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If the Navy is to counteract the Lemming Effect, it must understand the dynamics that cause otherwise decent individuals to rush as a group off the cliff of high standards onto the rocks of dishonor.
The recent cheating scandal at the U.S.
Naval Academy is providing grist for the mills of a good many moralizers. The lines between accusers, accused, and bystanders have blurred amid the media attention focused on this sad series of events. The way the scandal is being covered, at least in some circles, seems to reinforce the ditty, “the job is not completed until blame has been affixed.”
Just whose fault is it? Did the midshipmen who cheated fail the system? Did the midshipmen who did not cheat but suspected cheating and said nothing fail the system? Did the system fail the midshipmen by insisting on an impossibly high honor standard that seemed to invite hypocrisy and selective obedience? Did society, parents, and friends fail the Navy by producing so many students who allegedly were willing to cheat and lie when faced with a hard test? Is everyone failing the midshipmen and staff who neither cheated nor lied and who have made every effort to deal fairly and forthrightly with the crisis?
Whatever other ethical lessons may arise from this tragedy, one stands out. It is applicable for all who serve as officers in the armed forces. The “Lemming Effect” is alive and well and must be addressed if the officer corps of the sea services is to serve honorably into the century to come.
This term is drawn from the legend of the lemming, five-inch-long rodents that inhabit northern climates and occasionally pour in groups over high cliffs into the sea, apparently in a frenzied death wish. In fact, lemmings do not have a death wish. They do swim in groups from one location to another in search of food. Occasionally, they miscalculate the distance to dinner, with predictable results.
The Lemming Effect is manifest in the willingness of otherwise decent individuals to rush as a group off the
cliff of high standards onto the rocks of dishonor that lie below. The Lemming Effect creates the atmosphere in which a massive cheating scandal or a Tailhook gantlet become possible for many, who, in other settings, would
Proceedings / July 1994
! never consider such behavior. It makes groups of people ' do things that the individuals comprising the group normally would not do—a sort of “mob mentality.”
I first saw the Lemming Effect at work in civilian life.
I Driving through a small Georgia town behind a line of I cars, I moved toward a stop light that was changing from yellow to red. The line of cars ahead of me continued , through the light, even after it turned red. I felt an impulse to follow them, but checked my impulse when I noticed that a police car was parked at the intersection.
The police officer watched in amazement as four or five I cars continued their caravan through the red light. He flipped on both siren and lights and whirled through the intersection, waving his arms vigorously at the line of transgressors to pull over. Thus did a small Georgia town come into additional revenue, thanks to the Lemming Effect.
I have seen the Lemming Effect at work among officers and enlisted, among the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard units where I have served. At its worst, it gains public notoriety and ends careers. More often, its effects are private and personal but no less devastat- s ing. People lose faith in the integrity of leaders and the ’ system. Many are blindsided by their own behavior, unaware of the dynamics at play as they pursue unethical actions toward unpleasant and unplanned conclusions.
The recent problems at the Tailhook convention and the Naval Academy have forced the issue into the open. However painful its origin, that awareness can be turned to great good. The Navy can effectively confront the ethical and moral implications of the Lemming Effect, but it will take nothing less than a total institutional response.
There are several elements necessary to understand the dynamics of the Lemming Effect and to effect meaningful change.
► Recognize the contributing causes. In previous generations, young adults tended to derive moral and ethical standards from family, church, peers, heroes, and sports, among other things. This old paradigm of values has shifted. Family no longer provides a predictable nurturing environment for ethical formation for those entering i the Navy or the military in general.
The fragmentation of the nuclear family has disrupted the ethical traditionalizing that has been one of the family’s major functions. This is not to say that children from single-parent homes or with four sets of grandparents are doomed to ethical failure. It is to say that the military must take a serious look at its assumptions about the moral and ethical standards of those it commissions or recruits.
