Thoughts on Professional Loyalty from the notes of LTC Paul Christopher
The thoughts included below may help you in describing, for cadets, the meaning of their professional code, "The Cadet Honor Code."
College honor codes -- and all good colleges in America have them -- identify particular moral values that are crucial to being a student and give them special emphasis. This is much the same as other professional codes in medicine, engineering, etc. The Hippocratic Oath focuses on saving life because that is fundamental to the medical profession. Most college honor codes focus on cheating and plagiarism because these decry values that are essential for students (or scholars). Indeed, cheating and plagiarizing defeat the very concept of scholarship -- they are the antitheses of learning.
Unlike most other honor codes, which only include student related concerns such as cheating or plagiarizing, all military schools also include lying and stealing in their honor codes. Each of these additions to our honor code has its own justification but center on the concern of trust. Stealing is given special emphasis through inclusion in military honor codes because of the barracks environment in which cadets live. It's not that other (civilian) schools ignore stealing; it is just that it is handled under their judicial system instead of their honor system. Because of the nature of the barracks environment, stealing is a behavior that is singled out for special emphasis by its inclusion in the honor code. Nothing erodes trust and morale faster than a barracks thief.
Likewise, lying is given special emphasis at military schools because of its impact in the profession of arms. Truth telling is paramount for basic requirements of accountability, reporting, etc. Lying is not ignored at other schools; it is considered to be bad manners or a lack of breeding prevaricate, much the way it is in our society. The importance of truthfulness to the military profession justifies giving lying special condemnation by including it in our honor code.
Honor codes, like professional codes, identify particular values that are of such importance to a particular activity (scholarship in this case) that normal social and judicial sanctions are considered inadequate. Because we have singled out certain behaviors for special emphasis, we must also establish a system for reporting, investigating, and punishing those who transgress. Hence a formal process is adopted for dealing with infractions of these values, and the responsibility for enforcing these values and administering the formal system rests with those affected by the code. Responsibility for the honor code rests with the student body and the faculty. That's why an honor code is really not a genuine honor code unless there is some formal or informal concept of non-toleration. Unlike a judicial code where the right to judge and punish wrongdoers is taken away from the population at large and isolated in the office of the magistrate, the administration of an honor code rests with those who are subject to it.
An honor code augments the judicial system for a special group of people by providing for additional sanctions over and above what society demands of its citizens at large.
How do we get cadets to commit themselves to an honor code? The most important principle is that they take an "internal point of view" to the code. That is, they see it as their code, rather than the administration's code that is imposed upon them. When persons take an "external point of view" to a code of rules, then the only motive for obeying the rules is a fear of sanction. And, of course, in such cases one would need an enforcer watching these people all the time. When persons take an internal point of view to the rules, on the other hand, no other reason is needed for compliance because the rules are their rules (The same applies to cadet regulations: if cadets view the regs USMA as the administration's then they will only enforce (and obey) them out of fear of getting caught if they disobey. If however, they have some ownership in the regs, then they will themselves take responsibility for enforcing and following them.)
We can see that the honor code is a professional code for students the same way that our professional military ethic or warrior ethos is a professional code for the officer corps. Civilian occupations don't demand courage, selflessness, and loyalty from their managers because these abstract values are not crucial to most types of jobs. The sanctions for lying, plagiarizing, and petty theft in our society at large are trivial compared to the way we handle such actions here at USMA because serious punishment for such offenses is simply not warranted except under special conditions. Separating these values from the judicial system entails that we consider special emphasis appropriate and that we also assume the responsibility for their enforcement.