On its face, this makes sense. Why throw away 2 or 3 years training invested in a cadet, just because he screws up once. But it can also encourage mediocrity. An example was cited in LTC Heffington's letter - if a cadet was doing poorly in class, he may just choose to fail it altogether. This allowed him to re-take the class (with little risk of getting kicked out of the academy). And to top it off, the summer academic term now counts as a summer training period - this means going to summer school no longer consumes all of your precious summer leave; and, a cadet may actually get more leave if he goes to summer school instead of Airborne School. In the 'old days', if you were lucky enough to not get kicked out after failing a class, your leave was mostly forfeited in lieu of summer term academics.
IMHO, the superintendent's letter merely gives a one liner to this major philosophical change. Sometimes zero tolerance can be a great motivator, and should not be dismissed without discussion. Unless LTC Heffington just made things up out of thin air, there is a 'climate' problem...Heffington probably shouldn't have accused the Superintendent of being a liar, because now this could devolve into an unproductive finger pointing rally. But clearly something is wrong - in light of the recent commie cadet episode, perhaps an investigative commission is in order.
Thanks for the post. We can’t let this commie Rapone fall off the radar.
So, General Caslen, all those you separated before were worse than this latest commie creep, right? Right?
I fart in your general direction!
Agreed. Something is clearly wrong or (1) Rapone wold never have been admitted and (2) would never have graduated.
A friend of mine taught at West Point for many years. He had been career military and after retirement, left teaching to get his PhD.
Clinton changed the rules that you no longer had to be former military to be on WP faculty. What that meant was they no longer hired former military for WP faculty.
He couldn’t get his old job back.
Written by a darn well talented public affairs officer on the General’s staff. Now just because the man wears makeup, and has never seen combat should lead to no conclusions or judgments.
This is the result of the Obama commissars infiltrating the military and the political officers who reached senior rank over the last eight years. Policies that have been implemented in the military if publicly known would disgust the average American.
I didn’t see anything addressing why they’re now teaching a Communist and SJW oriented curriculum at a military academy. Its mostly looks just like asscovering without refuting most of the points.
Sounds like new age leadership models I have seen... Attritional Model: Set clear standards on fitness, discipline, honor, academic and leadership, etc. If you fail to meet standards at any point you are dropped. "Developmental"-- Set goal oriented standards for each individual; they may progress at different speeds, but are supposed to meet common standards at the end of the day. Hence, if they fail on occasion, they may not be dropped, but if they fail to correct over time they will be. The problem with this model is you have to have leaders of character with a hard edge, or they will get too attached/vested in the people they are developing and not drop them. Also, if you are skating by academically and having to retake classes you need to be dropped. You could make this model work, but you still need SOME black and white standards. I would recommend zero tolerance on honor (there can be no margin of error here if you want real integrity), physical training(if you can't meet min standards you seriously shouldn't be here, that is easy), and academic (you fail a class you are out)
One of my sayings is "The Master Does Not Boast" (You don't see Special Forces talking about how bad ass great they are. They don't have to. Their reputation speaks for them). I think that applies here.
Less posturing and more self-examination is in order at West Point.
Too bad he didn’t address the issue of Rappone
Since when is being a communist a chance to help some poor kid learn the truth? He is a traitor and a threat
Thank you for posting this Official reply to LTC Heffington’s letter. I went through the Army of “zero defects” and saw the problems caused by it, but I’m leary of the superintendent’s reply that you noted: “abandoned an ‘attritional model’ and embraced a ‘developmental model’.”
The “attritional model” pays for itself if the cause of the attrition is loss of readiness in leadership. We don’t need “leaders for the sake of graduating” end result officer’s corps.
The infiltration of the social justice warriors of obamaumao’s regime has been further in the Army than the Navy, but the Naval Officer’s cadet graduates are starting to show the effect of similar efforts.
The photo in this thread show “women of color” of various ethnic background and skin tone-— which, on the face of it— should not matter AT ALL in a true leadership model. Instead they pose with the clenched fist salute of world Communism... the Comintern (just like their granddaddy’s did at the Olympics... clenched fists of communist power). The very exhibition of this “salute” should be cause for removal. Communism is not now “OK” any more than it was in the 50s or 60s. But, keep in mind that our vaunted CIA former head, Brennan- was a Irish catholic convert to Islam.... ISLAM!! And has stated he voted communist party many times in US elections. HOW could this joker ever become head of CIA? Answer that question and you answer the entire screed of well written PR pablum with stats, and zero examples of leadership results.
No, I would NOT join the Lt. Col in an Afghan war zone with these “leaders”. They are NOT warfighters, they are political officers of PC- a dead weight on an effective fighting force. Period.
He doth protesteth too much.
Hey General. Apparently you failed your English composition courses. Otherwise, why would take so many paragraphs to present your position? Hell, I can sum my reaction up in five words - You are full of s**t.
Lt Generals dont normally respond to Lt Colonels but this guy obviously hit a nerve. Those of us with an Army background can see right through this extended BS and know the General means West Point now is an outcome based institution and merit has almost no place now so long as the end product looks like the gods of PC want it to look. And there is not a word that I saw addressing the communist they recently commissioned and sent out to lead our soldiers.
My suggestion would be to fire everyone at West Point that is a West Point graduate, and replace them with Citadel and VMI grads. Perhaps hire a few carefully vetted TA&M and Norwich guys.
So until such time as the Superintendent offers a convincing explanation for why Rapone was retained...I consider his letter to be just prettied-up PR.