PLAYING SOLDIER
Hoffman, Carl
Playing Soldier ROTC goes to high school BY CARL HOFFMAN Adecade ago, students at Woodrow Wilson High School could find haven in a long, narrow room in the basement. Graffiti covered the walls....
...That explains why the Atlanta Peace Alliance is fighting to reach young people...
...In my history class, there is one girl who is into peace and being a hippie-type girl...
...You know, a uniform always brings people out of the closet...
...In this bright, upbeat room, there are none of the disturbing images that have come to be associated with Vietnam: no pictures of naked little girls running from napalm...
...Before and after school, cadets participate in color guard and on the drill, rifle, map, and ranger teams...
...She knows, however, that "a lot of people died during the war...
...Today, the walls sport a shiny coat of green paint, and a new linoleum floor has been laid...
...Brian Taylor, a member of the Peace Alliance, says his organization seeks to "participate in career days, address classes if we're invited by a student or teacher, put counseling ads in student newspapers, and put literature in career counseling offices...
...Why do students join ROTC...
...When you mix academics and the military, you always have some controversy," says Moore...
...Keenen Peck (Keenen Peck is an associate editor of The Progressive...
...It recently sued school officials to obtain the same access to students that military recruiters receive...
...The other half is picked up by the local school system...
...I like the things they offer...
...She wrote a peace sign on the wall, and [a ranger drew a picture of] a gun shooting it...
...Wooden desks, torn couches, and old theater sets and costumes cluttered the floor...
...I feel I should go if it's for a good purpose...
...Some antiwar groups have scored victories outside of the courts...
...The Pentagon will be doing it's best in Atlanta to stop this peace offensive...
...In September, after a twelve-year absence, ROTC cadets will resume firing .22-caliber rifles here...
...With the training and background of junior ROTC, he "can get ranked quicker because I know what's expected of me and what to do...
...For a woman who plans to spend the next eight to twelve years in the military—ROTC has offered her a full four-year college scholarship— her grasp of international politics is tenuous...
...In April, Clergy and Laity Concerned worked out a set of ground rules with school administrators, and it is now making student education "a major focus of work," according to one activist in the group...
...Instead, they present the armed forces as a benign sponsor of classes and extracurricular activities...
...But James Littlejohn, a seventeen-year-old at Wilson, says he and "most of the people who are taking ROTC will be going into some kind of service...
...If the Government allowed the Republicans to talk about the Republican Party in school, they would have to let the Democrats talk about the Democratic Party," he explains...
...But Joe Stechschulte, also an English teacher, wonders "whether the school should be tied into military training...
...Littlejohn wants to enter the Army "for adventure and training," he says...
...According to Moore and Michael Durso, the principal, there was little protest when ROTC was reinstated at Wilson...
...On a table near the doorway stands the six-foot trophy awarded to the Wilson Armed Drill Team for placing second in a national competition...
...They can't let in some groups and not others...
...Nationwide, the number of high school Carl Hoffman, a Washington free-lance writer, attended Woodrow Wilson High School...
...The Wilson unit boasts 132 cadets out of about 1,600 students...
...To most high school students, the Vietnam war is little more than an entry in the history texts...
...It was hard to imagine that this was once a rifle range where students drilled, practiced marksmanship, and trumpeted patriotism...
...He wants a war so he can fight in it...
...He says only a few of the cadets will enter the service after high school...
...In Madison, Wisconsin, Vietnam Veterans Against the War persuaded the school board to observe strict limits on recruiting...
...ROTC is fun...
...And in any event, says Ralph Goldberg, the group's attorney, "they have opened up the schools as a limited public forum" by inviting recruiters...
...We had one teacher who resented the rifles used by the students during drill...
...Before the Vietnam war and Watergate, it had been used by the junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC...
...Gwen, a student dressed entirely in black, bedecked with chains and studded jewelry, says cadets are used to keep order during school assemblies...
...They're nothing...
...The Alliance would discuss "careers in peacemaking," provide information about conscientious objector status, and pinpoint "things to watch out for" when a recruiter makes promises...
...In Washington, a retired, married lieutenant colonel with more than twenty years of service—the minimum requirement for an ROTC leader-earns $30,702 a year...
...I have this thing about helping people," she says, "and if we're going to help their government, or their people, then fine...
...There is not one iota of evidence" that school officials would issue a blanket prohibition, the Peace Alliance responds in its brief...
...of weary soldiers hiding behind sandbags...
...The domestic wounds opened by the Vietnam war have barely left a scar on today's youth...
...Erica Fennel counters, "I don't know why people are down on the military, because half the time they don't know anything about it...
...I don't want to go kill anybody, I just think it would be fun...
...Three other teachers declined to give me their opinions on ROTC...