Similarly, the influence of organized religion as a conduit for shared social and human values has waned. On my first day teaching a Morals and Ethics class at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, I gave the 24 cadets in class a quiz to determine what formal knowledge they brought to the j course. The last question asked the cadets to name as many of the Ten Commandments as they could. As the commandments are one of foundations for ethical reflection , in Western civilization, it seemed like an appropriate question. I figured that even if they had seen the Cecil B. DeMille movie, they should be good for a couple.
I was wrong. One cadet knew eight commandments. Seven knew between four and six commandments. Eight
knew between one and three. Eight cadets—one third of the class—could not with confidence name a single commandment. They had heard there was such a list but were unable to say with certainty that any particular behavior was part of it. They embodied what former Stanford University philosopher D. Elton Trueblood has termed, “cut flower morality,” in which society seeks to keep the ethical flower and fruit of ancient values while severing the roots that nourished and produced them.
The institution must face the reality of incoming officers and enlisted personnel whose allegiance to and even awareness of long-standing traditional ethical values are shaky. This is not an invitation to treat new members of the military with disdain or mistrust. It is a call to recognize the powerful deficiencies under which newcomers must operate in an organization where lying, cheating, and stealing are grounds for dismissal.
► Recognize ethical standards and moral behavior as a seamless garment. When any institution clearly stakes out the moral high ground for its members, the danger of hypocrisy by some and a response of moral cynicism by others increases exponentially. Religious, civic, and military institutions are not exempt from the peril. “They preach but they do not practice” is an indictment as old as biblical times, and as new.
The vision of honor as a seamless garment helps to fend off the habit of selective adherence that newcomers to the institution find so distasteful. Plebes and swabs quickly pick up the mixed signals when a system declares lying a matter of honor but drunkenness a rite of passage, provided a drunk-driving citation is avoided. They are sensitive to a posture that declares cheating a matter of integrity, but multiple sexual encounters a matter of luck, provided that detection, conception, and infection are evaded. Novices are acutely aware of the contradiction when an institution declares stealing things to be grounds for dismissal but stealing the reputation of classmates through innuendo and gossip to be only bad manners.
The institution does not need to list every conceivable misbehavior in an honor code to cultivate the vision of the seamless nature of honor. It does need to express and reinforce honor consistently in ways best symbolized by the classic “lie-cheat-steal” prohibitions but not limited to them. Lemmings thrive in climates where the integrity of ethical behavior downshifts into selective indignation.
► Don't leave it to the lawyers. Couching issues of honor and ethics in purely legal terms may be convenient for command training lectures, but it sends the wrong signal to the rank-and-file, the potential lemmings in some future moral leap. A act can be legal and dishonorable: permitted by statute but unethical by common consent.
1 am not arguing that the lawyers should not be involved in the Navy’s ethics presentations to commands. The plea here is for wider vision. To answer the question of legality is not necessarily to resolve the question of honor. Lemmings more easily trundle off the cliffs of honor when some pied piper is whistling, “There’s no law against it.”
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Froceedings/July 1994
► Train and educate constantly. The Coast Guard Academy’s decision in 1991 to require an academic course in morals and ethics is a step in the right direction. To be relevant, a solid introduction must be intellectually rig-
orous, connected to issues real for the student, winsomely presented, and clearly related to an agenda of helping the midshipman or cadet identify, probe, and articulate his or her ethical posture.
Education is no panacea, however, and it can become a placebo for genuine ethical development. At the end of the class 1 taught on morals and ethics, a company officer approached me with word that a number of library books on ethics had been found dumped in a corner in his area. It appears that one of the students, responding to the assignment to write a paper stating and critiquing his or her ethical posture, had walked away from the library with all the references without bothering to check them out. Those well-versed in ethics may become better at recognizing wrong and smoother at doing it!
Division officers who have had fittings pirated from their hatches during' refresher training can offer insights for another type of training for the crew. General military training, all-officer meetings, and a periodic departmental “human stand down” offer forums to keep integrity in the big picture and the small details of sea service life. School of the Ship and I Division offer natural occasions to discuss the honor, courage, and commitment themes of Navy values. The institution can continue that exposure to all hands without turning training into one long moralistic whine.
