Cadet Honor Code

Although failure to report violations had long been reckoned as grounds for expulsion, the code wasn't formally amended to expressly forbid "toleration" until 1970.

[1] In August 1951, Time reported that 90 of the academy's 2,500 cadets were facing dismissal for mass violations of the honor code related to "cribbing", receiving the answers to exams ahead of time, allegedly through upperclass tutors who were assisting other cadets, mostly dedicated football players, to study for those exams.

[2] The Army arranged for an investigation by a panel which included famed jurist Learned Hand and retired generals Troy H. Middleton, then president of Louisiana State University, and Robert M. Danford, a former commandant of cadets at West Point.

[3] The board recommended dismissal of all 90 suspected violators of the Honor Code, and while the Army and Congress debated the issue and its causes, the cadets were left with a cloud hanging over their heads and their futures.

In August 1976, where it was found that possibly over half of the junior class at the academy had violated the honor code by cheating on a case assignment.

In December 2020 73 cadets were accused of cheating on a calculus exam in May 2020, when West Point had shifted to virtual classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of 59 cadets admitted to cheating on the exam with 55 of those to be enrolled in the academy's "willful admissions" process, a rehabilitation program that involves after-hours classes, discussions on ethics and the honor code, as well as being on probation for the rest of the year.

The 1975 TV movie The Silence is a recounting of the case of Cadet James Pelosi, who though accused of an honor code violation maintained his innocence and refused to resign from the Military Academy; and as a result was "silenced" by his fellow cadets as permitted under such circumstances by the Honor Code at that time.

The Long Gray Line, a 1955 biopic of Master Sergeant Martin Maher, who served in the West Point Athletic Department as both an Army enlisted man and a civilian employee, featured a sequence concerning a cadet who married a girl on impulse while on leave.

Part of the plot involved his character, Elwin "Bix" Bixby, a World War II combat veteran and Broadway director, living at West Point as a plebe cadet and occasionally running afoul of the Honor Code.