On one hand, they’re 18-19 year old kids. A 19 year old enlisted man would get an article 15, do the corrective training and you move on with your mission. That your may be ruined, but if you want to make a career, for the most part you just had a setback.
On the other hand, they are a group of over fifty cadets who were given a golden opportunity that many other candidates and they pissed it away in their very first year. That’s a failure of leadership, it’s a failure of integrity, and that list of names is going to get out. Imagine any one of them trying to lead a platoon or heaven forbid one of them reaches company command. I don’t know how you justify the decision not to expel.
Let me guess, Diversity and Racism!
There is something else to consider. Harsh penalties deter future misbehavior by others. But now cheating just gets you a stint in some sort of rehab class.
That’s not much of a deterrent.
I'm suspecting that the decision not to expel may revolve around the cadets either being related to "important people" or members of "protected classes". In other words, people who would not have gotten in on pure merit, and thus may have difficulty passing a test on a hard subject that would be objectively graded.