West Point Cheating Scandal
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 8 months ago
West Point has expelled at least eight cadets and are holding more than 50 back a year as a result of the military academy’s worst cheating scandal in over 40 years.
The military academy investigated 73 cadets suspected of cheating on a freshman calculus exam in May administered virtually because of the coronavirus. More than 50 of the cadets were athletes, several of whom were on the football team, according to a West Point spokeswoman.
“West Point must be the gold standard for developing Army officers. We demand nothing less than impeccable character from our graduates,” said Superintendent Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams in a press release.
Fifty-five of the 73 immediately admitted to cheating through the academy’s process of willful admission when confronted with suspicions of cheating. Willful admission was instituted in 2015 to encourage cadets to adhere to the academy’s honor code and take responsibility for any violations of the code. However, officials have concluded that this program has not been effective, and the academy is terminating the program.
This is the worst cheating scandal at the school since 1976, when 153 cadets resigned or were expelled because they cheated on an electrical engineering exam.
I’ll make some remarks that may surprise readers.
First of all, engineering is hard. Calculus is hard. People must resist the temptation to cheat. The only way to learn engineering is to take a deep dive and spend all of your life with it, for at least four straight years. There is no other way. There is no replacement for devoting your life to study of this subject. Ask me how I know.
I’m not sure why West Point – or any other school for that matter – would think that America can eviscerate God from the institution and expect honesty. Without God there is no foundation for morals. That is obvious not just in everyday, pedestrian life, but from the classic debates (e.g., Frederick Copleston versus Bertrand Russell, Greg Bahnsen versus Gordon Stein, etc.).
Second, while all of that is true, engineering professors must not turn engineering into exercises of memorization. I don’t know that they did this, and I certainly don’t know the details of the incident. But engineering isn’t done by memorization. Any engineer who creates models and designs by memorized conversions, formulae or techniques should be fired. It’s not done that way, and professors too stupid to know that shouldn’t be teaching.
Lectures and tests should focus on mastery of the concepts and material, not rote memorization.
On April 19, 2021 at 9:42 am, 41mag said:
Personal experience: cheating was only seen at my alma mater by the diversity students. Not hating, it’s the truth.
My profs were definitely teaching memorization for the most part. The best professors taught concepts. I like asking questions, some enjoyed answering them. My undergrad courses were fascinating to me and were perfect for me to engage my curiosity. It was hard tho, and not afraid to admit I had trouble in some of the courses.
The biggest issue I could see, and saw in myself sometimes was people lacking the testicular fortitude to work. Work ethic is lacking in men generally, we all can see it, and this scandal at West Point is more proof of it.
On April 19, 2021 at 11:14 am, Milton said:
I have neither given nor received aid on this exam. (sign your name)
This requirement, in order to have your work in a blue book checked, worked at University of Michigan, for those who were ethical enough to apply it. If you didn’t sign, your work was not graded.
I was always satisfied that this was the ethic of ALL engineers, and appreciated being treated as a professional, until…
…one of my peers explained to me that cheaters are gonna cheat, and it is no big thing (to them) to lie about it as well. Nothing but disdain for liars and cheaters.
On April 19, 2021 at 11:25 am, billrla said:
“However, officials have concluded that this program has not been effective, and the academy is terminating the program.”
Translation: Darn it all! The program keeps turning up new cheaters!
On April 19, 2021 at 1:39 pm, scott s. said:
At the Naval Academy, the problem typically has been that since the days when Lehman was SecNav, and also Rickover was head of Naval Reactors there was a preference for engineering/math/science majors. So it was mandated that all academy mids had to take a certain amount of engineering/math if not major in it. A number simply aren’t capable of doing well in that discipline. It seems an open question if you must have an engineering mind to be a good officer. Then you have the culture which I think gets to your point. Too much of the “you rate what you skate” (rates are the demerits you accumulate, so the idea is what you can get away with), and “2-0 (GPA) and go” or “If the minimum isn’t the minimum, it wouldn’t be the minimum”.
There has been an improvement in recent years as far as “service selection night”. It used to be mids lined up in “order of merit” and no.1 got the first pick (typically Top Gun wannabees grabbed naval aviation) the anchor-man got what was left (typically some auxiliary ship). The exception being nuclear power, where USNA had a quota it had to meet and the “nukes” had somewhat a “pick of the litter”. That seems to have gone away today.
If we’re going to have “red flags” lack of God would have to be the number one.
On April 19, 2021 at 1:52 pm, Roger J said:
Teaching chemistry lab to undergrads, I found the worst cheaters were pre-med students. They were single-minded in their pursuit of an A. I began to question the ethics of the medical profession. I doubt that behavior ever stopped.
On April 19, 2021 at 5:03 pm, Whocares said:
If West Point is only admitting academic all stars they probably took Calculus 1 and 2 in high school via AP or IB programs.
So probably these students came in light on math and weren’t all stars.
I know from a family members admission into Airforce officer candidate program taught in Montgomery Alabama, cheating in rampant. Even for the rules and regs which is rote learning, cheating and trading favors is commonplace.
