The Daily Princetonian: In the Nation's Service (11/15/19)

Friday November 15, 2019 vol. CXLIII no. 105

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In Opinion

Contributing columnist Brent Kibbey calls on the University to grant ROTC classes credit, while contributing columnist Juan José López Haddad reflects on World War I’s legacy on campus, and Managing Editor Jon Ort argues that public service requires more than seeking positions of power, as the calamitous fall of Donald Rumsfeld ’54 illustrates.

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Friday November 15, 2019 vol. CXLIII no. 105

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STUDENT LIFE

ROTC celebrates 100-year anniversary

Letter from the editor By Chris Murphy

By Caitlin Limestahl

Editor=in-Chief

Contributor

The Daily Princetonian is pleased to present its fall special edition issue: In the Nation’s Service. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the University’s ROTC Program; this semester also gives us a chance to reconsider Princeton’s long-standing motto following the installation of “Double Sights,” which highlights the complex legacy of Woodrow Wilson. As the community grapples with Wilson’s namesake and student groups revitalize efforts to take his name off of the School of International and Public Affairs, we began to wrestle with what being “In the Nation’s Service” actually means. Do we consider it from a military perspective? How about in the sphere of civil service? With excitement and vigor, our staff explored this idea through a variety of lenses. Enclosed in today’s paper, you’ll find the work of dozens of student journalists who spent the past few weeks exploring the notion of Princeton in the Nation’s Service. We celebrate the 100th anniversary of the University’s ROTC program and highlight legacies of service, from fathers and sons to siblings who have all joined or plan to join a branch of the military after graduation. We sit down with Princeton alumni who are current congressmen and congresswomen to provide their perspective of the nation’s service through a career in politics. We profile current students who have already served in the military, including the first female veteran to attend Princeton in 10 years. And in the opinion section, our columnists explore the on-campus experience of the ROTC program, the memory of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice during their service, and the promises and perils of serving the nation. We hope that through reading these pieces, you have an opportunity to explore what “In the Nation’s Service” means to you. Whether it be through military service, political service, civil service, or any other kind of service, we hope that this special edition allows you to think about Princeton’s motto and offers some perspective to keep in mind as you continue your career at the University. We hope you enjoy reading as much as we enjoyed writing.

JON ORT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Students in ROTC training in Jadwin Gymnasium

Three days a week, Cadet Gabriel Peña ’23 wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and makes the mile trip to Jadwin Gymnasium for physical training (PT). By 8:00, he’s in the dining hall for breakfast and then on his way to a 9:00 a.m. class. Peña’s schedule is roughly similar to that of the 47 other cadets in Princeton’s Army ROTC. “I’m awake probably three hours before the rest of my roommates,” Peña said. “As tiring as it is, I don’t mind getting up early. Me losing a couple hours of sleep if it means saving someone’s life in a matter of years? There’s no comparison.” This year marks the 100th anniversary of Army ROTC at Princeton. Since its in-

ception in 1919, the program has expanded to include cadets from The College of New Jersey, Rider University, and Rowan University. The program boasts Mark A. Milley ’80 — 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking officer in the United States military — as an alumnus. “It’s an honor to be a part of the ROTC program on its 100th year at Princeton and an honor to serve as the cadet company commander this year,” Cadet Captain Caleb Visser ’20, Cadet Company Commander of the Tiger Company, wrote in an email to The Daily Princetonian. “We understand that we all stand on the shoulders of the giants who have come before us. Our experiences would not be possible withSee ROTC page 4

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Alumni serving in Congress speak on service, policy By Naomi Hess Staff Writer

The Daily Princetonian spoke to members of Congress who are University alums, and asked them how they believe they work “in the Nation’s Service.” Ted Cruz ‘92 Cruz currently serves as the junior senator from Texas. He honed his academic and political skills during his time at the University. As a student at the University, Cruz spent much of his time on the debate panel and in student government. “The Princeton debate panel had a profoundly positive impact on my life, on the skills it takes to succeed in the practice of law, in the world of politics, and in life,” he said. One important skill Cruz said he learned was how to interact with people who he disagreed with. “Indeed, one of the things I encourage people today is to learn to disagree with others without being disagreeable, to engage on substance and issues and facts without getting nasty and personal,” he said. “One of the great things that we learned through Princeton debate was how to engage on the issues with civility and respect for those with whom you

disagree,” Cruz continued. Cruz was the chairman of the Cliosophic Party in the American Whig-Cliosophic Society and the chairman of the University Council. He described his collaboration with his college and law school roommate, David Panton ’92, who was president of the Undergraduate Student Government. “One of the issues that we both were very active leading on was continuing the tradition of ROTC at campus, that Princeton should be educating leaders across the country, but military leaders in particular,” Cruz said. Cruz majored in the Wilson School and wrote his thesis on the ninth and 10th amendments to the Constitution. His thesis advisor was Professor Robert George, now the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, whom Cruz considers a friend and mentor to this day. Cruz said he was inspired to run for Congress because of his father’s experience immigrating to the United States from Cuba. His father fought against the Batista regime and was imprisoned and tortured. His aunt later fought in the counter-revolution against Castro. “As a child growing up, I used to sit at the feet of my dad

ON CAMPUS

and my Tia Sonia and listen to stories of their being freedom fighters, their fighting to be free, and it inspired me. For as long as I can remember, what I wanted to do was fight to defend our freedom,” he said. Cruz expressed he does not take his position in the Senate for granted. “I’ve been in the Senate seven years, and there’s not a day that I don’t wake up when I’m not grateful for the opportunity to be in the arena — [as] Teddy Roosevelt put it, to be able to fight for principles that matter, to be able to fight for our Constitution, and ultimately to be able to fight for liberty,” Cruz said. “That is an enormous privilege and one that I think Princeton did a wonderful job helping equip me to participate in that arena,” he continued. When asked about his proudest moments from his time in Congress, Cruz described a bill he introduced as part of the 2017 tax cut that supported school choice through expanding 529 college savings plans to K-12 education. After a 50/50 vote, Vice President Mike Pence broke the tie at about one in the morning. “Education throughout the history of our country has proven to be the gateway to the American dream and, be-

cause of that legislation, it is now easier for families who are struggling to save for and provide for an excellent education for their kids,” he said. “It may help a whole new generation of kids come to Princeton and achieve the opportunities that an excellent education can provide,” Cruz continued. Cruz commended the University for producing future leaders. “Producing people who are smart, who are educated, who understand history, who understand the principles that our Constitution was built upon, and who have a commitment to defend those principles — that’s a legacy Princeton can be proud of,” Cruz said. Cruz also warned about the dangers of limiting free speech on campus. “In today’s academic environment, some universities are retreating from an active engagement on substance. Some universities are moving away from free speech, away from an active dialogue. I am grateful that Princeton has resisted those efforts to silence and stifle free speech,” he said. John Sarbanes ’84 Sarbanes is currently in his seventh term as the RepSee CONGRESSPEOPLE page 4

STUDENT LIFE

Clariza Macaspac ’23 enters Who do WWS graduates serve?: Analyzing 75 years of alumni profiles U. community as first female Assistant News Editor, Contributor

In the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (WWS) “Undergraduate Program Viewbook,” Dean Cecilia Rouse refers to WWS as a “multidisciplinary liberal arts major for Princeton University undergraduate students who are passionate about public policy.” Through an analysis of 75 years of alumni career data, The Daily Princetonian sought to examine how often this passion turns into a policy-based career, analyzing where WWS alumni professionally end up.

In Opinion

The examination of alumni career data, available in the TigerNet Alumni Directory, shows that while the WWS sends more students into government jobs per capita than any other major, a WWS graduate student is nearly seven times more likely than an undergraduate to go into government. Additionally, comparing WWS majors to other Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) recipients, a higher percentage of WWS graduates go into finance and consulting than all but three other A.B. majors, and WWS sends more students into law than any other department.

Contributing columnist Brent Kibbey calls on the University to grant ROTC classes credit, while contributing columnist Juan José López Haddad reflects on World War I’s legacy on campus, and Managing Editor Jon Ort argues that public service requires more than seeking positions of power, as the calamitous fall of Donald Rumsfeld ’54 illustrates.

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According to the WWS website, alumni “become leaders in their respective fields,” and “[t]heir careers embody the University’s unofficial motto ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity.’” Serving nations or corporations? To examine how many students from each major were going into public administration or government-based service, the ‘Prince’ compared the number of students who listed “Foreign Service,” “Military,” or “Government” (including more specific classifications) See WOODY WOO page 6

By Sophie Li Contributor

Clariza Macaspac ’23, age 30 and a first-year in Butler College, is one of 13 admitted transfer students this year. She is also the University’s first enrolled female student veteran in the past decade. As part of the growing presence of student veterans on campus, Macaspac expresses her appreciation for the University’s efforts to expand the veteran community, while also expressing her gratitude for her military experience in helping her grow as a student.

Today on Campus 8:30 p.m.: Join Princeton University Ballet in their Carnival of the Animals Production. Hearst Theater - Lewis Center for the Arts Complex

Prior to joining the military, Macaspac lived in Sacramento, Calif., where she attended community college upon completion of high school. On top of finding it difficult to pay for school, she recalled being unsure about what she wanted to study. “I was going to classes, and I felt like I wasn’t being productive,” Macaspac said. Her college life would change later when an Army recruiter visited her school. Originally, she said, she never thought she would enlist. “The military was the last See FEMALE page 7

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Friday November 15, 2019 STUDENT LIFE

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IN TOWN

In the service of other Peace in Palmer Square: A history nations: International of Vietnam War activism student vets at the U. By James Anderson Contributor

PHOTO COURTEST OF DAFNA YAVETZ

Dafna Yavetz ‘23 served as an air traffic controller in the Israeli Defense Force and Jeongmin Cho ‘21 served in the South Korean military prior to his time at the University.

By Sam Kagan Contributor

The notion of standing “In the Nation’s Service” is built into what it means to be a Princetonian and drilled into students’ minds from the moment they set foot on campus. Yet, for a quarter of the University’s combined undergraduate and graduate population, “the nation,” which is referenced in the motto, isn’t the United States. The 2018–2019 International Students Summary released by the Davis International Center noted that 12.4 percent of all undergraduates in the previous academic year and 25.3 percent of all University students were international students. Of the University’s 2,055 internationals, 16 hailed from Israel and 114 from South Korea — two nations known for their stringent military requirements. Israel and South Korea both practice compulsory military service, meaning that all citizens who are able to serve are compelled by law to participate in the armed forces. In Israel, men are currently required to spend roughly two years and 10 months serving while women are obligated for only two years. In South Korea, the required length of service fluctuates between 21 and 36 months, depending on the member’s particular responsibilities. “I’m not opposed to [compulsory military service], I think it’s good that it’s like that,” Dafna Yavetz ’23 said. During her time in the Israeli Defense Forces, Yavetz worked as an air traffic controller. “It’s good because Israel is a state where we need … people in the military. They could lose a lot of strong minds and talented people if [service] wasn’t mandatory.” She believes service helps “develop character” and facilitates maturity. Similar to Yavetz, Adam HitinBialus ’23 believes in the cause of the military. Still, when it came time to enlist, Hitin-Bialus, a former member of a communications unit in one of Israel’s artillery units, found himself struggling with the transition. “My view of the military completely changed before and after,” he said. “Just after you finish high school … you feel like you’re in your prime. You’re great. But no, all you’re going to do right now is run around in the sand, shooting at targets. It stops the flow of studying, stops what you know, and takes you away from your friends.” The transition away from civilian life is often a challenging one, Yavetz would attest. “It sucked too, at times, definitely. It was a trainwreck. Ups and downs the whole way through. I hated it sometimes, I was crying every night for a few months. Other times I was happy. I was lucky to leave really happy.” Despite the difficulty inherent in having to adapt the course of one’s life to serve in the military, all four international veterans to whom The Daily Princetonian spoke — Yavetz, Hitin-Bialus, Jeongmin Cho ’21, and Avigail Gilad ’22 — said the experience was formative for their personal

development. The international student veterans interviewed shared the view that their service helped them appreciate and take better advantage of their time at the University. “My time in the military was a lot of reflection and a lot of getting to know myself,” Cho said. “Because the environment that I was situated in in the military was drastically different from Princeton … it’s a pretty strict military hierarchy. In that sort of environment, it’s a strict order and ‘command-and-obey’ sort of environment.” In his time with South Korea, Cho served as a Republic of Korea Marine Corps Honor Guard under the Ministry of National Defense. In what order to complete their time in the military and in college depended on the students’ personal choices. Hitin-Bialus and Yavetz both entered the military immediately after graduating high school, whereas Cho and Gilad completed their first year at Princeton before returning abroad. “After doing what the institution wanted for such a long time, now [at the University] I have the time to pursue my own personal interests and it made me more passionate about those,” said Gilad, a member of an intelligence unit in the Israeli military. “I think it also made me a lot more focused during my time here and experiencing that adult world outside of school to kind of hone in my experiences here toward exactly where I want to go.” Cho said the challenges he faced during his service made him mentally “tougher” and help him now in navigating the struggles of college life. “In my cookie jar of things I have gone through, I can reflect and say ‘I’ve already gone through these hard times in bootcamp,’ so a lot of the trivial [...] struggles I feel like I go through here at Princeton are really nothing compared to some of the physical and mental struggles I went through in my time in the military,” said Cho. “The obvious take away from the military is that … mentally I feel tougher, going about and navigating through the struggles that Princeton offers.” Gilad believes her time in the military strengthened her connection to her home country. “I’d say that definitely my time in the army made me more passionate [...] about my Israeli identity,” she said. “I think that you see the importance of what you’re doing so much so that you really invest in it everything. It’s your life.” Hitin-Bialus spoke to the feeling of profound yet humble pride that comes with being a former service member. “I would definitely, definitely recommend that people … go [into the military] and have that experience and feel like they have contributed back to society,” Hitin-Bialus said. “A lot of times during the military you don’t think of it this way, but looking back it’s great to know that I did something, even a small thing. You’re doing it. You contributed.”