>• Create safe havens. Every significant compromise of honor and ethics that has come to public attention has done so because someone broke away from the other lemmings and refused to leap. If individuals are aware of safe havens to air ethical dilemmas, we have a better chance to turn the crowd before they pour over the cliffs.
During my four years as a chaplain at the Coast Guard Academy, a number of cadets and staff came at various times with significant issues related to the honor code, personal misconduct, and possible violations of law. Some of the cadets and staff were active religiously, others were not. They were dealing with the implications and pressures of the Lemming Effect and wanted a safe place to air concerns, ask questions, and sift responses in confidence. Several situations were defused when, without violating confidentiality, issues were brought to the attention of those within the institution who had the authority to address the concerns before the lemmings could form.
Academic settings such as military academies offer chaplains, counselors, certain company staff, and peers with various degrees of confidentiality. Operational units also have people who are positioned to offer a safety vent for crew who may sense an impending movement of lemmings but are unsure what to do. Commands that make clear the value placed on command master chiefs, chaplains, and others who can offer various degrees of off-the- record feedback help to create a climate that can defuse problems before they reach the point of no return.
>■ Focus on the process. Leadership can limit itself to swatting moral mosquitoes at mast and office hours or it can make efforts to drain the swamps that breed the mosquitoes. Leadership can do much to enhance or inhibit the climate in which honorable conduct and ethical performance thrives.
Leaders who enjoy socializing without intoxication set a positive tone for subordinates that is less likely to
breed a gantlet of drunken lemmings. Leaders who encourage appropriate involvement in community and social activities help subordinates develop peer groups focused on service. Leaders sensitive to the religious needs of their people help those people deepen their roots in traditions rich in positive ethical values. As syndicated columnist William Raspberry once wrote, “If you saw five burly young men walking toward you on a deserted street at j midnight, would your feelings be changed if you kne" they had just come from a Bible study?”
If people tend to move together, they can move in I positive directions as well as negative ones. Allegations | of mass honesty may not make good press copy—recall that 90% of the Naval Academy Class of 1994 has not been accused of anything—but they make for a very good military. The crisis may get the attention, but the process is the key to change.
► Identify heroes. A squadron commanding officer went to the 1991 Tailhook convention with several of his subordinates. Knowing something of the event’s reputation for after-hours antics, he warned his squadron that he ■ would pull chocks and fly home if any of them started to 1 get out of hand. That night, he saw enough to act on his word. Amid much grumbling about the commanding of-1 ficer’s puritanical standards, the squadron abruptly departed. The night after they departed, the infamous gantlet formed.
It is not easy to be heroic in the face of the Lemming Effect. The pressure for conformity is powerful and pervasive. Consider some of the flattering terms used to describe those who reject and report unethical behavior: rat, squealer, stool pigeon, chicken, uptight, Judas.
The institution rightly identifies and rewards those who exhibit courage in combat against the enemy. The sea services have many heroes who have withstood the Lemming Effect in the face of sarcastic and bitter attack. Heroes who have shown the courage and commitment to fulfill the requirements of honor can become positive reminders that integrity really does matter to the institution.
► Nurture the vision. John Killinger tells of Vanderbilt University’s Dean Madison Sarratt, who taught freshman math: “Former students remember him saying, Today 1 am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass both of them. But if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry. There are many good men in the world today who cannot pass an examination in trigonometry, but there are no good men who cannot pass an examination in honesty.’”
Only a keen vision of a better way can defuse the whisper, “Everybody’s doing it.” Revisiting the concepts of honor, commitment, and courage are part of the creation of that vision. Positive restatement and reinforcement of the professional fruit of integrity are part of the vision. The best way to spot counterfeit money is by a total familiarity with genuine currency. Naval leadership that exemplifies the genuine currency of integrity offers pause to potential lemmings who are ready to rush after the counterfeit payoffs promised by unethical behavior.
Captain Phillips is assigned to the precommissioning unit of the John C. Stennis (CVN-74) at Newport News, Virginia.
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