The Air Force is taking a hard look at the honor code at its officer training school here, after an investigation by its inspector general revealed problems with the way the system was being administered.
The strict code binds students not to “lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate anyone among us who does.” It is the ethical backbone of the prestigious 41-year-old Air Force Academy.
Like other military academies, the Air Force’s code has survived serious challenges, among them a cheating scandal involving more than 100 cadets in 1965 and a sexual harassment scandal in the early 1990s. Now, it is under the spotlight because of questions raised by a student, Juan Nieves, who was expelled from the academy last year and reinstated in January after an investigation.
The case has prompted the Air Force to commission a major survey of the honor code, due this fall, designed to determine whether students, faculty and staffers have confidence in its integrity. Also, Secretary of the Air Force F. Whitten Peters has instructed the academy to improve the way the honor code is applied. Recommended changes went into effect last month.
But unlike past incidents, which have involved students misbehaving, the Nieves case suggests that faculty members at the academy sometimes undermine the student-run system and that the Air Force is determined to rein them in. According to various reports, faculty members have been known to criticize the system for being too lax.
“I’ve never seen a case of a service academy slapping the hands of its faculty in public, like they are doing here,” said Joseph Traficanti, a former professor of law at the academy and a retired Air Force lawyer who helped revise the honor code process in 1992. “This is an extremely significant action.”
Among the recommendations mandated by the secretary are extra training in the honor code for staffers and a formal process for faculty to withdraw from making or influencing decisions about students with whom they are in conflict.
Nieves, 24, came to the academy from a large family in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. His uncle was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, and Nieves had always wanted to be a pilot. But English was his second language, his test scores were poor, and the Air Force Academy had rejected his first application in 1992.
But Nieves was persistent, gaining entrance to the academy’s one-year prep school and, finally, admission to the academy in 1995.
Though the work was hard and his grades were low, he said in an interview, he had met academic standards until failing two engineering courses his junior year. It was a blow to the cadet, who had hoped to major in astronautic engineering. Hoping to remove the F’s from his record, he took both courses again.
In the second semester of his senior year, Nieves struggled again with engineering mechanics, taught by Col. Cary Fisher. Nieves also was having troubling personal problems and had been seeing a counselor off and on since the beginning of the school year. He declined to detail the personal problems.
According to Nieves, his problems with Fisher began when the instructor queried him by e-mail about a missed class on Feb. 16, 1999, and Nieves responded, also via e-mail, that he had been to the counselor’s office. In fact, Nieves says he went to the offices that day but left without seeing anyone. When Fisher checked the clinic records and found Nieves didn’t have an appointment, he suspected the cadet of lying, a serious honor code violation. Nieves said he tried to explain what happened but contends his teacher rebuffed him.
Reached by e-mail, Fisher said he could not comment on the specifics of the case but defended his actions in general terms.
“My commitment to the mission of the academy, and most particularly to the honor code, is unwavering. Nothing in this case has done anything to alter that commitment or to cast doubt upon it. I continue to believe that the honor code is central to our mission to produce officers of the highest standards of integrity, selflessness, and service,” Fisher wrote in response to inquiries.
Nieves twice went before student-run honor boards that review cases and was found not in violation of the honor code. But instead of accepting the decisions as final, Fisher undertook an audit of all the cadet’s absences from class and circulated comments on Nieves that went into his record, saying, “this is a man that can’t be trusted and should not be commissioned,” according to the inspector general’s report. Fisher apparently also reclassified excused absences as “unexcused,” grounds for academic disciplinary action against Nieves.
“I was going in a downward spiral,” Nieves said, missing classes to complete the extensive work needed to defend himself and seeing his grades slip as his stress intensified. By the time the cadet’s case came before academic authorities, Nieves was failing and the board recommended expulsion in May 1999.
According to the inspector general’s report, Fisher discussed Nieves’ case with members of the academic board before and during the meeting.
Nieves watched his classmates graduate in June 1999 and left to fulfill a three-year service obligation at a base in Texas. There, seeing pilots in training, he found himself thinking “that’s where I should be.” He drafted an eight-page letter and sent it to officials in Washington. By August, the Air Force Inspector General agreed to start an investigation. Just after Christmas, the Air Force secretary reinstated Nieves, who returned to the academy after the New Year to finish his last semester.
In June, the Air Force released its report, substantiating three charges Nieves had made in his complaint. Most notably, it found that the honor code process had not been followed properly and that Fisher had denigrated the code, referring to it as “fatally flawed.” Also, the report concluded that Fisher’s comments to the academic board that expelled Nieves were inappropriate and that the academy’s failure to avoid this conflict of interest needed to be corrected.
There is an ongoing tension within the Air Force, attorney Traficanti believes, between the desire to rigorously enforce standards of conduct and yet give allowance to students who make unintentional mistakes, giving them a second chance unless malfeasance can be established “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Nieves’ case is rare. Since January 1997, only four cadets in the 4,000 member Academy have been expelled for honor code violations. None except Nieves was reinstated by order of the top command, with all references to past problems expunged from their records. While maintaining that the honor code is intact, the academy has owned up to internal problems and set about fixing them. “We take these kinds of things very seriously,” said spokesman Neil Talbott. “The process of applying the code is a fluid thing, and it is a good thing that it will cause us to tweak the system and make it better.”
As for Nieves, who is awaiting graduation in September, the experience has taught him to “persist, even if the whole system is working against you.” He is headed to pilot training later this year. “At this point of my life, I just want to move on and fly.”