The Vietnam War brought unprecedented activism at the University in forms ranging from peaceful pickets and fasting to sieges on buildings and firebombing. It divided the campus deeply between radicals and conservatives, youths and adults, and draft refusers and ROTC cadets. Toward the end of the war, though, the sense of emergency also united both students and faculty in overwhelming numbers. Most of all, the war shattered the community’s political outlook and its conception of what it means to serve the nation. Activism came late to the University, largely because it took years of wrestling with

notions of nationalism and general political indifference before a significant number of students came to see dissent as a valid form of service. In March 1965, Landon Y. Jones ’66 wrote an op-ed in The Daily Princetonian pointing to energetic protests at Berkeley, Georgetown, and Yale, complaining that “Unfortunately, demonstrations at Princeton are but flashes in the comfortable night of apathy.” He added that the protesters were confined to a certain type: “a respectable number of these faces wore beards or other traces of so-called ‘beatnikism.’” Jonathan M. Wiener ’66 wrote an op-ed on the Undergraduate Committee on Human Rights, which was formed to “avoid contamination by the ‘beatnik’ and ‘luna-

tic fringe’ element” but fizzled out quickly because “the coatand-tie boys lacked the interest and commitment to create an organization of “responsible” activism.” He concluded that the Vietnam protesters did not represent the overall student body and that there is “no base for committed student activism among Princeton undergraduates.” In October 1966, one student accused University students of taking “a four-year sabbatical from responsibility and concern” and added, “Berkeley and Harvard and dozens of other campuses are hotbeds of student protest, activity, and activism; Princeton men like to go to the movies.” The tide of rebellion did take hold in the early years See STORY page 8

STUDENT LIFE

From the Archives: Veterans of Future Wars

By Rose Gilbert Contributor

Many University students who have stepped foot on Prospect Avenue have seen the words “Veterans of Future Wars” painted over a fireplace in Terrace Club. Most don’t know that the Veterans of Future Wars was a short-lived but nation-wide student movement, born in March 1936 in that very same eating club. The Veterans of Future Wars started as a parody of the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization, protesting the early payout of controversial “soldiers’ bonuses” to World War I veterans, which the students saw as an irresponsible government spending. They argued that, with another world war brewing, Congress ought to grant a soldiers’ bonus to every man between the ages of 18 and 35. The reasoning was

that all of these men could potentially be drafted, and there was no guarantee that they would survive any future wars, so they ought to be given their bonuses in advance while they were alive to enjoy them. What started as a joke exploded into a nation-wide movement. Newspapers across the country ran articles on the Veterans for Future Wars. Members of Congress discussed their arguments; veterans’ organizations condemned them. Students on campuses across America started joining the movement. Most of these new members were anti-war protesters, and weren’t as concerned with the fiscal issues that had originally led to the group’s creation. Inspired by the movement, students at Vassar College attempted to form “the Association of Gold Star Mothers of

the Veterans of Future Wars,” a group which would obtain any mothers, or potential mothers, “an immediate trip to Europe … to view the future burying places of their present and future children.” By the end of summer of 1936, the Veterans of Future Wars were flagging, and disbanded by the next spring. Their two Manifestos follow as they appeared originally in The Daily Princetonian. FUTURE VETERANS, UNITE! Original date of publication: March 14, 1936 With war clouds gathering over Europe daily and with prospects better than ever for a universal holocaust, Princeton is doing her part “in the nation’s service.” An organization of no little importance has sprung up on the Campus, free See STORY page 7

The Daily Princetonian

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Friday November 15, 2019

Visser: At the end of the day, we are one team, and we have one fight. ROTC

Continued from page 1

............. out the committed paths they’ve paved and sacrifices they’ve made to steward this program over the years.” Waxing and Waning Kara Dowling ’20 and Leo Li ’20 recently put together a history of the University’s Army ROTC program, entitled “A Century of Service.” It marks the evolution of the Army ROTC from its founding after World War I, as one of the War Department’s first permanent peacetime ROTC units, to the present. “At various points throughout the last century, the program has waxed and [waned] in and out of jeopardy. But at each junction, our community has come together to recognize the unique and powerful role Princeton can play in training and educating the next generation of military leaders,” Visser wrote. One of these wanings that Dowling and Li illustrate is outlined in a chapter they call “Fall from Grace.” According to Dowling and Li, ROTC went under “massive scrutiny” beginning in 1968, with then University president Robert F. Goheen creating a special committee to examine whether or not the program should be

maintained, ultimately settling on a “yes,” but under particular conditions. Soon after, in 1970, following controversy and student protests surrounding the U.S. bombing in Cambodia and North Vietnam, two University students and two other students were arrested for arson after setting fire to Princeton’s armory; then, the CPUC voted to remove ROTC from campus. “Army and Air Force ROTC, told to leave campus by 1972, elected to leave campus by the spring of 1971,” Dowling and Li wrote. “Navy, meanwhile, would plan to leave in 1972.” In an effort to combat the removal, however, according to Dowling and Li, the student body passed a series of referenda recommending the return of ROTC on campus as a non-credit, “extracurricular activity,” and an agreement was reached where the Army ROTC could continue to train students. Navy and Air Force ROTC Programs left campus after the graduation of the Class of 1972. In addition, Dowling and Li wrote that in the ’90s, the ROTC “was once again back in the spotlight,” as students began to question ROTC’s existence on campus in protest of the military’s

ban on members of the LGBT+ community serving in the armed forces. “After the Clinton Administration passed its ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy in 1994, faculty began to advocate again for the removal of ROTC,” Dowling and Li wrote. “Led by Professor Steven Greene, the resolution threatened to remove ROTC, which then boasted around seventy-five cadets, from Princeton by June 30, 1994 unless the federal government reversed itself on its policy towards LGBT+ service members.” Ultimately, the University faculty voted 42–33 to remove ROTC from campus, but the Board of Trustees voted not to accept the faculty resolution. Under the leadership of President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83, the Princeton NROTC Unit was re-established in 2014 as a crosstown affiliate of the Rutgers NROTC program, which had been established in 2012. The Air Force ROTC program also trains at the Rutgers campus. The Army ROTC continues to train on the University’s campus to this day. ROTC Today In addition to the course requirements for their major, cadets undergo a collec-

tion of additional training that will allow them to commission as an officer in the military after graduation. The cadets’ training includes three days of PT a week; leadership labs that teach skills like land navigation, squad situational training exercises, and individual movement techniques; field training exercises where cadets apply critical skills learned through the leadership labs; and military science courses that focus on personal, tactical, and team leadership. Peña doesn’t mind the added work, saying, “I’m working for something bigger than myself. After I graduate, I’m gonna commission as an officer in the Army. We often get told in a lot of our labs that we need to pay attention and focus on what we are doing, because if we don’t, we could get people killed.” Outside of the mandatory training, the cadets have the opportunity to participate in the Ranger Challenge, an activity in which cadets can gain additional skills and practice the ones they’ve learned in class. Each October, the team competes against other schools in the Ranger Challenge Competition. “We expect a lot of our ca-

dets — from ourselves and from one another,” Visser wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ “But at the end of the day, we are one team, and we have one fight. And the only way we work toward completing it is together.” It was through Visser’s experiences in the Senegal Bridge Year Program that he began to consider pursuing a military focused path. “I began to think about grassroots social change and community-led development. I felt a duty to work within my community and give back. I suppose it was a sense of duty in that purest sense that drove me to join the ROTC program,” Visser wrote. The command philosophy says that the primary mission of the University’s Army ROTC is to train, develop, and empower “Cadets to lead ‘in the nation’s service and in the service of humanity’ and to embody the Scholar, Athlete, Leader model.” “As Princeton students and U.S. Army cadets, we are committed to embodying the Army values (leadership, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage) and understanding our role as global officers,” Visser wrote.

Cruz: I encourage people today to learn to disagree with others without being disagreeable. CONGRESSPEOPLE Continued from page 1

............. resentative for Maryland’s 3rd Congressional district. He got his start in politics during his time at the University. Sarbanes majored in the Wilson School, which he said he appreciated for its focus on public policy. He was a member of the Student Volunteer Council and the Democratic Club. He also worked on the Princeton mayoral campaign of Barbara Sigmund. “Certainly the public policy piece was there, the volunteerism piece was there, and the political opportunity to do some grassroots organizing was there as well. So I would say all of those things certainly set a good foundation for my interest in going into politics and to serve in public office,” he said. After college, Sarbanes studied law and politics in Greece on a Fulbright Scholarship before going to Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Baltimore while working simultaneously in the public sector for the Maryland State Department of Education. Sarbanes was also the President of the nonprofit Public Justice Center. “So when [the opportunity to run for office] presented, I thought, rather than kind of juggling three different pursuits simultaneously, why not take a job where, frankly, all of those things intersect — public sector, private sector, nonprofit sector — in terms of the issues you’re grappling with, because public policy affects all of those things,” he said. Politics runs in the Sarbanes family, as Sarbanes’s father Paul Sarbanes ’54 served as a member of the House of Representatives and later a Senator for Maryland. When asked about his proudest moments during his time in Congress, Sarbanes described the passage of the Affordable Care Act. He serves on the Health Subcommittee in which the hearings on the ACA took place. “I would imagine, however long I serve in Congress, I will always view that as being at the top of the list or near the top of the list in terms of accomplishments,” he said. Sarbanes also highlighted his work on the No Child Left Inside Act and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Now, Sarbanes considers democracy reform to be

his number one priority. As Democracy Reform Task Force Chair, he wrote H.R. 1, the For the People Act. “I was privileged to be given the assignment by the Speaker to assemble these terrific ideas and proposals for how to address impediments to voting, how to make sure we draw our district lines in a way that’s respectful of our constituents — more transparency when it comes to ethics and accountability by lawmakers in Washington and certainly by the executive branch,” he said. “We got that introduced as H.R. 1, the first bill introduced by Democrats after eight years of being in the minority, and we were able to get it passed within the first hundred days on March 8, and we’re going to keep pushing so that ultimately those reforms will become law and hopefully begin to restore people’s confidence in their democracy,” Sarbanes continued. Sarbanes believes that “Princeton in the nation’s service” applies to alumni, no matter what career field they enter after graduating from the University.

community. I think Princeton tries to do that through that commitment, and I think the motto represents that commitment,” he continued. Ken Buck ‘81 Buck has spent three terms as the Representative for Colorado’s 4th congressional district as a Republican. The University inspired him to follow his dreams. “The most important lesson I learned at Princeton was that there is no ceiling. I was surrounded by other young people who excelled in a variety of areas and just learned an important lesson that I could achieve what I set my mind to,” Buck said. “The education was important, the inspiration was important, but the knowledge that there is no upward limit given energy and enthusiasm was the most important thing I learned,” he continued. Buck majored in politics during his time at the University. As a student, he was involved in the Reagan campaign. Before running for Congress, Buck was the Chief of the Criminal Division for the Col-

