West Point Cadets Using Drugs I Am Shocked…That I Am Not Shocked

The headline was as sad as it was shocking: “Cocaine, Fentanyl Cause 6 West Point Cadets to Overdose: Police” – Newsweek. The United States Military Academy has long prided itself on upholding the highest standards of ethical and moral behavior. Seeing a headline like that rocked the Academy and cast a shadow on its image. Oddly enough though, and perhaps that highlights a root cause of this debacle, people outside the Academy community seem more concerned with the institution’s reputation than does the leadership of the Academy.

Speaking from personal experience, it is a fact that the leadership development philosophy of the Military Academy at West Point, commonly known as just West Point, has shifted significantly over the past several decades. That shift started in earnest with the arrival of female cadets at the institution starting in 1976 and has continued steadily since. Initially, the accommodations made were primarily physical. Females were allowed to meet significantly lower physical standards than men without being expelled. In an institution that had previously prided itself on producing combat leaders, a lowering of physical fitness/capability standards was a huge shift, though it was presented as unremarkable by military leaders and politicians at the time. How can it be believed that soldiers in combat would have the same respect for a physically unfit leader as they would for one who was physically fit? Of course, that compromise also compromised the females in the eyes of many of their peers, and those peers began to reflect their lack of respect for the incapability of their female classmates by downgrading them on leadership evaluations. It was not the fault of the women that they were given an easier standard, but it was all too predictable that they would suffer in consequence the lowered esteem of their peers.

Now what would a true leader do in that situation? Required to include women at West Point which had higher physical standards than most women could meet, but knowing that meeting physical standards was essential to gaining the respect of soldiers, would that leader: 1) Lower the physical standards so that most women could meet them while requiring men to meet the old standard; 2) Focus on recruiting a few exceptional women who could meet the required standards, and also start a program at the West Point prep school to let women who were already academically and psychologically qualified focus on gaining the physical fitness necessary to meet Academy standards. Plainly, the answer would be something like #2, but of course, the military leadership was already widely infected with the disease of careerism as a result of the Vietnam debacle, and the flag officer corps chose the easier wrong.

So, female cadets came in and started struggling to pass the physical tests. That made them lose respect from their male classmates who were being held to a higher standard. When the male cadets expressed their displeasure and disagreement in peer rating forms, causing women cadets to lag badly in leadership ratings and class standing, the general officers had another problem. Once again, they had a dilemma. They could listen to the evaluations of the cadets and admit that double standards were a bad idea, or they could accuse male cadets of being sexist and eliminate peer ratings even though that system had proven over time to be the single best predictor of success as a combat leader. It correlated better to success in the military than ratings from superiors, academic achievement, physical fitness, participation in extracurricular activities, SAT scores, or disciplinary records. Despite the obvious value and importance of such a system, the brass was in no mood to have cadets making it clear that a big mistake had been made, so they abolished the system and accused the male cadets of being sexists.

That pattern of behavior has continued to this day. The leadership of the military habitually makes stupid decisions to play politics. Those decisions then blow up, and the generals rush in to cover up the mess by either blaming the cadets (they ARE a reflection of our society, you know), or pretending that the bad thing that happened is anomalous and should be ignored as irrelevant. One thing is absolutely certain, it is NOT the fault of the leadership, and they can show you 500 Power Point presentations that prove it. The sad truth is that West Point has been taken over by an attitude of political expedience. They will compromise anything at the drop of hat, or at the wink and nod of a powerful politician. They violated thousands of years of religious tradition and said that professionalism made them do it. They tolerate blatant racism by black cadets because, well, you know, BLM and the Democrat party say they must. They let cadets with criminal records remain at the West Point because they are good football players, and a winning football team makes a general look good, but it also sends the message that West Point’s stated commitment to “Duty, Honor, Country” is conditional, and discarded when expedient. All of that is unacceptable and has predictable consequences. No one would be surprised to learn that a college that matriculates felons to play football would have a crime problem. Likewise, they would not be surprised if a college that tolerates racism gets more of it. However, most Americans would be shocked to learn that West Point is one of those places.

The average cadet is a talented and ambitious young person. They are typically more physically fit than their Americans peers, males and females, and they have shown themselves to be active in their communities and successful academically and socially. The distinguishing qualities of a West Pointer, versus an Ivy Leaguer, or a freshman entering a top public university, have always been a stronger desire to devote themselves to public service, a willingness to face danger in that service, and a commitment to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of that opportunity. A good word that sums up those qualities is patriotism, and not the sunshine variety. Not everyone who is talented is a patriot. However, every talented person who enters West Point would ideally also already be a patriot.

Even on that score, West Point has changed. The leadership has embraced the idea that the academy can teach values. Previously, the Academy assumed some base levels of determination, honor, commitment, physical fitness, and dedication to the ideals of the institution. The purpose of “Beast Barracks” and other demanding and rigorous requirements levied on the cadets was specifically designed to “weed out” those who did not or would not meet the standards. By contrast, the assumption now is that if a cadet fails to meet a standard then the institution must have failed that individual cadet. It is a muddled philosophy. As a group, cadets are always wrong: sexist, racist, homophobic, etc., but individually, they are always excellent people who West Point desperately wants and needs to keep. If too many cadets are failing to meet a standard, they will lower the standard. If a certain group of cadets are failing to meet a standard, they will lower the standards for that group, but cadets as a whole are cannot to be trusted to evaluate their peers or pass judgment on the required physical standards.

West Point is led by politically expedient, ethically malleable, and professionally derelict officers as are large swaths of the military these days. By and large, those officers fail at their missions. Combat failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, are just the most visible and damaging effects of their shortcomings. The vast and expensive bureaucracy that is the military is an ongoing litany of inefficiency, waste, ineffectiveness and poor results, and another all too convincing monument to their incompetence.

West Point was always intended to be a model of what the Army should aspire to be. A place full of professional, highly motivated, talented, smart, physically fit, honest, courageous, and selfless soldiers and officers. The hope was that a small corps of officers, having experienced that kind of environment, would be inspired to recreate that culture throughout the military and that the culture would spread until it dominated in the Army. That approach was abandoned about 40 years ago. West Point now aspires mainly to be like “elite” American universities that are currently famous mainly for expensiveness and woke idiocy. Given that 35-40% of Ivy League students say they use drugs at their schools, one would have to a be a high-risk gambler to bet money that drug using West Point cadets are a rarity. A much better bet would be that the leadership of West Point and the Army will do nothing at all to find out if that is true, and if more scandals make it obvious that there is a problem, an even better bet would be on the leadership not taking any blame nor suffering any consequences.

Everyone should pray that all the cadets involved make a full recovery. We should also hope that any of them who bought drugs or voluntarily used them should be expelled from West Point. Sadly, both of those outcomes are in doubt.

Ned Claybrook

19 March 2022

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