It does take a little time to adjust to the honor code, but among all the things learned at WP, this one stuck with me the most. I (and many of my friends) came to literally hate lying/cheating, and to disdain those who do. But there’s another route that is taken too — the opposite, where some cadets become very good at lying/cheating. What starts out as a trivial lie must be covered up with larger more intricate lies, moving from something accidental or thoughtless to something intentional and deliberate. The cover-up and defense, often bringing friends into the mix, turns toxic really quickly. This is what happens when a perceived innocuous lie is seen a a life-ruiner.
My father also went to a service academy, and often after catching me in a lie would say, “I’m mad at you about lying, but I’m ever madder you were dumb enough to get caught!” My dad is one of the most moral men I’ve ever met, and I only just now connected the dots here with regard to a zero-toleration honor code.
I suspect the 2015 change was a practical rather than principled change: to make it easier to catch and correct violations instead of letting them fester and spread.
In some ways the service academies are a giant experiment in human character. Humans naturally lie, cheat, and steal in order to survive and protect their own tribe (i.e., go to war). Can you change that? Not really. But you can create a culture like that. The change, as ironic as it may seem, may do a better job of creating that kind of culture by attacking the tendency to dig deeper holes.