Senator Ted Cruz’s senior thesis advisor was Professor Robert George, now the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, who Cruz considers a friend and mentor to this day. “I think what that means is just understanding that even as students understandably are pursuing education that can allow them to have a rewarding and in many cases profitable career, that it’s important always to weave into your life and your career and your commitment this willingness to give back to your community,” he said. He commended the University for teaching its students the value of service. “I don’t think any institution should just assume that the students who matriculate, they’re going to gravitate towards those opportunities,” Sarbanes said. “You need to create a culture and an expectation that people will serve, give back, volunteer, strengthen their

orado U.S. Attorney’s Office. He was elected three times to the position of Weld County District Attorney. These experiences in law enforcement motivated him to run for Congress. “I spent 25 years in law enforcement and grew increasingly frustrated with the lawmaking process, and the lack of experience from a number of the lawmakers concerning the criminal justice system, and, really, the boundaries that we have in society, and decided that I wanted to shift from law enforcement to lawmaking,” Buck said. Buck said he appreciates the chance to directly help his constituents, especially those who want to join the military. “The most enjoyable part of my job, and one of the things

that makes me the proudest of my job, is to nominate young people to military academies and see our best and brightest to go on to serve their country,” he said. Princeton’s motto of “in the nation’s service” reminds Buck of the importance of giving back to the community. “It means that that there is something greater than selfinterest in career,” he said. “It means that helping others and serving the greatest country in the history of the world is important and should be part of every person’s career at some point.” “I think that we, as Princeton students, are blessed with a great education and great opportunity, and paying that back by serving our country is a noble way to proceed, a noble way to live life,” he continued. Buck appreciates the University’s continued dedication to service. “I have a Princeton student intern in my office every year,” he said. “I’m really very happy to see that the university has continued to stress that.” Terri Sewell ‘86 Sewell represents her hometown of Selma as the Representative for Alabama’s 7th Congressional District. She credits the University with helping her achieve her dream of becoming an elected representative. “While my foundation in public service comes from home, Princeton was able to hone my intellectual skills, as well as provide me with resources and opportunities to propel me into an opportunity as big as being a member of Congress,” she said. Sewell’s thesis for the Wilson School was called “Black Women in Politics: Our Time Has Come.” For her research, she traveled around the country interviewing black women in politics, including current California Senator Maxine Waters, who was an assemblywoman at the time. Sewell’s own mother was the first black woman on the Selma City Council. “Watching her run for office and watching the dynamics in our own family, of having a mother be the one who has a public face, was very inspiring to me,” she said. “I never thought growing up that I couldn’t be a woman in elected office. I never thought that I couldn’t succeed in a world that didn’t look like me and didn’t expect a person

from my zip code to succeed, and I owe all of that to the people back home,” she continued. Sewell is now in her fifth term in Congress and hopes to be elected to her sixth term in 2020. When she was elected in 2010, she became the first African-American woman to represent Alabama in Congress. “It is humbling to have that title, but I know it’s not about me. It really is a testament to the fortitude, to the resilience, to the brilliance, to the bravery of those who came before me,” she said. Her friends and classmates from Princeton supported and believed in her during her election campaign. “It was really Princeton folks that really, really believed in me and believed I would be not only a great representative from Alabama, but saw the potential that I could also represent them nationally,” she said. When Sewell interned for her representative in Congress during her time at the University, her district was the poorest in the state with the highest unemployment rate and highest dropout rate. When she was elected to represent her district 28 years later, her district still held that status. “The challenge for me was to see how I could provide better resources and opportunities to folks back home,” Sewell said. “After all, I represented what was possible from that district with opportunities given to me by being able to get into great universities like Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Law School, but also reinforced by a wonderful community that told me I could be somebody and I believed them,” she continued. When asked about her proudest moment in Congress, Sewell described her first piece of legislation that passed both houses, which was, in 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the 16th Street church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Ala. “To be that representative during the 50th year anniversary and to be able to pass a bill to give a Congressional Gold Medal posthumously to those four little girls, and one set of parents were still alive, to witness that bill being signed into law in the Oval Office by Barack Obama, the first African-American president, was a pinch-me moment,” she said. She also described another pinch me moment during the 50th anniversary of the march

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from Selma to Montgomery. “It was an amazing experience that I will never ever forget, aside from the fact that the President spoke an amazing speech about how far this nation has come,” she said. “But to really be an embodiment of that progress was both humbling but also a huge responsibility.” Sewell hopes that Princeton students will take the opportunities and resources given to them by Princeton and use them to help others. “A place like that that provides people with such a world-class education, that is an education that not only is informed by books, but by people and by places and opportunity,” she said. “I think that that opportunity coupled with the resources that Princeton provided places a huge responsibility on those of us who get that opportunity to do more than just provide for our own economic security, but that we must look outward and provide opportunities for others,” she explained. “That’s an important mission that Princeton … inculcates in all of us.” Mike Gallagher ’06 Gallagher currently serves as the Representative for Wisconsin’s 8th congressional district. A Republican and first-term congressman, Gallagher got his start in the Wilson School. Gallagher first became interested in the Middle East after he got assigned a project studying terrorist targeting methods during his time working at a British think tank. After his internship, he pursued a certificate in Near Eastern studies and started studying Arabic. “That’s kind of what led me to start thinking about how I could serve my country and use those language and regional skills in a very real way and try and live out the motto of ‘Princeton in the nation’s service,’” he said. Gallagher enlisted in the Marine Corps right after college. He completed Officer Candidate School the summer after his junior year and then got commissioned when he graduated. “I was lucky to go to Princeton and I felt that I had a debt that I needed to repay and the military was one way I could pay off that debt,” he said. “Then on a practical level, I just thought it would be a fun challenge. I thought it would really test me not only academically, mentally, physically, but also just in terms of leadership,” he continued. Gallagher believes the military should reflect the diversity of America. “I think the strength of our military isn’t ultimately in the weapons we carry, or the ships, you know, the airplanes we buy,” he said. “It’s in the individual soldiers, sailors,

airmen, and Marines, it’s in their warrior ethos and their fighting spirit and the extent to which they reflect American values.” Gallagher used the GI Bill to pursue a Ph.D. He first got elected to Congress in 2016 and currently serves on the Transportation and Infrastruc-

areas of study helped prepare him for his work in Congress. “My study of engineering helped to hone my analytical skills, which are useful in any endeavor,” he said. “My public policy degree helped to add to my understanding substantively of, you know, different issues of public policy that I

Congresswoman Terri Sewell’s thesis for the Woodrow Wilson School was called Black Women in Politics: Our Time Has Come. ture, Homeland Security, and Armed Services Committees. “The opportunity to serve on the Armed Services Committee and shape higher level military policy after serving is a true honor,” he said. He also appreciates the chance to directly assist his constituents. “I think my most rewarding moments are just when I’m back in the district and my team has helped one of my constituents get the VA benefits that they need or navigate their social security benefits or help resolve an immigration case or someone’s spouse trying to come to the country, all the little ways in this job that you can help people,” he said. “It’s truly gratifying when people come up to you back home and say ‘thank you’ for that,” he continued. Along with Raja Krishnamoorthi ’95, Gallagher cofounded the Middle Class Jobs Caucus. “Obviously, he’s a Democrat, I’m a Republican, and we come at this from different perspectives, but we both agree that there’s a phenomenon we’re studying here, which is to say the middle class is hollowing out,” he explained. “So we formed the caucus to examine that, why it’s happening, and ultimately come up with policies that we could introduce in a bipartisan way to help strengthen the middle class.” Gallagher, like the other congresspeople interviewed, finds enduring meaning in the University’s motto of “Princeton in the nation’s service.” “I think it means that not just as Princetonians, but as citizens, we all have a responsibility to leave the country a little bit better than how we found it. If we can do that, then we can continue to be really a source of hope for the rest of the world and the leader of the free world,” he said. Raja Krishnamoorthi ’95 Krishnamoorthi serves as the representative of Illinois’s 8th Congressional District. At the University, he majored in Mechanical Engineering and received a certificate from the Wilson School. According to Krishnamoorthi, both of his undergraduate

encounter even today in Congress.” Krishnamoorthi immigrated to America from New Delhi, with his parents, as an infant. His trajectory since then is what inspired him to run for office. “I came to this country when I was three months old. And you know, pretty much this country’s afforded my family and me incredible opportunities that I never my parents and I never would have dreamed of,” he said. “And so now I have a chance to give back in a significant way and, you know, make sure that others have the same opportunities.” When asked about the proudest moments of his career in Congress, Krishnamoorthi said it was the passing of the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. “Passage of the reauthorization of the Perkins career technical education act is probably my proudest legislative moment,” he said. “You know, 13 million people are getting a higher quality skills based education starting this July, and this is incredibly important for making sure, you know, more families can enter the

lim Ban 1.0,” he said. “I fought tooth and nail against any kind of action or practice from the Trump administration that’s discriminatory in nature against anybody.” Krishnamoorthi connects to the University’s motto “In the Nation’s Service” on two levels. “I think what it means to me is Princeton, doing two things, one, training — educating and training the next generation of individuals who will help take our country forward, whether it’s in the fields of science, or engineering, or public service, or any number of endeavors,” he said. “Then secondly, the University itself, helping to create the next generation of research and pushing the frontiers of our understanding in so many different fields, and making sure that our country remains, you know, technologically adept and making sure that we push the frontiers of understanding and progress in so many different areas.” Derek Kilmer ’96 Kilmer grew up in a timber town on the coast of Washington State, in an area where he now serves as the representative from Washington’s 6th Congressional District. Kilmer links his passion for public service to his time at the University. “I really appreciated the service ethic of Princeton,” he said. “The notion of service is something that, I think becomes part of your DNA when you graduate [from] Princeton, and even before I chose to run for office, I was trying to find opportunities to be involved in my community and making a difference on issues that matter to folks in my region.” Growing up in Washington, Kilmer witnessed many people lose their jobs due to the struggles of the timber industry. He was attracted to the University because of the Wilson School and the possibility of making

“My senior thesis at Princeton was literally ‘How do you help timber towns in Washington State?’” said Derek Kilmer, the representative from Washington’s 6th Congressional District. middle class and stay in the middle class.” Another one of Krishnamoorthi’s proudest moments involved advocating on behalf of Muslim-American green card holders during Trump’s Muslim Ban. “I was the first member of Congress to go to O’Hare International Airport in Illinois and help free a couple dozen, you know, Muslim-American green card holders who had been stopped from re-entering the country because of Mus-

an impact on people’s lives through public policy. “One of the biggest impacts that Princeton had for me was that it enabled me to research something that I really cared about,” he said. “My senior thesis at Princeton was literally ‘How do you help timber towns in Washington State?’” When he decided to run for office, Kilmer returned to his hometown in Washington. He was troubled by the state of the discourse between the forestry industry and the conser-

page 5 vationist community. “One of the things that I was concerned about was that the dialogue between the timber industry and the conservation community had not really advanced in a positive way,” he said. “Honestly, it wasn’t working for anybody. I would argue, you know, the status quo wasn’t working for forest health, for environmental health, and it certainly wasn’t working for the health of our community, economically.” In response to this problem, Kilmer founded the Olympic Forest Collaborative, a forum for discussion between the timber industry and the conservationist community. He prides himself on the strong communication he has fostered between the two groups. “We’ve had multiple projects that have advanced,” he said. “We increase the harvest levels in our region, for the forest, and we’ve avoided litigation because it’s been done in a way that the environmental community has been part of the conversation.” As Chair of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, a committee dedicated to assessing Congress’s progress and recommending changes, Kilmer has tried to foster a similar culture of civility. He credits the committee’s successful passing of 29 unanimous recommendations to its members’ bipartisan cooperation. “Oftentimes when you start a committee, the first thing that happens is the committee gets its budget,” he said. “And you take the budget and divide it by two, and the Democrats get their money, and they hire people with a Democratic background who put on blue jerseys. And Republicans get their half of the money and they hire people who put on red jerseys.” Under Kilmer’s leadership, the committee diverged from this practice and hired one group of experts. Members of the committee have worked together to try to improve Congress. Kilmer also works on advancing affordable education, fighting climate change and discrimination, and promoting veteran rights. One of the proudest moments of his career involved advocating on behalf of a veteran. “We had a guy reach out to our office who fought in the Vietnam War. He’d gotten injured on a mission and never got his Purple Heart,” he said. “He had reached out to our office and said, ‘you know, it would help me heal some of the wounds that people cannot see, if I can get that Purple Heart.’” Kilmer and his staff helped advocate for the declassification of the mission on which this veteran was injured in order to allow him to receive the Purple Heart award. “One of the coolest days I’ve had in this job was getting to pin that Purple Heart to his chest,” Kilmer said. Kilmer also takes deep pride in the success of his staff. He appreciates playing a role in hiring young people who want to work in politics. “We have a really good team of a really good, diverse group of people who are all doing this because they want to serve our country, and they want to make a difference on behalf of the American people,” he said. “I hope that Princeton students, even as we are in this very divided time, recognize the value of public service as a means to have an impact and to make people’s lives better.” Kilmer serves on the University’s Board of Trustees. He has served on the Student Life Committee, the Honorary Degrees Committee, and the Public Affairs Committee; and he currently serves on the Academic Affairs Committee and the Alumni Affairs Committee.

