We Trained With ROTC For a Week. Here’s How We Fared.
Putting the ‘ran’ in Veterans Day
This October, an intrepid band of students set out to join ROTC for a week of their training, looking to glean some insight into an overlooked corner of campus life. Their travails are chronicled below. Despite the early mornings and clumsy boots, they found a sense of camaraderie, purpose, and responsible leadership among the ROTC cadets that is too often missing elsewhere on campus.
Day 1: Physical Training
Caleb Rasor, sporting a fitting Team USA compression workout shirt, and Shiv Parihar, in a press-minded Washington Post tee, ambled to the Bauer Center for physical training before dawn on a warm Thursday morning. Neither were fully prepared for the exertion they were about to withstand.
The cadets’ camaraderie was evident from the start: slaps on the shoulder and a jubilant round of “happy birthday!” wishes to Cadet Nelson. The birthday boy had woken up ten minutes ago. Needless to say, he later outperformed both of The Forum’s intrepid reporters by an order of magnitude.
Within minutes, commanding voices ordered and students obeyed by lining up in formation.
“Does anyone know why this day is special?” Cadet Truong announced.
A freshman raised his hand.
“Cadet Benardete?”
Benardete had read the emails. 108 years ago on that day, October 8th of 1918, Sergeant Alvin York captured 132 of the Kaiser’s Germans. The famous Sergeant York was originally a conscientious objector, but was convinced that serving his country in the First World War was just. This Tennessee woodsman remains one of America’s most decorated warriors.
Naturally, ROTC celebrated with a touch of pain. For each of the three rounds, every squad would complete a total of 132 pushups, situps, squats, and lunges in honor of the 132 captured Germans. That is, every squad except for the young Cadet Benardete's, which would take the first round off. Shiv, in Benardete's squad and soon to be huffing his breath away at the back of the pack, welcomed the break.
Cadets embraced their competitive spirit, fighting alongside their team to be the first to complete not only all 132 repetitions of each exercise, but run a full lap around the Sports Bowl track. The Army’s Soldier’s Creed to “never leave a fallen comrade” was evident: Cadets regularly picked up extra exercises from squad members to hit the required total. In the end, two of the three squads ended up in a dead tie; it took a one-to-one matchup between Cadets Ye and Kimm to finally settle the winning squad.
Not all of ROTC trained with The Forum. Some cadets go the extra mile in Ranger Challenge, an ROTC program where cadets show up in full military fatigues to complete extra physical training meant to simulate the prestigious Ranger School. At the end of the year, the Golden Lion Battalion will send its own Ranger Challenge team to compete against officers-in-training from the nation’s colleges.
In exchange for participation, cadets will receive points in the ranking of national cadets that occurs every year and helps determine their final military career path. Claremont ROTC alumni have worked in every part of the military, from flying helicopters to managing human relations.
In fact, CMC used to be a “feeder” into Army leadership, at least relative to its size. The second highest ranking general in the United States Army from 1997 to 1998 was a CMC alumnus, William W. Crouch. It’s a far cry from today, where leadership in finance and consulting has eclipsed public service as the soul of the college.
Day 2: Ruck
Jasper Langley-Hawthorne begrudgingly arrived outside Bauer at 0540 hours to join the battalion on a ruck. For the uninitiated, a ruck is a run carrying a weighted backpack, a fun portmanteau for a decidedly un-fun activity.
As cadets began to trickle in, one MS4 announced that “Morale is high. So high.”
For Jasper, it was not.
The battalion was getting ready for a 4-mile ruck with 35 pound packs; for many freshman cadets, this was their first ruck. Jasper watched in bleary amusement as the freshman got dressed down by the MS4s for the messy state of their packs (Jasper had his packed for him.)
The ruck did not start on time. As the sun peeked over the wire-fenced rim of the Sports Bowl, the tightly-packed group of jogging cadets soon broke up into little bands like warheads on a Minuteman III missile. As he ran alongside them, Jasper was introduced to the unwieldy gear provided by the Army for its cadets. The provisioned boots are lovingly nicknamed ‘bricks’ given their weight (around two pounds) and cumbersomeness (one freshman cadet twisted his ankle only a little ways into the ordeal).
Around a quarter of the way through the course, Jasper found himself running alongside cadets from Pitzer and Scripps. While ROTC members who attend Pitzer, Pomona, and, for the first time this year, Scripps, are never openly critiqued, many told The Forum that they feel uncomfortable or embarrassed while walking in camo on their home campus. “I try to get back to my dorm as quickly as possible,” an anonymous cadet said.
