COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: JROTC/ROTC
interview with author of "Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War"
Paul D. Thacker, Inside Higher Ed insidehighered
January 11, 2007
The U.S. Army fields more than 100,000 officers, with close to 7,000leaving the service each year, and another 7,000 filling in behind.
A fraction come from West Point, but the vast majority of officers
are commissioned after serving four years with a Reserve Officers
Training Corp program located on an American college or university
campus.
For a few months during the summer of 2004, the journalist David Axe
shadowed the Gamecock Battalion, an ROTC unit located at the
University of South Carolina. He then spent countless hours in
follow-up interviews discussing the cadets' experiences stretching
back to 2001. For so many reasons, the 80 members of the Gamecocks
define the quintessential ROTC unit: They are working class,
Southern, racially diverse, have minor problems integrating women,
and love to party.
In his book, Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War, (University of
South Carolina Press, January) Axe finds young men and women —
straddling the line between student and soldier, child and adult —
who are trying to figure out if the military will give them a leg up
in life. In the background looms a war in the Middle East that is
consuming American lives. Axe has spent several years as a war
correspondent for Salon, the Village Voice, BBC radio, and C-SPAN.
He is currently a correspondent for the magazine Defense Technology
International.
Q: What made you pick this particular unit?
A: I picked the University of South Carolina Gamecock Battalion
because it's a good ROTC unit but also because it's typical in that
it's Southern, conservative and racially diverse. USC and the state
of South Carolina both have rich military traditions. So they're
ideal settings. Mostly, though, I picked these guys because they
were convenient. I was living in Columbia near USC, so I could walk
across campus for my interviews.
Q: It was a little surprising to discover that so many of America's
universities started out as military colleges.
A: Yeah, it's true. There was a day when university, military
commission, and political participation were all related, especially
in New England and the South. You'd go to school to get educated,
serve as an officer to prove yourself as a gentleman and citizen,
and then leave the service to participate in government — either as
an elected official or as a landowner or other prominent citizen.
These days, officers tend to be professionals. Military service
isn't just a passage into adulthood and civic involvement — it's a
job. And it's a job requiring years and years of specialized
training.
Q: You write that war is big business in South Carolina. Southerners
disproportionately populate the military and the Department of
Defense pours huge amounts of money into South Carolina, whose
politicians sit on critical Congressional committees. Do you think
that this unit is different from an ROTC program at, say, a college
in Southern California or upstate New York?
A: It's different than a Californian or Northern ROTC unit, yes, but
it's pretty typical of Southern ROTC units, and they comprise the
majority. An example: in 2003, there were protests at ROTC units in
California. No Southern university suffered the same way, and that's
no accident. Southern culture, being more traditional and more
masculine, embraces the military in a way that other regional
cultures don't.
Q: The students you profile join for slightly different reasons –
some out of patriotism, others because of the excitement of the
military, some to pay for college. How do the students handle the
rigor of balancing ROTC and their studies when so many of their
peers are partying and getting the "college experience?"
A: Oh, ROTC cadets still party. Boy, do they ever party. And they go
to class. And they train and do their early-morning workouts. They
manage to do everything other college students do, plus a lot extra.
The trick, I've been told, is to stop sleeping.
Q: There is also this need to belong. You point out that many of the
cadets are also in fraternities.
A: Yep. And frats are a lot like the Army. There's regimentation.
There are old traditions. There are even uniforms sometimes. And
frat boys, like soldiers, are known for their alcohol consumption.
Q: Did some join on a lark, or was ROTC always a part of these
students' college plans?
A. There were some that were just trying it out, but in my
experience those folks don't last. The ones who succeed were
planning on ROTC for awhile, and had even done high school ROTC. The
physicial rigor is so hard that the average student who just wanders
in can't handle it. These people are very fit, and they exercise
hard just like the enlisted.
Q: Did you find more competitiveness or camaraderie among the cadets?
A: Those two characteristics aren't mutually exclusive. Cadets
compete with each other to get top honors in grades or Physical
Training scores. But this competition makes them a stronger team,
and it keeps them all trying their hardest.
Q. As the war in Iraq turned sour in 2004, Cadet Command, which
oversees the country's ROTC programs, issued a "public affairs
guidance" to all ROTC units. The 28-page document even contained
canned answers to potential questions such as whether the U.S.
should have attacked Iraq. How did members of the Gamecock Battalion
handle these questions from college friends and family?
A: Most of the cadets I talked to had no opinion about the Iraq war —
and knew little about it, like most college kids. The best-informed
cadets tended to oppose the war, however. Though most cadets are pro-
war, patriotic and conservative, there are exceptions to every rule.
There are liberal cadets, gay cadets, cadets leaning towards
pacifism. It takes all kinds.
Q: When you asked or when they were sitting around, what kind of
views did they express about the Iraq invasion?