On April 19, 2021 at 5:25 pm, The Wretched Dog said:
Gents: Several issues are at play here. With respect to Herschel’s comments regarding memorization versus conceptual understanding, West Point taught from the basis of conceptual understanding through at least the year 2000, when my nephew graduated.
Scott’s comments with respect to engineering at the Naval Academy pertain to West Point. “So it was mandated that all academy mids[hipmen] had to take a certain amount of engineering/math if not major in it. A number simply aren’t capable of doing well in that discipline.” West Point is the same.
But the issue isn’t engineering pedagogy. The issue is cheating and moral standards.
The cheating involved a freshman calculus test, conducted virtually. Calculus is hard, and while the majority of West Point students are no longer engineering majors, every cadet must take four semesters of higher math, e.g. the calculus and analytic geometry. For those who are academically challenged, but manage to get accepted anyway (think athletes and diversity), this requirement is spread over five semesters. Same content; five, not four semesters. Thus, I don’t expect those on the engineering course track were the cadets likely to have been involved.
So taking Calculus wasn’t fun for most cadets. In my day, 1980-1984, a full third of our classmates failed-out their first year, either English or Math. You get an opportunity to retake the failed course during a short, six week summer academic term. If you fail again, you are released from the Academy. Dismissed. Sent home to your family in disgrace.
Without even addressing the diversity/skills issue, when you remove God, as Herschel observes, you remove morality. It is no wonder that academically challenged cadets, under pressure to succeed, would cheat (which is so much easier to do on a virtual test), rather than risk failure and dismissal.
The Academy’s legendary ethics code: “A Cadet will not Lie, Cheat, or Steal, nor tolerate Those Who Do” has been watered down of late; no doubt to reflect the current social norms. So, I was surprised to receive the Superintendent’s message last week announcing the results of this scandal, along with the decision to shut down the “Willful Admission (Second Chance)” program.
Perhaps a return to sanity?
Note that I am a 1984 Graduate the Military Academy. Note also that I was in the three-semester, advanced math program – same content as the four semester program, packed into only three semesters. It sucked. It was hard. I stuck it out so I could get an extra free elective in history. As a history major I never used higher math in my military career and couldn’t do a derivative to save my life today. I did, however, have the aptitude for math that a full one third my classmates lacked. Many of whom were dismissed the end of plebe year.
Preparation of the nation’s military leaders is too important to waffle on standards, so it is good that a minimal return to sanity seems to have prevailed. Nevertheless, the Service Academies, like the Military/Naval Services themselves, are still completely besotted with Woke ideology.
The Wretched Dog
USMA 1984
Colonel, US Army (Ret.)
On April 19, 2021 at 6:35 pm, Spartan said:
For the Wretched Dog: BOTC!
I concur, the Math sucked, and I was content to just barely pass. I earned every decimal point over 2.0, and couldn’t fathom why anyone would cheat when the whole idea was to learn the material and acknowledge the assistance of those who helped get you to that point.
On April 19, 2021 at 8:11 pm, Gerald Schwartz said:
Oh, you are held back another year for cheating? Whatever happened to “you lie, you die?”
I guess the extra year will make them better human beings. I feel much better now….
not
On April 19, 2021 at 11:23 pm, BRVTVS said:
My guess is that the cheating involved the use of a computer algebra system like Wolfram Alpha. There are problems for which those packages spit out answers with errors or odd formatting a student is unlikely to come up with. It’s possible the professor chose a question like that in order to detect cheating.
On April 19, 2021 at 11:35 pm, Herschel Smith said:
@BRVTVS,
Well there you go. They should have used Jypyter Notebook, which will give symbolic answers in well-formatted notation.
Dumb cheaters.
On April 20, 2021 at 7:07 am, Old Bill in TN said:
I retired as a SSG from the National Guard. No, no disciplinary actions; I had a couple breaks in service, and truth to tell I didn’t want higher rank. I wanted to lead men in combat not do paperwork, and my rough tongue would probably not have fit well in higher circles.
All that said, there is no substitute for Moral Authority, and Moral Courage in leadership; NONE.
These cadets, and the Academy had surrendered any Moral Authority they may ever have had by this cheating and the official reaction to it. If you plan to lead men, and give them orders they know will most likely cost their lives, your word had better be gold-plated. They HAVE to know that your order comes because the task has to be done.
Taking a step back from just this scandal, we are seeing the putrid fruit of the Clinton & Obama purges of the Officer Corps. I’m thankful I’ve retired, and I could not in good conscious recommend to a young person that they enlist. The last bastion of Honorable Manhood has been undermined; there’s nothing left.
On April 23, 2021 at 4:01 pm, TRX said:
There wouldn’t have been any “cheating scandal” if West Point’s instructors had not tacitly permitted it.
Spenser Rapone didn’t just wake up on graduation day and think, “Hey, I’ll paint ‘Communism Will Win’ inside my hat for the photo op.”
A degree from West Point is toilet paper now, just like Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, and Stanford. The alumni who purchased their degrees from really should consider suing them for that… it’s a “do not hire” at an increasing number of employers who don’t want to deal with mis- and maleducated Woke in their employees.