Academy honor cases focus on redemption, not expulsion

Despite its reputation for setting high standards, the Naval Academy rarely dismisses anyone for lying, cheating or stealing, according to thousands of pages of documents obtained by concerned graduates under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

It's a disturbing trend, these graduates contend, because Naval Academy midshipmen, as junior officers, become responsible for weapons systems, national security and the welfare of the young men and women who enlist in the Navy and Marine Corps.

Academy officials counter that the honor code, or Honor Concept as it is called at the Naval Academy, is alive and well.

Commandant of Midshipmen Navy Capt. Matthew Klunder would not go so far as to say that standards had eroded before he arrived in early June 2008, but he said he found some changes needed to be made.

"I just got the real feeling inside my gut and on the back of my neck that we were missing the real core understanding of what honor was all about," said Klunder, a 1982 academy grad.

"We have brought increased energy and increased focus, and I am pleased with that. ... I want the alumni to know (the Honor Concept) is important to the commandant," he said.

The academy's focus on cases of lying and stealing saw two midshipmen court-martialed this year. Both mids in these unrelated cases were booted out of the Navy and sent to prison for stealing from their fellow midshipmen.

After the first sentencing, in late April, a longtime academy spokesman said he could not recall the last time a mid had been tried for theft.

Still, the number of honor cases and the lenient punishments remain a concern for many academy graduates.

In the 2008-2009 academic year, for example, the 4,400-member Brigade of Midshipmen had 173 honor cases involving 145 individual midshipmen; of these, 113 mids were found in violation. Three of them resigned and nine were "separated," or discharged, according to the Naval Academy.

The concerned academy graduates who said honor violations have been handled too gently for too long obtained more than 2,500 pages of documents under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The heavily redacted and incomplete records cover the years 2005 to 2007. The graduates shared the files with The Capital without restriction, and the newspaper conducted its own analysis.

According to the case reports and related documents, instances of lying and cheating frequently involve multiple midshipmen acting in concert. Also according to the records, some mids have been allowed to violate honor standards multiple times without being separated.

"What got me was the conspiracies to commit honor violations," said Curt C. Hartman, a 1987 Naval Academy graduate and the attorney who worked for two years to obtain the honor reports. "The mids know they will be 'remediated' and not separated."

Hartman pointed to one 2006 case that dealt with the taps log, the roster that mids must sign at night to record their presence in the barrack.

The FOIA documents contained several cases of forging the log, but in this case a sophomore refused to falsely sign the document for a friend who was staying out one Saturday night. But the reluctant mid proceeded to search out someone else who would commit forgery on behalf of the AWOL mid.

"Now, that's a rationalization," Hartman said of the go-between's involvement.

Honor investigations are conducted by midshipmen under the oversight of commissioned officers, and the mids who investigated this offense concluded the go-between had suffered enough just by having her honor impugned. The mids deemed that no additional punishment was warranted.

"This is a good example of an outstanding midshipman that was trying to do the right thing but didn't think it through all the way," wrote one midshipman who investigated the case.

As for the midshipman who forged the taps log, she was ordered to undergo formal honor counseling and write a three-page paper on "moral courage and integrity." She also had to keep an "integrity journal" over winter break, according to the documents.

Lastly, the mid who was AWOL and solicited someone to falsify the record on her behalf told honor officers she was confused about whether she had liberty that weekend or not, and hadn't meant to break any rules. She was put on remediation training for four months and was given a D in her military rating, plus was required to work 20 hours on an honor project.

Hartman said it was a disgrace that no one was kicked out of the academy after conspiring to falsify personnel status reports, documents that are the lifeblood of any military organization.

The academy today focuses on "equivocation, remediation, rationalization," Hartman said.

Giving honor teeth

Annapolis attorney William Ferris, a 1970 academy graduate whose office is on Duke of Gloucester Street, said he has seen the same trend that concerns Hartman.

Mids no longer fear getting kicked out of the academy for honor violations, and they no longer seek legal advice when charged with an honor offense, Ferris said.

"The importance of 'honor violation' has been minimized during the past 10 years, and these mids don't take it as seriously," Ferris said.

Naval Academy grad Charles W. Gittins, Class of 1979, another civilian attorney who specializes in military law and practices in Virginia, said he has seen the same trend.

"When I was a midshipman, I never knew a person who had an honor board (hearing); now, they have them all the time," Gittins said.

Klunder explained that honor cases have become a teaching tool and are not just an occasion for punishment. He acknowledged that the emphasis today is on retaining and remediating midshipmen, a trend that is seen throughout academia. Over the past two or three decades, the Naval Academy, like a host of colleges, has gone from deliberately pushing students to the limit in order to winnow out the weak, to trying to retain everyone who makes it through the admissions process.

As part of the larger goal to reduce attrition, Naval Academy instructors have long provided mids with personal instruction outside the classroom, and in 1989 the academy opened the Center for Academic Excellence. Mids can go to the center for additional individual instruction and for instruction on how to study.

The center was funded by a gift from the Class of 1963.

Corresponding with the shift toward retaining students, the academy also works to include more midshipmen in the handling of honor cases.

The goal, academy officials said, is for mids to use their violations and their involvement as adjudicators as part of the process of learning to be leaders.

