Another school year begins, another college newspaper repeats an old cliché — that the U.S. military targets and exploits the poor and minorities. Unfortunately for Elisa Lazzarino, author of “ROTC Presence Promotes Militarization of the University, Exploits the Poor,” that stereotype flies in the face of the facts.
Though there is no definitive study of recruit income, studies based on census tracts suggest U.S. military recruits come from predominantly middle-class and upper-middle class neighborhoods. Most available evidence suggests the poor are actually underrepresented in the military.
The deck is actually stacked against America’s poorest neighborhoods. Less than a quarter of American youth meet the minimum standards to enlist in the U.S. Army, and those standards generally exclude dropouts, criminals and single parents — maladies which disproportionately affect the poor. The best indication of whether a young man or woman will join the military isn’t income, it’s whether they have a parent or close family member who served in the military.
Nevertheless, education benefits are certainly a popular reason for joining the military. I was fortunate in that neither I nor my sisters had to pay a single cent for our educations, which included 12 years of private school and four years of college each. But not all Americans are as lucky — over half of North Carolina college students graduate with student loan debt, at an average of $26,000 per graduate. If military recruits are in need of tuition assistance, it is because the majority of Americans need tuition assistance.
Ms. Lazzarino appears aghast Army ROTC is moving to urban areas and recruiting minorities. But this is a good thing for both the Army and our nation. The Army in general — and Army ROTC in particular — over-recruits from the South and rural areas. Over 40 percent of Army officers hail from the South, but just 15 percent of military recruits come from the Northeast.
But as more (predominantly rich) Americans gravitate towards larger cities, it only makes sense Army ROTC will follow them. Mainstream America would also benefit from seeing soldiers in its largest cities. Army bases are concentrated in the rural Southeast; the result is a nation and an Army which have little interaction with one another. More frequent interaction between the two benefits both soldiers and the society they serve.
Army ROTC is also right to recruit more minorities, especially considering white people make up 72 percent of the officer corps. Our nation is made of men and women from all walks of life, and our Army should reflect that. In fact, I credit my NC State experience — of which Army ROTC was a large part — for allowing me to interact with young people with many different beliefs and backgrounds. That’s something I didn’t get in a parochial high school with just three African-American graduates in a class of 169.
Finally, Ms. Lazzarino raises the issue of U.S. foreign policy. Though U.S. foreign policy is certainly not without its flaws, America is hardly the villain on the world stage that its critics believe it is. The United States — and particularly its military — is often the first to respond to humanitarian disasters in all corners of the world, as it did during the earthquake in Haiti (2010) and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan (2011).
The United States is also the first nation many smaller countries call for help in a crisis. This past year, U.S. armored vehicles drove from their home base in Vilseck, Germany to Estonia. The people of Eastern Europe, many of whom grew up as citizens of the Soviet Union, were overwhelmingly welcome to U.S. troops. Estonia, in particular, gave the American cavalrymen a warm response. Estonians know imperialism; for all but just a few years, they have lived under the boot heel of one empire or another. They know that only the United States military can stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s chronic bullying. America is by no means perfect, but no superpower has wielded its power as responsibly as the U.S.
NC State began as a land-grant university, where students received education in exchange for commissioned military service. The university’s iconic Belltower is a monument recognizing NC State graduates killed in service — the most recent while serving in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Even some of the top university administrators are products of the ROTC system. Our military has been here since the inception of the campus and it will continue to remain so.
Crispin Burke is an alumnus of NC State’s Army ROTC program in 2002. His views are his own and not those of the Department of Defense. This column is a response to Elisa Lazzarino’s column published on Sept. 6.
