Cracks in USAFA's Honor Code

The Air Force Academy's honor system might be losing its hold on the nation's future officers, but can the Academy actually track cadets' moral growth?

Read the survey of surveys here.

A Case for the Toleration Clause...

William McGurn, writing in today's WSJ, makes the case for that most unpopular aspect of cadet life, the toleration clause:

"Our military academies are not filled with moral paragons. Like their peers, their student bodies are populated with young Americans in their late teens. They are every bit as human, and an honor code has never been a guarantee against scandal. From the huge 1951 cheating scandal at West Point that saw more than 80 cadets expelled (including nearly half the football team) to more recent scandals at Navy and Air Force, the academies have had their share. The difference is they don't delegate to the NCAA the idea of right and wrong, and they take community seriously. On these campuses, no man is an island. The message is: You are all in it together."

Read the article here.

Extra Credit – Essay: Frankfurt & the Honor Code

ASSIGNMENT: Read Frankfurt’s essay On B.S. From that and our discussion in class, assess whether and how Frankfurt’s work may apply to the Honor Code. Could the work on b.s. offer some improvements to the Honor Code, or not so much?

Select one of the following topics and write a two-page (500 word) essay answering the associated question(s).

1. Like the Honor Code, Frankfurt takes into consideration the speaker’s state of mind. Does his work add anything to the concept of intent as outlined in the Honor Code?

or

2. Does the Honor Code deal with B.S. as defined by Frankfurt?

This isn’t an “agree or disagree” type assignment. Your assessment should be based on the strength of the argument Frankfurt makes in relation to the question you’re answering. Remember that your own argument (your answer to the question) should be based on solid reasons/premises, one of which will be an explicit definition of b.s.

GRADING: This assignment will be graded on your ability to analyze Frankfurt’s work (10 pts.), the development of your own line of argumentation (10 pts.), and your ability to communicate both clearly (5 pts.).

Toleration in Virginia

A faculty member from the University of Virginia talks about their Honor Code and toleration (excerpted from a review of The Honor Code in the NYT Sunday Book Review).

[Note: "WIERD" = Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic]

At the University of Virginia, for example, we have a student-run honor
system, created in 1842 by a few hundred sons of Virginia planters whose
families vigilantly tracked one another’s reputations and arranged marital and
commercial alliances accordingly. In that world, a gentleman could not tolerate
a stain upon his honor, and neither could a community of gentlemen. We therefore
have a “single sanction” based on a psychology of purity: any dishonorable
behavior contaminates the whole community, so any violation of the honor code is
punishable by expulsion.

Today, however, the university’s 21,000 students come from all over the
world, and concerns about purity are mostly confined to the cafeteria. The moral
domain has shrunk — as it must to accommodate the individualism, mobility and
diversity of a WEIRD society — to its bare minimum: don’t hurt people, treat
them fairly but otherwise leave them alone. Students at Virginia work hard and
care about their grades, but when they learn about fellow students’ cheating,
they usually do nothing. They understand that cheating harms others (in courses
graded on a curve), but because WEIRD moral calculus involves only individuals
(not the honor of the group), they feel that expulsion is too harsh a
punishment. And because they do not feel personally dishonored by a cheater,
it’s not clear to them why they should step forward and press charges. The
result is that our purity-based single sanction, still in force long after the
death of its natal honor world, increases students’ willingness to tolerate
dishonorable behavior.

EXTRA CREDIT: BS and the Honor Code

We have a theme running through what you’ve written for assignment #2: the second question (Does the Honor Code deal with BS as defined by Frankfurt?) seems to have elicited more response – either the Code doesn’t address BS directly but doesn’t need to (for various reasons), or the Code does deal with BS when it’s egregious. The root argument in both of these positions runs something like: when BS approaches a certain point, a perception of lying on the part of the receiver, the Code kicks in, regardless of the BSer’s intent.

On several of your papers, I’ve written a comment to the effect that an example or case that illustrates that line – where BS crosses into lying – would strengthen the root argument.

So give me one. Everyone’s eligible, regardless if you chose this question or the other (on intent/state of mind). Give me a “Cadet X”-type scenario where the BSer sticks to Frankfurt’s definition but also “activates” the Honor Code’s definition of lying. For the sake of clarity, here are your terms of reference:

BS (Frankfurt) – pointless, unnecessary, insincere, or empty speech or act; not necessarily false, but always deceptive or phony in the sense that the speaker’s enterprise is to convey some sense of authenticity, while s/he is ultimately unconstrained by a concern for truth and is indifferent to how things really are.

Lying (Honor Code) – making an assertion with an intent to deceive or mislead.

Limit your case to 1-2 paragraphs. Max points – 10 – based on the outcome, a good, plausible scenario. Email it to me by 0000 hrs., 23 Aug.