Photo by Eli Kaplan
Military Science cadets stand at attention following physical training at Clark Field.

Five Years Into Iraq UT Students Are Still Opting to Serve

By Mike Jeffers
AUSTIN -- Charles Tofel, is within a month of becoming a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. The 22-year-old University of Texas business major could likely land a management-track job in the corporate world with his degree, but instead will devote his leadership skills to military service, for less pay, in potentially grueling or even deadly conditions, and in faraway places. With that in mind, Tofel is busy wrapping up his last few classes and Reserve Officers’s Training Corps requirements—without regret.

“I couldn’t see myself doing anything else,” said Toffel. “I’d be pretty sad if I wasn’t able to commission. It’s about doing something bigger than yourself.”

ROTC is a program available to university students at most accredited college campuses that provides full-time students with training to become full-fledged officers after they graduate. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all have ROTC detachments at UT.

Reasons for pursuing a commission in the military via ROTC vary, but interviews with members of each branch of service at UT suggest common themes: family legacy, a desire to give back to the country, and money for education, or some combination thereof. Many ROTC students receive scholarships for school in exchange for a commitment to serve a designated number of years in the military after graduation.

“Some cadets come from families where no one has served so it becomes a personal challenge,” said Maj. Darrel J. Debish, executive officer of the Army detachment at UT.

Five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and almost seven years after the attacks of 9/11, Tofel is one of about 100 UT students who will be commissioned as officers in the U.S. military next month upon completion of their degrees and ROTC program requirements. By comparison, Texas A&M has approximately 2,000 students currently enrolled in the uniformed Corp of Cadets, a military-like program that can be combined with ROTC training in pursuit of an officer’s commission. Of that number 42 percent become military officers–-they commission about 150 a year. Considering some of the ROTC members are students at other local universities without ROTC programs, the number of UT graduates who will serve in the U.S. military directly after finishing college is relatively small.

But while the numbers may seem limited, officers from all four branches said they consistently receive more applications to join ROTC at UT than they are able to accept. The ROTC program at UT is set up on a smaller scale than at A&M, which was previously an all-male military school.

“We saw a huge spike after 9/11,” said Col. Michael Harris, commander of UT’s Air Force ROTC detachment. “Since then Air Force ROTC numbers have slowly gone down, but we have always accessed more than we need.”

Each ROTC detachment requires its students to take additional elective classes and participate in a range of extracurricular activities and military training during both the school year and summer vacation. Each program is tailored to the branch of military the new officers will join by providing summer experiences and training with active duty units so future officers have an idea of what to expect upon completion of the program.

The cadets, as they are referred to in the Army and Air Force programs, and midshipmen, in the Navy and the Marine Corps programs, come from a wide array of backgrounds. In addition to receiving training to become military officers the cadets appreciated being part of an organization that becomes a “tight-knit family” during their tenure at a large university.

Actual ROTC training is a hybrid of college life and military life. Cadets take military science classes and wake up early for physical training two or three days a week. But the rest of their time is their own to focus on school and recreation, just like any other student.

Occasionally the officers-in-training must walk a fine line between military service and the political activity familiar to the environment of a large university. Harris described a situation wherein a group of Air Force cadets encountered a student media group opposed to the current war in Iraq. The cadets relied on their training not to engage in open politic debate or to become personally involved in the situation, Harris said, despite any impulses to do otherwise. “We go where we’re told to go, we take an oath to support and defend the constitution,” he said. That means following the orders of the elected officials appointed over the military, no matter how controversial their tenures in office.

“Officers take an oath to serve the officers above them, if they personally disagree they keep it to themselves” Debish said .

Although many cadets receive scholarships, training and a guaranteed job after graduation, some don’t make the cut. “We screen people to make sure they have the intelligence and physical aptitude to succeed,” said Marine Capt. Ronald Lobato.

The ROTC cadre from all the detachments at UT said that many students discover that military life is not a good fit for them and drop out, or they are eliminated for medical or performance-related reasons during the various phases of the program. The overall dropout rate is between 25 and 30 percent over a four-year period, though certain phases of the program have a higher dropout rates than others. Marine-option midshipmen, for example, are required to attend Officer Candidate School for six weeks, an intense physical and mental training program with a 30 percent drop rate. For some midshipmen, the voyage ends there.

The cadets that make it offer a variety of skills to the military.

Army cadet and UT senior Tonya Burgoon, a linguistics major fluent in Russian with a basic knowledge of Spanish and Arabic, is about to commission in the Army as a military intelligence officer. She comes from a family with ties to both the Army and Navy and chose the Army after being awarded scholarships from both. She first became affiliated with the Army through the JROTC program, an organization for high school students to gain exposure to the military.

“I didn’t like the idea of being stuck on a ship, and the Navy’s drill is different,” she said, referring to the different ways in which the Army and Navy practice marching and drill maneuvers.

Reid Koenig, a 20-year-old Criminal Justice major at St. Edwards University, began his military service as an enlisted soldier in the Army National Guard. He said he hopes to become a military police officer and is receiving a three-year scholarship, which covers the cost of tuition at his private university.

Will Wang, a Navy midshipman and business major from Sugarland, Texas, will soon become a submarine officer and attend the Navy’s Nuclear Power School in Goose Creek, S.C. Wang has no history of military in his family and was awarded a four-year scholarship out of high school. Wang could likely land a high paying job in the commercial sector upon graduation if he opted for a civilian career in the business world but he said he is attracted to the responsibility of being a naval officer.

Wang and Tofel both compared the leadership training they receive in the business school to their military training. Although Wang will spend most of his first year as an officer in training, he said the level of responsibility that he and his fellow midshipmen will bear during their first years as officers is much higher than they would have as civilians.

Midshipmen who will become surface warfare officers, or SWOs, go straight to fleet after graduation and get the remainder of their training on the job, Wang said.

“My friend who is a SWO is going from college student to driving a multimillion dollar ship in the Persian Gulf right after graduation.”

Tofel spoke well of the quality of the leadership training he’s received during his time at UT. But the training the cadets receive here is only a foundation for the real-world grounding they’ll get when they join the active duty military.

“Sending me straight to Iraq could get a lot of people killed,” Tofel said half-jokingly.