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Hardimon GS ’21: ‘Public service’ doesn’t necessarily need to take place in the public sector WOODY WOO Continued from page 2

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as a “field/specialty” on their TigerNet profile to the total number of students who listed any field (“Other” included). From all graduates from 1941–2016 with listed fields on TigerNet, there was a higher percentage of WWS students in government employment, foreign service, or military service than any other major, with 6.4 percent of WWS alumni listing one of those fields. Over that time frame, the politics department sent more total students, but only 5.5 percent of students. These compare to a 3.1 percent rate of government, foreign service, and military employment for A.B. students at large. In terms of more specific time frames, WWS concentrators went into these governmental and service-related fields at a higher rate than students from all other departments from 1941–1969, 1980– 1989, 1990–1999, 2000–2009, and 2010–2016. Students who graduated in the 1970s from WWS, however, were less likely than politics majors to go into public policy or foreign and military service. 2000–2009 represented the highest rate of employment in these fields from WWS concentrators (9.0 percent) and A.B. students at large (4.0 percent). Though WWS sends more graduates into these public sector jobs than any other department, some alumni still wish the numbers were higher across the board. WWS graduate Magdi Amin ’88, who currently manages the “Beneficial Technology” department of a private-sector investment company, working on many of the same issues that public sector employees seek to address, wishes more University students sought out careers in the public sector. “While I believe that one can serve the public good through the private sector, there is certainly a legitimate desire to see more students go into government,” he said. “More effective governments and capable institutions are good for everyone.” Amin said he believes that trust in many public institutions, but notably government, has been in decline — but still sees ways forward to combat this perception. “Current students may not have confidence that they will realize their ambition to have a positive impact on society through government,” he said. “It might help to create more exposure to senior civil servants who are having an impact in their respective fields.” Jon B. Alterman ’87, Se-

nior Vice President, Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy, and Director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed out certain barriers to entering direct government service, which he says have contributed to the aging population of government employees. “One [barrier] which I have discussed directly with the Robertson family, is that direct government employment is becoming harder to secure,” he said. “Partly it’s due to the rise of government contractors, but it’s also because of periodic hiring freezes and budget uncertainty that makes a government career increasingly hard to secure.” Additionally, in a 2019 ‘Prince’ piece on reasons why many WWS graduates do not go into service, various WWS undergraduates and alumni cited the disparities between public and private-center entities in both entry-level salaries and recruiting presence on campus. University sociology and public affairs professor Jennifer Jennings ’00, a WWS alumna, pointed to the coercive nature of a six-digit salary. According to University reporting on class of 2017 job outcomes, the average student entering “Public Administration” earned an annual salary of $45,049. For students going into “Finance and Insurance,” that number nearly doubled to $87,753. At the HireTigers Career Fair this past fall, 10 governmental and foreign service organizations, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Peace Corps, were present — but there was a substantially greater presence from Finance and Consulting firms, which accounted for 16 and 17 tables, respectively. To examine how many WWS students were going into these two industries, popular fields among alumni, the ‘Prince’ compared the number of students who listed a “field/specialty” as “Consulting” or one of 12 finance-related options to the total number of students who listed a field or specialty across majors. Of A.B. alumni who graduated between 1941–2016, 15.8 percent listed one of these fields. However, after removing economics majors (35 percent of the department listed these fields, accounting for nearly a quarter of all alumni in consulting or finance), the number drops to 13.5 percent. Of WWS graduates from that same interval, 16.8 percent listed consulting or a form of finance as a field or specialty. Of graduates from 2010–2016, 21.5 percent of WWS alumni

listed these fields, compared to 13.4 percent of non-economics A.B. students. Over the total time-frame , WWS concentrators were more likely than alumni from all but three A.B. departments (economics, politics, and sociology) to enter one of these fields. However, the sample size of sociology was quite small (708 total graduates with fields listed, compared to 2,483 from WWS, 3,053 from economics, and 3,186 from politics). WWS graduates from 1970–1979 and 2010–2016 were more likely than all other A.B.receiving alumni, excluding economics majors, to list finance or consulting as a field. Politics concentrators from 1980–1989 and 2000–2009 were more likely than WWS concentrators to list these fields. Still, for these time periods, WWS concentrators were over 3 percent more likely than noneconomics A.B. alumni to list their field as consulting or finance. The greatest discrepancy between WWS concentrators and non-economics A.B. recipients existed among graduates from the 1990s, among whom 19.1 percent of WWS concentrators listed finance or consulting as a field, compared to 9.2 percent for non-economics A.B. recipients. In a statement to the ‘Prince,’ Rouse wrote that she thought WWS students “land in appropriate jobs after graduation.” “The concentration is a liberal arts major, not a pre-professional course of study, so like students in all concentrations across campus, students land in jobs in the private sector, non-profit and government sector or go on to graduate school,” she wrote. Alterman applauded what he called the Wilson School’s “multidisciplinary approach to problem solving,” something he thinks universities as a whole need more of. He said he thought the Wilson School prepared him superbly for what he does, and that we “should think of public service expansively” and “encourage more Princeton alumni to enter into it.” “My classmates in the Wilson School have done all sorts of things since graduation. One runs a large auction house, one is a law professor, one is a physician, and one works on Wall Street. Two are career diplomats, and another runs the ACLU,” Alterman added. “I don’t think it’s a bad record, and I do think, on the whole, it amounts to being in the nation’s service.” Bridget Akinc ’98, CEO of the non-profit Building Impacts, also highlighted the increasingly malleable boundaries that lie between the corporate,

non-profit, and government sectors. “With the recent emergence of B corporations and the August 2019 declaration of the Business Roundtable redefining the purpose of the corporation, the [nonprofit/for profit] distinction is less important — that is a matter of accounting. What matters more is the defined purpose of the organization,” Akinc said. Undergraduates vs. Master’s According to past WWS annual reports, over half of WWS graduate alumni from 2015–2018 entered “public or nonprofit” work directly after graduation. This statistic was highest in 2018, with 81percent of master’s recipients entering public or non-profit work. Maya Hardimon GS ’21 emphasized the importance of considering the “public or nonprofit” statistics, saying that a large percentage of graduate alumni work at non-governmental organizations and “it’s important to recognize that ‘public service’ doesn’t necessarily need to take place in the public sector.” For alumni who graduated between 2015 and 2018, WWS placed over 40 percent of master’s recipients specifically into the public sector. This statistic was also highest in 2018, when 52 percent of master’s recipients entered public policy. “The vast majority of master’s students go to positions in the government or non-profit sector (which we define as public service),” Rouse wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “A much smaller number of undergraduate concentrators go into public service [compared to master’s students], but that isn’t surprising.” The discrepancy in percapita entry into government related jobs between undergraduate and graduate alumni was large. Among alumni with fields listed on TigerNet, 44.7 percent of undergraduate alumni listed foreign service, military service, or one of the “government” service options as a field or specialty, making MPA and MPP recipients nearly seven times more likely to enter these fields than their undergraduate counterparts. This ratio has also grown gradually over time. Among alumni who graduated in the ’70s, graduate students were about twice as likely to enter these government-service-related fields (6.9 percent vs. 3.6 percent). This ratio rose to 2.5 (21.3 percent vs. 8.4 percent) for alumni who graduated in the 1980s, and to 5.6 (36.7 percent vs. 6.6 percent) for alumni who graduated in the ’90s. A rise in both graduate and undergraduate alumni entering governmental service in

the 2000s kept the ratio at 5.5 (49.6 percent to 9.0 percent), but among graduates from 2010–2016, 60 percent of MPA and MPP recipients entered government-service-related fields, compared to 7.1 percent of undergraduates (yielding a ratio of 8.5). Where the percentage of WWS undergraduates going into government-related fields has fluctuated over decades, rising from under 4 percent before the 1980s and fluctuating around 6–8 percent after then, the percentage of MPA and MPP recipients entering these fields has risen over time (a steady increase from 7 percent to 21 percent go 37 percent to 50 percent to 60 over the measured time intervals). In addition to the curriculum, Hardimon said the WWS’s financial support plays a role in allowing graduate students to pursue careers in government, political advocacy, NGOs, and other servicebased industries. “Compared to students at a lot of other policy schools, we don’t face as much pressure to take high-paying private sector jobs in order to pay off massive student loans,” she noted. Undergraduate WWS alumni are also somewhat more likely than Master of Public Affairs (MPA) and Master of Public Policy (MPP) recipients to go into finance or consulting, though the discrepancy in these fields is far smaller than in government. Of alumni who graduated between 1941 and 2016, 12.5 percent of MPA and MPP recipients listed finance or consulting as a field or specialty, compared to 16.8 percent of WWS undergraduates. WWS as a pre-law major More WWS concentrators listed “Law” as their field or specialty than any other undergraduate department, and WWS undergraduates are more likely to go into law than their graduate school counterparts. Karolen Eid ’21, with her experience as Publicity Chair of Princeton’s Pre-Law Society, confirmed that these statistics parallel her interactions with prospective law students on campus. “Most of the pre-law students I meet are [majoring in the] Woodrow Wilson [program], history, or politics,” she said. Eid is a staff writer for the ‘Prince.’ Of the 73 upperclassmen on the Pre-Law Society listserv, 22 are declared WWS concentrators, amounting to 30 percent of the group. Additionally, 14 percent of that group is made up of politics concentrators, 11 percent of history concentrators, and seven percent of philosophy concentrators.

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Seventeen separate majors account for the remainder of the 73 students, with no more than three students concentrating in a single major. As a Woodrow Wilson student on the pre-law track herself, Eid illuminated some competing interests that students feel which could explain this widespread orientation toward a legal career. On one hand, she says she often hears students worried about attaining “financially security.” At the same time, she noted a student culture which “pushes” students toward careers with a public service focus and away from the private sector. Out of graduates from the class of 1941 to the class of 2016, 30.6 percent of WWS concentrators listed law as a field, compared to 14.7 percent of A.B. recipients at large. Over this time frame, the politics department produced the most law specialists in total, though approximately 5 percent less lawyers than WWS. WWS undergraduate alumni were also about 5 percent more likely than graduate school alumni to list law as a field (30.6 percent vs. 25.7 percent). Due to the likelihood that graduates from 2010–2016 may not yet have completed law school, the percentages for that interval is significantly lower, with less than half of those from each other interval. Removing this interval from the sample, 35 percent of WWS concentrators went into

law (compared to 15.9 percent of A.B. recipients). The 1970s produced the most lawyers per capita for both WWS concentrators and A.B. students at large, with over half of WWS alumni (50.6 percent) and 16.2 percent of A.B. alumni listing a type of law as their field. The sample also showed no major deviations between WWS concentrators and A.B. recipients at large when it came to types of law. The WWS department accounted for 20.3 percent of A.B. recipients who listed their field as corporate law, 20.4 percent of those who listed criminal, and 18.7 percent litigation. For comparison, of alumni who listed a specific legal field, WWS alumni accounted for 18.9 percent. Less common types of law deviated further from 18.9 percent, but this may be attributable to sample size. WWS students accounted for 11.8 percent of intellectual property lawyers, 8.2 percent of patent and copyright lawyers, 21.8 percent of tax lawyers, and 13.1 percent of trust and estate lawyers. However, sample sizes among these subcategories ranged from 55 to 122 (compared to 946 corporate lawyers and 961 litigators). Methodology can be found in the online version of this article.

V.F.W.: Soldiers of America, Unite! You have nothing to lose FUTURE

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from association with the Military Science Department but ever ready to rally Princeton in the vanguard of patriotism. This group, for Americans only, has taken the name of the Veterans of Future Wars and we point with pride to its program. MANIFESTO OF THE VETERANS OF FUTURE WARS ‘A spectre is haunting America, the spectre of War. All the powers of old Europe have entered into an alliance to incarnate this spectre: Pope and Commissar, Hitler and Mussolini, French Radicals and German Industrialists. “Two things result from this fact: “I. War is imminent. “II. It is high time that we openly, in the face of the world, admit that America shall be engaged in it. “’To this end the Veterans of Future Wars have united to force upon the government and people of the United States the realization that common justice demands that all of us who will be engaged in the coming war deserve, as is customary, an adjusted service compensation, sometimes called a bonus. We demand that this bonus be one thousand dollars, payable June 1, 1965. Because it is customary to pay bonuses before they are due we demand immediate cash payment, plus three per cent compounded annually for thirty years back from June 1, 1965 to June 1, 1935. All those of military age, that is, from 18 to 36, are eligible to receive this bonus. It is but common right that this bonus be paid now, for many will be killed or wounded in the next war, and hence they, the most deserving, will not get the full benefit of their country’s gratitude. For the realization of these just demands, we mutually pledge our undivided and supreme efforts. “Soldiers of America, Unite! You have nothing to lose.” V. F. W. ISSUES MANIFESTO NUMBER TWO Veterans of Future Wars Offer European Trip to Aux-

iliary Society of Gold Star Mothers Original date of publication: March 16, 1939 To the Editor of the PRINCETONIAN: Sir: Since the publication of our original manifesto in Saturday’s issue of the DAILY PRINCETONIAN, several additional points have arisen. In order to clarify these, and to make known our purposes to all whom our organization concerns, we therefore submit MANIFESTO NUMBER TWO To all undergraduates of Princeton and to the People of America: Whereas all Veterans of Future Wars are agreed on the urgency of the presentation situation; (sic) Whereas the coming war will strike American womanhood as severely as American manhood; We therefore offer to the women of America the following subsidiary organization: The Association of Gold Star Mothers of the Veterans of Future Wars, open to all mothers and prospective mothers of male children, the purpose of which shall be to obtain for all aforementioned mothers an immediate trip to Europe in holy pilgrimage to view the future burying places of their present and future children. The first chapter of this association has already been formed at Vassar College. We reiterate that the immediacy of our cause is twofold: (a) inasmuch as the coming war will otherwise deprive the most deserving bloc of Veterans of Future Wars of its bonus by causing its sudden and complete demise, the bonus must be paid NOW; (b) inasmuch as the coming war will obliterate the future burying places of our future noble dead, the holy pilgrimage of Gold Star Mothers must be made NOW. We hold this to be entirely in keeping with the ideals and precedents of American government; we hold it to be logical and sound; we shall shortly call upon all the manhood and womanhood of America to respond to our cause. America for Americans!

