by Ed Ruggero
The center will develop lesson plans, integrate the education over four years, and generally seek to standardize cadet development. One of the initiatives in this area is the establishment of CHET, or Company Honor Education Teams. Two or three faculty members are assigned to work with each company, to help the cadets develop lesson plans for honor education. The idea is to give the cadets the benefit of the years of experience residing with the staff and faculty.
Colonel Peter Stromberg, head of the Department of English, is a member of the Company Honor Education Team for Company D-3. Stromberg, USMA ‘59, is the senior department head at West Point. He is tall and thin, with a deep voice, a keen sense of the absurd and an ability to laugh at himself. He is in Thayer Hall to observe an honor class conducted by the yearlings of D-3.
Inside the room, twenty-some yearlings mill about, trying to patch together short skits that will illustrate the learning points laid out for them in the prescribed curriculum. After a few minutes delay, the second class honor rep opens the door and invites Stromberg and two other faculty members of the CHET team inside.
In the first skit the yearlings create a hostage drama, in which a police chief must decide whether it’s OK to lie to terrorists holding hostages. His plan is to tell them he wants to negotiate, then, when they let down their guard, send in the SWAT team. Another police officer questions whether this tactic is justifiable.
Although this group of performers spent time preparing (they had even typed out a script that sounded a lot like a Bruce Willis movie), they confuse the audience. Some cadets claim that lying to terrorists is OK, others aren’t sure. Ultimately, there is no resolution.
The second skit involves three cadets in a firefight with enemy soldiers. Pinned down behind some desks, almost out of ammunition, the three consider surrendering. One suggests they hold up a white flag, then shoot the enemy soldiers when they reveal themselves. True to the lesson plan, if not very plausible, another cadet argues calmly that this would be a violation of the Law of Land Warfare. The cadets watching laugh at the performance. On this day, safe in the classroom, the skit has as much to do with them as space travel.
The cadets have stumbled through a half hour already. The CHET members sit quietly, and the audience keeps checking the clock. One cadet has his head down on the desk and might be asleep.
Stromberg whispers, “This is student-centered learning.”
The last skit concerns something the cadets call the “home team, away team dilemma.”
A male cadet, home on leave, sits at a table with a young woman. After ordering dinner, he suggests a bottle of wine that “might make things more fun later.” His date giggles, demurs, then agrees. Later, we see the same male cadet back at West Point, where he runs into his cadet girlfriend. The two make plans for what passes as a big evening for West Point couples.
“Let’s go running,” the woman says.
“Great, and after that, we can go to the gym.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Lift weights, play some hoops. Then … uh … I guess we could go out for a run or something.”
The conversation turns to what happened on leave; asked what he did for fun, the male cadet gives a half-hearted, “Not much.”
A “good angel” appears by one shoulder, advising him to tell both women everything. A “bad angel” appears on the other shoulder, and with a few winks at the audience, advises him to keep his mouth shut.
“As long as you don’t actually lie to either of them, it’s OK,” the bad angel says.
During the discussion that follows, the men in the room laugh and poke one another like high school boys. The talk centers around whether or not the cadet’s actions, so far, have constituted an honor violation. No one asks whether he behaved honorably.
This is a common complaint among many cadets and faculty members: cadet concerns about honor aren’t about honorable behavior, they are about whether or not some action is a violation of the code. The proliferation of rules, and one could even argue the nature of the litigious society the cadets come from, has created legions of guardhouse lawyers who are able to justify behavior that is outside the spirit—if not the letter—of the code.
One cadet, a woman, raises her hand.
“This wouldn’t even come up if you respect both of these women. You wouldn’t treat someone like that if you really try to respect people.”
No one agrees or disagrees, and her comment passes.
“No, it’s not an honor violation to have eight girlfriends,” the junior leading the group adds. “In fact, it’s pretty impressive. But it isn’t right.”
Recently, a cadet chosen by his class to chair the Honor Committee did not get the job because it came out that he was dating a cadet woman and was practically engaged to a woman back home. The two-timing cadet did not get the job, nor was he sanctioned by the Honor Committee, which has set a precedent of not getting involved in cadet dating lives.
“If we did get involved [in dating spats],” D-3’s rep says, “there’d be a danger that some jilted girlfriend or boyfriend would bring someone up on honor for something we could never figure out: ‘He said he loved me,’ She said she wasn’t sleeping with anyone else.’ ”
The cadets run their own honor classes and teach each other, exploring the questions raised at their own pace. Because they are inexperienced, because the presentations are ungraded (which means low on the priority list and not much prep time), the whole process is inefficient. As with leader development, it may be much more time-efficient for the senior leader to just say, “Do it this way,” but then the lessons and the rules belong to the leader, not to the led.
But sitting in the classroom, with the clock ticking and every cadet aware that this is ungraded, that there are another half dozen graded requirements before the end of the day, makes it tough for the cadets to give this lesson its due.
Lieutenant Colonel Scott Snook, a leadership professor, says that real character development cannot take place in the classroom.
