Sears: [00:00:00] This is Radio Stockdale. I'm Michael Sears at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy. We're talking honor with Commander Jana Vavaseur, the Brigade Honor Officer. Commander, the Naval Academy states its goal to develop midshipmen morally, mentally and physically. How does the honor program add to that?

Vavaseur: [00:00:31] So I'd say the honor program definitely bolsters the moral development the most. It certainly contributes to mental as well, but definitely focuses on the moral development of midshipmen in a couple of ways. One, part of the Honor Program, a large part of the honor program, is actually education for the midshipmen. And that's partially midshipman driven, partially officer driven, but I'd say centrally midshipmen driven as the entire Honor Program and Concept is supposed to be, but then, two, in in remediation that is post-honor offense. If a midshipman is found in violation of the Honor Concept by the Brigade, they are then assigned remediation, and in that respect, the Honor Concept. The Honor Program truly bolsters the moral development of midshipmen, those who have proven to need it the most.

Sears: [00:01:26] So the Honor Concept at the Naval Academy is clearly part of one of the stated goals, moral, mental, physical. Let me ask you this. Do we hire honorable high school graduates when we bring students, midshipmen, in? Or do we make honorable midshipmen? Which is it?

Vavaseur: [00:01:43] I think the answer to both of those questions is yes. We do want to bring in honorable midshipmen candidates. That's what we want to accept the Naval Academy as midshipmen, to be sure, but there is no vetting process that can determine that entirely, number one, and number two, bring someone in who is, quote, honorable as an 18-year-old, they're going to experience challenges and significant set of different challenges here that may challenge that and may find cracks or vulnerabilities there, and they may not always live up to that. So, so the development is so important either way. But both the foundation coming in, as well as the development once a midshipman is here, are very critical.

Sears: [00:02:29] You know, some people may say that students nowadays, this generation, is less honorable than in the past. Do you see any of that in the data? Do you have specifics about that? Is this generation any less honorable than it was back in the 70s, 80s or 90s?

Vavaseur: [00:02:50] So I haven’t compared any data back to the 70s, 80s or 90s. I'm a member of the class of 94 who had the, went through the EE cheating scandal that most people, most Naval Academy graduates are quite aware of. So, I think it's, I'm acutely aware of the idea that I don't think midshipmen are necessarily less or more honorable than they were at least a little more than 30 years ago. So, I don't think that when I compare, especially to the trials and tribulations that my class experienced, I would not characterize it that way as either more or less honorable. There are different challenges. There are different, we didn't have any of the social media or electronic challenges, if you will, that the classes have right now. But those are just different venues for all the same thing, the moral challenges, the different classes are faced. It presents itself in different ways, but the challenges really are the same and different classes arguably meet them to different degrees with different degrees of success. But I think that's gone up and down through the years, maybe reflective of specific situations that bring new challenges that are unexpected and can't be anticipated or aren't well anticipated or maybe reflective of how leadership is going at the time, it could be reflective of all kinds of variables. So, we're always trying to get ahead of that, and that's our biggest challenge, probably, with the with the Honor Program.

Sears: [00:04:26] So as of late, are there numbers we can talk about, not to get too specific, and clearly, we just had a pandemic a year ago.

Vavaseur: [00:04:35] So as of late, it's actually pretty, pretty illustrative of what I just said, over the past five or six years before COVID, we're sitting at about a hundred cases a year. That does vary, and that's very general, but about a hundred cases a year. And then during the COVID year, specifically, academic year twenty-one, most of those challenges fell in there with specifically with academics. The numbers jumped almost double about one hundred and ninety-five cases, if I remember correctly in AC year (academic year) twenty one. And those were very much related to the virtual environment for teaching and learning and testing, and the temptation there, the opportunity there to cheat, especially when so many midshipmen were sitting at home for nearly a semester.

Sears: [00:05:28] You and I have spoken before about this concept of brittle fracture. I like that idea in terms of how individuals face their day-to-day stuff. How does that concept, the concept of brittle fracture, relate to honor violations?

Vavaseur: [00:05:44] That's a great concept that then Captain Buchanan came up with and was using that as an analogy to explain to midshipmen and to honor staff and to anyone who was his audience really about how he didn't see a character flaw. It's something to be determined whether or not someone had, he went on with the assumption that everyone had some sort of character flaw. But it's not. It's not visible much like a flaw in a piece of material might be. It's not visible and it's not exposed until you approach this line of brittle fracture. So just like a vessel is a vessel strength, and vulnerabilities are measured in the engineering world based on the material and the structure of the vessel. And then there's this line of how much stress and that's based on pressure and temperature, of course. And you don't in the nuclear world, you don't approach that line because you don't want to play with the idea of brittle fracture. And there, in the analogy, plays the best. If you expose any individual midshipman, adult, anybody, to enough stress and enough sleep deprivation and enough pressure or whatever the outside influences might be, you need to know what those influences are. Be aware of them and stay away from pushing yourself to your line of brittle fracture because we're all flawed in some way and we're all vulnerable if we get close enough to that line to cracking. And so that knowledge can really be helpful. That analogy can be very helpful in the education portion of how do we get better? How do we improve ourselves? How do we make ourselves better morally?

Sears: [00:07:30] I appreciate that concept there. It's not, honor is not black and white, necessarily. A lot of people think it is. Honor is not black and white. There's a lot of gray there, and it's a continuous path. We know where the sharp edges are, so to speak. And one of the things that the Honor Concept here at the Naval Academy is doing is try to identify those sharp edges. But by the same token, try to help folks have the tools to navigate through what will be a lot of rocks and shoals out there.

Vavaseur: [00:07:57] Well, exactly. Knowing the edges are really important, knowing where your curve is, what your edges are really important, but it's really step one. Once you know where that is, you have to practice. You have to put in practice, mechanisms that keep you away from that curve, getting whether it's getting more sleep or that's just a really simple one. There are tons of them. But in order to do that, you have to practice that on a day-to-day basis. You have to be aware of it. And it really is an Aristotelian concept of habituation, giving yourself the right habits to stay away from. Stay away from that edge. So, it's knowing yourself and then doing the things to protect you from getting too close to that edge.

Sears: [00:08:37] Commander Vavaseur, the Brigade Honor Officer at the Naval Academy. Thanks for joining us on Radio Stockdale.

Vavaseur: [00:08:43] Thanks very much, sir.

Sears: [00:08:52] You've been listening to Radio Stockdale, a series of podcasts produced by the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy. You can hear more podcasts at stockdalecenter.com\podcasts.