{"id":5630,"date":"2010-06-04T00:35:01","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T06:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=5630"},"modified":"2010-06-04T00:11:58","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T06:11:58","slug":"marine-officers-kicked-out-over-cheating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/04\/marine-officers-kicked-out-over-cheating\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Officers Kicked Out Over Cheating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just days after noting the <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/28\/marine-fighter-pilot-charged-with-stealing-440k\/\">ethical challenges inherent in military service<\/a>, the US Marines have booted 13 officers for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marinecorpstimes.com\/news\/2010\/05\/marine_cheating_052510w\/\">cheating during a land navigation exam<\/a> at Basic Officer School at Quantico.\u00a0 Among the 8 men and 5 women, at least one was a recent US Naval Academy graduate and football player.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently the officers gave wrong answers to test questions &#8212; but <!--more-->they were <em>correct<\/em> answers to the <em>last<\/em> version of the test, indicating they had received a copy of (what they thought was) the test.\u00a0 This <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/fighterpilotspeak.htm#Gouge\">gouge<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/01\/the-ethics-of-gouge\/\">see discussion<\/a>) was impermissible.<\/p>\n<p>Col. George W. Smith Jr., the school&#8217;s commander, gave a poignant description of the severity of their offense, as well as the value placed on ethical conduct in the Marines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>While proficiency with a lensatic compass is important, their moral compass is of utmost importance to our Corps. Their moral compass must unerringly point to do the right thing at all times. Without that, in my strongest opinion, they don&#8217;t have the foundation to continue to serve as Marine leaders.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>All <\/em>officers must do the right thing at <em>all<\/em> times.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/30\/ethics-and-professional-conduct\/\">Military ethics<\/a> must be without question.\u00a0 Is it always easy?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Might moral integrity result in academic failure?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Might the military culture even encourage &#8220;cheating&#8221;?\u00a0 It <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/21\/army-battles-culture-of-cheating\/\">may appear so<\/a>.\u00a0 As discussed here many <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/01\/navy-sailors-punished-for-academic-cheating\/\">times before<\/a>, officers must decide ahead of time not to compromise their integrity; at the &#8220;point of friction,&#8221; as Smith said, you must be able to fall back on your basic foundations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just days after noting the ethical challenges inherent in military service, the US Marines have booted 13 officers for cheating during a land navigation exam at Basic Officer School at Quantico.\u00a0 Among the 8 men and 5 women, at least one was a recent US Naval Academy graduate and football player. Apparently the officers gave wrong answers to test questions [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,16],"tags":[102,86,571,572,149,2,473],"class_list":["post-5630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-living","category-fighter-pilot","tag-cheat","tag-ethics","tag-george-w-smith","tag-gouge","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-usna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}