Senior Sociology major Blake Miller wants to be in charge of a tank platoon once he graduates college. How will he be able to lead a tank platoon? What can any college student do to become a member of the armed forces with an officer ranking? According to Miller, ROTC is providing him a way to reach his goal.
“Before you go into your senior year, you give a list of your top branch preferences,” said Miller. “I’ll be leading a tank platoon, maneuvering them telling them what formation to learn in, but yeah I’ll be learning how to drive them and maintenance.”
He isn’t sure if he will leave the army or not after he is done with his service. He doesn’t have any family in the military so he isn’t quite sure what to expect from army life.
“I’m going to see how I like it first, like I said I don’t really have any family that has been in the army so I don’t really have an idea of how much I’ll like it, I might hate it and get out after three years I might love it and stay in. I know I want to get my masters in counseling and be a guidance counselor at a high school,” Miller said.
People like Miler don’t just go to college to get a regular major. They join the ROTC program. ROTC is an acronym for Reserve Officer Training Corps and is one path that many students across the country take to join the United States Military. It draws in thousands of students looking to potentially put their lives on the line for the country they love. The students have to deal with high standards, physical training or “PT” everyday, and tackle military classes, as well as more conventional college workloads.
The ROTC students, called “cadets” by their superiors, go through all of this and more in order to get a feel for the military lifestyle. They sign a contract that says they will serve for three years in the army, and spend the rest of their college days getting ready for military service.
The contract is called the ISTW, Illinois State Tuition Waiver. It is given to a cadet to sign after four semesters if he or she wants to continue with the ROTC courses and become an officer in the Army upon graduation. It also comes with benefits according to Miller.
“They will pay your tuition for the next four semesters and then you can walk away and be like ‘It’s not for me I tried it out I don’t like it’ and there is no commitment you just walk away. If you want to continue on into your junior year and keep getting money, then you do have to sign a contract,” said Miller.
Miller joined ROTC once he found out what it was. He heard about it before he went to community college. He wanted to join the army after high school, but his parents said he was too smart to just go to the army and should go to college first. He signed up for Lakeland College to appease his parents. He then saw an army affiliated program at EIU and asked if he could train with them. They told him to sign up for ROTC at Eastern and not bother with Lakeland, which he decided to do. He decided to join the army because no one in his family had done it before. He wanted to carve his own path, and he wanted to do something to help people.
“I’ve always liked the army since I was little, like watching soldier movies and running around the woods, shooting guns, it was cool to me,” said Miller.
Miller said his sociology major will help him a lot as well. He feels his ability to study people can help place them in the best positions possible in order to make them effective.
Karl Horn is a senior Geography major who decided to join ROTC after leaving the army.
“I liked the military life and I thought I can better myself by being an officer”, Miller said.
He said that there are differences between being an officer and an enlisted man. Enlisted men do more of the heavy lifting, while officers do more of the planning and telling people what to do and what kind of objectives to complete.
Miller said that his schedule has been busy lately.
“Just trying to finish up all my classes so I can graduate. ROTC keeps you busy, it can be hectic sometimes, but it’s something that is doable,” said Miller.
He said that his senior year classes are preparing him to become a good officer as well as a professional in the workplace.
Freshman Biology major Dexter Kimbrough’s journey into ROTC started before he began classes at EIU.
“It started pretty much when I walked into orientation and I saw Captain Alex sitting there in his ASU’s, and he gave me this look that was like drawing me in. I walked up to him and a conversation initiated,” ASU is an acronym for “army service uniforms”.
He said that he sees ROTC as a family who helps him when he is slacking on his work. Kimbrough said it is an honor to be part of the program in its’ centennial year.
Kimbrough’s course load includes biology, English, first aid and basic ROTC classes to become a medic in an army run hospital.
He is hoping that he can go to CIET, Cadet Initial Entry Training this upcoming summer to get into better shape. CIET is a camp that helps build the cadets into leaders by placing them in charge of groups made up of other cadets and leading them through different challenges.
Kimbrough is confident that his major and degree will be able to help him both in and out of military life.
“There are so many things you can do with biology, you know work in a hospital, work as a pharmacist. It is such a broad field that I can see it helping me become closer to people,” Kimbrough said.
Lieutenant Colonel Patricia McPhillips is a professor for the ROTC program and is a former ROTC cadet herself. She was enlisted before she was a cadet and made it into the program through the Green Gold Scholarship and completed it at the University of Tampa.
“I teach military science to the sophomores and seniors and my master sergeant who is a cadre member here teaches military science courses to the freshman and juniors and then we also teach a physical class every morning,” said McPhillips.
She said that in some cases the lessons that the cadets learn can be applied to civilian life.
“Some of them are more tactically based, and those tactical classes only equate to things we do in the military, but across the board we teach leadership and that can be equivalent to anything they would do. If they manage a team as a civilian, to be the supervisor of anybody, we teach mentorship and counseling and how to evaluate people,” said McPhillips.
The biggest challenge that cadets face with their work according to McPhillips is time management and prioritization.
“In order to stay in the program they have to have a strong GPA, especially if they want a scholarship through us, they have to maintain a 2.0 or higher GPA,” said McPhillips.
She said that the older cadets should take on more responsibilities, from passing on information from command to the younger cadets, to writing up marching orders.
“Being able to balance all the commitments for ROTC, as well as taking them away on weekends for training, and things like that, with getting their schoolwork done so that they can keep up their GPA, get all their tests done, do their homework, I think that is the biggest challenge they have is managing that time,” said McPhillips.
She said that there is a class ROTC offers on time management to help the students figure out how to balance their lives appropriately and safely. The cadets are assigned mentors based on their major. These mentors are older cadets who tell them which classes to take, offer help with projects and also send the cadets to appropriate help centers to get their schoolwork in order.
ROTC cadets prepare for after college life like every other student, but they also prepare for the chance of going off to fight and die for America. This is no small task, but the training they get now will pay off largely when they graduate and become army officers and leaders in their own fields.
