________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
board to go through the same process. Since the cadet section marcher wrote him up, I
decided to send it to a cadet board.
I well remember the report of the board, which was some two or three pages in length and
signed by Cadet Captain Steve Wesbrook, who was the deputy regimental commander. The
board found Anderson guilty of the offense and recommended punishment. Part of
Wesbrook's articulation because the academic departments had talked about standards, was
to the effect that academic departments may have their standards, but cadets had their
standards too. Cadet Anderson didn't meet them, and so he was assessed the punishment.
I thought this was an appropriate solution to the episode. Colonel Jordan may not have
agreed, but the process had worked. The punishment was approved, only to be stopped when
the plaintiffs went to the judge and got an injunction against any punishment of Cadet
Anderson or others during the period.
In the end, of course, that suit is the one that caused mandatory chapel to be dropped at our
service academies.
Q:
So, the era had its effect on West Point, but perhaps not in the same ways that it might have
affected some other parts of society, but a sort of rebelliousness against rules and regulations.
A:
Well, you put that in a little different tone, in a different mode from what I answered. You
asked, did I see things as different. Your conclusion about the era may've not been the same
thing.
I think you'd have to go in and do an analysis of a whole bunch of things, such as retention
rates, for one. You know, I think the numbers of applicants per position were down in those
years compared to later years when the number of applicants had grown considerably after
the war was over.
I don't know whether the graduates of '67, '68, '69, '70 stayed in or got out in any different
proclivity from other classes. I don't think my answers can lead you in any kind of overall
conclusions on the impacts of those wartime things on the graduates of West Point.
What I was trying to suggest was that daily activities at West Point weren't embroiled in war
operations, that we went about the daily business. The daily business for a cadet is very time-
consuming. He or she has got a lot to take care of, and their schedules are very packed full of
academics and other activities. So, there's not a lot of extra time to do other things.
What I'm suggesting is, from my interactions with the cadets of that time versus the old, the
tactical department of my day as a cadet and me, I'm not so sure the interactions weren't
about the same, and things that went on weren't about the same. Certainly a different external
climate that we were all aware of and all very interested in, and probably all more in tune
with than many of the people on the rest of the campuses, many of whom seemed to be in the
streets but with their ears tuned off to anything of logic and only tuned into things with their
own already preconceived biases.
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