falconfamily
5-Year Member
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 670
Devil dog, I'm not too sure about the piling on stuff. But your comment about young people is spot on. It is important to remember that these are first year students and the honor boards do take time under the honor system into consideration. i.e. a first year is treated completely differently than a 4th year. At the time this infraction occurred these first year cadets had been under the honor code for about 6 months. So there is reason for the academy to look at them differently.
Compare this to a situation at one of the service academies in the 1990's that involved about 134 Seniors who were involved with stealing a test and some were selling it. That is a very different situation than what just happened at USAFA where it appears that the cadets in question did something that was very impulsive but did not involve collusion or premeditation. Only 24 of the seniors in the 1990's case were expelled, the rest got some sort of administrative punishment, loss of certain privileges, or there was no finding by the honor boards. But that case also revealed that there is a problem with the honor board being reluctant to take action against so many of their fellows and this forced the intervention of the very upper levels of the command structure to intervene. It was situations like these that forced the academies to reform their honor systems so that they can be more effective in making findings without enforcing a mandatory sentence that many were reluctant to uphold. So I do not agree with the idea that this is some sort of PC, gentler/kinder USAFA honor code. Rather, I think it reflects the best attempts at using an honor code that seeks to find justice and encourage honor than simply retribution.
Compare this to a situation at one of the service academies in the 1990's that involved about 134 Seniors who were involved with stealing a test and some were selling it. That is a very different situation than what just happened at USAFA where it appears that the cadets in question did something that was very impulsive but did not involve collusion or premeditation. Only 24 of the seniors in the 1990's case were expelled, the rest got some sort of administrative punishment, loss of certain privileges, or there was no finding by the honor boards. But that case also revealed that there is a problem with the honor board being reluctant to take action against so many of their fellows and this forced the intervention of the very upper levels of the command structure to intervene. It was situations like these that forced the academies to reform their honor systems so that they can be more effective in making findings without enforcing a mandatory sentence that many were reluctant to uphold. So I do not agree with the idea that this is some sort of PC, gentler/kinder USAFA honor code. Rather, I think it reflects the best attempts at using an honor code that seeks to find justice and encourage honor than simply retribution.
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