Mamas, don’t let your white male babies to grow up to apply to West Point

How bad is the discrimination against white males and Asians at West Point? Similar to as bad as at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—which are being sued by Asian groups for discrimination.

A young West Point grad/Harvard MBA used the Freedom of information Act to get pertinent data. You can see his analysis at https://usmadata.wordpress.com/.

According to the data, if you are white, and apply to West Point, your SAT score is not adjusted. If you are Asian, they subtract 50 points from your actual SAT score to get the adjusted SAT score that they use to decide whether to admit you. If you are Hispanic they add about 80 points to your SAT score. And if you are black they add 150 points to your SAT score.

So how do those who benefited from discrimination in their favor do at actually graduating from West Point after they “beat” white and Asian applicants to get in?

The washout rate for native Americans and blacks was the worst. Asian and whites washed out the least. Hispanics were close to the whites in their washout rate.

Why did they wash out? Black cadets got thrown out the most for academic and honor code reasons and tied with Hispanics for the lead in getting thrown out for bad conduct (not being a neatnick actually). The academic washout rate for blacks was double that of Hispanics and four times that of Whites and Asians. The black honor code washout rate was double that of the other racial groups.

Remember, this means that white and Asians who did not get into West Point because they were discriminated against in favor of blacks and Hispanics were in many cases replaced by blacks and Hispanics who flunked out or were thrown out for violating the honor code or bad conduct.

Some whites and Asians also flunked out for those reasons, but only a fraction of the numbers of blacks and Hispanics who did. So not only were those whites and blacks illegally and immorally discriminated against regarding admissions, but American taxpayers wasted a bunch of money educating and training blacks and Hispanics who did not graduate. And most of the whites and Asians so discriminated against would have graduated and become Army officers if they had been admitted.

Author Thomas Sowell says the blacks and Hispanics who “benefit” from racial discrimination in their favor with regard to college admissions are really also victims of this racism under color of law and morality. How so? Because of racial discrimination in their favor, young blacks and Hispanics who probably would have succeeded at a college that fit their aptitude and preparation for college, were turned into failures by admitting them to a college they were not qualified for. 

Those who were unfairly rejected lost out. Those who were unfairly admitted and washed out also lost out. And the American taxpayers who paid for this futile cheating lost. So did the American people who believe West Point is turning out quality Army officers as efficiently as possible.

In fact, West Point graduates about 1,000 second lieutenants a year. The overall attrition rate is about 25% so the 1,000 lieutenants are what’s left from about 1,300 who were admitted. Absent the cheating to get more blacks and Hispanics, the graduating class would be more like 1,150. So something like 150 whites and Asians who would have graduated were prevented from entering because of trying too hard to increase the percentage of blacks and Hispanics in the West Point student body.

The recent Superintendent of West Point says such “diversity” that is his “top priority” “makes West Point stronger.” As measured by SAT scores and graduation rates, that is a barefaced lie. “Diversity” that is achieved by discriminating against Asians and whites, as common sense would predict, makes West Point dumber and and makes the Academy less efficient at graduating as many of the admitted New Cadets as they could have.

The anti-white-male discrimination continues for your entire career in the Army

The problem of anti-white male and anti-Asian racial discrimination in West Point admissions, does not end when you get your acceptance letter. It appears that white male cadets are also discriminated against with regard to leadership positions at West Point while they are cadets. And there is every reason to believe that your white son will be discriminated against throughout his career as an Army officer if he graduates from there and stays in the Army. Indeed, it is infinitely easier to discriminate against white males officers than white male West Point applicants—no test scores for one.

It is beyond my comprehension why a white male would seek to attend West Point or be a U.S military officer today. The U.S. military does not want you. They think they already have too many of you. They are embarrassed by you. They think you have original sin from being the same skin color as former slave owners. They will discriminate against you every day you are inside the belly of the U.S. military beast. 

Life is too short to be dumb enough to subject yourself to what the U.S.military and its service academies have become. If you have merit, go where merit is appreciated, not where they falsely claim it is.  

How low have the standards gone to beat Navy?

This report that I linked to above also addresses the issue of how dumb are the intercollegiate athletes (called Corps Squad) at West Point. Generally, dumber than the other cadets.

I doubt anyone is surprised by that. I have said that the smartest football team on earth is probably the Harvard team, and that the dumbest group of people at Harvard are probably also the football team.

My son Dan was initially promised an official visit to Harvard by the football coaching staff. But they later changed their mind before the visit. He was recruited by, and admitted to, (technically he got “likely letters” from) Ivy League Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale. He played tailback at Columbia for four years, including four games against Harvard. So my family is rather familiar with the relationship between academics and Ivy League football.

