Last week, while Pirko’s classmates were flinging their caps into the air at the Academy’s graduation ceremonies, Pirko was sitting in his girlfriend’s apartment, thumbing through the want ads. Along with 23 of his classmates, Pirko had been kicked out in the worst cheating scandal in navy history: 88 found guilty, out of what Pirko estimated as possibly 160 who had received an advance copy of some portion of the final exam for Electrical Engineering 311, popularly called ““Double E.’’ So far, much of the controversy has focused on special privileges for navy football players, six of whom were booted out. But the case of Brian Pirko reveals that the real scandal is the way the U.S. Naval Academy trains its charges.
Pirko was ““a great midshipman’’ who showed ““a lot of potential to become an impact player in the fleet,’’ according to a formal evaluation by his company officer. An A student and captain of the football team in high school, he had longed to be a naval aviator (his grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all gone to rival West Point). At the Naval Academy, he excelled academically. Idealistic, ingenuous and overeager, he was a sponge for the basic values – both good and bad – of the institution.
The Naval Academy is supposed to produce leaders who live by a code of honor – they do not ““lie, cheat, or steal.’’ Midshipmen are intentionally overwhelmed with classwork and drill, some of it demeaning and trivial. (As a plebe, Pirko and his dorm mates would be ordered to trash their room so they would have a mess to clean up.) The idea is to strengthen character in adversity. The effect, however, is to make many midshipmen deeply cynical. The midshipmen use teamwork to survive, but their common enemy becomes the in-stitution and all its rules and requirements. ““Don’t bilge your classmate’’ is the informal code of the dormitory, Bancroft Hall, where all 4,800 ““mids’’ sleep, eat and study. Formal instruction in leadership is often rote and shallow – multiple-choice questions on tests given for a much-maligned course called Law and Leadership (““an oxymoron,’’ according to one professor).
Pirko prided himself on teamwork. ““If gouge is out, everyone’s entitled to it,’’ he told the disciplinary board that reviewed his case. On the night before the Double E exam in December 1992, gouge was out all over the dormitory, as mids passed around a leaked copy of the exam. Pirko, who was pulling an A in the course, shared in the good fortune, helping others to figure out the right answers.
After the exam, a group of midshipmen who had obtained their gouge from Pirko’s room secretly met. They decided that, although they had committed an honor violation, they would avail themselves of a loophole under the honor code. It permits midshipmen suspected of honor violations to ““counsel’’ each other – and not press charges. Pirko, who later learned of the meeting, knew that the ““counseling option’’ was ““bull,’’ but he didn’t want to bilge his classmates. Like most of the other mids, he remained silent.
An initial investigation amounted to little more than a cover-up by Academy authorities. Although six midshipmen who confessed were kicked out, the superintendent, Rear Adm. Thomas Lynch (navy’s football cocaptain in 1963), dismissed the ““compromise’’ of the exam as an isolated incident. One midshipman who broke the code of silence was assaulted by his classmates. A campus priest later reported that other midshipmen were being advised by their parents to lie.
Under pressure from a lawsuit threatened by four of the expelled midshipmen, who believed they had been unfairly singled out, and from Congress, the Pentagon finally ordered a more thorough investigation. Another student who cheated counseled Pirko: ““Lie till you die.’’ But Pirko recognized that the cheating was wrong and admitted his role. He was thrown out.
Some who continued to lie escaped punishment. Last January a navy inspector general’s report concluded that, after the Double E scandal, most midshipmen consider the honor system to be a joke, since it protected the liars and punished those who came forward.
Pirko’s education cost taxpayers $200,000. He’s been rejected by the University of Maryland and considered enrolling in lifeguard school. Has he become a cynic? ““Absolutely,’’ he says, unconvincingly. In the transcripts of his disciplinary hearings, he comes across more like the officer and gentleman he longed to be, albeit a lot more credulous than a navy ““lifer.’’ After he confessed, he told the president of the Honor Review Board, ““Whatever happens, you know, I feel better from this moment on, just knowing that I’ve come here and cleared my conscience. I guess that’s all I have to say, sir.''
