Monday, June 4, 2007

ABC News Story

Video: "Disparity of ROTC programs raises concern that cadets aren't diverse enough: Virginia has 11 ROTC programs while New York City only has 2".

At a time when diversity could be more important than ever to the U.S.
military, many campus recruiters for the Army's ROTC program are narrowing the field of potential officers.
Roman Rushtlion speaks Russian and English. Now he's learning Arabic. "The kind of fight that we're fighting, we have to be very sensitive to other people's cultures," Rushtlion said.
He's a fairly typical cadet at St. John's University's ROTC program, one of only two remaining ROTC programs in New York City.It's much the same at Fordham University in Manhattan, where recruits use Central Park for a training ground.
Over the past two decades, the Army has slashed nearly a quarter of its ROTC programs. The deepest cuts have come at inner city schools, as the Army focuses more of its recruitment efforts on the rural South. Cities like Chicago and Miami have only one ROTC program, and Detroit, with its large Muslim population, has
none.
Some worry the result is a less diverse officer corps, at a time the Army is facing more diverse challenges at home and abroad. "You lose valuable assets of people who are used to interacting with multicultural people and are used to participating in customs," said St. John's ROTC Cadet Raquel Acosta. Acosta speaks English and Spanish and some Arabic.
"You lose quite a bit when the military does not place the necessary emphasis it should on urban centers because out of those urban centers come young people who have multicultural backgrounds. They speak multiple languages," said Retired Gen. Jack Deane, an ABC News consultant.The Army says it sees the importance of trying to maintain an ethnic and regional balance, but it's taking a long view.
"We do need to be concerned about our approach because it has to be balanced this might be the right thing to do for this particular conflict. The question is, what will it look like five years from now," said U.S. Army Cadet Commander Maj. Gen. W. Montague Winfield.ROTC gets more bang for the buck in rural America, where a strong military tradition drives students into the program. While New York City has just two programs, the state of Virginia, with a slightly smaller population, has 11.
The program at James Madison University is more typical and very successful. The goal is to graduate 25 cadets a year, this year they will graduate 26. That gives the Army a good return on its investment.
That's important at a time when the ROTC is trying to do more with less. The Army wants ROTC to churn out 4,500 new officers this year, 600 more than last year."We're not making that mission right now because we can't produce an officer overnight," Winfield said.The Pentagon acknowledges that a new kind of warfare requires a new kind of officer. But the Army is still struggling to find enough of them.

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