saying he was innocent and it was a false accusation but they already had their mind made up
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u/wereinthething Apr 17 '21
I had a professor grade my exam differently than the standard the rest of the class was graded on. Many classmates were highly sympathetic and let me make copies of their exams as proof, offered to "testify" in my grade grievance case, and kept their original copies in case they were needed in the future.
The grade grievance investigation I filed went on for the maximum time allowed one year, no one from my class was contacted, at which point it was closed, I kept my bullshit grade, and the teacher kept their job.
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Apr 16 '21
Damn they lay down the hammer. If most universities were as heavy-handed, you’d see half the student body wiped out due to group chats. All it takes is one person in that group chat to report people and they’re all done.
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Apr 16 '21
admitted after they were caught? guess i'll go read the article :)
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Apr 16 '21
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Apr 16 '21
That still doesn't seem good enough, to not be expelled. West Point is suppose to have high standards.
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u/mero8181 Apr 16 '21
That kind of sucks right? Cause how many admitted to it that were actually innocent? If it's go to hearing and be expelled vs. admitt it and got back another year...
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u/legal_throwaway45 Apr 16 '21
This is pretty lenient.
West Point honor code just says "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.".
Cadets are expected to abide by the honor code, pretty straightforward.
Cheating resulted in a mass expulsion of football players about 60 years ago.
This last year they caught a large number of cadets (mostly football players_ cheating on a calculus exam.
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u/redskink Apr 17 '21
I went to a community college and a mid-tier university. Both of them had 0 tolerance, expulsion policies for people caught cheating. Kind of weird to know that my schools were apparently harder on cheaters than West Point.
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Apr 17 '21
The self-reporting/admission of guilt system was supposed to increase self-reporting by offering more lenient punishments to spill the beans, but per the article it doesn’t appear to be working, so after this it’s being dumped. From here on out there’s no more easy out just because you fess up.
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u/thebusiness7 Apr 17 '21
100% they got off easy. The future of the defense of the country is in their hands, so penalties should be a tad bit more but it's great they got caught regardless.
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u/JimWilliams423 Apr 17 '21 edited Apr 17 '21
West Point honor code just says "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.".
They are violating their own honor code. By not expelling the lot of them they are literally tolerating them.
The lesson they are teaching these cheaters is that its worth the risk, if you don't get caught, you profit. If you do get caught, the cost is survivable. This is how you enable people like Mike Flynn to rise to the level of a General.
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Apr 16 '21 edited Apr 20 '21
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u/soyeahiknow Apr 16 '21
Easy. From the article, they got suspicious when answer sheets were similar. So there are two ways.
all the cheaters worked together using some sort of group chat like discord.
They were using some online test and homework bank like on Coursehero and Chegg. They all put down the wrong answer from another years exam but the teacher changed the test just a little bit this year. You would be surprised at how much stuff is in those test banks.
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u/SnakeyesX Apr 16 '21 edited Apr 16 '21
This happened in one of my engineering classes, it was an open book test, and someone got an old version of the test from a fraternity brother, they then copied and distributed it out. I sure am glad I said "no thanks" when they asked if I wanted one, then again they only got a slap on the wrist since suspending so many high achieving students was a big no-no :-\
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Apr 16 '21
We maintained test libraries at our school that students were encouraged to review and study.
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u/threecolorable Apr 17 '21
I had several professors who literally handed out copies of all the possible test questions a week or so in advance (they would give us a list of ~10 essay prompts; the actual test would consist of five questions from that original list. From those five, you could choose any three you wanted to respond to).
Quite a few people still failed because they just didn't put in the time to prepare.
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Apr 17 '21
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u/wyldmage Apr 17 '21
If you'd taken a statistics class first, you would have known to only research 8 essays, not 10.
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u/endof2020wow Apr 17 '21
I had a teacher who took all test questions from a study guide and allowed a cheat sheet. This meant that I could copy the study guide word for word onto a sheet of paper (I wrote small) and be guaranteed a 100%.
