An End to Silence

Cadet James J. Pelosi seemed like any other West Point graduating student last week as he stepped up smartly to receive his diploma. But his 938 classmates knew differently. For Pelosi, the occasion marked not only the end of a college career but also the end of a Kafkaesque nightmare. In November of 1971, he had been accused of breaking the rules while taking a test. Supposedly he had gone on writing in his bluebook after the order to stop. He denied the charge before the cadet honor committee, but it found him guilty.

His case then went up to the West Point board of officers. It was ready to second the committee's decision until Pelosi's lawyer pointed out that an academy official had prejudiced the case. The board dismissed the charge, and the West Point superintendent ordered the cadet returned to good standing.

The cadet honor committee, however, had the last word. It sentenced Pelosi to "the silence," a severe form of ostracism meted out to those who refuse to resign when accused of cheating but against whom there is insufficient evidence for dismissal. Immediately, Pelosi became the Quasimodo of the Point. He ate alone at a table meant for ten, an easy target for the ice cubes that fellow cadets would lob at him during dinner. His mail was opened, his clothes were dragged through the latrine, his person threatened by anonymous callers. None of the cadets talked to him except on official business. "West Point is extremely isolated from the outside world anyway," he explained last week. "There is no one to talk to or communicate with except other cadets. When they stop talking, it gets really lonely." Eventually Pelosi found some people he could talk to among M.P.s and staff help at the Point.

The son of a Manhattan bank executive who served as a fighter pilot in World War II Pelosi lost 26 lbs. in the first months of the treatment, but he resolved to stay. "I was innocent, and to leave would have been giving in to a guilt I didn't feel," he explained. Eventually, his determination won over some of his tormentors. During his last few months, several sympathetic cadets, in particular his former friends, began to visit with him. The sanctions against him became almost unenforceable. By the time he graduated last week, there were even handshakes.

But Pelosi, 21, one of the few West Pointers to endure the silence, knows that his ordeal is not over. A cadet blackballed by the honor committee is theoretically doomed to be ostracized by Point graduates the rest of his life.

In his determination to make the Army a career, Pelosi has almost no other silence alumni to look to--except Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Silenced during his first year at the Point--1932 to 1936 --Cadet Davis survived to become a lieutenant general in the Air Force. An encouraging example, but not all together analogous: Davis' only sin was presumably his black skin.

His diploma in hand, Pelosi argued last week--not very convincingly--that it had all been worth it. He also suggested that honor-committee members --he had been one, too--place "themselves above the law, and no one has a right to do that." His view is about to be tested in court. Last April, 21 cadets were accused of cheating on a physics exam. Most resigned immediately, but six of those who opted to fight the charges have filed a lawsuit with the U.S. district court, arguing that the honor system subverts the due process guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment. The cadet honor committee is, they maintain, a modern-day kangaroo court. If the court agrees, the Point's 156-year-old honor system will in all likelihood be struck down--and with it the silence.

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