I met Cady Whicker ’17, a sunny, blonde Californian, in King Arthur Flour cafe on the Saturday of Winter Carnival. We both wore infinity scarves and chatted briefly about the previous evening’s festivities. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed, at first, that Whicker spends her Dartmouth Days working hard in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a program geared toward creating officers for the U.S. Army.
Whicker grew up in Lancaster, Calif., a town completely shadowed by the Edwards Air Force base 22 miles to the Northeast. Whicker credits the base, which played a large role in developing nearly every plane to enter the Air Force Inventory since World War II, for piquing her interest in Dartmouth, which includes both a strong ROTC program and a diverse and accomplished student body.
Whicker said her involvement in ROTC has been essential to her Dartmouth experience. Not only does the program bring her closer to achieving her dreams of becoming a future Army surgeon, it also provides her with the camaraderie of fellow cadets, she said.
“It’s awesome to see a group with so many specific goals and ambitions get together in the context of the Army,” Whicker said.
The program’s physical component includes rigorous physical training every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Whicker said. During these workout sessions, cadets work on their upper body, lower body, cardiovascular fitness and, according to Whicker, a tremendous amount of ab training.
Chris Aguemon ’17, a member of the football team, must balance countless hours of football with spending time with cadets. This give-and-take relationship is surprisingly manageable thanks to open communication between both groups’ leaders, he said.
Aguemon said he first discovered ROTC through friends involved in similar programs at Clemson University and Syracuse University. These friends told Aguemon about the ROTC program’s opportunities throughout his time in high school, allowing him to speak with officers who had completed the program at other schools. Aguemon said he was also inspired to join the program by his father, who served in the army for a number of years.
In addition to workouts that I couldn’t accomplish in my dreams — like ab circles and laps alternated with push-ups — cadets must take part in weekly classes. Freshman cadets are required to attend hour long classes, sophomores two-hour classes, and juniors and seniors three-hour classes. Classes revolve more around discussions than lectures, and focus on learning army characteristics, land navigation details and leadership strategies.
Jonathan Marinelli ’16, another ROTC student, said that class is his favorite aspect of the program because it builds skills that can be applied outside the classroom.
“It’s definitely refreshing to go from a class where you’re ... writing a five-page research paper to one where you’re learning to read maps,” he said.
On Friday afternoons, cadets leave Hanover and apply the material they learned in the classroom to real-life settings, affectionately referred to by cadets as “lab” time. Examples include going to the gun range and shooting or taking to the woods to practice land navigation skills learned in class.
Aguemon said he particularly enjoyed a lab during which the group went on a fake mission to the football stadium, treating the field as a battleground. Leaders told the cadets to “lay low” and “do 360s,” and Aguemon said he appreciated the opportunity to view his home turf in a different context. Getting outside and having to live out the things they had only read and discussed was surprisingly difficult and confusing at first, Aguemon said, but was both educational and rewarding once the cadets were used to applying their skills.
Between cadets’ junior and senior years, they participate in a 29-day leadership development and assessment course in Fort Knox, Ky. Upon passing, cadets become officers.
The size of the College’s program, which is composed of only 17 students, ensures that cadets have a personalized ROTC education.
The small class makes it easier for cadets to ask specific questions and engage on a personal level with the material, Whicker said. For instance, she said they have had the opportunity to interact closely with retired General Carter Ham, the former head of U.S. forces in Africa, who visited the College to provide advice and personal stories.
Many cadets cited walking around campus in the ROTC’s camouflage uniform as the group’s most unifying feature.
Whicker said that though wearing the uniform around campus elicits stares, she is open to people asking questions about the program. People are often surprised to hear that Whicker is in ROTC, she said, and she enjoys answering questions about what it means to be both a student and a cadet.
Aguemon agreed, saying that the uniform gives him pride and support, and makes him realize how thankful people are for his choice to serve the country.
Captain Gregory Wortman, a visiting assistant professor of military science at Norwich University who will be teaching at the College for the next year and a half, said the Dartmouth community is supportive of ROTC. He emphasized the importance of leadership training over any particular skill or tactic learned through the program.
“We’re not as much concerned with what [cadets] know, but how they go about thinking in the field,” he said.
For future officers who will command 30 or more people and handle millions of dollars of equipment, having confidence, common sense and applicable, universal skills is invaluable when in the Army.
“You say you want to go to Maryland, and you get sent to Germany,” Wortman, who has been deployed to Yusufiyah, Iraq, Kuwait and Fort Meade, Md., said.
While all cadets will eventually become officers if they successfully complete the program, the leadership skills learned in ROTC also translate to other occupations both within and outside the Army. Wortman said the media perpetuates the misconception that everyone who enters the Army is fighting on the battlefield. After serving as an infantry officer, Wortman became a communications officer by his third deployment, during which he helped organize and manage battlefield technology.
“Many people don’t see the huge project management behind the army besides war fighting,” he said.
For the students studying this ROTC management process and the technical skills that underlie it, Dartmouth offers a unique opportunity. It brings together a close-knit community of aspiring officers who learn and apply it all together, be it in a seminar room or on the football field.