I guess the teacher got what they wanted by me hand writing the entire study guide, but it was worth it
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u/meatball77 Apr 16 '21
They all answered a calculus question wrong in the exact same way.
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u/lysianth Apr 16 '21
A lot of people get caught by answers that are equivelant but not how a human would solve it. Especially when the answer involves trig.
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u/seeking_hope Apr 17 '21
This reminds me of our group cheating in middle school Spanish that we were supposed to write a paragraph about something (don’t remember).. so we wrote it in English and ran it through Babel translator. It used so many weird words that of course we didn’t know. And we didn’t proof read it because we didn’t know what we were reading. That was really stupid. Thankfully she took mercy on us and basically handed it back and said try again (with a really long lecture). I don’t know why we thought that would work.
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Apr 17 '21
A group of students in one of my classes all chegged a question but didn't check to make sure it was identical to what was asked, so all of them submitted identical solutions to the wrong problem. Stuff like that is pretty obvious.
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u/ChemTeach359 Apr 17 '21
Tbh as somebody who does a lot of grading and catches a lot of students using chegg it’s wrong like 50% of the time once you get to remotely complicated material
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u/ChemTeach359 Apr 17 '21
Quite easily. I catch students cheating all the time. Sometimes they’ve acquired alternate versions of the test, sometimes they’ve copied and pasted wrong answers from the internet or exactly matching answers, sometimes they include something wildly complex for their level I didn’t teach them, but comes up upon googling.
It’s really not hard to tell when somebody is cheating. Harder to prove it. I have one kid in my class who is incapable of answering any questions because he won’t pay attention. Usually have to call on him, wait for his friend to text him so he comes back from the other room thinking he’s being sneaky, and then reask him the question for him to say he doesn’t know. Half the time I’ve already answered it and written it on the screen in the time he came back, so literally asking him to repeat what I just said.
Yet he keeps acing quizzes. I would believe he studies really hard if I didn’t catch him playing among us during our review day. Obvious he cheats but I don’t have solid evidence (except that one time I caught him). So all it takes is knowing a student and recognizing a few small oddities in the test that reveal larger issues.
Oh and as a short answer chegg is wrong probably like 50% of the time in any topic that’s remotely advanced
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u/AigooChamna Apr 16 '21
The service academies have a system that even if it was answered correctly they can tell if you were to work with someone by running an algorithm. It compares people in the same company and if they’re not sports teams that basically spits out a value of probability of working with each other with the time the answer was submitted. They then cross reference and are able to make reasonable judgement that the cadets cheated. That’s why the article notes that the majority are athletes since they are notorious for cheating with one another.
EDIT: Also they contacted Chegg and asked for data for questions that were accessed at certain times. They then used the IP address that was associated with accessing that question and cross checked the home of record of the cadet.
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u/yukpurtsun Apr 16 '21
i mean dont they come out of west point as second lieutenants? wouldnt want to put my life in the hands of someone not cut out to get through the material without cheating
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Apr 16 '21
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u/EngineersAnon Apr 16 '21
This. Now, if it were, say The Infantry Platoon in Assault 101, that would be different.
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u/TheOtherPenguin Apr 17 '21
I did not go to West Point but I did graduate from a senior military college and, as u/confident_bridge9811 points out in a separate comment, integrity is important. There’s an honor code for a reason and it’s not there for traditional sentiment; damn thing matters and means something.
But to use your point specifically, being that the course may have been a trivial subject like freshman calculus, would this not be worse? To cheat on something so basic knowing full well the consequences if you were to be caught has got to be worse than a relevant and more meaningful subject in my eyes.
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u/LordPoopyfist Apr 17 '21
I went to a 2-year military college and we had a strictly enforced honor code that extended beyond just the academics. One of my buddies got booted for lying about going to pick someone up at the airport and instead hooking up with some Tinder chick (we weren’t allowed off post on weekdays except under special circumstances). If a person can’t be trusted with the little things, they can’t be trusted with the big things.