People’s taste in the military, especially those on the left, has certainly soured somewhat. However, the ROTC student body includes individuals of all political leanings, and conversations during ROTC programming remain strictly nonpartisan.
Running alongside a freshman cadet, Jasper asked why he had decided to join ROTC. The cadet responded that he had done JROTC in high school, and therefore had the dubious honor of carrying the battalion flag. Like a Sword of Damocles glinting over his head, he faced trouble should he let any cadet of higher rank steal it from him. Jokes aside, it clearly meant a lot for him to carry it. The flag is passed on to the most deserving cadet each semester.
At three minutes past 0730, Jasper shuffled across the finish line, his shoulders and lungs burning. Around him other cadets were peeling off their packs and chatting amiably. The going had been tough as the sun rose on another day of 100 degree heat. Back on the ruck route, the Ranger Training leader yelled at the straggling cadets for letting our surely weak and measly reporter pass ahead of them.
With the sun bathing the RDSC in a warm glow and the stars and stripes beaming proudly from the patch on his pack, Jasper felt that peculiar sense of boundless freedom that he knew to be the American dream.
Day 3: Land Navigation
Jathan Pai arrived in the dusty deserts of San Bernardino for ROTC’s “Land Navigation” day with a cold three-liter reservoir of water, a hat, a small paring knife, and a clipboard.
“Line up for your compass, single file!” ordered a senior, also known as an “MS4.”
“Uuup,” the young cadets responded.
Jathan walked past the line of bright-eyed faces. Like the temperature, spirits were high as the groups bantered about their navigation skills. This “lab,” led by two MS4s, brought together six Army ROTC programs across the Inland Empire.
The cadets would organize into squads, set out into the desert, find their way through the thick snake-filled brush with a compass and a map, and return having found some or all of the four flags. Jathan was assigned to a group of young cadets, MS1s, whose mission now was to take a reporter into the wilderness and bring him back alive.
These MS1s, Cadets Dowdy, Kimm, and Ye, were especially fresh. When Jathan inquired what the “MS” in “MS1” stood for, the young cadets’ best guess was “midshipman” despite being in the Army version of ROTC, a famously land-based branch of the military. The “Military Science 1s” (as Jathan discovered later) got on the ground and mapped the coordinates onto their paper.
The cadets found their first flag easily, relying solely on their compass and map. Shortly after, though, they realized that they didn’t know which of the four flags they had stumbled across.
Ye made the call, at this low point, to refer back to their training: Re-orient and reposition. Dowdy and Kimm agreed. After pacing around a bit in this area, they found the next flag. “We’re going to find all four!” they proclaimed. Unfortunately, their high was short-lived. Dowdy, the pace counter, now noticed some discrepancies in their calculations. The young cadets were lost again.
“You should’ve come last week,” Kimm insisted. “We found all four.”
They were running out of time.
“There’s a squad of cadets headed that way. Why don’t we investigate there?” Ye suggested. It became clear to Jathan that the wayfinding process had become less scientific. As the group trekked to and fro looking for a third flag, Jathan inquired about their loss.
“It’s not really losing if you got something out of it,” Kimm shrugged. Despite being beaten down by the heat, brush, and waypoints, the MS1s never gave up. The whole time, the resilient squad expressed their admiration for the perseverance and physical prowess of their MS4s, knowing with certainty that one day they’d be just like them.
The young cadets walked back weary, but not defeated. Jathan asked if they’d be provided lunch afterward, in part hoping to get a standard-issue meal himself. The young cadets let out a wry chuckle, as if they were seasoned veterans.
“What do you think this is, summer camp?”
As the tired squad walked along the path back to base camp, an MS4 yelled “Double time!” The young cadets obeyed, picking up the pace.
The Forum heard varied stated reasons for joining ROTC. Some chose it primarily for the scholarship, which at CMC covers full room and board and tuition for four years. Others are interested in entering a career in military leadership. Cadets compete for “branches,” or jobs, such as in intelligence, that are assigned to them halfway through senior year.
Jathan’s squad had no members with more than a few months of experience in college. They had all joined ROTC for different reasons: history of family service, job market benefits post-service, a calling to serve, and in Kimm’s case, a FOMO as all of his friends from home in Singapore would be serving.
Fresh out of high school, they are not completely sure where their careers will take them. However, it was clear that they were each focused on bettering themselves as leaders one step at a time. One might expect them to have conflict at the tense decision points, or to have the usual group dynamics of an emboldened leader and dejected followers. These cadets, though, embodied a true group of leaders.
Special thanks to MS4 Isaiah Shields CMC ‘27, without whom this article would not be possible.
