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The business of stuffing knowledge into cadets is scorned by critics as "the fire-hose school of education." Too often, complain some West Point teachers, students just try to skate by with Cs--"2.0 and go," in cadet slang. "I just feel I'm on a fast-moving train," says Cadet Captain Lissa Young, the ranking female cadet and a top student. "You find yourself groping and grasping for things you'd like to take more time with. The Army breeds an attitude of 'Carry out the order with the approved solution.' Creativity here is stifled by the fear of failure." Says Joseph Zengerle, class of '64, now a lawyer in Washington, D.C.: "The schedule is so choked with shoe shining and mess-hall leading that the idea of sitting back and contemplating deeply is ridiculous. Plus, it's heresy."
West Point administrators concede that cadets are stretched thin. But, shrugs General Peter Boylan, commandant of cadets, "you can't become Spartan by living in Athens." West Point too often produces martinets, charge the academy's critics. However, acknowledges Joseph Ellis, a retired Army captain and former West Point instructor, "the Army can't very well have officers ordered to 'take that hill' respond, 'I gave this some thought while I was reading Melville last night, and I really can't see it.' "
A cadet will not "lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do," according to West Point's honor code. "Here in everything we do, we talk of honor," says Colonel James Anderson, the master of the sword (director of physical education). When an instructor orders "Cease work" in an exam, cadets literally throw down their pencils, as if they had become instantly hot to the touch. A cadet tennis-squad player who hurls his racquet in a match is off the team.
Such purity of conduct is hard to maintain in a permissive era. In the mid-'70s, West Point was rocked by a cheating scandal; 152 cadets were dismissed or re signed after plagiarizing on a take-home exam. Whole companies of cadets had gone "cool on honor," an internal investigation found, in part because the honor code had become "trivialized," used as a tool to enforce petty regulations.
There is, in many ways, an air of unreality about West Point. Says Ted Sullivan, '79, now a New York stockbroker: "The difference between the regular Army and West Point is light-years." In the Army, West Pointers are sometimes regarded as aloof and cliquish, called ring knockers for ostentatiously flashing their class rings. Non-West Pointers complain about the so-called West Point Protective Association in the Pentagon that favors and promotes academy grads.
The values cherished by West Point sometimes get twisted or lost on the battlefield. In Viet Nam, the questionable enemy "body counts" served up by senior military leaders--many of them academy graduates--"cut right against the integrity we were taught at West Point," concedes General Palmer, a deputy commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam. (His much criticized superior, General William Westmoreland, '36, was a cadet first captain and later superintendent of the academy.) The Viet Nam War is an awkward subject at West Point. In class, cadets are taught that the military leadership was not blameless, but most subscribe to a "stabbed in the back" theory. Says Cadet Borgerding: "The Army fought well, but their civilian leaders screwed up."