My son was one of two “top band” players on his football team in his class at Columbia. That is Ivy League football terminology. It means he was one of the two smartest players on the team in his recruiting year group. His SAT score was higher than the average student, not just the average football player, at Columbia.

Most of the dumbest cadets are intercollegiate athletes, but not all such athletes at West Point are dumb

More than half the cadets at West Point whose math ACT scores were in the 16 to 24 range were Corps Squad athletes. SAT scores show a similar distribution. Most of the dumbest cadets at West Point are Corps Squad athletes, but not all Corps Squad athletes are among the dumber cadets.

But this is sort of the way of all college sports. The problem, if there is one, is that Superintendent Caslen says he did not compromise standards in order to win the Commander in Chief’s Trophy in 2017 (best service academy football team of the year). That is a bit hard to prove or disprove because we don’t know how he is defining the words he uses. In a court of law, I expect, we would learn that he was merely saying the standards at West Point are no lower than at other colleges, but that’s a pretty low bar. And it gives lie to the notion that West Point has higher standards than other colleges when it comes to marquee intercollegiate sports.

For many of the Corps Squad athlete slots, West Point is producing lower quality Army Officers as a result of prioritizing athletic success over its mission of producing the best possible class of Army officers. True high academic standards are not compatible with competitive intercollegiate teams at the top levels of NCAA competition. 

Truly high academic colleges are D-III, not FBS

If West Point truly does not want to compromise academic standards while still competing in intercollegiate sports, they need to drop down to high academic Division III competition. If Navy and Air Force did not also do that, Army could no longer play those teams in marquee sports. Army’s new opponents would be teams like Williams, Amherst, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Pomona, Claremont, MIT, Chicago, Bates, Carnegie-Mellon, Coast Guard Academy (that would be the new Army-Navy game), Gallaudet, U. Mass. Dartmouth, Middlebury, Merchant Marine Academy, Occidental, Rochester, RPI, St. John’s, Washington & Lee, Willamette, and many others.

How about Army switching to the Ivy League? No way. They hate the military, notwithstanding letting ROTC back on campus. And if Army started winning consistently, the Ivy League would throw them out. Also, the phrase Ivy League has a snobbish meaning. They would not water down their brand by letting a public military college, or anyone else other than maybe Stanford, in.

West Point needs to either switch to high academic D-III and finally, actually uphold their alleged high standards, or cut the BS and fess up to the fact that a majority of the Army intercollegiate athletes are in the bottom half of their West Point classes academically and would not even be allowed in academically at West Point if it was a high academic D-III school.

The high black flunk-out rate is probably a result of recruiting black athletes who clearly do not have the academic ability or preparation to graduate. That would be totally wrong. And it would also raise the question of how are they maintaining their eligibility to play each season.

Retired West Point grad and professor at West Point Ltc. Heffington says,

“Every fall, the Superintendent addresses the staff and faculty and lies. He repeatedly states that “We are going to have winning sports teams without compromising our standards,” and everyone in Robinson Auditorium knows he is lying because we routinely admit athletes with ACT scores in the mid-teens across the board. I have personally taught cadets who are borderline illiterate and cannot read simple passages from the assigned textbooks. It is disheartening when the institution’s most senior leader openly lies to his own faculty — and they all know it.”

The phrase “borderline illiterate and cannot read simple passages from the assigned textbooks” clearly implies that West Point instructors—who are mostly recent graduates—are maintaining the eligibility of the too-dumb-to-graduate players by lying about their academic performance in class.

Time was when accusations like LTC Heffington’s would trigger the appointment of a commission like the Borman Commission to investigate and render a report and recommendations. No more. Now they shoot the messenger with non-denial-denial press releases.

Time was when congress would hold hearings on such accusations. Cadet Douglas MacArthur testified in one on plebe hazing in 1900. No more. There is one West Point senator in Congress now: RI senator John F. “Jack” Reed. I was his platoon sergeant in July 1967 when he was a New Cadet. 

The following are current members of the House of Representatives:

• John Shimkus, class of 1980. U.S. Representative, Illinois (1997- )
• Geoff Davis, class of 1981. U.S. Representative, Kentucky (2004- )
• Brett Guthrie, class of 1987. U.S. Representative, Kentucky (2009-)
• Warren Davidson, class of 1995. U.S. Representative, Ohio (2016-)

I am not aware of any West Pointer in Congress expressing any interest in Heffington’s accusations.

What about the West Point Association of Graduates? I have never seen them deviate from the brass in any way. They seem to be, in effect, an arm of the West Point public relations department. West Point needs a second association of graduates to urge the place to actually live up, not just pay lip service to, its ideals.

If you claim to have the highest standards, and you actually do, you would react to Heffington’s accusations by creating a blue ribbon investigation. No one at West Point has done that.