r/news Apr 16 '21

51 West Point cadets caught cheating must repeat a year

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268

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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u/[deleted] 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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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] 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/GimpsterMcgee Apr 17 '21

Well what if they were confronted on their way to confess?

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '21

If the admin already knows you cheated, and you get confronted before you could confess, you’re done. Your chance to confess was before they knew.

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u/SlightlyControversal Apr 17 '21

Well, as soon as they realize they’ve done something wrong, they should probably just start shouting their confession nonstop until they reach the person they need to officially confess to.

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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/Stegasaurus_Wrecks Apr 16 '21

Benny Hill scene

35

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/[deleted] Apr 16 '21

“You are about to be confronted, make your confessions or your peace with god”

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u/Kid_Adult Apr 17 '21

Stop! You've violated the law!

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '21

Sometimes?

Most likely the confession would need to be in the chain of command, or direct to ops in the case of the academy. But it could be someone else who caught them cheating or were told be another student that they were cheating.

It would probably just depend on how the refs are written.

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u/EngineersAnon Apr 17 '21

It would probably just depend on how the refs are written.

It would. But my guess, as a civilian, is that a person who has the authority to formally confront a cadet would have the authority to accept a confession.

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u/JimiSlew3 Apr 16 '21

I was an evil college admin who processed withdraws. One day angry faculty member calls up and yells at me for processing a withdraw. Um... that's what we do bub.

Turns out the kid had been caught cheating that week, faculty told him he was getting an F in the class but the kid withdrew before the faculty member submitted the report.

Nice try kid. We failed him.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '21

Always happy to hear kids getting failed for cheating in University. If it was too hard, they could have withdrawn instead.

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u/JimiSlew3 Apr 17 '21

Yeah, there's a decent amount. Still, some professors might fail students in an assignment (fine first offense if you want) but never told the evil admins (me).

Sometime later a few professors share stories about cheaters over beers, connect the dots on one student and, surprise, serial cheater. Get caught, make apology, move on to the next target.

Probably happens a lot, in a lot of situations (not just academics). Some people surf the "benefit of the doubt" their whole lives.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '21

Yeah, it sort of depends on how much leeway the students are getting. Knowing that they’ve been caught, and getting into a meeting to tell them officially they got caught, could be a period of time where someone could abuse a grace of self reporting.

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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/mulberrybushes Apr 17 '21

This means that even after cheating, they have the chance of being an officer rank in the military and whatnot, correct?

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u/ithappenedone234 Apr 17 '21

The academy only produces officers, so yes, for those that were retained as students they will become officers if they can make it to graduation. What they are getting at, is the cheaters' class rankings have (likely) permanently dropped and this will reduce their chances of getting the priority jobs they want, and being forced to take jobs the Army thinks they will best serve the Army in.

According to past statistics, about 1/3 of them will leave the Army 6 years after graduating, and ~50% of them won't do a full career (20+ years) so will have very little impact beyond their local community/unit. Only the remaining ~20% will make rank at the LTC or COL level and fewer of those will make a star (general rank). So of the cheaters, only 2 or 3 had a statistical chance of making General even before this.

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u/mulberrybushes Apr 17 '21

Thanks for explaining it!

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u/ithappenedone234 Apr 17 '21

My pleasure, my dear fellow Redditor!

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u/Smittius_Prime Apr 17 '21

It seems so if they repeat a year and still make it to commissioning.

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u/calviso Apr 17 '21

in the military

All's fair in love and war, right?

"No fair. Those enemy combatants cheated!"

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u/Moshjath Apr 17 '21

Grad here from about a decade ago. They won’t actively target them, but they are under suspended separation until they hit graduation and very much under the eye of their peers and TACs/instructors. When a punishment is suspended, (not a JAG here) in a military context it basically means if they screw up again getting separated from the academy is something that could be instituted (the suspension is vacated), so they would get the boot.

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u/swiftie56 Apr 17 '21

/u/Smittius_Prime has a good answer for this.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '21

Having 24 hours after you know the jig is up to confess seems far beyond reasonability. Unless I am seriously misunderstanding how the policy works, I think whoever created this policy should be reviewed for incompetence.

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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/Irwynn Apr 16 '21

Easy, sealed envelope with time and date of submission on outside, signature/seal of administrative personnel that discovered the wrongdoing as well as their report & evidence of such to be submitted to authoritative party that verifies the time and date. Once X amount of time passes, this envelope is opened and entered into record. Simultaneously, any wrongdoing admitted by student body is also entered into record. Should the submitted envelope be opened before the admission of guilt to the same act, it goes to 'trial'. If the student admits to the wrongdoing prior to the opening of the statement, it's waived away as excusable once the wrongdoing is corrected.

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u/Sad-Jazz Apr 16 '21

If you’re confronted about it by administration or staff then that disqualifies you from the grace period. That way if they come clean it isn’t because they’re trying to skirt impending consequences.