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Macaspac: We’re doing our jobs. Many of us do not see ourselves as heroes.

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thing on my mind,“ Macaspac noted. However, after speaking to the recruiter and learning more about what she could do in the military, Macaspac realized that it could not only help her pay for college but also provide her a great opportunity to live away from home and learn discipline. About a year later, Macaspac, then 21, officially joined the military, where she would serve for seven years. While she initially wanted to be a nuclear engineer, her passion for learning languages led her to become a language analyst instead. She would later become a part of the Navy’s Cryptologic Technician Interpretive, which translates and analyzes communication signals. The specifics of her work there are classified. Becoming a linguist required a long training process. After attending an eight-week boot camp in Illinois, Macaspac then spent one year in Monterey, Calif., learning Spanish. She signed up for aircrew service and underwent six months of rigorous water survival training, despite formerly not knowing how to swim, before being stationed in San Antonio, Texas, for three years. She was also deployed several times to regions in South America and the Caribbean. “It really brought me out of my comfort zone, which was really my goal for joining, anyway,” Macaspac said. In the latter half of her career, Macaspac returned to Monterey, California, as a division officer and military language instructor to teach new sailors joining the military. “That was probably the most

rewarding part of my career: going back to teach people Spanish and being in charge of the new sailors,” Macaspac said. “I learned a lot about leadership there. That’s probably where I grew the most and what set me up to be ready for college again.” Though she initially planned to remain in the military for 20 years, Macaspac knew it was time to return to school after seven years of service. “The military was always a path for me to eventually return to school,” she said. “When I went back to the language school, I learned a lot. I took inspiration from the younger sailors.” But the biggest inspiration still came from within. “When I was at college the first time around, I was a poor student. In college, I didn’t know what to do. I was not motivated to be there,“ she said. “I wanted a chance to redeem myself.” Macaspac returned to community college for two years to reorient herself, where she began to make plans to attend a university. Reaching out to Service to School, an organization that helps veterans apply to college, Macaspac was able to attend a summit where she met veterans who attended top U.S. colleges. “Seeing people achieve that dream, I thought, ‘I’m going to put all my effort into transferring into one of those schools,’” she said. Hoping to research public health, Macaspac said she thought the University stood out to her because of its opportunities for independent research, notably its senior thesis. Additionally, she valued the University’s aid policy and willingness to connect with the veteran community. Above all, Macaspac appreciates that veterans at the Uni-

versity are treated just like the general population. Though Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss could not provide confirmation, Macaspac claims to be the first student to have been admitted from the waitlist out of over a thousand students who applied via the University’s reinstated transfer program. “There are a lot of schools that have separate programs [for transfer students. Here], if I don’t tell people I’m a veteran, they probably won’t know. And I like that,” she said. “I like being able to come in as a student.” Despite being the only female student veteran on campus, Macaspac feels comfortable sharing her identity with others. “[Veterans] have such low visibility to begin with, so even though I am the only female, I don’t feel any type of pressure being the only female, or I don’t feel that there’s that burden.” Now, Macaspac immerses herself in her college life here on campus, regarding her current campus experience as enriching as her experience in the military. Finding the transition comfortable, she hopes to potentially concentrate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She credits her military service with teaching her the tenacity, resilience, and discipline needed to succeed at the University. While she admits that there could be increased veteran representation on campus, she is optimistic about the future of the transfer program, which has only been reinstated for two years. In the meantime, Macaspac hopes to demystify the veteran experience for the broader University community. “Not all of us see our service as sacrifice,“ she said. “We’re do-

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Schevitz ’62 (in 1965): U.S. policy in Vietnam is in the nation’s disservice VIETNAM Continued from page 3

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of the conflict, though it was extremely limited in membership. “‘In the nation’s service’ does not mean unthinking support of a nation’s policies,” Jeffrey M. Schevitz ’62 wrote in a 1965 letter to the ‘Prince,’ “It is my opinion that support of current U.S. policy in Vietnam is in the nation’s disservice (to say nothing about the disservice to the world).” In fall 1965, a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was founded at the University, despite some students’ concerns over the organization’s ties to the W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs and other Marxist societies. Membership was originally confined to a few radical students; most students were baffled by the impulse to protest in such prosperous conditions, and one Tiger Inn senior said he wanted to “punch those guys out.” By May, the group was proud that its membership had grown to 50 — measly by the standards of the later demonstrators. On Oct. 16, 1965, University students participated in protest in Trenton before hiking 18 miles to Fort Dix, an Army post. That November, 1,002 students pledged their names to a telegram of support to troops in South Vietnam. In February 1965, 93 University faculty signed an ad in the New York Times urging Johnson not to escalate the Vietnam crisis and charging that the United States “lost the political initiative in Vietnam and is attempting to substitute military actions for political ones.” On Jan. 15, 1967, two ads appeared in the Times signed by 59 faculty, one reading “U.S. Intervention in Vietnam is illegal” and the other reading “Mr. President: Stop the Bombing.” On March 4, 1965, two opposing groups of students marched in Palmer Square, the peace protesters with signs like “End Bomber Diplomacy” and the pro-war camp with signs like “Freedom is worth fighting for.” In April, students participated in the national SDS march in Washington, carrying a 10-foot banner that read “Even Princeton,” which counter-protesters tried to snatch at a later event. On Nov. 5, 1966, 150 students and faculty marched from Nassau Hall down Nassau Street and Washington Road to Palmer Stadium in a “Peace Parade,” carrying signs like “Kill for Peace” and “Make Love Not War.” It was the day of a football game, and they encountered heckling from alumni picnicking along Ivy Lane. On May 11, 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson spoke at the dedication of Robertson Hall while

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286 students, dressed in coats and ties, marched silently in protest. A few bystanders threw eggs at the marchers, and one woman shouted during Johnson’s speech, but otherwise the protest was largely peaceful. One participant later wrote, “It has been argued by some, however, that an ardent love of Princeton and America is not most adequately expressed by the uncritical and reverential reception of a speech which was remarkable only in its banality.” On April 12, 1967, 10 speakers and two singers participated in the Spring Mobilization Forum to End the War in Vietnam in Whig Hall. Three days later, the University’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Young Democrats, We Won’t Go, and the Ad Hoc Committee to Bring About Negotiations in Vietnam participated in a massive march in New York City with Martin Luther King, Jr. On Oct. 9, 1967, 20 University SDS members protested outside an Army examination center in Newark. Later in the month, University students joined a protest at the Pentagon but were chased off the steps. One recalled seeing the “startled crowd of bleeding, screaming, crying, frightened fellow students” before being arrested. On Dec. 5, 1967, students picketed for several hours while a recruiter interviewed students for Dow Chemical, the main producer of napalm. In 1969, the SDS attempted to block recruiters from the Marines and General Electric from speaking with students. Resistance to the draft was prevalent at the University, because full-time students were not always granted deferments, and those who refused service faced five years in prison. In October 1965, SDS advised University students to register as conscientious objectors, regardless of their religion, to “clog up the induction procedure.” The Princeton Draft Resistance Union was created in 1967. On May 2, 1970, 175 draft cards were handed in at the University Chapel, and at least 350 were handed in that week. That month, the University hosted a conference of The Union for National Draft Opposition (UNDO) that attracted about 200 students. Some of the most violent protests centered on the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), which was overseen by 12 universities to bring technical and scientific expertise to the advancement of national security. The branch in Princeton leased a property from the University in 1959. In October 1967, SDS wrote to University President Robert

Friday November 15, 2019

JONATHAN GUNTER ’68 / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

On March 4th, 1965, the two opposing pickets in Palmer Square were orderly and calm; some demonstrators ducked into delicatessens partway through for lunch

ED PAULY ’71 / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

The siege on the Institute for Defense Analysis in May 1970 included rallies

PETER BROWN ’70 / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

On March 5th, 1968, University SDS members participated in a protest of the draft outside the Newark Army recruiting station

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Protestors in April, 1969: U.S. Out of Vietnam, ROTC Out of Princeton VIETNAM Continued from page 8

............. F. Goheen on the University’s membership in IDA, arguing, “Research in the service of the warfare state is incompatible with the expressed liberal goals of this university.” One unique voice in the “In the Nation’s Service” debate was David Vogel, who advanced the argument in his “The Tiger and the Eagle” that the University actually has no obligation to the country. “Princeton University existed before the United States of America — and, if the events of this summer are an indication — it will continue to exist long after the United States of America,” he wrote. Because of our tradition of intellectual independence, he continued, there is no “sacrosanct relationship between Princeton’s and the national interests in Washington,” and University resources should not be used by the IDA. On the morning of Oct. 23, 1967, 31 undergraduates formed a blockade at the entrance to IDA, preventing the employees from entering. At about 1:30 p.m., Police Chief McCrohan decided to intervene and gave the protesters five minutes to disperse before arresting them and loading them onto a bus to the Borough Hall jail. The students, expecting to be arrested, had already arranged for their bail, which totalled $7,300. In the summer of 1968, all university memberships in IDA were abandoned. However, students still protested against the IDA leasing John von Neumann Hall, which was just east of the EQuad on Prospect Ave., from the University. ROTC provided another target close to home for Vietnam protesters. On April 25, 1969, at least 200 students marched from Nassau Hall to Pardee field, where they chanted “U.S. out of Vietnam, ROTC out of Princeton” while the Army and Navy ROTC students stood for their annual joint revue behind the reviewing stands on the field. In 1970, the Dean of the College recommended terminating the University’s contracts with the three services in June 1972, allowing some of the current 123 ROTC students to finish. ROTC students issued a petition stating that, “terminating the ROTC programs on this campus is not a relevant response to American involvement in Vietnam, and in no way benefits efforts to end that involvement.” The University Trustees, however, accepted the Dean’s recommendation, reasoning that “the efficacy of the programs depends on a degree of their acceptance by the Faculty and the undergraduates that regrettabl[y] does not now exist.” Originally, the University disbanded its ROTC Army, Navy, and Air Force programs, but after later discussion with Army representatives, it was determined that the Army program alone would stay. In May 1972, a poll of 3346 students revealed 64 percent to be in favor of deferring reinstatement of ROTC until a reconsideration at the end of the war. Alumni from the Class of 1938 agreed to a resolution acknowledging that instruction in the ROTC program “has not always measured up to the University’s level of curriculum” but asserting that the program should be sustained because “Princeton and the nation have important mutual interests.” For two days, from Feb. 16– 18, 1968, at least 200 students and faculty participated in a fast and attended discussions on the war. In March 1968, SDS from Rutgers and the University protested the draft outside the Newark Federal Building, chanting “Hell no, we won’t go” in support of University student Benjamin Stackler’s GS ’69 refusal to be inducted. In May, in addition to issues that included counseling for drafted students and abolishing pari-

etals, between 1,000 and 1,500 students gathered in front of Nassau Hall to protest the war. On Nov. 5, 1968, SDS protested the national election outside the same Newark building, and were shoved by members of the right-wing Young Americans for Freedom. Apparently, without provocation, police began clubbing the radicals. Among the victims was Jimmy Tarlau ’70, who had to be treated for scalp lacerations at Newark City Hospital and whose main goal as a student was “radicalizing the University,” according to Princeton Alumni Weekly. During the 1969–1970 academic year, protests at the University reached a fever pitch, accompanying another change students had been protesting for: 170 women moved into Pyne Hall. By this point, protests had a much wider agenda than the war: investment in apartheid, environmental issues, and women’s liberation had also entered the scene. On Oct. 12, 1969, about 300 members of the University community joined a march 5,000 strong on Fort Dix boot camp. About 600 soldiers formed a line and pointed their bayonets at the crowd. After a few minutes, they fired tear gas, and the protest dispersed. On Oct. 14, 1969, a teach-in with about 3,000 attendees was held in Dillon Gym in anticipation of Moratorium Day, for which faculty cancelled classes. Most students favored the moratorium, and dissenters who put up posters advising students to attend class anyway saw their posters torn down. Goheen refused to cancel classes, writing, “It does not, however, seem to me right to force participation in this sort of protest upon members of the University who may feel very differently.” The second moratorium was on Nov. 13 and 14; the Vietnam Assembly was held in Jadwin Gymnasium with the purpose to “discuss and consider resolutions concerning the war in Vietnam and related issues.” It lasted four hours, and over 1,500 students and local alumni participated. President Goheen clarified that it was a “meeting of individuals” because, “It is wrong for the University to seek to take a position as an institution on controversial political questions.” Nov. 15 was the day of the Yale game, which a CPUC meeting considered rescheduling. Fifteen busloads of Princetonians forewent the game to join a march on Washington by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. The University and Yale bands formed a peace sign during halftime. On March 5, 1970, radical students harassed Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel as he spoke at Jadwin, in what was called the “Hickel Heckle.” According the Ad Hoc Sub-Committee of Free Speech, “His talk was drowned out by a group of demonstrators so that he could not be heard.” 1,400 students later signed a letter of apology to Hickel. Student activism reached its absolute peak in May 1970. On April 31, 1970, only a half hour after Nixon announced his decision to invade Cambodia, more than 2,500 students filled the seats and aisles of the University Chapel in a mass meeting and recommended a strike as well as the impeachment of Nixon, making the University first in the strike movement which in days would envelop the nation. On May 1, 1970, a demonstration was held at Mather Sundial and over 2,500 members of the community voted to strike and form picket lines “around all classroom buildings” the following day. Students carried signs with messages such as “Build not Burn,” “Vietnam for the Vietnamese,” “What Does War Settle?”, and “Fulbright for President.” The eating clubs cancelled Houseparties that weekend, and most student activities were cancelled. Almost all of these protests

