Columbia student vs ROTC

[Luminous Animal]

This is from a young friend of mine:

Dear Columbia, please don't let ROTC on campus. I worked really hard to get here, and there are times I worry I can't afford to stay. I have and will bury myself and my mother in debt. Face homelessness. But don't you dare let them dangle that scholarship in front of my face like a carrot on a string, ask me to get behind a gun. Be killed. Kill. ROTC don't help us poor kids. It exploits us.

[Luminous Animal]

1. Interesting. No DU insight in regards to the ROTC exploiting college kids who are poor.

[HEyHEY]

2. I think it's cause the kid can just NOT sign up....

[Luminous Animal]

4. Ah, but they are playing on her fears of bankrupting her mother and leaving herself in a lifetime

of debt.

This is a young woman who has sacrificed a lot to get there. She lived for a while in a windowless basement. She lived in a utility shed in someone's backyard.

She has been poor her entire life (she is 21 now) and worked her ass off and suffered a lot to get to Columbia. She thought she had her ducks in a row but unexpected and thus, unplanned for extra expenses are proving to be overwhelming. The strain of being a poor kid at a school like that is unrelenting.

Poor kids deserve better than a choice to drop out, take on crushing debt or to be part of the U.S. killing machine.

[HEyHEY]

9. What about people would have no qualms about it and would gladly take the program?

[NuclearDem]

3. Being poor doesn't rob you of your ability to make decisions

[Luminous Animal]

5. Your options become extremely limited when you are poor.

[NuclearDem]

6. I know that

But by your own post, you said this girl worked her ass for the chance to be at Columbia, she obviously sounds like someone who can put her mind to something and get it done. She had the option to NOT go to Columbia and take the easy way out...but she obviously didn't take that option.

I'm actually a little insulted you think her will is that weak.

[Luminous Animal]

7. Will? This girl has grown up poor her whole entire life and has moved 3000 miles from

She is poorer now. There are expenses and obstacles that she didn't anticipate thus, she is poor and hungry when she wakes up in the morning. She is poor and hungry when it is time for lunch. She is poor and hungry when it is time for dinner. She is poor and hungry when she goes to bed.

And you have the coldness from your situation of comfort to question her weakness. Hunger and poverty drive people to do things that they never imagined that they would do. My friend is smart enough to know that the military will prey on poor people who have made it thus far but find themselves struggling.

[NuclearDem]

13. Coldness of my situation?

What's that, the $16K in debt after being four months unemployed? Having $400 to my name? PTSD from Afghanistan? Living on a can of soup a day?

Maybe, just maybe someone who's actually seriously looked around for a safe place to live when his truck becomes his home might know something about desperation from poverty...

[HEyHEY]

10. And you're proposing to limit them even more

[Luminous Animal]

8. She's given me more...

Please don't allow ROTC to come back to the Columbia Campus. I was appalled this evening at the Panel meeting because of how many individuals spoke of the merits of ROTC for low-income students, and how many opportunities it afforded.

And that is the message that poor students at Columbia get. The military is a benefit for low-income students. It is extremely fucked up that the best argument for allowing the ROTC back on Columbia campus is to allow them the opportunity to exploit poor intelligent kids.

[Obamanaut]

12. "...opportunity to exploit poor intelligent kids..." If they are intelligent enough

to get into college, they should be intelligent enough to "just say no" to recruiters if they don't want to enlist/join.

Perhaps some of the young people who do enlist/join don't feel exploited.

[NuclearDem]

14. Recruiters shouldn't be actively searching for people on campus

But at least leave the option open for people who want it.

Hell, not every job in the military involves killing or directly contributing to the wars. The JAG, Force Support (stuff like Finance, Personnel), the chaplaincy...and not everyone who deploys kills someone, or contributes to killing someone.

[rfranklin]

11. The children of the people who start wars should go first...

The Bush girls should have been leading the charge into Iraq as grunts on the ground. No deferments, no cushy aide-to-the-commander job behind the lines. Using the poor as cannon fodder is the reason it is so easy to go to war.