Corps Curriculum

Interest has declined in ROTC since the start of the Iraq war, but a number of students still find it the best way to be all they can be.

By Kathleen Holder

“Remember, keep the butt of your rifle out of the dirt,” instructed Army Sgt. Keith Schmidt, as a pair of students crept prone along the ground, pushing mounds of dirt clods and grass stubble forward with their bellies and crimson faces. “Keep your body flat. Make sure you look. Keep your head down!”

The M-16 rifles were made of rubber, and the exercise was only a drill—part of an introductory laboratory course for freshman and sophomore ROTC cadets. The ground was free of booby traps. Only a jackrabbit bolted from the brush near the banks of Putah Creek south of campus. Rather than enemy fire, the cadets heard words of encouragement from drill leaders and the sounds of their own labored breathing in the 90-degree heat.

But real combat is clearly on the mind of ROTC cadets and their officers.

Senior Katie Werback, who urged the lower-division cadets to keep moving, said she has known from the moment that she accepted a Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship as a freshman that she could end up in a war zone. She started her first military-science course just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Werback expects to go to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri for her Officer Basic Course after receiving her bachelor’s diploma in civil engineering and her second lieutenant’s commission in December.

She hopes, after completing the six- to eight-month training, to get stationed in Korea, Germany or Alaska, and eventually make her way into the Army Corps of Engineers to work on environmental projects. “I’ll try to stay out of the war,” she said. “I don’t need to go home in a body bag.”

Enrollment in college ROTC programs nationwide has declined about 16 percent since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. At UC Davis, participation dropped from 90 in spring 2003 to about 70 students last spring, with a bit of a rebound this fall to about 80 UC Davis students. Capt. Jason Hioco ’95 said another 40 students come from California State University, Sacramento, which has an Air Force ROTC program but not Army.

With a combined total of 120 cadets, UC Davis has the largest ROTC program in California, Hioco said. Even with the recent enrollment slump, the UC Davis program commissions 30 to 40 graduating seniors as second lieutenants each year, exceeding the Army’s goal of 23, Hioco said.

An estimated 60 Aggie alumni have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan. One ROTC alumnus, Army Surgeon Mark Taylor ’91, was killed in action in March 2004. Another, Carson Spears ’01, received shrapnel wounds. (See related story about alumni serving in Iraq, page 32).

“The war has affected things. It brings a sense of reality to the Army and what serving in the military can possibly bring,” said Hioco.

The Army has assigned Iraq war veterans like Schmidt and Hioco to train UC Davis cadets as future officers. Schmidt, who taught students to keep their heads down while crawling on the ground, spent a year in Iraq leading a 1st Cavalry tank platoon. Hioco commanded an infantry company with the California National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 185th Armor Regiment in Iraq before returning in May to the UC Davis ROTC program where he got his first officer training.

“My concern as we come back as veterans is that we share as much knowledge as we can so that they [cadets] can go into those situations and not have to figure it out all over again,” he said.

Before Sept. 11, ROTC officers would wonder how their cadets would perform in national training exercises, Hioco said. “Now you look at a kid and think, ‘Is he going to do well in combat?’”

ROTC at UC Davis dates back to the 1920s, with roots in two prior wars—World War I, with the 1916 National Defense Act, and the Civil War, with an 1862 federal act that established land-grant colleges for instruction in agriculture, “mechanic arts” and military tactics. And for two years during World War II, the campus was closed and converted to a Western Army Signal Corps School.

Over the years, the UC Davis ROTC program has weathered periodic opposition, including student demonstrations, a firebomb attack on its Hickey Gym offices and a faculty review of military courses during the Vietnam War, protests in the early 1990s over the military’s exclusion of homosexuals, and recent calls from Iraq war protesters to ban military recruiters from campus.

Today, recruiting efforts on campus are low-key: introductory letters mailed to in-coming students and informational tables in the residence halls during the first week of fall quarter, Hioco said. “There’s no arm twisting or convincing. We don’t have any flashy videos. If they’re interested, they’ll come. If they’re not, they’ll stay away.”

