Free Republic

Virginia Military Institute will make changes to its student-run honor court to make the system fairer to cadets accused of lying, cheating, stealing or other transgressions that can lead to expulsion. VMI detailed the reforms in a progress report Friday in response to a state-ordered investigation into racism and sexism at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college. The 70-page report, which the college gave to General Assembly members and the Virginia secretary of education, describes initiatives approved, enacted or begun last year, including mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training for administrators and members of VMI’s Board of Visitors, and changes...

Military codes of conduct that prescribe honorable behavior date back thousands of years and are essential for maintaining trust, camaraderie, and discipline within the armed forces. Yet over the past fifty years, cadets at the Air Force Academy have demonstrated a diminishing respect for the Honor Code, which has fallen victim to the moral relativism that blurs the distinction between ethical and unethical behaviors and contributed to a precipitous drop in retention rates and overall military readiness. The Air Force Academy Honor Code is concise and unambiguous: “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/07/17/boy-scouts-reaffirm-gay-ban-after-2-year-review/ NEW YORK (AP) — After a confidential two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday emphatically reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, ruling out any changes despite relentless protest campaigns by some critics. An 11-member special committee, formed discreetly by top Scout leaders in 2010, “came to the conclusion that this policy is absolutely the best policy for the Boy Scouts,” the organization’ national spokesman, Deron Smith, told The Associated Press. Smith said the committee, comprised of professional scout executives and adult volunteers, was unanimous in its conclusion – preserving a long-standing policy that was upheld by the...

In April, a University of Virgina third-year law student, Jonathan Perkins, wrote a letter to the editor of the Virgina Law Weekly where he described how he was harassed by university police while walking home one night, due to being African American. The account is long and richly detailed, complete with dialogue between him and the officers and descriptions of his thought process during the events. He concludes this account with the statement that: I am writing this column because it is important for my classmates to hear a real-life anecdote illustrating the myth of equal protection under the law....

Over the past month, BYU has been held up as a symbol of all that is decent in college sports for its unsparing treatment of Brandon Davies, the African-American basketball player who violated the school's honor code by reportedly having sex with his girlfriend. Davies was suspended shortly before the NCAA tournament, and a braying mainstream press lauded BYU for sticking to its principles. Sports Illustrated's website even wondered if a values-driven, "non-hypocritical" BYU was "on the verge of becoming America's team." The reality isn't so appealing. While it's impossible to know how many students disobey BYU's honor code, which...

Treading into the murky area of the post-"don't ask, don't tell" era, the Army's senior civilian leader told reporters today that he has met with soldiers who revealed that they were gay. Such a declaration, at least in theory, could be grounds for the service members to be discharged from the military. Asked at a breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington whether he had met with gay members of the military to solicit their views on the changes to the law that bans them from openly serving, Army Secretary John McHugh, a former Republican congressman from New York, said, "I...