Many people (me included) wondered how it was that the openly-Communist Spenser Rapone was allowed to graduate from West Point. It’s not as though Rapone was underground with his point of view as a proud Communist. And West Point isn’t Evergreen State College—is it? So how on earth did Rapone fall through the cracks?

Now the professor who had originally reported Rapone to West Point authorities (to no avail), retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Heffington, has issued an open letter to West Point graduates with a word—actually, many words—of explanation:

Here is the text of the letter. After you’ve read it, you will understand that Rapone didn’t fall through the cracks. There weren’t any cracks. If what Heffington says it’s the truth—and I’m definitely inclined to believe it—then West Point has apparently become a standardless, permissive, PC, open (and perhaps bottomless) pit.

Honor hearings are rarely scheduled and reports of honor infractions actively discouraged, and students are rarely disciplined for violations even when admittedly guilty. Academic standards are non-existent; it seems nearly impossible to flunk out. Heffinton isn’t sure when all this started—he thinks about 10 years ago, but my guess is that it began at some point early in the Obama years, with their emphasis on a PC military.

And what education does occur seems to have been taken over by the HowardZinn/BillAyres school of pedagoguery:

The plebe American History course has been revamped to focus completely on race and on the narrative that America is founded solely on a history of racial oppression. Cadets derisively call it the “I Hate America Course.” Simultaneously, the plebe International History course now focuses on gender to the exclusion of many other important themes. On the other hand, an entire semester of military history was recently deleted from the curriculum (at West Point!). In all courses, the bar has been lowered to the point where it is irrelevant. If a cadet fails a course, the instructor is blamed, so instructors are incentivized to pass everyone. Additionally, instead of responding to cadet failure with an insistence that cadets rise to the challenge and meet the standard, the bar for passing the course itself is simply lowered. This pattern is widespread and pervades every academic department. Conduct and disciplinary standards are in perhaps the worst shape of all. Cadets are jaded, cynical, arrogant, and entitled. They routinely talk back to and snap at their instructors (military and civilian alike), challenge authority, and openly refuse to follow regulations. They are allowed to wear civilian clothes in almost any arena outside the classroom, and they flaunt that privilege. Some arrive to class unshaven, in need of haircuts, and with uniforms that look so ridiculously bad that, at times, I could not believe I was even looking at a West Point cadet. However, if a staff or faculty member attempts to correct the cadet in question, that staff/faculty member is sure to be reprimanded for “harassing cadets.”… t seems that the Academy’s senior leaders are intimidated by cadets…I found it impossible to believe that the several hundred field grade officers stationed at West Point could not make teenagers wear the uniform. This anecdote highlights the fact that West Point’s senior leaders lack not the ability but the motivation to enforce their will upon the Corps of Cadets.

In other words, West Point has become the same as just about any other university, afraid of its students and subservient to the PC dictates. And the general public is only getting the chance to notice this now because Rapone felt so secure that he flaunted his views to the outside world. He’s not a one-off, he’s a symptom of the West Point (and general university) culture these days. It’s just more disturbing to find that it’s rampant at an institution such as West Point, usually thought to be one of the last outposts of discipline and standards, and—more importantly—one that sets the tone for the future of our military leaders.

It’s no accident, either; this was done purposely. Whether it began under Obama or earlier I don’t know, but it’s been going on long enough for a lot of graduates to have been trained under its umbrella. Heffington doesn’t directly say whether the lax standards are applied across-the-board, or whether certain groups are especially favored at West Point (he mentions several women getting passes at honor hearings, for example, but it’s hard to tell if women are being treated more leniently in general). He also makes reference to something called the “developmental model” that seems to be implemented at West Point, but doesn’t explain it. I’ve looked it up and found manuals such as this one, which appears to contain platitudes about training leaders and gives me no hint of what Heffington is specifically referring to (I only read a couple of pages; that’s all I could stomach of the empty claptrap).

More background:

All of this comes one week after Sen. Marco Rubio became aware of Spenser Rapone’s activism, calling the communist second lieutenant “a national security threat.” In a biting letter to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, Rubio asked for McCarthy to investigate if West Point administrators were aware of his behavior, requesting a response within 30 days. Now, proof has surfaced that Rapone’s chain of command was keenly aware of his radical anti-American “activism.” But judging by the viral praise for LTC Heffington’s open letter espoused by West Point graduates, his criticisms seem to evidence a much broader, systemic neglect of duty and standards ”” trickling down from some of the Army’s most senior leadership.

If all of this was an open secret, it’s shocking that there was a culture of silence around it till now. Reminds me a bit of Hollywood—or, if truth be told, most institutions. Maybe Spenser Rapone did us all a favor by being so flagrant that he drew greater public attention to the rot that’s been going on (not just in the military in general, which we already knew about, but at West Point itself) for a long time. The question is whether anything will be done about it.