were nonviolent, with the notable exception of the firebombing of the ROTC office at 3:20 a.m. on May 2. The four student perpetrators, two of whom attended the University, were taken into custody at 4 a.m. based on eyewitness evidence. They pleaded guilty to attempted arson, conspiracy, and possession of a molotov cocktail and were sentenced to three months in prison and fined $500, in addition to restitution for the damage. On May 4, a mass assembly was held in Jadwin; over 5,000 spectators were present. For the next week of the strike, faculty held emergency teach-ins and debated University policy, agreeing that it should not condemn the war as an institution, only as individuals. On May 7, 1970, students marched on the IDA building, crowding the garden, spraypainting the walls, and climbing on the roof. Police came and took control of the roof as students continued demonstrating, sleeping in tarp tents on the property to prevent IDA employees from entering. After five days they were at last

forced out, so they moved their tents to behind the Engineering Quad. William J. Burlingham ’73 was charged with arson for a small fire at 2:25 a.m. in the IDA building; an hour later another fire was discovered in the basement of Nassau Hall. When the campers were ordered out of the Engineering Quad, they moved in front of Nassau Hall, where the University finally dispersed them. During Commencement in 1970, many graduates forewent caps and gowns and carried anti-war signs. When students arrived back at the University in fall 1970, the enormous tension of the mass meetings and protests was gone. The ‘Prince’ reported that “Princeton 1970–71 was an emotionally burned out university, whose chief attribute was disillusionment.” Even the two-week recess to allow canvassing for anti-war candidates was hardly used; most students were overwhelmed just preparing for the exams, which had been postponed in the heat of the spring. However, the fundamental overhauls the University had

undergone in its years of turmoil remained; the “return to apathy” some students predicted could never be complete. The shift took place in part at an institutional level; student participation in University affairs was greatly enlarged so that protests wouldn’t be their only recourse. For example, the “Kelley Committee,” the Special Committee on the Structure of the University, and the University Council contributed to the reform. For the first time, undergraduate advising committees played a role in determining each department’s curricula. To be sure, a number of Princetonians stayed out of the fray; some even actively supported Nixon through the Undergraduates for a Stable America (USA). However, the sheer proportion of students taking part in demonstrations by the time of the strike showed that the University was not the same one it had been before the war. The events of spring 1970 were in themselves revolutionary, but the attitudes necessary for their fulfillment revealed a political consciousness un-

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Friday November 15, 2019

Legacies of service: family, co

Generations of families have passed down a sense of duty to America; generations of fami tradition of enrollment in Princeton ROTC. Below are a series of interviews with current

Colin Jackson ’92 and Karl Jackson ’22 Lieutenant Colonel Colin Jackson graduated from the University’s ROTC program in 1992 with a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He went on to serve four years of active duty, received his M.B.A in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, his M.A in International Economics and Strategic Studies from John Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, and a P.h.D in Political Science from MIT. He taught at the U.S. Naval War College, MIT, and Columbia. He is currently the Chairman of the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College. His son, Karl Jackson, is a member of the Princeton class of 2022. He is an ROTC cadet pursuing a concentration in Chemistry and the History and the Practice of Diplomacy certificate. The Daily Princetonian: Dr. Jackson, tell me a bit about your childhood. Was there something that made you interested in military matters or military service from a young age? Colin Jackson: The two are not as tightly connected as you would think. I grew up in Berkeley, California, as the son of a professor in the Political Science department at UC Berkeley, so I’m an outlier in the sense of not having a family background in the military. I’m the first in my family to do that. I was certainly interested in two things: one was the idea of military service and the other one was paying for college. In the old days, that was a heck of a lot harder in terms of finding sources than it is today in the sort of contemporary Princeton environment. You guys have an embarrassment of riches that weren’t necessarily there before. DP: Karl, tell me a bit about yours. What was it like having a father involved with the Armed Forces? Did that inspire your interest in military service? Karl Jackson: He [Colin] was always doing reserve stuff most of my childhood and then he got deployed in 2011. So that was always a context. Then when I was 15 or 16 I realized, “Yeah I want to do this. I want to serve.” And it helps with college too. DP: Dr. Jackson, you arrived on campus in the fall of 1988 as an ROTC cadet. What was your day-to-day life was like, and how did ROTC affect your Princeton experience? CJ: It was a great deal of fun. It’s what the military could be if everybody were Princeton students. So you have all the traditions and structure of the military, but with all of these fabulously intelligent, capable people. It’s an outlier unit in that sense. You’re surrounded by a bunch of folks who’re great fun. We also lucked out with Doug Lovejoy, who was the colonel here — who’s still connected to Princeton — he retired from the army. He was a development guy for many years and a tremendous role model as the colonel running the program. DP: Karl, you arrived on campus in the fall of 2018 as an ROTC cadet. What is your day-to-day life like, and how does ROTC affect your Princeton experience? KJ: A regular day would be getting up, going to PT, eating breakfast with a bunch of ROTC guys, going to class as usual and that’s just about it. It’s the same thing where you’re with a bunch of guys who’re all working towards

the same purpose. Ultimately, we all want to serve in the army, and we’re all super capable, hopefully intelligent individuals. It’s a great feeling being with people who want that. DP: What do you think is different about your two ROTC experiences? What do you think is similar? CJ: I think the program has changed less than the world. I entered at the tail end of the Cold War. I think most of us joining at that point thought we’d be part of this large project of maintaining the Cold War, which didn’t seem like it would end. But then our generation instead served either in Iraq or Afghanistan or both, which was unforeseeable for us at that time. Whereas these guys are now entering at a period where they know full well that we’re engaged [in] two different security threats. One is sort of this war against militancy that doesn’t appear to want to end, and the other is this sort of prospect of great power revisionism in Europe and Asia. I think it’s a very different period in the world and that’s more significant than the changes in the program. I would add one other thing that’s really interesting: the demographics of the ROTC class have changed. The sizes of the classes are actually remarkably similar. I had about 15 kids in my graduating class — KJ: — I have about 16. CJ: But there weren’t a lot of military families sending their kids to Princeton when I came in. Now generals and officers often send one kid to West Point and one kid to Princeton for this idea that they’re going to get a high-end civilian education and they’re going to be commissioned with the military. That’s a real change. It’s very different than the period that we all lived through. There was very little overlap between the professional military class and Princeton. DP: Dr. Jackson, you earned a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School — how did your studies inform your experience as a cadet and officer? CJ: I don’t think that there was an enormous overlap between the military cadet experience and the Woodrow Wilson School. I mean, similar motivations took me into both realms, but there really wasn’t an immediate spillover benefit. I just finished up two years as a Senior Defense Official, and I’ll say that serving in government at the highest levels hugely overlaps with what the Wilson School has traditionally taught. The curriculum is brilliant. It essentially forces people to work in groups on a policy problem. The act of working with problem-solving, the aspect of deliberating, and then coming to some consensus or dissent situation is exactly what the bread and butter of the government is. The model is terrific for preparing people for the types of situations that foreign service officers or civilians in defense or people in the National Security Council will deal in. DP: Karl, how do your studies inform your experience as a cadet? KJ: I’m getting the History and the Practice of Diplomacy certificate, but I’m a chemistry concentrator. I went a very different route — he has trouble with math, so it makes sense. CJ: Oh, easy! DP: Dr. Jackson, can you tell

me about your service and career since graduation? COLIN: I went four years active and went to Germany for three years after my initial training. I was in tank units in Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, right before Bosnia. Then I got out and came back into the reserves in graduate school because I spoke French, and I got into a linguist unit which is sort of the least “army” of army units. I never thought that would amount to anything, but after September 11th occurred, the company I worked for actually went bankrupt. I went back on active duty after 9/11 doing translation support on captured enemy documents — things we were pulling out of caves in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. I was both doing some French language stuff on North African militant groups and supervising a lot of the Arabic and Pashto Dari documents that we were doing. I went to Afghanistan in 2009 as a civilian advisor helping frame strategy stuff for them. Then in 2011, I went back in uniform for a year as the U.S. policy person looking backward to Washington. Again, I was in uniform but it was one of those twin skillsets — you’re in uniform in a war zone but you’re also doing public policy stuff. I did that for a year. The last two years, I was in the Pentagon in a civilian capacity as the Senior Civilian overseeing the war in Afghanistan and then also Pakistan and Central Asia. The joke in the army is that you PCS — which is a permanent change of station when they send you somewhere — to the other side of the problem. I was in Kabul for the first time in uniform, then I was the Senior Civilian looking back to the uniform side. And the two-star [general] I worked for in 2011 was the four-star [general] in command when I was the Senior Civilian. My path has been not at all typical, but maybe it’s typical with the Princeton ROTC side. We’re a quirky group that’s not representative of the larger military. DP: Dr. Jackson, why did you choose to do active duty in the first place? CJ: I wanted to see what the real experience was. I was curious about it and it seemed like the thing to do as a young person coming out. I was gloating throughout the summer of 1992 in the middle of the recession. All of my friends were freaking out about why they couldn’t get jobs on Wall Street and I knew I was going to Fort Knox, Kentucky, so I was fine. I chose to do it, but thought I wouldn’t do it as a career and would probably get out after four years. But when I got out and went back to business school, I realized the impact the military had had on me in those four years. Basic, ethical things that I didn’t find in every businessperson I interacted with: a sense of team play, freeform problem solving, and all these kinds of things that I took for granted as a member of the military. When I left and started encountering certain business types, my second nature wasn’t necessarily second nature to them. They were great with excel and data modeling. Leadership was something that wasn’t as easy for them. DP: Karl, how does your dad’s experience in the military shape what you want to do after graduation?

COURTESY OF KARL JACKSON

Lieutenant Colonel Colin Jackson ’92 (middle) with his son, Cadet Sergeant Karl Jackson ’22 (right).

KARL: I think I want to definitely go active if I can. You have to apply. But hopefully I’ll do that and then I’d like to branch infantry or armory. I’d do that for four years and then see what I want to do from there. I think my dad is a good example of how you can balance the military stuff and civilian stuff. I don’t know if I want to do the career army or do four years and then go into the civilian world. But clearly, you can kind of do this endless dance between the two. CJ: I didn’t understand until I left the military for the first time how invaluable an imprint it had on me in a positive way. And I tell people that the best finishing school after a place like Princeton is the military. Because you develop all of these critical deep thought questions like “why,” and you’re so academically trained. But your head does inflate a little bit while you’re here. Then you enter an organization which is deflation central. No one cares whether you’re the smartest guy in the room. You’re in this organization that’s dedicated to learning to lead, learning to make mistakes, learning to recover from making mistakes, and being surrounded by people who are very different from you in upbringing and origin. It’s an enormously valuable experience. I always tell people that if your kid is going to go to some top-flight school, the best thing they can do is finish in the military. Not because they’ll necessarily stay in it for a career. They’ll probably leave, but always bear the marks of this in a positive way. DP: Karl, what is the single greatest thing your military experience has taught you? KJ: I think it’s satisfying to be with a group of individuals who you know are highly competent and capable of doing a lot both for themselves and for the country. We’re all doing what we can to hopefully make the army a better place and maybe make the world a better place. DP: Dr. Jackson, what is the single greatest thing your military experience has taught you? CJ: I’d say two things. One is that as an adult, you get very few opportunities that you guys are just swimming in right now, where you get to make these deep and lasting bonds and friendships. It’s not

a normal part of adulthood. But in the military, you show up and there’s some guy you don’t know on the bottom bunk. The friendships that form over that are so strong compared to normal ones. Friendship and companionship is a rare and tremendously gratifying thing. KJ: Yes, most of my best friends are ROTC guys. You spend most of your time together, you learn together, and it’s just an iron-clad bond. COLIN: And here’s the other thing. I deployed in 2001 to Afghanistan. This was in the middle of that period of this conversation about millennials. You know, “oh, kids these days! They’re narcissistic, they’re ‘snowflakes.’” Then you watch a bunch of people who are 18 to 25 years old, placed in a war zone with no material possessions and in significant danger — and they’re just as inspiring as any other generation of young Americans. It really was one of the most gratifying things to be surrounded by much younger people whose situations have brought out the best in them. And obviously this isn’t a great time to be upbeat about facets of American society, but you get these little windows into the next greatest generation. DP: How do you think that Princeton ROTC and general military service fits into the University’s motto of “in the nation’s service and the service of humanity?” CJ: It’s certainly one of the higher expressions of “in the nation’s service.” In many instances, and I’m not a great exemplar of this, these are guys who have risked their lives not once, but twice or multiple times. And quietly. It’s the ultimate expression, I think, for folks who dive deep into this, but I wouldn’t say I’m in that category. They’re the exemplars of “in the nation’s service.” KJ: I think the combination of Princeton and the army uniquely qualifies you to serve the nation and humanity to a greater extent than at another place. You get the benefits of the army, the comradery and teamwork, coupled with what, I think, is the best education you can get on the planet. So marrying these two, when our cadets graduate, allows them to be at the top of whatever they do and be able to really make a difference in a positive way.