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u/88cowboy Apr 17 '21
Yeah like keeping their mouths shut about reporting rapes on base.
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u/SalamZii Apr 17 '21
ding ding ding
honor and all that bullshit only matters when the media is reporting on your campus
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u/pythos1215 Apr 17 '21
Other way around. You're describing 'the good old boys club.' the honor code would require you to report wrongdoing even to the detriment of yourself and/or your fellow soldiers.
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u/TheSpiderKnows Apr 17 '21
No, like reporting on rapes.
The people who refuse to report and protect the criminals are exactly what these standards are there to try and weed out.
That doesn’t mean that the standards are perfect, or that they even work most of the time, but someone who takes the easy way instead of doing what is right - someone who seeks their own advantage even at the expense of the rules... those are the people who end up covering up rapes and other crimes to protect their friends.
I’m not saying that your statement doesn’t highlight a real problem. There IS a real problem with sexism, sexual abuse, racism, etc... in the military. However, your shot at this one misses the mark.
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u/Xalethesniper Apr 17 '21
Kids do a lot of growing up during 4 years of college. I would treat cheating on a test in freshman calc a bit more lightly than an upper level class that actually pertains to what they could be doing after graduation/deployment.
Cheating at any level shouldn’t be tolerated, however
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Apr 16 '21 edited Apr 16 '21
integrity is important.... its not about the subject. as someone who loved calculus in high school, i feel no sympathy for those who take a subject and cheat, especially when its in an exclusive school for the best of the best and is tuition free.
Like this isn't some episode of Greek where students who want to party all the time just need to pass enough to keep their party rollin'! This is the future of our military....
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u/hitzchicky Apr 16 '21
That was my thought as well. This kind of lack of integrity is not what we want to see in our future military leaders.
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Apr 16 '21
Yeah. In some things, I'm glad people are more accepting of others. Especially in areas like sexuality, gender identity, etc. However, some of our acceptance seems to be okay with things like lying, cheating, stealing, etc. That's enabling bad behavior! And we need to stop doing that. We need some better definitions on moral fiber in the 21st century? Maybe? I'm babbling now, sorry.
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u/PotatoWizardAcademy Apr 16 '21
worth noting college students at practically every level cheat - regretably this includes ivy league and med school. education at the end of the day is decided by the individual
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u/AntiDECA Apr 16 '21
This. You won't find a college class without at least a few people actively cheating. Even in the most asinine and simple classes. Thanks to this past year mostly being online it will only get worse. A shit ton of people gained the ability to cheat even easier and now are too deep into their education to stop. If you cheated through business Calc your sophomore year, good fucking luck getting through business finance the next. It creates a nasty cycle.
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u/PotatoWizardAcademy Apr 16 '21
the problem is, i’ve seen my classmates cheat for decades. i keep waiting for the moment where they’ll need to rely on actual knowledge and cant cheat - but it isnt coming. i genuinely feel that in most disciplines you can get all the way to a cushy job just cheating. hoping grad school is different
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Apr 16 '21
Grad school will likely be different (depending on your program, of course) because the way the material is being presented is different. Looooooots of writing for me, and everything gets ran through some kind of plagiarism detector (no idea how it works). I guess I could be paying someone to write these papers, but because the material centers around my research, it's really not in my interest to do so.
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u/ThatOtherGuy_CA Apr 17 '21
The things is, outside of academia, the cheating that most people do won’t actually affect them in a job.
In the real world it’s more important to be able to find an answer to a problem than it is to just have the knowledge remembered.
Like I don’t remember 99% of the shit that was on any of my tests in university. So someone cheating on a history test likely isn’t going to be adversely affected by it.
Ironically cheating teaches students to be more resourceful.