A: Like I said, most had no opinion. Others echoed the accepted non-
truths or half-truths that many American believe — that Saddam
Hussein had ties to al Qaeda, that Iraq was a direct threat, that
the invasion was somehow revenge for 9/11. Just because these kids
are going to fight this war doesn't mean that they have any idea
what the war is really about.
Q: How did they feel about potentially serving in Iraq?
A: Many cadets, like other soldiers, yearn to serve, to deploy, to
fight — even to kill. It's their job. It's what they're trained to
do. Sure, they might have reservations deep down. Lying awake at
night, they might be a little afraid. But they know that they belong
to the most fearsome army in the history of the world. That tends to
instill confidence, even overconfidence.
Q: On a couple of occasions you write about the experiences of the
female cadets. In one incident, a female is groped by a supervisor
but doesn't complain. And there are recurrent scandals involving
sexual assaults at the military academies. There seems to be this
problem of sexual harassment in the military.
A: Absolutely, but no more so than in general society. That's one
thing I learned about ROTC and the military — that in many cases its
problems are the same problems, on the same scale, as you see in
general society. The Army is hyper-masculine, to be sure, but
whatever tendency that instills toward harassment is partially
canceled by an equal tendency toward extreme politeness and
chivalry. Cadets tend to be simultaneously cruder and more polite
than the average college kid. It all depends on context. They're
pretty nasty among their peers, but extremely respectful of their
elders and superiors and (for the men) especially of women.
Q: Women are also barred from serving in combat units, which is the
career highway to top leadership. How did the men and women feel
about the fairness of this?
A: I don't know any male cadets who have ever given that a second
thought. But many female cadets do indeed feel some resentment. That
aside, they're soldiers, and soldiers obey orders. So if the Army
says they're not allowed to serve in combat units, they might feel a
twinge deep inside, but they're going to salute and go about their
business. It's going to take dedicated action by politicians to
change the Army's policies towards women. Change isn't going to come
from inside the military.
Q: You also write about some of the other tensions between the male
and female cadets.
A: There's sexual tension. There are also minor rivalries between
men and women. Many male cadets secretly resent women for being, in
general, slower, weaker and more sensitive. These same male cadets
also resent other male cadets who are slower, weaker and more
sensitive. So it's not just about sex. It's more about ability. If
you can carry your load and keep up, you're going to win at least
grudging respect. If you fall behind, if you're a burden, you're
going to make enemies whether you're a man or a woman.
Q: But you don't really touch on gays in the military.
A. Bear in mind, this is the South. It didn't come up and it
wouldn't come up. It might at a bigger university or at a university
in a different region that is more open to homosexuality. Mostly,
when it came up, it was when someone was stating adamantly that they
were not gay.
Q: Surprisingly, there's almost nothing about racial tension in the
book. But you're writing about students at a university in the
South. What's happening there?
A: The Army was one of the first national institutions to
desegregate, and blacks have long been strongly represented in the
Army. In fact, in the non-commissioned officer corps, blacks seem to
be overrepresented. Some of the strongest NCOs I've known were
black: tough, strong, fair-minded and no-nonsense. There's little or
no racism in the Army. The color of your skin doesn't matter. It's
what you can do, and whether you take care of your buddy. The
service isn't nearly as fair to women as it is to minorities.
Q: Some cadets feel that the hardships are just not worth it. Can
you describe what made them drop out, and has Iraq increased the
drop out rate?
A: I haven't seen studies indicating whether or not Iraq is hurting
ROTC recruitment. I would guess that it is, but only slightly. ROTC
can always increase scholarships to make up losses. So I can't
really speak to long-term, Army-wide trends regarding ROTC
recruitment. But I did speak to cadets who dropped out of ROTC
specifically because of Iraq. They are few and far between, however.
Strangely, the Iraq war seems to have motivated many people to join
the military. It's something of a rallying call, I guess. That
phenomenon hasn't totally made up for shortfalls caused by people's
opposition to the war, but it has alleviated the losses. The
military has managed to sustain recruiting despite the war. Huge
bonuses have certainly helped.
Q: One cadet ends up getting booted from the program and then
shipped to Iraq. Can you talk about that?
A: Well, what really happened was that he got booted from ROTC,
forced to enlist as a result, and then, like most soldiers,
eventually got shipped off to Iraq. These days everyone in the Army
ends up in Iraq at least once, but in 2004 it wasn't quite so
certain. Cadets could imagine that they might ride out the war in
college. With this Iraq thing looking to be decades-long,
deployments into combat are now an accepted part of an Army career.
Just something everyone does.
Q. What has been the feedback from your book and what do you think
people can learn by reading it?
A: I haven't heard much since, as of this writing, the book isn't
out yet. I hope people will read it and appreciate what these
college kids go through as they prepare to serve this country. It's
easy to blame the Army for Iraq. But remember that it was our
elected civilian leaders that got us into this mess, not our
soldiers. They're just doing what they're told by their civilian
leaders. Respect cadets for their hard work, for their basic
goodness, and for the sacrifices they are preparing to make for an
admittedly dubious cause.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of