With twenty new cadets this year, the Hopkins Army Officer Reserves Training Corps (ROTC) has seen a dramatic increase in enrollment.
The new cadets include freshmen, sophomores, juniors and even graduate students. With the added recruits, there are now exactly 100 students participating in the Hopkins program.
“For perspective,” Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Pomper, the head of the ROTC faculty said. “We’ve doubled in size over the last two years.”
This increase in enrollment comes at a time of increased focus on college ROTC programs, especially those at elite schools. Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke at Duke University and stressed the value of diversity in the U.S. military. He emphasized the importance of elite schools and universities promoting or reinstating their ROTC programs.
In a national sense, the character of ROTC is changing. As more and more military recruits come from rural southern and mountain-west areas, ROTC programs tend to follow. This is one reason a state like Alabama with a population of 5 million boasts 10 ROTC host programs while a metropolis like Chicago with a population of 9 million has only 3.
The reasons for such disparity are many. As Pomper explained, “There are 273 programs across the nation and each differs some; the truth is, the Army cannot be everywhere, on every campus in America.”
Students who attend a school without an ROTC program may still participate. “They simply do their military education at a nearby campus, like our relationship with UMBC. There is some efficiency gained by this,” Pomper said.
In Baltimore, the Hopkins program hosts students from Stevenson University, UMBC, the JHU School of Nursing, University of Baltimore, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and MICA.
Certain elite schools, notably Harvard, have discontinued their respective ROTC programs. Harvard very publicly dropped their affiliation in 1969 as a protest to the Vietnam War. It has not since been reinstated.
Secretary Gates said that he was “encouraged” that more schools are now considering reestablishing their ROTC programs.
Freshman cadet Michael St. Germaine spoke with pride of the fact that Hopkins has a stronger ROTC presence than some Ivy League schools.
“Hopkins, although it’s not Ivy, is ahead of the Ivies in that way,” he said.
One of Gates’s key points regarding diversity in the military — producing a military that is representative of the diversity in both culture and demographics of the American people they are sworn to protect — is a matter of necessity, was echoed by Pomper.
“We want and need engineers, writers, doctors, sociologists and artists. We want folks from all walks of life and every economic background. When a new officer stands in front of their 40 Soldiers — they will have a literal melting pot of people. In many ways, a student’s time on campus is representative of this,” he said.
However, ROTC participants see the program not just in terms of how they can contribute, but also as a way to develop their own leadership potential.
Senior Eli Peller described the importance of his leadership experience in the ROTC program.
“The leadership experience is a big part of being in the army,” he said. “I myself have matured a lot in the past four years.”
Fellow senior Chris Van Dollen agreed, saying that the leadership experience was one reason more students might be joining the program at Hopkins.
“The army turns out really good leaders, and companies want that . . . so it can help your career whether that career remains in the military or not,” he explained.
Both also acknowledged the role of Army scholarships as a factor in the decision to join ROTC.
“I actually never really thought of joining the Army, but when I was facing that huge bill from Hopkins the military became more attractive,” Van Dollen said.
“But as I continued it became more than that . . . I realized the other benefits, like the leadership experience and how it would make my career more secure.”
In addition, neither thought that the increased class size negatively affected the quality of the program.
“We are in a transformation process, with fewer people at the top and more at the bottom,” Peller said.
“But as the freshman class comes up it will begin to even out.”
He also added that the growth of the program allows cadets to gain experience dealing with more people, a factor Van Dollen also noted.
“We can do larger scale operations and get more experience dealing with more people,” he said.
They also mentioned that cadets choose an older student to be their mentor, which allows them to work one-on-one with a more experienced member of the program.
Freshman Micahel St. Germaine spoke positively of his experience with the ROTC at Hopkins so far.
“It’s met all of my expectations like physical training and lab and class, but there were also some things that I didn’t expect,” he said.
“It’s a lot like being on a sports team, just in the amount of time you spend together. It’s been an interesting experience . . . and that comradery and support is without a doubt a really nice unexpected benefit.”
Like Van Dollen and Peller, St. Germaine thought that the size of the program, despite its growth, is manageable.
“We have mentors who help us out, and the cadre is always more than willing to help us out as well,” he said.
Junior Matt Potkoski agreed.
“I don’t think that the cadre would take on anything they couldn’t handle,” he said.
He also spoke of the increased size of the program as an opportunity for cadets to develop skills working with larger numbers of people.
Second Lieutenant Peter Kavanagh, a 2010 graduate of Hopkins who is now working with the ROTC program, likewise emphasized that leadership training.
“The value of the ROTC program is immense because of its ability to transform students into leaders in such a short time frame. We take young men and women from high school that have a desire to lead and give them the tools and resources to develop,” he said.
“I have yet to see another organization on campus that mentors students as much as the ROTC program . . . [The cadets] are motivated to excel, they push each other to develop, and they understand the value and responsibility that they will hold as a Commissioned Officer.“
The reason for the Hopkins program success? Both Kavanagh and Pomper agree, it is the cadets.
As Kavanagh says, “Not only are they training to become officers, they are also students, athletes, fraternity and sorority members, student government leaders, and community representatives,” he said.
“The Johns Hopkins community sees that everyday . . . our cadets, in being themselves, recruit through their professional image.“
Pomper added, “All you have to do is walk down our alumni hall and see photographs of bayonet practice on Wyman Quad to realize how special it is to be an Army cadet here at Johns Hopkins.”
He also believes that the success of the program stems from the desire to preserve the ROTC image.
“The current corps strives to uphold the leadership excellence that came before them.”
