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Cadet: Test answers were posted on Web site

The cheating scandal at the Air Force Academy has led officials there to declare a weekend lockdown for all cadets, confining all students to campus while administrators investigate a mass violation of the academy’s honor code.

A source at the academy told Air Force Times that the incident sheds light on a cheating system widely known to cadets but, until now, was difficult for faculty to track.

The Air Force Academy is investigating 28 freshmen cadets — some of them athletes on the school’s sports teams — who are accused of cheating on a weekly test.

Nineteen have admitted to cheating on the Jan. 31 test, called a Fourth Class Knowledge Test, and another nine are suspected of wrongdoing, according to an academy spokesman. Some of the athletes have confessed, Johnny Whitaker, director of communications, said Wednesday.

Cadets reported the cheating to academy officials Feb. 2, Whitaker said.

“That’s the way the [honor] system is designed to work,” he said. “We hope the cadets turn themselves in, or if they suspect someone else ... they turn somebody else in.”

A second-year cadet, who spoke to Air Force Times on condition of anonymity, said the test answers were advertised on the social networking site Facebook.com. Fourth Class tests quiz students on military knowledge, and are created and administered by upper-class cadets, who sometimes pass the answers on to younger cadets — especially teammates — in a process known as “Kool-Aid,” the cadet said.

“An upperclassman was using Facebook to let the freshmen know, if they needed the answers, if they needed the ‘Kool-Aid,’ that they could get in touch with them,” the cadet said.

The cadet said the cheating process was “kind of commonly known [among cadets], that the intercollegiate athletes do retain some kind of advantage.” Previously, the cadet said, there was no way to identify who was involved.

But this time, “because it was on Facebook, the evidence was very concrete. You could tell who had accessed the site,” the cadet said.

Failing such a test would likely result only in “some extra instruction,” Whitaker said. The tests do factor into a freshman’s becoming a full-fledged cadet in the spring, he added.

The freshmen who have admitted cheating will go in front of a cadet sanctions recommendation panel composed of cadet honor representatives, who could recommend punishment including honor probation, a six-month, “very intensive program” of instruction and journal-keeping, Whitaker said.

Cadets who do not admit to cheating but who are suspected will go in front of a full wing honor board, which is composed of cadet honor reps but overseen by active-duty airmen and lawyers. Cadets can resign from the academy at any point during the process, and, if found guilty, can face punishments from probation to expulsion, Whitaker said.

For the athletes, none will be removed from their teams unless they are placed in “cadet not in good standing” status, said Troy Garnhart, a spokesman in the athletics department. Any athletes put on probation “would be able to remain on the team, but they would not be able to represent the academy in outside activities.”

Many cadets share “frustration” over the incident, according to the second-year cadet who spoke to Air Force Times.

“The fact that they felt that it was OK to cheat on the military portion, it shows a contempt for the military training,” the cadet said.

No punishments have been announced yet, but for the weekend, the cadet wings are being confined to campus in what academy superintendent Lt. Gen. John F. Regni called “a strategic pause,” the cadet said.

“[It’s] a push to make sure everyone gets themselves in order,” the cadet said, likening it to a flying wing’s standdown. “If something catastrophic happens, they step back … and take a re-assessment of what’s going on.”

The last cheating scandal at the academy occurred in April 2004. Twenty-nine freshmen were investigated for cheating on a higher-stakes certification test. Twelve admitted to cheating, seven of whom resigned voluntarily, and seven others were found in violation, Whitaker said.