...Between classes or in the late afternoon, teens would sneak downstairs "to smoke pot, kiss, drink beer, and write on the walls," recalls one graduate...
...In San Diego, California, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, school administrators agreed to let activists tell students about careers that promote peace...
...Erica Fennel, a captain in her second year of ROTC at Wilson, says she does "not really understand Vietnam...
...And the junior ROTC does not "dwell on it," Moore says...
...We're arguing that they're excluding groups based on the content of their message...
...Meanwhile, organizers in other parts of the country have been showing copies of the Chicago decision to principals, asking for access...
...They march around like they're all big and bad, and nobody cares about them...
...It was restored in 1984 at the request of some parents, students, and the principal...
...But if we're going there just to kill, then I don't want people just to think that's what we're going there for...
...They think they own the fucking place, which is a bunch of crap...
...Wilson, a racially mixed public school in one of Washington's high-income neighborhoods, dropped its ROTC unit in 1973 because of the "controversy surrounding the Vietnam war and opposition to things in uniform at that time," says Moore, a soft-spoken officer who retired last year after twenty-four years in the Army...
...Not to solve anything...
...The lawsuit began as a local dispute between the school system and the antiwar activists, but on July 9, U.S...
...The kids in ROTC are a bunch of pig assholes," she declares...
...Our whole aim," Moore explains, "is toward teaching patriotism and respect for authority...
...Most sign up, Moore believes, because they like the extracurricular offerings and want to experience the "self-discipline of having to wake up early and of having to keep the brass shined...
...Cadets earn one of the seventeen class-units needed for graduation by taking courses in "leadership development, map reading, military history, human behavior, hygiene and first aid, and rifle marksmanship...
...The Pentagon provides uniforms, equipment (including rifles), and half the salary for each ROTC unit's staff...
...About one out of five graduates goes straight into the armed forces...
...The ROTC units, combined with intensive recruiting efforts aimed at the general student population, have produced a steady stream of enlistees...
...On Tuesdays and Thursdays, young men and women in patent-leather shoes and crisp green uniforms make their presence felt in the hallways and classrooms...
...The deadlier side of military service is out of sight and out of mind...
...They just want to go fight and kill people...
...Government lawyers contend that the Pentagon's access to students "will be adversely affected if plaintiffs are successful in converting the Atlanta schools into a public forum every time a recruiter enters the school...
...In the absence of an all-out war, junior ROTC seems to promise merely fun and opportunity—shiny uniforms, a dose of patriotism, training in the proper way to fire a rifle, maybe even a job down the road...
...Last year, a Federal court in Chicago used "the dual mandate of the First Amendment and the equal protection clause" to grant access to Clergy and Laity Concerned, a peace organization...
...Erica Fennel says she joined ROTC because "my dad is in the Army, and he's learned a lot, and I look up to him...
...And the Pentagon's junior ROTC budget has jumped from $11.3 million in 1980 to almost $25 million in 1985...
...units has grown from 287 in 1980 to 826 in 1985...
...the subject is "still controversial...
...They fear that school administrators might simply bar both recruiters and peace organizers...
...The change at Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C., exemplifies a trend: ROTC is back in force at the high schools...
...The Alliance brought suit under the First Amendment as well as the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment...
...Once school officials open a forum for the expression of views, Judge George Leighton found, they "cannot pick and choose which views they feel should be expressed in the forum...
...The spacious ROTC office, across the hall from the rifle range, showcases Army recruiting posters—toothy smiles of men and women "being all they can be" as they study, repair engines, or direct air traffic...
...ROTC administrators downplay war-fighting, the purpose of the military...
...By comparison, a first-year English teacher with a bachelor's degree receives an annual salary of $17,000...
...I don't even know what their point in being there is...
...Though the resurgence of ROTC has not sparked active resistance, some students dislike the cadets...
...Her friend Christian says, "Some of the ranger guys seem kind of crazy to me...
...M Hearts and Minds In Atlanta, junior ROTC has marched into all twenty-two public high schools...
...of street executions...
...the number of cadets has increased from 70,000 in 1980 to 131,493 in 1985...
...Another student, Josh, charges that those in ROTC "want to go into a war so they can fight...
...Six wire cables attached to targets run the length of the room...
...They think we're there to kill, and that's not it...
...It was a cause, and I feel proud to wear the uniform...
...District Judge Marvin Shoob allowed the Federal Government to enter the case against the Peace Alliance...
...Jeanette Feely, an English instructor, approves of the program, saying it "helps to teach a certain kind of discipline that young people need...
...The glamour of the service, tarnished during the Vietnam era, is coming back to the forefront," says Colonel Bobby Moore, the head instructor of Wilson's ROTC...
Vol. 49 • September 1985 • No. 9