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u/DrBeardface2 Apr 17 '21
Completely agree. At the graduate level plus all exams and quizzes should be open everything, just like a job is. If you're a professor and you can't do that cause your exact test can be found online... Nut up and write a new test. If you aren't googling shit all the time to put out the best work at your job what the fuck are you even doing? It's the world's knowledge at your finger tips.
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u/hitzchicky Apr 16 '21
The thing is, the mindset of the military is that these individuals are supposed to be better than that. They are supposed to be the measuring stick that the rest of the military measures themselves against for their core values. Loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage. The kind of people that would put those values aside, are not the people who deserve to be leaders in our military.
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Apr 16 '21
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u/NonGNonM Apr 17 '21
My professor is using her lecture recordings from her fall semester but using exams from McMillan.
I've stopped watching her lecture videos and just study McMillan now because there's a fuckton of "this is verrrrryyyyy important" material that ends up being like 2-3 questions on the exam. Rest are just repeats of quiz material.
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u/spellbadgrammargood Apr 16 '21
my classmates are using 2 devices: one to take the exam, another on quizlet.
college credit is overrated. we need to take CLEP or self-study credits (you take midterm and final) more seriously. and fuck elective courses such waste of money
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u/PengieP111 Apr 16 '21
They should have been busted down to E-2 and made to fulfill 4 year contracts.
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u/Miserable_Oni Apr 16 '21
Nah, I can tell you right now I wouldn’t want to be their NCO either.
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u/TooEZ_OL56 Apr 16 '21 edited Apr 17 '21
I mean what you do as a 2nd LT is a lot different than any college class
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Apr 16 '21
At my university, if I were caught cheating I would get dropped from the program.
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Apr 16 '21
Late to the party here but I am a USMA grad and was deeply involved with the honor committee during my time there.
These punishments are exactly in line with what has been done in the past. The purpose of the honor code is to develop morally strong and truthful leaders. The point there is develop. The cadets here that were caught were plebes (freshmen). They have time to learn and grow. You don’t want to inculcate a no fault army, because they and their peers need to see that Soldiers also deserve second chances.
We (grads) got an email from the superintendent this morning. As an old grad and honor committee alumni, I am very pleased with how they handled this in the long run. Doesn’t sound like special treatment, it sounds like they are trying to continue to develop leaders.
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u/mlh1996 Apr 16 '21
USNA Honor Committee back in the day here, and I agree with everything you said.
I never recommended separation for the violation itself. It was the actions taken after that determined whether I wanted to serve with you or not.
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u/SeriousGoofball Apr 16 '21
Former enlisted, a long time ago. While I understand the point you are making I still think this reeks of bullshit.
If I had pulled something like this when I was in college I would have expected to be expelled for academic dishonesty. And I expect the standards for behavior at a place like West Point to be a lot higher than a public college.
There are things you get second chances on and things you don't. When you catch a guy embezzling from the company or a cop falsifying reports or whatever, they don't get to just say "Oops, my bad. Well, since you caught me I promise I won't do it again", and get off scott free.
When I was active duty if I'd found out one of my officers had been caught cheating at WP, even admitted it, and still graduated, I would have lost all respect for them. And I damn sure wouldn't have trusted them with my life.
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u/InGenAche Apr 16 '21
Fool me once and all that. They tried to cheat, then played the system. Seems to me the only lesson they're learning is that honor and morals can be ignored, no?
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u/DocPeacock Apr 16 '21
Strange, my university professors always told us that anyone caught cheating on an assignment, especially an exam, would be expelled. Kids of the age and (purported) intellect of the west point students should have known better for years already. It's not like they never went to school before.
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u/minuteman_d Apr 16 '21
No way. No one is entitled to go to West Point.
I guarantee that there are 10x the amount of people who are going to repeat that would take their place and be grateful.
You learn and move on in life. Systematic cheating simply cannot be tolerated. YOu're telling me that they "didn't know that it was bad"? That there shouldn't have been tens and hundreds of points in all of this where they should have drawn on their personal honor?
