Atten' Hut
QUOTE/UNQUOTE "Leadership in the future will be about depth before breadth. Do every job like you're going to be in it forever." GENERAL ELECTRIC CEO JEFFERY IMMELT '78, SPEAKING AT TUCK SCHOOL IN APRIL (HE IS ALSO THE COLLEGE'S COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER)
WHEN JAMES ERMARTH '04 WAS commissioned as a second lieutenant into the U.S. Army June 12 he became the latest in a long, albeit broken, line of newly minted military officers trained at the College. He is the sole officer to graduate this year from a Dartmouth that dedicated 10 full dormitories to housing 1,500 aspiring naval officers during World War II and until 1969 carried several hundred active Army, Navy and Air Force cadets on campus annually.
If Capt. Anthony Lowry, assistant professor of military science, has his way, there will be more military graduates in the future.Three afternoons a week while the College is in session, the 11-year Army professional drives 52 miles from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, to Leverone Field House, where he instructs the Big Greens tiny Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) unit in the basics of military organization, history, tactics, customs and procedures.
"What we really want," says Lowry, a 1993 ROTC graduate of the University of North Georgia who took charge of the Dartmouth program in 2003, "is to bring the unit back to the point where we're commissioning a dozen or more second lieutenants every year."
It surprises some to see ROTC cadets on campus. Military training at Dartmouth began with a flintlock-toting drill team called the Dartmouth Phalanx in 1855; the 1862 Dartmouth Cavalry, a 40-man Civil War unit, saw action at Harpers Ferry and Winchester. When the National Defense Act created ROTC in 1916, the College responded with a shortlived unit that disbanded in 1919. During World War II the College went all-Navy with the V-12 officer-training program taking over the campus from 1943 to 1945. The Army didn't reappear until 1952, when 260 students signed up for its renewed ROTC unit. This participation level remained fairly constant until May1969,when several dozen student activists occupied Parkhurst to demand ROTC's immediate removal. The faculty had voted in January to gradually phase out military training, but protesters demanded immediate action. A year later all armed services programs were gone.
ROTC in its current Army-only form came back to campus in 1985, still opposed by the faculty but legitimized by President David McLaughlin '54 as an extension agreement with Norwich University, where since 1977 a few determined students had been working toward lieutenant's bars on their own time.
Dartmouth's program—one of 1,000 across U.S. campuses—is more convenient for students but, unlike those at host universities such as Norwich or Cornell, does not offer degree credit for the many military science courses required by ROTC. Dartmouth students have to take classes on their own time, in addition to their required College credits, in order to be ranked on the Army Training Commands Order of Merit List (OML) that determines initial duty preferences.
"Dartmouth students have one disadvantage on the OML, which includes scores from the sort of ROTC activities that are only available at places like VMI and the Citadel," says Capt. Lowry. "But a big OML component is academic, and our cadets are strong there. They do very well. Wed just like to have more of them."
He may soon get his wish. Nine students are currently enrolled. And, until he heads to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, in January, Ermarth expects to be recruiting at Dartmouth.
Fatigued Dartmouth ROTC studentsstudy military science on their own time.
