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Boots on the Ground: ROTC at Harvard
Boots on the Ground: ROTC at Harvard
Four years after the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps’ reinstatement on campus, the challenges of reuniting two long separated institutional and bureaucratic giants—Harvard University and the United States military—remain.
It’s a frigid night in mid-February, and for those who have braved the growing piles of snow outside, the Gordon Indoor Track provides a warm, if crowded, refuge. Various teams jostle for practice space, mostly ignoring the gray-clad group of students on the infield. Ten minutes ago, the track echoed with the shouts of cheerleading practice. Now, there’s a markedly different tone in the air, as Harvard students in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps take to the track.“Off to battle we will go, to live or die, hell I don’t know,” yells James J. W. Clarke ’16 as he circles the track. Beside him, a group of cadets stride in time, repeating the traditional lyrics. This is a cadence, a rhythmic call-and-response drill the cadets use to practice marching. In formation along the outside edge of the track, they’re careful to leave room for the ultimate frisbee team. It’s 9:30 p.m. on a Thursday, almost at the end of an hour-long physical training session. The cadets wear matching workout gear emblazoned with “ARMY,” hair either closely shorn or pulled back into tight ponytails.“From a big bird in the sky, all will jump and some will die,” Clarke continues as the cadets round the track.Somewhere between solemn and facetious, the lyrics allude to an intensely real future that the rest of the workout—push-ups, sprints, burpees, and mountain-climbers—has made easy to ignore. For now, Clarke and the rest are student-soldiers, existing in the sometimes chaotic space between p-sets and platoons, not to mention the gap between the formidable and not always aligned institutions of Harvard and the military. But someday soon, if they complete the program, they’ll take on new roles as commissioned officers.Following the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy towards gay and lesbian service members, Harvard officially recognized both Navy ROTC in 2011 and Army ROTC in 2012 to celebratory fanfare. But for students in the program, the merit of reinstatement was largely symbolic. Besides a few benefits like Harvard-funded Zipcars to and from physical training as well as largely unused office spaces in the Student Organization Center at Hilles, the program is largely unchanged on a logistical level. There’s a sense among students in ROTC, alumni of the program, and veterans at Harvard’s graduate schools that the University could be doing more to accommodate students and to grow ROTC’s once-expansive presence on campus.The challenges of reuniting two long separated institutional and bureaucratic giants—Harvard University and the United States military—remain.
Last edited by Common Sense (2/27/2015 7:23 am)
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