Former Superintendent Vice Adm. Rodney P. Rempt made the goals clear in a Dec. 21, 2005, memo he sent the Brigade of Midshipmen unveiling the latest major change to the Honor Concept.

"Focus on remediation and moral development vice (in place of) solely on punishment and risk of possible separation," Rempt wrote.

The numbers

The 2005 revision increased the number of mids involved in the honor process, and the number of cases increased accordingly, Klunder said.

"The number of severe cases remains about the same, but we have more minor infractions," Klunder said.

He said the Honor Concept is undergoing some adjustments this year, mainly to separate the substance from the enforcement procedure, thereby making it all easier for mids to read and understand.

The reason so few graduates know of honor violations from days gone by, Klunder said, is that punishment was an all-or-nothing affair.

In 1974, for example, 61 mids were accused of cheating on a navigation exam. Twenty were found guilty, and of these, seven offenders were forced out of the academy, according to academy records. The others apparently received no punishment.

Jump ahead to the academic year ending in 2009, when 113 mids were found in violation; three of the total resigned and nine were separated.

Nearly every one of the remaining 101 underwent some form of remediation training, Klunder said.

Klunder said time pressures, not deep character flaws, are behind most violations.

"It is very infrequent I see a malicious, dishonorable act," he said. "Most often it goes something like this: 'Exams are coming up, I'm juggling a million balls, I have six courses. ... I didn't plan well, I've got to do something.' Almost like clockwork, it's mismanagement of time ... nine out of 10 times."

Klunder said varsity athletes, in particular, have so many demands on them, they are more likely than other students to run into trouble.

"Those midshipmen who are in hugely pressured situations where their time is most severe, that is where most of the (violations) come from," he said. "Athletes don't have a lot of time."

Varsity athletes make up 29 percent of the brigade and commit 47 percent of the honor violations, according to Naval Academy data.

Women make up 20 percent of the brigade and commit 23 percent of the violations.

Whites constitute 76 percent of the brigade and commit 55 percent of the violations, while African-Americans make up 5 percent of the brigade and commit 19 percent of the violations, according to Naval Academy data. Asians and Hispanics make up 5 percent and 10 percent of the brigade, respectively, and commit 6 percent and 14 percent of the honor violations, respectively.

Midshipmen who serve in the military before coming to the academy, along with mids who attend the Naval Academy Preparatory School before being admitted, commit 37 percent of the violations, even though they make up 24 percent of the brigade.

Other service academies

An expert on honor standards at the service academies said the Naval Academy's reliance on remediation instead of expulsion is typical of the other academies.

"I've been collecting service academy honor data since 1987 (and) my case studies and surveys cover from 1959 to the present - 50 years of graduates," said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Frederick V. Malmstrom, a psychologist and visiting scholar for honor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.

"Air Force says the presumptive punishment is disenrollment, but it is hardly ever used unless the violation was flagrant," Malmstrom said.

At the Air Force Academy, according to the academy's data, there are about 132 honor cases in a typical year, with about 94 cadets found guilty. Of these, roughly one-third are dismissed or leave of their own volition each year, and two-thirds undergo remediation training.

As already noted, in the last academic year, the Naval Academy had 145 mids involved in honor cases, and 12 either left or were forced out.

The United States Military Academy at West Point has had between 107 and 146 honor cases per year. While West Point did not provide its data in the same format as the other service academies, it appears that about a quarter of the honor cases, or roughly 25 per year, end with cadets either resigning or being separated.

'Remediation not easy'

The Naval Academy defends remediation as an important part of the learning process. Violators typically lose weekend liberty for up to four months, must report for additional formations each day, and may be required to march in a specified location near Bancroft Hall, according to Klunder. They also work under the guidance of commissioned officers to learn how and why honor is important.

"Remediation is not easy. It is not something done in a few weeks," said Klunder, who noted that he kept two seniors from graduating this year because of honor violations.

He said he would not allow them to be commissioned until they complete the remediation process, and one of the two who was not showing satisfactory progress might be denied a commission.

Klunder said the Brigade of Midshipmen is recruited from the nation's general population, and ethical standards in high schools across the country have changed over the past 30 years.

In support of Klunder's claim that teaching honor is part of training midshipmen, some surveys of high school students show that as many as 95 percent cheat at some point. Also, it appears that today's teenagers come from a less-regimented society, and require additional time in which to acclimate to the military environment.

"We anticipate there are going to be small missteps during the first two years at the academy," Klunder said. "But when you get up into ... your junior and senior year, the bar is very high and the margin of error is miniscule."

Annapolis resident Sean Fahey is a former Rhodes Scholar who in 1994 was brigade commander, the highest ranking senior at the Naval Academy. He was part of the class that saw 133 of its members accused of cheating on an electrical engineering exam - 71 were found to have violated the Honor Concept, and 29 of those mids were kicked out.

Fahey said of the debate over remediation versus separation, "My personal view is that somewhere between the two is correct. But to say someone is old enough to come to the Naval Academy, but doesn't recognize right from wrong, is naive."

Honor code examples tough to piece together from documents: www.hometownannapolis.com/news/nav/2009/11/01-80/Honor-code-examples-tough-to-piece-together-from-documents.html

Honor has bumpy history at Naval Academy: www.hometownannapolis.com/news/nav/2009/11/01-73/Honor-has-bumpy-history-at-Naval-Academy.html