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"Black requested the court martial after refusing an admiral's mast, which is his right."

Gameing the system. quite honestly, if I were in this situation, I would do the same thing. Very likely, he will not be found guilty.

There is actually another side to choosing a CM. A lot of times the prosecutors will look at the case and see that there is not enough justification to bring it to trial and spend the time and money. The absolutel ludicrousness of this case warrants it just be tossed anyway. A temporary LoR is and maybe a downgrading to a B or C in leadership or judgement on his fitness report a far more appropriate punishment

Disagree. This will be a straight forward case to get a conviction. The persons and actions were covered by the UCMJ. The action did occur. The accused performed the action. Guilty. Then will come the hard and interesting part... extenuation and mitigation. The act of apologizing and its acceptance. The nature of the action. The service record and character of the perpetrator all will be taken into consideration before sentencing. End result... a conviction and little or no punishment. End of career... End of story.

As far as the culture of the academy is concerned we went through this 40 years ago. Most of the negative aspects of the plebe system in the post WWII era were reduced if not eliminated. It is laughably naive to state "when these young men and women entered the Naval Academy they were the best and the brightest of this nation. Yet in a few short years some of them became criminals". Despite its flaws the Naval Academy leadership system builds character in most young men and women. But, midshipmen come from every walk of life and "bad apples" do get into the barrel. The system weeds most of them out still. In the old system the ones without character left very quickly under the stress. Now they are given more opportunity but are apparently formally evaluated to a greater extent.

Yes, I was once a "spoiled and pampered pet of Uncle Sam".