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ountry, and Princeton ROTC

ilies have passed down a love for Princeton. Some have done both, establishing a hereditary t Princeton ROTC cadets and the family members in whose footsteps they have followed.

Jack Bound ’22 and Alex Bound ’23 Cadet Sergeant Jack Bound ’22 is a sophomore and prospective history major enrolled in the Army ROTC program. His younger brother, Alex Bound ’23, is a Midshipman Fourth Ensign enrolled in the BSE program and the Navy ROTC program. DP: Jack, tell me a bit about your childhood. Was there something that made you interested in military matters or military service from a young age? Jack Bound: ROTC and the military is something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I remember one of my best friends in primary school — from preschool onwards, we always talked about being soldiers when we grew up. I went back to see him this summer. I remember asking him what he was up to, if he was planning on joining the navy. He was, like, “dude, what are you talking about?” For him, it had been a stupid childhood game, just a dream. But for me it always stuck. Part of that is being in a military family. There’s a general tradition of military service with our ancestors, and my dad affected me primarily. You have to do all these exercises where you’re asked why do you want to do this, why do you want to do that, why do you want to be an army officer. There are concrete answers I could give you, but oddly enough, I just can’t remember a time where it wasn’t what I wanted to do. DP: Alex, tell me a bit about yours. What was it like having a brother and a family involved with the Armed Forces? Did that inspire your interest in military service? Alex Bound: It definitely is encouraging when you have a parent who’s done it, because it confirms for you that it’s a great track to be on, especially in early adulthood. It’s better than just getting out of college and trying to find a job on Wall Street, a really serious job you’ll have to do for 20 years. It’s better to do something you’re really passionate about. It gives you great perspective on the world, because you’ve seen so many things and had so many experiences. In the military, it doesn’t matter what race, gender, age you are. You’ll have worked with many different people, so that if you ever transition to the civilian world, you’re better equipped to take on whatever role you need to. DP: Jack, you both arrived on campus in the fall of 2018 as an ROTC cadet. What is your day-to-day life like, and how does ROTC affect your Princeton experience? JB: I don’t know what a Princeton experience is like without it. It’s definitely something that has to be a massive part of what you’re doing. There’s enough of a time commitment where you can’t half-ass it. We spend 20 to 25 hours a week doing stuff with the battalion, constantly being around the same people, and constantly working towards the goal of commissioning. For that reason, it is both a significant time investment and a very immersive program. Obviously, that is challenging, but you get used to the day-to-day. You get used to PT three times a week, class and lab for four

or five hours on a Friday, going to operations in the field a few weekends a semester. No one in the program is 100 percent sure of what they’re doing, but it’s difficult to be in the program, to be spending all that time, and not be committed to what you’re doing. It certainly is an adjusted experience from what a “normal” Princeton experience might be. DP: Alex, you arrived on campus in the fall of 2019 as an ROTC cadet. What is your day-to-day life like, and how does ROTC affect your Princeton experience? AB: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you wake up at 4:30 to go to Rutgers. You have class afterwards on Mondays and Wednesdays, which is just naval science. And Friday afterwards, you have drills: close-order drill, which is just kind of marching around with guns, or someone might come to talk to us about the Navy and different communities within it. It’s great because you become really close with the other freshman, and get really good mentorship from the upperclassmen, who are all juggling ROTC and really difficult degrees. It’s definitely been a positive experience overall. DP: What do you think is different about your two ROTC experiences? What do you think is similar? JB: I wouldn’t necessarily say this if I were interviewing for the Army, but I actually always wanted to do the Navy. My dad was in the Navy. I specifically always wanted to do Marines. Army happened to be on campus. And I figured that doing Infantry would be kind of a similar thing. The Navy has always been the tradition of our family; we were always swimming and sailing. In general, though, I think our day-today experiences are pretty remarkably similar. Military science versus naval science might be different, the type of tactics we practice in the field are different. But a lot of the structures are the same. AB: With the Navy it’s a bit different, just because it’s diverse in terms of what you want to do. You can do submarines, ships, special warfare, flying a plane. Versus the Army, the majority of people just want to be — and end up — shooting guns. Army ROTC does field weekends, when you march around in a forest and practice those movement exercises. Navy does much less of that. There’s some stuff that’s just for marines. A much smaller percentage of people want to do that conventional type of warfare. A lot of people just want to do surface warfare, which is being on a ship. It’s a more intellectual focus as opposed to a more physical one. JB: The way the Army are trained, everyone is trained as an infantry officer across the board. Everything we learn is based around platoon tactics, because that is seen as the bedrock of developing leadership, rather than necessarily tactical knowledge. It seems like in Navy, they give more attention to what people are going to be doing. That has both its drawbacks and its merits. DP: Jack, how do your studies inform your experi-

COURTESY OF JACK BOUND

Midshipman Fourth Ensign Alex Bound ‘23 (center) and Cadet Sergeant Jack Bound ‘22 (right) with their elder brother, Harry Bound ‘21.

ence as a cadet? JB: I’m probably going to be a history major. I decided that something I wanted to get out of my degree was a focus on reasoning, writing, developing of a critical mindset towards things, being able to argue, and trying to find the true essence in everything you’re studying. As a broad frame of mind and set of skills, that is what I wanted to get out of it. That is what I think the most important application would be to anything, but especially with the military, given the kind of decision making you have to make on the ground. In leadership, you have to be able to look at situations critically and decide what the best course of action is going to be. You have to have strong convictions in that sense. You need to develop the mindset of taking into account all the information you have and making decisions on the fly. The same skills that are developed in a literary liberal arts education are similar to the skills that are most valuable in an Army leader. DP: Alex, how do your studies inform your experience as a cadet? AB: I’m doing engineering. Obviously with math and science, you’re able to deconstruct problems systematically. A lot of the times it’s pretty abstract. You have to take really small steps and see where it leads. That’s pretty helpful. As Jack was saying, you constantly wrestle with pretty big problems day-to-day in the military. If you can trust the systematic problem-solving approach, you’ll probably be better for it. DP: Jack, do you have an idea of what you want to do after graduation and commissioning? JB: I’m hoping to commission as an infantry officer. This is a little facetious, but I remember my dad’s employment advice. In any company or in any job that you’re applying to, you want to do what the company does. The entire Army is constructed around letting men on the ground execute the mission as best as they can. In my sense, I think where I’d like to be is at the tip of the spear, centered around actually competing objectives

and performing the primary missions of the Army, as opposed to a supporting role. Although all jobs really are equal and just as significant. You can’t launch a campaign without supply lines, finances, communication, artillery support. It all contributes towards a common goal. But specifically in my vision, I want to do what the Army does. What the Army does is fight. DP: Alex, do you have an idea of what you want to do after graduation and commissioning? AB: Seals. I’ve always loved being really physically active and through difficult experiences, gaining a closer bond with whomever you’re with. In high school, Jack and I did swimming. It’s a really tough sport, really physical. During those really hard workouts, you get closer with your friends. And of course watching all those cool movies like Lone Survivor and American Sniper is what really inspires the most patriotism, makes you want to do something like that and fire guns and be in the forest and stuff like that. DP: Jack, what aspect of ROTC challenges you the most? JB: Balancing the time, though that’s every Princeton student. Obviously time management is tough with everything everyone wants to do and get done. With ROTC that’s particularly difficult. ROTC is incredibly wellrun. But what I think is great training for the Army as a whole is that as with any organization, there’s difficulty, bad decisions get made sometimes, accidents happen sometimes. It’s a human-led organization. Our command team is seniors right now. They have all this stuff to do. They’re basically running an entire program. There’s difficulty at every level in the chain of command. That’s really cool — it’s important training. All the Armed Forces try to be the best they can be, but mistakes happen. Leaders make bad decisions sometimes. That is all to say that at the end of the day, it’s an organization of human beings. The difficulties and setbacks related to the incredibly difficult task of organizing 50 cadets is in-

credibly good leadership training. What happens when things go wrong? What happens when you don’t like your platoon leader? You work around things. It’s great training in terms of the interpersonal aspect, the leadership aspect. DP: Alex, what aspect of ROTC challenges you the most? AB: The time and waking up early. If you’re waking up at 4:30 the next morning, you have to makes sure you’re going to bed at a reasonable time. You still get the weekend off, still have free time. DP: What is the single greatest thing ROTC has taught you? JB: That the true strength of any organization, but especially the army, lies in its people. Not the uniform or the weapons or the funding or whatever else. People make or break the mission DP: How do you think that Princeton ROTC and general military service fits into the University’s motto of ‘in the nation’s service and the service of humanity?’ AB: We were at this dinner on Monday night, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of ROTC at Princeton. The lead speaker was talking about how a lot of the time, people don’t associate Ivy League schools and academia with the military. But there’s been so many great military leaders to graduate Princeton, like General Cavoli and General Milley. The military definitely needs competent capable people leading the ranks. If you have a passion for academia and military service and combining the two, it’s amazing to be in ROTC. JB: It’s great that at Princeton, you have people preparing to serve at the highest levels in all levels of society, whether that’s in health, in business, in government, in public service. I think it’s fitting that in that regard we should also have a growing tradition of growing warrior leaders here, too. If Princeton is in the service of the nation and prepares those who are likely going to be the leaders of our country, I think in the same way we should be preparing the future leaders of the military.

The Daily Princetonian

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Friday November 15, 2019

Legacies of service: family, co

Generations of families have passed down a sense of duty to America; generations of fami tradition of enrollment in Princeton ROTC. Below are a series of interviews with current

Paul Spiegl ’19, Sterling Spiegl ’21, and Jarrett Spiegl ’21 Atlanta-born Second Lieutenant Paul Spiegl ’19 is stationed in Fort Brenning, Ga., where he began his active duty training a month ago. He left behind him at the University more than just a legacy as an ROTC company commander, a Whitman College RCA, and a concentrator in the Near Eastern Studies department; his brothers, twins cadet Sterling Spiegl ’21 and cadet Staff Sergeant Jarrett Spiegl ’21, are both members of the University’s ROTC program. Sterling is pursuing a concentration in civil and environmental engineering. Jarrett is an economics concentrator. DP: Paul, tell me a bit about your childhood. Was there something that made you interested in military matters or military service from a young age? Paul Spiegl: My family went to public school in Atlanta. For a long time, schools like Princeton weren’t even on my radar. The only other two people who have come to Princeton from my high school are my two brothers. And it was just our mom growing up. So the idea of giving back and serving others wasn’t just a concept for us; it was real. We had people who gave back, who really mentored us. They believed in us. That aspect of giving back was something we always wanted to do and something our mom kind of emphasized. She’s a prime example of service in our eyes. She worked multiple jobs to help pay for things and get by in high school. And she also emphasized a strong education. I was either going to do ROTC or go to an Academy, and once I got into Princeton, I couldn’t turn it down. I wanted a college experience. At Princeton, I could do the whole military thing and someone else can do something totally different: working for nonprofits, consulting, banking and what-not. I really like getting like diverse perspectives about things and you know, as a Southern Georgia guy, meeting people from around the world was pretty cool. DP: Sterling and Jarrett, tell me a bit about your childhood. Was there something that made you interested in military matters or military service from a young age? Sterling Spiegl: I didn’t really think about military service until I got to high school. Paul was in JROTC, and told me not to do it because it wasn’t good from a GPA standpoint. I’d never really thought about it until Paul applied to college. And Jarrett and I had a youth group leader named Dave our freshman year of high school. He went to West Point, graduated in ’06, then went to Harvard Business School and was an Army Ranger and everything like that. It was never that he pushed military service. It was more that I thought it would be awesome to be someone like Dave, who’s humble, smart, hardworking, driven, and all-around what you would like to be as a person. Jarrett Spiegl: I’m kind of the same. I didn’t think about ROTC or a Service Academy until high school. I figured I’d give it a try and applied, got the scholarship, and kind of tested it out, and now I’m still here. I enjoy it. I think it’s exciting. DP: Paul, You arrived on campus in the fall of 2015 as an ROTC cadet. What was your day-today life like, and how did ROTC affect your Princeton experience? Paul: It’s similar to what they have now in terms of schedule. DP: Sterling and Jarrett, you both arrived on campus in the fall of 2017 as an ROTC cadet.