“We train people in the classroom. We can teach them the things a leader needs to know, and what a leader needs to do.”
The Army’s leadership model, laid out in the manual called Army Leadership is “Be, Know, Do.” The “Know” part is skills and knowledge: it includes everything from operating equipment and preparing reports to planning attacks. The “Do” part is action. Leaders influence people, operate to accomplish the mission, and work to improve the organization.
But what a leader needs to be—the character issue—is much more complicated.
“We approach the character part like we approach everything else,” Snook says. “Got a problem with lying? Throw a class at it. Sex discrimination? Hold a meeting. We approach it that way because we know how to train people.”
To put it another way when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Snook and others who want West Point to aspire to a more sophisticated approach say that cadets have to be ready to learn lessons about character. They must be self-aware and mature enough to be able step back from themselves and see how they fit in. Young people are most open to this kind of learning when something has happened to them that, as Snook says, “shakes their view of the world and how they fit in.”
In my experience as a cadet, that meant failure.
By the end of my second year at West Point I was, by all objective standards, a successful cadet. My year of college experience before West Point prepared me well for academics. My grade point average and good standing in military attitude moved me high enough in the class to win the gold stars that indicated a top 5 percent class rank. I was focused and intense and probably not much fun to be around. For my summer assignment I chose the U.S. Army Ranger course, which was then available to cadets. Only a few cadets got to wear the black and gold tab; it was a significant achievement and would, I was certain, make a fine addition to my growing list of accomplishments. Cocky and underprepared, I went to Fort Benning and promptly flunk
ed out.
I was stunned. I had never failed at any major endeavor in my life. At first I blamed the school’s grading system, then the ignorance of the instructors, who obviously hadn’t taken the time to be impressed by my lengthy credentials.
I suddenly had unexpected leave time on my hands. Somewhere in the course of those weeks before school started again, it occurred to me that the U.S. Army Ranger Department didn’t owe me anything. I simply didn’t meet the standard. That revelation made me think a great deal about how, in my two years at West Point, I had become a “sweat.” I worried excessively about the smallest details because that’s what West Point wanted, but I had no time or sympathy for people who could not perform to the same level.
In failing, I learned my own limitations and thus became more understanding of other people, critical lessons that I could never have learned in a classroom. Two years later I went back to Ranger School and not only completed the course, but I was able to help others get through.
While character development may be the trickiest aspect of the Academy’s mission, the biggest challenge cadets face as they learn to live with the Honor Code is the non-toleration clause. A cadet who knows of an honor violation but does not report it is also guilty of a violation, and the sanctions can be just as severe.
“It’s one thing to talk about honor in the corps in general, it’s quite another to think about turning in a friend,” says Colonel Maureen LeBoeuf, head of the Department of Physical Education and a CHET mentor. “[The non-toleration clause] seems to them to set up a tension between two goods: loyalty to their buddies and loyalty to the institution.”
In another CHET class, LeBoeuf sits in the visitor’s chair while a firstie named Belmont has the floor. He is trying to follow a lesson plan, and he isn’t making much progress. After struggling for ten minutes, he asks if LeBoeuf will come up and share with the class a couple of things they spoke about in their one-on-one discussion. She agrees, and as she stands to walk to the front of the room, Belmont tries to thank her. But it comes out as, “I’m sure Colonel LeBoeuf will do a good job.”
“Thanks Belmont,” she says dryly, “It always makes my day to be validated by a firstie.”
The class laughs, and she keeps the banter going, playing to what they will think is funny, joking with them, poking fun. She addresses one huge cadet; the desktop looks like a cafeteria tray in front of him.
“OK, now this is a stretch, are you a football player?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you guys learn to count on each other, right? You’ve got to trust each other, right?”
The whole room nods. They’re all athletes, and they know the teamwork drill.
“It’s the same way in a unit.”
She walks over to two cadets sitting beside each other, weaving a story for them: The two men are friends. One, whose name-tag says Abelli, also knows that the other, Wade, borrows things from other cadets. Sometimes he “forgets” to return them.
“So he’s not the most truthful guy,” LeBoeuf says. “But then you find out you’re going to the same unit, and this is great, because you’re buddies.
“Then it comes time to report on your vehicles. And you, Abelli, give an accurate report. ‘Eighty percent [mission capable] sir,’ you say to your company commander. And the captain looks at you a little funny, cause that’s not a great number. Keep in mind this is the guy who’s going to write your efficiency report.”
“And then he asks Wade, who saw the reaction you got, and Wade says …” LeBoeuf turns to Wade, pauses.
“Work with me, Wade.”
“One hundred percent,” Wade says.
“Right.”
She turns to Abelli, then to the rest of the class. “And you know that’s not true. What does that do to you? What are you going to do?”
Abelli doesn’t answer right away. He looks a bit confused. Finally, he says, “I’d probably report 100 percent next time, too.”
“No!” LeBoeuf insists. “No, no, no!”
Abelli looks pained. Not only were 20 percent of his vehicles broken, now he’s given the wrong answer.