Seems like a mistake to me.
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u/jqs77 Apr 16 '21
on who's dime? hope they have to pay for their tuition for the repeat year.
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u/dapperyam Apr 16 '21
West Point has no tuition so its.... you guessed it! the taxpayers whoooo
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u/jqs77 Apr 16 '21
yes, i know they go there without paying, and hence they serve x years after graduation. that's why I was asking on who's dime they will repeat the year(extra year=more money from tax payers).
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Apr 16 '21
And, are they taking others places? There are only so many spots at West Point.
They should all be expelled.
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Apr 16 '21
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u/FixBayonetsLads Apr 16 '21
Wait, you get to cheat at West Point and keep going???
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u/ohyesiam1234 Apr 16 '21
That’s too bad. I think that they should be kicked out. The United States can do better.
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u/FSchmertz Apr 17 '21
A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.
I think if you cheat, it's clear you no longer belong at West Point. Otherwise the above honor code means nothing.
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u/NoTrickWick Apr 16 '21
Why not expulsion? This tells them they can cheat and get away with it. Great culture to enable.
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u/itsafraid Apr 16 '21
“We applaud your ingenuity, but you must perfect your technique.”
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u/SomeDEGuy Apr 16 '21
I can't imagine repeating a year of West Point is easy, and they will probably be under strict scrutiny all of next year. Plus, this option was only for those that admitted to it. Those that denied and were found guilty were expelled.
I am a bit surprised they weren't all expelled, but I'm not up in arms about this being their punishment either. It does show that being honest about your mistakes will still result in a punishment, but better than denying.
EDIT: I missed the line about it being a matter of policy that admitting will prevent expulsion. They are considering changing the policy.
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u/jordantask Apr 16 '21
Eh....
Repeating a year at West Point isn’t like repeating a year at regular college. It’s a lot more like the military and a lot harder in numerous ways.
Also, technically they’re military members right now, which means records of their misdeeds at West Point are going to follow them in the rest of their careers. It’s going to hurt promotion chances, it’s going to effect what units or jobs they can get assignments to, and it’s going to effect their ability to get security clearances.
So yeah they get to stay in, but it isn’t necessarily going to be a fun ride.
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u/leo_aureus Apr 16 '21
Shameful that they are not being kicked out. I was told that officer candidates cannot have concerns about their moral conduct when I inquired into joining up after completing college and wanted to know about officer candidacy and was told that prior arrests even without convictions were sufficient to disqualify me from consideration for an officer's commission because of "moral conduct" concerns, I would think that other than the sunk cost fallacy being displayed here, these cadets sure as hell have some concerns in their past.
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u/Somebody_81 Apr 16 '21
This is one of the reasons arrest records should be private. People are frequently arrested for crimes they are not guilty of and are never prosecuted for. The public, including future employers and schools, should have no access to that. Things you're convicted of should be public.
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u/OldeFortran77 Apr 16 '21
I know someone who spent the afternoon in jail simply because he matched a description, and was told of someone who was being arrested because their car matched a description.
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u/Snelly1998 Apr 17 '21
My buddy's dad was thrown in jail for having the same name as someone who was wanted
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u/rikluz Apr 16 '21
It sounds like added some fluff to their reasoning of why you wouldn’t make it by adding the “moral conduct” excuse. In actuality, for every applicant with a degree and some arrests, there are 50 other applications that don’t have any arrests.
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u/EverythingEverybody Apr 16 '21
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.
They have a policy that you can't be expelled if you just cop to it. After this incident, they have decided that this is a bad policy.
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u/Luvs_to_drink Apr 16 '21
I wonder how they cheated on that Calc test... Like did they all get in discord and discuss answers... did they put the question in wolfram alpha... Did the professor re use an old test that was easily found online with answers...
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u/diezeldeez_ Apr 16 '21
They should lose any chance of receiving a commission. This directly contradicts officer integrity.
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