Any student can take lower-division military science courses on campus. Those who continue as juniors and seniors must sign contracts to join the Army after graduation.

Many ROTC cadets say they join, in large part, for the money. ROTC offers two-, three- and four-year scholarships that cover a cadet’s registration fees, some book costs and other student fees, and pay a $250 to $350 monthly stipend. In return, the cadets agree to serve four years in the Army or eight years in the California National Guard or the Army Reserves.

“If I didn’t have the ROTC scholarship, I’d probably go to a JC,” said Josh Causie, a freshman history major from Auburn.

Still, he and other cadets also cite other reasons for joining, including the physical challenge, discipline, camaraderie, leadership training and the chance to make a difference.

Matt Closson, a freshman history major from Pleasanton, said he had tried to enlist in the military when he was 17, but his mother insisted he go to college. He said he hopes that, if he trains and studies hard, he can help save the lives of American troops in Iraq. “Maybe I can go there and bring some of these guys back.”

Nationwide, ROTC trains close to 60 percent of the Army’s officers, commissioning 4,000 to 4,500 new officers each year. Supporters say it is critical to the country that officers are not just the products of military academies.

“Some day these lieutenants here are going to be the ones who are in charge [of the Army],” Hioco said. “It’s extremely important to the Army that these programs are on campuses so we can have that wide variety of influences and backgrounds.”

Each quarter, ROTC cadets take a military science course, participate in a laboratory class in military leadership and operations, and work out at 6:30 a.m. at least three times a week.

“The real goal of this program is not to train cadets how to shoot an M-16 or jump out of an airplane,” Hioco said. “The real goal is to develop leaders and develop officers.”

Mike Scheer, who graduated and got his second lieutenant bars in June, said ROTC taught him how to apply himself as a student and helped him raise his grades while attending UC Davis.

He said he expects to eventually go to Iraq after completing Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning in Georgia. Both his parents are veterans—his father served in the Vietnam War and his mother was an Army nurse in Korea. He said most of his relatives worry about his safety. Nevertheless, he said, joining the Army “just feels to me that it’s the right thing to do.”

Cadets say, while their camouflage and boots sometimes draw looks from classmates, they face little hostility on campus.

Werback said her friends are “either really impressed, or they make fun of me working out at 6:30 in the morning three times a week.”

One of three women in her cadet class of 30, Werback often went the extra mile. She participated on a Ranger Challenge team, which trained five mornings a week and competed against other ROTC programs in eight events: rope bridge, weapons assembly, 10K road march, Army Physical Fitness Test, basic rifle marksmanship, grenade assault course, patrolling and orienteering. She also finished a 26-mile desert Bataan Memorial Death March, wearing Army boots and a 35-pound pack. As she prepared for graduation, she trained with the goal of passing the men’s requirements for the Army’s physical test, with more push-ups and a faster two-mile run than required of women.

“I didn’t want to be one of those people who come to college and sit on their butt and study all the time,” said Werback.

Unlike many ROTC cadets, Werback didn’t need the scholarship to attend UC Davis. Her parents are Aggie alumni and Silicon Valley software engineers and had saved money for her college education. “When I first signed up for this scholarship, everybody said, ‘Please don’t,’” Werback recalled.

Werback liked the idea of saving her parents’ money but said: “I think it’s worth more in a bigger sense. We have a close-knit base that some college students don’t end up with…. It feels like giving back.”

Her mother, Mary Ann “Sam” Werback ’72, said she was surprised when her outgoing, athletic Girl Scout decided to sign up for ROTC. “But I thought about it. It’s an OK thing to do. She pretty much knows her own mind, and she’s a reasonable person. She really enjoys it. It’s her choice. So all we can do is support her.”

Andy Werback ’71, M.S. ’72, who served two years in ROTC at UC Davis before the Vietnam War-era draft ended in 1973, said, with Silicon Valley jobs moving to South Asia, he came to see the Army as a good career move for his engineer daughter. “The Army seems like a really good way to get experience.”

But, he added, “We’re just concerned about where she ends up.”

Kathleen Holder is associate editor of UC Davis Magazine.