“He wouldn’t trust Wade,” another cadet helps out.
“That’s right,” LeBoeuf says. She looks unsure of what to do with Abelli; she sizes him up, wondering, perhaps, if he really would falsify a report that quickly.
“Suppose you and Lieutenant Belmont are in the same unit,” she says to Abelli.
Belmont, the firstie, wears wings above his name-tag; he will become an Army aviator after graduation. LeBoeuf is also a pilot.
“And suppose Belmont tells you that this helicopter you’re about to fly—which has been having problems—is now OK.”
She leans forward, and in a stage whisper says, “But it isn’t.”
She straightens, addresses the class.
“How long do you think that helicopter will fly if the rotor bumps the mount?”
The cadets shake their heads in unison. This is working better.
“About as long as it takes to hit the ground,” she finishes.
“We’re not talking about working for IBM, folks,” she says, moving inside the horseshoe of desks and looking each cadet in the eye. “You could go to war with this person on your left or your right. You’ve got to be able to trust this person.”
These kind of extreme examples, combat stories and “what-ifs” are often heard in discussions of honor. But they are not the sole reason for the code.
When Sylvanus Thayer became West Point’s Superintendent in the early nineteenth century, he instituted strict accountability for cadets: they were held to high standards in academics, in appearance, in comportment. Above all, they had to be gentlemen; that is, their word was their bond. Thayer knew this was essential in a society that mistrusted a professional military. There must be no opportunity for the Army’s civilian overseers to say, “I told you they weren’t to be trusted.”
Cadet Kris Yagel, the senior honor rep in Rob Olson’s company, says, “For me, learning the Honor Code started with fear; we were afraid of doing something wrong and getting thrown out.”
Yagel, from Pennsylvania coal country, has dark hair and chiseled features. With longer hair, bad posture and a three-day growth of beard, he could be a Calvin Klein model. He is excruciatingly polite and serious about the Honor Code.
“It wasn’t until cow [junior] year that I really began to respect the code and what it can do for me. This year I’ve been involved with the education committee, making plans for next year. Like, how do we get across that honor applies everywhere: to academics, to athletics, to cadet life?
Honor education for the plebes centers around how the code applies in cadet life, while yearling classes discuss honor in the military. The first two years are “directional”, cadets are told what to do. By the end of the third class year and the beginning of second class year, the Honor Committee introduces more complex ethical dilemmas to the education.
“Not every situation has a right answer,” Yagel says. “Some are cut-and-dried, like a falsified status report or an illegal order. Others are trickier. [But] the biggest threat to the Honor Code is the non-toleration clause. It’s the most talked-about issue; it’s the one cadets have the most problems with. I always tell them that, as an officer, you cannot afford to overlook dishonest behavior.”
“Lots of cadets put loyalty to friends above loyalty to the organization. I used to think that way; that if I had a best friend who did something wrong that I wouldn’t be able to confront him or turn him in. But now I see that the non-toleration clause is an important part of the code. Dr. Snider [Don Snider, a civilian professor and CHET member] talked about this once: Loyalty to the higher ideals, loyalty to the unit, is going to benefit everyone more in the long run.”
There is another reason for the toleration clause: the code belongs to the cadets. If cadets don’t enforce it—fairly, even in the smallest circles of friends—then there is no code. Still, Yagel has had ot
her cadets tell him that they would not turn in a friend.
“It’s tough. We’re always taught: have a buddy, count on your team. You’re always depending on someone. Now I have to turn my back on that person? It’s hard to understand.”
Visitors to West Point almost always comment on the openness: unlocked doors, unmonitored exams. But it isn’t a perfect world.
“There are other problems, like ‘cadet borrowing.’ One of your sweatshirts is missing, which means someone took it, and then it doesn’t ever come back. They say it’s civilians in the barracks, but it goes on too much.
“So I ask people, ‘What do you think was going through the mind of the cadet who took this sweatshirt?’ People will say it’s petty, but if you’re going to lie about this what are you going to do when the stakes are high?”
Yagel has a special disdain for cadets who won’t take responsibility for their actions. He saw this when he served on the board that investigated incidents of electronic copying.
“I got so tired of sitting on those boards and hearing people say they didn’t think [electronic copying] was cheating. It seemed clear to me. Maybe I’m getting cynical, or turning into an old grad, but it used to be that if you committed a violation, you got kicked out.”
During Christman’s time as Superintendent, there has been a sea change in the disposition of “found” honor cases. The code used to have a single sanction: Cadets who were found to have violated the code were dismissed. But Dan Christman believes in rehabilitation, in a learning curve, in a developmental model that allows for some missteps. He uses sanctions other than separation in some cases: cadets may be turned back to the next class. A junior or senior may be sent into the Army as an enlisted soldier; after some period (assuming good performance), he or she is allowed to re-apply for admission to some later class. Many of these cadets also participate in “honor mentoring,” an intense program of one-on-one meetings with a senior faculty member. The cadet is required to keep a journal (for self-examination), to write papers on ethics, to read, even to address classmates on what he or she has learned.
