It is the most traditional of ceremonies at one of the nation's most hallowed shrines. On the broad green plain high above the Hudson River, where Baron von Steuben drilled minutemen 200 years ago, thousands of proud parents and nostalgic graduates will assemble this week to watch the corps of cadets pass in review: 4,400 young men in swallow-tailed gray coats, white trousers and black shakos stepping out with crisp precision while their brilliant regimental flags snap in the breeze.
As always, the Long Gray Line will provide a magnificent and stirring spectacle. But this year the excitement of graduation day at West Point will be marred by doubts, confusion, bitterness and fear. Dozens of the marching cadets may be dismissed from the United States Military Academy within weeks. There is talk that scores, even hundreds of others may be in deep trouble before the current investigations have run their course. The most serious cheating scandal in its history is shaking West Point—a furor that has set cadet against cadet and threatens the basic nature of the institution itself.
The scandal revolves around the honor code of the corps, which states with neither equivocation nor mercy: "A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, or tolerate those who do." The "toleration clause" includes those who know that others have cheated but have not turned them in. For all found guilty, there is only one punishment: quick and automatic dismissal from the academy. Times may change and values fade, but West Point continues to rely on its uncompromising code, no matter how impossible to attain it may seem to the rest of society.
Honor committees composed of cadets hear 100 or so cases a year. Most are for violations of the code in dealing with absurdly picayune incidents, such as a cadet's lying about having shined his shoes. When he was Secretary of the Army, Howard ("Bo") Callaway complained, "The honor code often deals with trivia." No matter: the trivial could get a cadet "separated"—expelled—as surely and swiftly as the significant.
The current violations grew out of a take-home electrical-engineering examination in March. A total of 823 second classmen—or juniors—took the test. So far, four cadets have resigned after being charged with cheating on the exam. Forty-eight others have been found guilty by honor committees; these cadets are awaiting review of their cases by 13 boards composed of officers. At the same time, instructors are going over the papers submitted by nearly 100 other cadets.
All this would be bad enough, but last week the situation worsened when members of the junior class said they were giving authorities the names of literally hundreds of their classmates who, they claimed, had violated the code. The avowed aim of this rush to judgment: to implicate so many cadets that West Point could not possibly dismiss all the guilty ones without virtually wiping out the entire junior class.