Students to soldiers

It is late Saturday morning, and the ambush is set. The radio
sounds to say the opposition force will be there in a matter of
minutes. The only sounds are the chirping of the birds and the
rustling of the wind.

David Dominguez, a UCLA student and the patrol leader for this
ROTC mission simulation, gets up to make a last check of his
troops, who are lying among the trees and the high brush. Most of
them are facing the direction from which the enemy should approach.
Nine more minutes pass and the opposition force is in sight.
Dominguez lets the first shot fly and the rest of his patrol opens
fire. There is an attempted flanking action to the right, but it is
quickly suppressed by Dominguez’s troops. After a few minutes
Dominguez calls for a ceasefire and his patrol moves back up into
the hills to set up a patrol base, or an assembly area in enemy
territory, and to have its after-action review with its ROTC
commanding officers. “The students are given a mission; they
have to develop an order and a plan and then they have to execute
it. No plan goes as planned,” said Lt. Col. Shawn Buck, the
chair of the military science department at UCLA. Army ROTC at UCLA
prepares students to become officers upon graduation. Members
receive leadership and military preparation through classes, labs
and morning physical training, as well as extended exercises at
Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base near San Diego, two times
during the school year. Each year in the program builds upon the
previous years as students gear up for their commissioning into the
army. This includes basic tactical training in their first and
second years, leading missions in their third year and coordinating
training exercises in their fourth year. Dominguez, a third-year
political science student, and other UCLA ROTC students left campus
at 5:30 a.m. Saturday for their field-training exercise at Camp
Pendleton. They stayed at the camp through Sunday afternoon,
working through a variety of missions simulations, training in land
navigation and learning other tactical skills necessary to become
officers in the army. “It’s about
incrementalism,” said Maj. Ariel Axelrod, a battalion
executive officer at UCLA. “You cannot expect that they will
improve wholesale; it is like an exam. You can cram and even do
well on the test but not remember anything afterwards. Our training
is more focused on leadership ability and developing individual
skills.” For first- and second-year students, the weekend was
a culmination for the training and education they had been
receiving all year in the classroom and campus exercises. But for
the “level three” students such as Dominguez, the camp
was only a taste of what is to come this summer. After their third
year in ROTC, students attend a leadership development assessment
course, which consists of about a month of intense tactical and
leadership training. At this camp students are evaluated based on
their leadership, and to prepare for these evaluations, students
lead squadrons and patrols on various missions. “A lot of
times it is like muscle memory so the more you practice it, the
more you reiterate it, the more you will just use it and it will
come to you … so that’s basically what I am working on a
lot,” Dominguez said. In one of the training simulations at
Camp Pendleton, Dominguez was the patrol leader of two squadrons,
which consist of about eight students each. His mission was to set
up an ambush and then to pull back to create a patrol base. In the
simulation, the opposition force was a group of first- and
second-year students whose mission was to move into contact, or
move from one location to another to find the enemy. Dominguez
first received orders from the headquarters, then gave orders to
his squadron leaders, who in turn directed their squadrons in how
to act and move. He said the tension was high during the
simulation, especially once the people were in place to act.
“You’re waiting for the enemy to come into what we call
the “˜kill zone,’ the area where we will engage
them,” Dominguez said. “I just hope everyone
performs.” ROTC builds upon itself as each year students
learn new skills that prepare them for the challenges to come.
First- and second-year students have less pressure on them at camp,
as they are still expected to be learning the basics, such as land
navigation and basic maneuvers. A normal school week for first- and
second-year ROTC students consists of about six to seven hours of
training and class. This includes physical training, military
science courses and Friday labs, in which they complete various
training exercises. “It is not that bad. I have had to learn
more time management,” said Tamara Dejesus, a first-year
undeclared student. But third- and fourth-year students weekly
spend 10 to 15 hours on ROTC studies. The commitment is increased
for third years because they are preparing for camp in the summer,
and fourth years, who have completed most of their basic training,
are preparing to be commissioned as officers upon graduation.
“It’s an extra demand on their time, and clearly
staying out late is a difficult choice to take,” Buck said.
“It teaches them a valuable skill because they have to learn
to prioritize their efforts.” Buck added that while some have
to give up a lot of sleep, others learn to budget their time and
are able to do all of the extracurricular activities they want to
do. “I don’t want them to leave college saying that I
missed my college experience because of ROTC,” Buck said.
“I want them to be able to do whatever they want.”
Dejesus said that ROTC interfered with things occasionally, but it
was not very often and that she didn’t mind.”I have
thought about doing it since high school; my grandpa was in the
military,” she said. “I wanted to get my college
degree, and this was something secondary. It interferes every once
in a while, but I know that … it will be a big accomplishment,
something besides just school.” ROTC students often have
different schedules from non-ROTC students, and it can make hanging
out with friends difficult. Rebecca Rainboldt, a fourth-year
theater student, said her schedule is almost the opposite to her
apartment-mate Anna Acosta, a fourth-year political science student
who is in ROTC. “She is up really early in the morning and
back almost for an hour before I’ve left for class and she
has to go back to work,” Rainboldt said. “I don’t
get home till after 11 most nights. … I don’t get to spend
a lot of time with Anna so I see her the most if I come home at
dinner or in the morning.” ROTC, though it is another
extracurricular activity offered on campus, is very different in
the type of training cadets receive. “It seems like another
type of learning. She’ll go on trips over the weekend, go on
missions, learn how to use guns and weapons and carry huge
packs,” Rainboldt said of Acosta. “I’m memorizing
lines and taking hours of dance classes.” As members of ROTC,
students know almost exactly what they will be doing upon
graduation as they contract with the U.S. Army after their first
year in the program. This binds them to several years of service
upon graduation, when they are commissioned as second lieutenants
of the Army. Until they graduate, students are not actually members
of the army. Acosta’s future branch is aviation, so when she
graduates, she said she will likely work for a few months at UCLA
with the military science department and then leave for her officer
training and to aviation school. She said eventually she would like
to fly a Blackhawk helicopter. To prepare for their upcoming
commissioning as officers, fourth-year students are given the extra
responsibility of organizing and mentoring many of the younger
students, which will give them valuable experience for the future.
They set up much of the missions during the camp as well as the
labs during the school years to help them improve their leadership
skills. These skills include not only being able to give others
guidance, but to be able to think critically and make choices that
could affect those under their supervision. “As lieutenants,
we are going to be making decisions,” Acosta said. “It
is important to make the right decisions, but sometimes a bad
decision is better than no decision.” ROTC programs, though
they teach students tactics and information about weapons,
machinery and other maneuvers and procedures, tend to focus more on
the leadership aspect of the military. “They are college
students and they will do college things. … We don’t expect
them to be extra military,” Buck said. “We expect them
to be average students, but we do expect them to be mature young
adults. They are officers in training and we expect them to
remember that.”