ROTC Students on Campus

By Colleen Cable

As freshman Teddy Moses feels the top of his head, instead of pulling his fingers through his typical curly hair, he now skims over his freshly buzzed head. “It still surprises me when I look in the mirror,” said Moses. As a new recruit into the Reserve Office Training Corp., Moses is already adapting to a more military lifestyle by cutting his hair to regulation length.

In addition to the shaved heads, cadets dedicate their time and energy to the ROTC, a program that “takes civilians and makes them officers in the US army,” said freshman Ben Flanders. ROTC prepares college students for officer positions in the US military after graduation.

There are currently two cadets already enrolled in the program and three newly joined members. The two cadets currently enrolled are contracted, which means their college education is paid for and they get a monthly stipend from the army. Being contracted also means that after graduation, that student must serve for an allotted amount of time, usually four years.

Physically and mentally, people in the ROTC need to be up to military standards. Military science classes, leadership labs, and physical training are all components of the ROTC experience. Two or three times a week, cadets have physical training from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m. “You got to learn to love getting up early to go for a run,” said Flanders.

While Gettysburg has not had an ROTC program since 1990, the five Gettysburg students go to Dickinson College to participate in the program. Three to four times a week the cadets must take the 39-minute commute to Dickinson for classes and physical training. “The commute sucks, I’d like to have [a battalion] here [but] as much as I don’t like it, I deal with it,” said Flanders. “Sacrifice is what I’ve been about for a long time,” he said. Freshman Brett Clark, who plays on the baseball team, also finds the commute to be an inconvenience. “It’s like having another practice during the day,” he said.

Another inconvenience for Gettysburg students is the policy of the school to refuse class credit for military science classes taken through the ROTC. “It is an imposition on them,” said former Registrar Ron Couchman. Couchman was Registrar when the decision was made to cut class credit. “They have to do Dickinson coursework without getting Gettysburg credit,” he said. The cadets at Gettysburg seem to all agree that taking a class without getting any credit is the most annoying part of being in the program.

The school refuses to take credit from ROTC classes because at the time the decision was made to stop taking the credits, a majority of the faculty believed that “military science [was] not an appropriate type of credit for a liberal arts college,” said Couchman. The issue of the army’s discriminatory practices was also raised.

“The one frustrating thing is that Gettysburg acknowledges we take the class but they don’t give us credit because of ‘don’t ask don’t tell,’” said Clark. There have been some attempts over the years to change the policy by students, but the faculty’s decision remains the same.

While going to a liberal arts college can have its drawbacks with respect to ROTC, it’s also a great alternative for students as opposed to attending a military academy. Life at a military academy is much different than that of a liberal arts college. At the academy, he would only get a military experience, but by coming to Gettysburg Flanders said he “get[s] a college experience in addition to a military experience.”

While only five students are currently cadets, back in the ROTC’s heyday, around the 1940′s, “it used to be huge,” said Couchman. ROTC was “an integral part of the campus,” he said. In fact, the battalion at Gettysburg was the seventh battalion in the country to receive a charter.

One reason the enrollment numbers have changed over the years is because participation in ROTC exempted students from the Gettysburg physical education requirement. When Gettysburg did away with that requirement, the numbers began to dwindle and finally shut down in 1990. A small battalion was not the only reason Gettysburg ROTC was shut down. In the late 1980′s, the army was streamlining itself, which meant closing certain ROTC battalions across the country, particularly the smaller ones.

1984 Gettysburg graduate and former member in ROTC, Robert Weaver is sad to see Gettysburg without an ROTC battalion. The army’s streamlining “put to death one of the earliest ROTC formations, in the town whose very name is synonymous with saving government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people.’”

Even with the inconveniences of commuting and receiving no college credit, the cadets agree that the experience is worth it. Being a part of the United States military “is not a job, it’s a lifestyle, it’s a part of who you are. I couldn’t go back to being just Joe Schmo on the street,” said Flanders.