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In This Issue
- Toddler Sex Toy Secrets Revealed
- Belgian Makes Fun of Belgians
- Sobriety: Mardi Gras Withdrawal
- Letters to the Feditor
- John Ashcroft = Scary
- Marauding Interviewer: Ass Virginity En Masse
- Inside the Real ROTC
- Columbia's Just Being Nice to Get You into the Sack
- Unleash the Flood Waters
- Your Local Forecast
- Oompa-Loompas' Fingers Too Short for Shocker
- Portrait of the Masturbator as a Young Man
- And Now, the Fed Translates the Creepiest Ad Ever
- Jacko Makes Cocktail Party Chitchat
- Spring Fashion: Haute Couture in Haute Alert
- At Your Local Supermarket
- Ode d'Orange
- THEY Watch
- Wacky Fun Whitey Wets the Bed
- An Outdoor Conversation
- Roboninja
- Poor Orange
- The Staff
Inside the Real ROTC
Fed writer discovers that it's a lot like the Eagle Scouts, only with more pageantry
Ted Holden
Arguments for and against reinstating Reserve Officer Training Corps at Columbia have been numerous and fierce, but both sides are a little too wrapped up in ideology to understand the actual truth about ROTC. For example, the anti-ROTC crowd (I'm referring mostly to the Socialists here) sees ROTC as a conspiracy of the military-industrial complex set to militarize academics, although it's a voluntary program that attracts students who already support the military's continued existence. The pro-ROTC students (led by Students United For America) cite the needs for more educated and informed military leadership, although the educated leadership of the military already comes from hardcore military academies like West Point and VMI. Then again, ROTC has had some success stories, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell (though some might argue that you don't need ROTC training to reluctantly support invasion of Iraq every twelve years). But the question remains - what is it that ROTC at Columbia would actually do?
My own experience with ROTC started out well enough. I signed up hoping a full scholarship for college and a high position in the Air Force. The first part of the process was easy enough - I had to fill out a contract affirming that I had never taken marijuana (no hard task for someone square enough to want an Air Force officership), and then a personal questionnaire with half the questions blacked out with a thick marker (forms so old that some had "Department of War" letterheads). So far, ROTC was pretty effortless. However, the effortlessness was soon transmogrified into incompetence once I had a chance to follow a group of cadets through morning training and exercises.
That morning, from 5:30 to 6:30, each cadet gave a five-minute presentation concerning some aspect of strategy or operation. I arrived halfway through, but the presentations I did see included an analysis of the blitz against France, followed by an analysis of Caesar's forces against the French Gauls, which was then followed by an analysis of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Last came a ten-minute slideshow about the Algerian defeat of, you guessed it, the French.
I soon followed the cadets to morning PT, which amounted to running a quarter-mile and doing twenty-five jumping jacks. Hardcore. We then learned how to perform a low-crawl, which is essentially squirming facedown on the ground moving only your right leg and left shoulder. We crawled a grand total of ten feet before the group broke up to have Oreos and orange-drink.
The remainder of the day's exercises was a scavenger hunt across a local playground designed to teach radio language. One student remarked that it was "totally Alpha Whiskey Echo Sierra Oscar Mike Echo!" and the cadets erupted in laughter. The captain rubbed his temples, shook his head, and resumed whatever he was doing with his oversized clipboard. As for the scavenger hunt, it came to a premature end when, as we rounded the teeter-totter, a member of the opposing team jumped out and yelled "BANG!" indicating we had trod into a minefield. Raspberries!
In the end, I became a little disenchanted with ROTC training. Later, when I received my aid package, I would truly understand what a crappy organization it was. I had only qualified for a Type II scholarship (15K/year), rather than a full-tuition Type A (yes, the scholarships were qualified as A and II). To compound matters, I had been assigned to Computer Science and German (majors I had only indicated as "tentative"), and was forbidden to drop or change either, lest I lose my scholarship.
I bid a hearty "screw you" to ROTC soon thereafter. Let Columbia foot the bill.
What can I say about arguments for or against ROTC at Columbia? First, if you really want to be an effective military leader, graduate Columbia and enlist in OCS. Second, if you want SU4A to shut up, give them their ROTC and laugh at them while they low-crawl across VanAm Quad at six in the morning on a Saturday. Finally, to SU4A, think real hard in case you, at any point, want to change majors, transfer colleges, or sleep in on weekends - you do want to keep your scholarship, right? Of course, some people actually do it for free, and I hope they have fun occupying Iraq after graduation.