The code is pretty straightforward. The court is not.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vmi-honor-court-racism/2021/01/28/d8703e6c-5b73-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html
Elected by the student body, VMI’s Honor Court operates in secrecy, investigating and prosecuting anyone suspected of an honor code violation. It has the power to enlist cadets to spy on classmates, who can be convicted by non-unanimous juries and then shamed with middle-of-the-night “drum-out” ceremonies announcing their names to the entire 1,700-member corps of cadets.
Wins told The Post that he is considering two changes: requiring unanimous juries for convictions and barring the Honor Court from announcing the names of expelled cadets during drum-out ceremonies.
(snip)
One faculty member who has reported cadets for honor code violations said VMI’s Honor Court system lacks due process and consistency. Sometimes, the professor said, academic department heads will greenlight accusations to go forward to the students running the Honor Court; other times, they won’t.
(snip)
None of the country’s federal service academies automatically expel students if they’re convicted of violating their honor codes, nor do VMI’s chief rivals, Virginia Tech and The Citadel in South Carolina — senior military colleges that offer a corps of cadets and the chance to commission into the armed services.
From the wapo article, here's an example of someone who withdrew rather than going through an Honor Court trial, and was drummed out anyway:
On April 1, 2019, when she was a freshman, Jony Ursua was “arrested” by the Honor Court. Her crime: She’d filled out a special permission form that allows students to leave campus for the night and spend time with relatives, a guardian, a VMI staff member or parents of other cadets, according to her Honor Court charging documents.
Ursua said she’d typed on the form that a family friend was taking her out. But she didn’t let the school know she was also spending time with an ex-cadet whom she was dating.
Later, when her roommates asked who she spent her off-campus time with, she initially didn’t mention the date. Ultimately, she confessed to her friends. Then, she said, one of her roommates alerted the Honor Court.
Ursua also was charged with failing to turn herself in quickly enough to VMI’s commandant staff, and for “[lying] to her roommates about who she was with,” her charging documents say.
Ursua told The Post that she thought mentioning only the family friend on the permission form satisfied the school rules, since the friend was the one who was going to pick her up at campus. She didn’t think she needed to say she was also going to see a romantic interest.
“I was just a freshman, and I didn’t have a full understanding of the regulations around the permits,” she said. “And I didn’t tell my roommates about the date because it wasn’t their business. It was about personal privacy.”
Rather than face the Honor Court trial, Ursua withdrew from VMI — a decision that amounted to a guilty plea and an expulsion from the school. Ursua figured a full-blown trial wasn’t worth it. Even if she would have prevailed, she said she was losing sleep worrying about the case. She struggled to concentrate and figured she probably would bomb her final exams.
She was dismissed April 7, six days after her arrest.
“Per the VMI Honor System, you should no longer return to the VMI Post,” her letter of expulsion read. “We hope this interruption in your formal education will be rapidly overcome. Please be assured that we wish you every success in your transition and your future.”
Ursua, an immigrant from the Philippines who speaks English as a second language, said she lost a scholarship that would have paid for her final three years of college.
“My plan after VMI was to commission or work at the CIA or NSA,” said Ursua, who now attends Old Dominion University. “I’m getting grants now for college, but I’ll need to take out loans.”
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