What are your day-to-day lives like, and how does ROTC affect your Princeton experience? SS: There’s obviously PT [Physical Training] Monday, Wednesday, Friday, MS [Military Science] class on Thursdays now, and then lab Friday evenings. What really takes a chunk of time out isn’t PT, but that you have to also do PT on your own. That’s what really complicates things from a time standpoint. I didn’t come in very physically fit, so I have been making up ground over the last two years. And [Jarrett and I] were both injured at the same time. We had a similar experience where we both have leg injuries and can’t do leg things. That was really something I was glad that he was there for, because it’s obviously a hard thing to go through. JS: I like to think that ROTC has kind of lengthened my Princeton experience. We’re up early and we stay up late. We just have more time that we’re awake and doing things. SS: I think ROTC also gives you more of a goal. If you’re just a random student here, you don’t necessarily need a great GPA. You can get a job with a 3.2 or a 2.9, or whatever it is you think you can end up with. But if you’re in Army ROTC, your GPA directly translates into whether or not you’re going to go to the branch you want when you active duty or guard. You don’t need a good GPA for the purpose of having a good GPA, you need a good GPA so you can do what you would like to in the army. DP: What do you think is different about your three ROTC experiences? What do you think is similar? SS: The program was a lot smaller when I entered. When you get older, the more people there are, the more challenges there are. Because of the adjustment, the first year is definitely the hardest year, and suddenly the majority of the program is first-years. JS: I think because Paul’s year is smaller and our year is almost double the size, we had more competition and more camaraderie. There’s more people kind of embracing the suck together. That’s added to our experience. SS: The whole cadre changed in between when Paul was here when we started coming here. We have a new battalion commander, we have a master sergeant, and we have a new major. I think every single person has changed. We get their whole take on the program. Also, Paul went to Fort Knox for 31 days when he was a cadet. We’ll go for 45 days this summer. We’ll have additional training, and additional things are that the Army is emphasizing because of that. Paul’s year didn’t get to shoot as much, but we’ll probably shoot twice over the course of the year. DP: Paul, you earned a degree in Near Eastern studies — how did your studies inform your experience as a cadet and officer? PS: NES is an interdisciplinary department. They make sure that you take classes on literature, history, ancient history, diasporic communities, etc. I took classes on jihadism, on Muslims in France, political economy in the Middle East, Sufism, the history of Jerusalem. I got to have a deep, holistic understanding of a lot of things, and one of them was Arabic. I had a lot of friends who would help me with Arabic — it got to a really high level, like a grad seminar based on Arabic texts my senior year that was very challenging. But I really learned to love Arabic. And peo-

ple say to learn the language of enemies; the U.S. government deems it a critical language with financial incentives for learning it. But for me, it was just something I really loved. I was able to have really interesting conversations with people that didn’t have anything to do with the military and didn’t necessarily agree with me about it. And we weren’t just talking about hot button issues all the time, but just having really meaningful conversations. Now, in my training, there’s a lot of international student officers here with me. We have students, soldiers from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. In my group there’s a Peshmerga [Kurdish] captain. There are people from all of the world, and I’ve been able to talk with them, practice my Arabic, and learn from their perspective. That’s all because of NES. DP: Sterling, you’re earning a degree in civil and environmental engineering — how do your studies inform your experience as a cadet? SS: I think, as an engineer, there’s a lot of problem solving I get to use. But other than that, I think for me academics and Army are very independent. DP: Jarrett, you’re earning a degree in economics — how do your studies inform your experience as a cadet? JS: With economics, a high percentage of the weight of your classes is on the midterm and final. You have that pressure to perform. I think that’s big as an officer — you have the same pressure to perform. DP: Paul, can you tell me about your service and career since graduation? PS: I’ve been active duty for about a month, stationed here at Fort Benning. They’ll tell me where I’m moving next in a couple weeks. I have about a year here training. It’s been nice to be closer to home. I’m still trying to keep in touch with friends as much as I can because we’re all kind of spread out. That’s just a natural fact of post-grad life, so I’m just trying to hear from my friends and keep up with them. DP: Sterling and Jarrett, how does Paul’s experience in the military shape what you want to do after graduation? SS: I mean, he’s been in active duty for literally a month as of today. So come springtime, I’ll have a better image of what he’s doing in the Army, and then whether or not I’d like to do the same thing. So we know what some of his experience has been, but not a ton. JS: Well I think as brothers, we compete with each other. So I’m kind looking for a way to one-up Paul, you know? We know where he was at our level, and so I’m kind of trying to be better than he was when he was at our stage. DP: Paul, what aspect of ROTC challenged you the most? PS: For me, a big thing was getting adjusted; I had one friend I did a summer program with, whom I knew, and everyone else was a complete stranger. I think just adjusting to academics on top of ROTC challenged me. I mean I didn’t do anything horrendous; I didn’t fail or anything like that. But I think through the struggling, I realized like how valuable mentorship is, giving back — helping people adjust to Princeton, no matter where they’re from. As a freshman I kind of ran around, trying to figure out sleep schedule and healthy habits and joining clubs. That actually encouraged me to be an RCA, which I did for two years. DP: Sterling and Jarrett, what aspect of ROTC challenges you the most?

COURTESY OF PRINCETON.EDU

(Left to right) Cadet Staff Sergeant Jarrett Spiegl ’21, Cadet Sterling Spiegl ’21, Second Lieutenant Paul Spiegl ’19, and their mother, Denise.

JS: I think it’s the no off-season. We constantly have a consistent schedule, no matter if it’s midterm week, or like during reading week. It’s just consistency. SS: I guess it’s physically challenging, in the sense that you’re up very early, and it’s really hard to get enough sleep. That starts to weigh on you, especially as the semester goes on. Sometimes PT actually is really tough. And then you have to go to class immediately after, and that’s rough. So I’ve actually changed my schedule to where I try to avoid Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning classes just in case. I mean, granted, it’s different because I broke my leg, so I do my own thing now, but in the past. DP: Paul, what is the single greatest thing military service has taught you? PS: It’s important to be your best self so you can serve others. I think that’s really important, constantly bettering yourself and doing more than what’s asked for you; things like selfstudying, putting time into making yourself better physically, mentally, taking care of yourself and your body and understanding that you ultimately have to lead other people. I learned that as company commander my last year of ROTC. I pretty much oversaw everything that happened with my 49 cadets. I also RCA-ed and really realized how to be my best self and really be as prepared as possible to serve others. Have discipline and be considerate. In life, I try to be the friend that I would want to have. I try to be a leader that I would [follow] in something like combat or battle. So, learning and growing as a person have been really important. Just being my best self so I can serve others. DP: Sterling and Jarrett, what is the single greatest thing military service has taught you? SS: I’m a lot more disciplined. I like to say that one of the things I can like definitely do is wake up at any time. If I need to wake up at 2:17, I could probably get that done. I think it helps you with your time management, because you do have a lot of commitments outside of school. You can’t really have time management without developing more discipline. You do a lot of things you don’t want to do, and you don’t say anything about it. And that also improves your discipline. JS: I think punctuality. I didn’t realize that being a little late is so disrespectful to other people and their time. That’s something learned, to always show up on time. You know, being prepared.

SS: It really showed in [REDACTED]. You were very punctual. JS: Shut up. DP: How do you think that Princeton ROTC and general military service fits into the University’s motto of ‘in the nation’s service and the service of humanity?’ PS: Regardless of where our nation is, whether we’re in the middle of a war or things are more calm, I think that the aspect of serving in a volunteer force is very important. I think that it’s a true way to serve our country. I mean very few do it in general, but also very few people do it [at] Princeton as well. It’s important to understand that if you’re ROTC, you’re likely going to be serving and leading people immediately, at a very young age. I think it’s the embodiment of the motto. There are many ways of giving back. And we kind of walk in the footsteps of giants when the program has people like General Milley or General Cavoli, who’ve done exceptionally well and are true role models. But I think my mom showed me how to serve before anyone in uniform ever did … I’m really proud to have done ROTC at Princeton, where it’s very challenging and you’re held to the same standards as everyone else in the country, regardless of how rigorous the academics are. I’m proud to be part of such a tradition and I’m glad to serve this country, and do it with a Princeton degree. JS: In the military, you are the security for the United States. You also help people around the world. We are helping people not just here but all around the world. And I think with the military in particular, you have the risk of losing your life, and you’re giving the ultimate sacrifice. I think that’s what really makes it special. SS: I think specifically at Princeton, you get a lot of questions about why you’re doing it. I mean, literally everyone — even back home, even the guys who will Uber me to physical therapy — ask, “Oh, so you go to Princeton, aren’t you a little too smart for the Army?” That’s sort of a common idea, that you’re too talented or too smart to be in the Army. Don’t you think that the people who defend this nation should be the most talented people? How can you be too talented to protect and defend the Constitution of The United States? We’re the people with the most to give. Why should we not give some of that?

Friday November 15, 2019

The Daily Princetonian

page 13

ountry, and Princeton ROTC

ilies have passed down a love for Princeton. Some have done both, establishing a hereditary t Princeton ROTC cadets and the family members in whose footsteps they have followed.

John Hurley ’86 and George Hurley ’22 Ret. Captain John Hurley graduated from the University in 1986 as an ROTC Cadet, Chairman of The Daily Princetonian, and with a degree in history. He went on to serve as an artillery officer in South Korea and fought in the first Gulf War. After his army service, Hurley went to Stanford Business School. Today, Hurley runs Cavalry Asset Management, an investment firm based in San Francisco and Hong Kong. His son, Cadet Sergeant George Hurley, is a sophomore at the University. Also enrolled in the ROTC program, George intends to follow his father in pursuing a degree in history. DP: Mr. Hurley, tell me a bit about your childhood. Was there something that made you interested in military matters or military service from a young age? John Hurley: My father spent 30 years in the Air Force and fought in the Vietnam War. I grew up on military bases. One of my brothers had gone to West Point. I had a pretty good understanding of what military service entailed. Midway through his career, the Air Force sent my father to Princeton to get his Ph.D. in the history department, so I also had a good understanding and attachment to Princeton. DP: George, tell me a bit about yours. What was it like having a father involved with the Armed Forces? Did that inspire your interest in military service? George Hurley: My dad was out of the army before I was born, so I didn’t have any direct exposure to it. But I remember, growing up, a lot of my dad’s friends from the army were big parts of my life. I heard a lot of stories about and felt very familiar with it. Unlike a lot of cadets here at Princeton, who really did grow up on bases and their parents are still in the army, I did not have any kind of exposure like that. DP: Mr. Hurley, You arrived on campus in the fall of 1982 as an ROTC cadet. What was your day-to-day life like, and how did ROTC affect your Princeton experience? JH: I don’t know that ROTC affected my Princeton experience that much. The leadership of the program did a great job of understanding how challenging Princeton was. They did everything that they needed to do to prepare us to become officers while also allowing us to do everything that we needed to do to succeed at Princeton. I was Chairman of The Daily Princetonian my senior year, ’85 and ’86. So the fact that I was able to both run the ‘Prince’ and do ROTC was a testament to the program leadership recognizing that we had to make ROTC work around a very tough Princeton schedule. DP: George, you arrived on campus in the fall of 2018 as an ROTC cadet. What is your day-to-day life like, and how does ROTC affect your Princeton experience? GH: ROTC is a huge commitment. It is a lot of time, but it is great and we have learned a lot. Because of all the time committed to it, a lot of my closest friends are in the ROTC program. But I have also been able to meet a lot of people outside of that.

ROTC is intense, but it is really great. DP: What do you think is different about your two ROTC experiences? What do you think is similar? JH: One thing that has changed — and it is a very positive thing — is in 1982 we were just a few years past the end of the Vietnam War. I would say attitudes in the country towards the military were pretty negative. Yes, there was a base of folks who were very supportive, but there were also many people in the country who very wrongly and foolishly attacked the military. If we fast-forward to today after the experience of 9/11, ISIS, and the recognition of all the truly terrible people there are out there, I think there is a much broader support for the military in the nation and at Princeton. I think President Eisgruber has been fantastic in his support of ROTC on campus. GH: I actually 100 percent agree. Particularly, through, hearing him talk about his Princeton experience in ROTC. They could never wear their uniform on campus, and actually that policy changed my freshman year. Just last year, the new policy became that on days when we have military science class we will wear our uniforms for the rest of the day. I think the fact that we can show our presence on campus very comfortably is indicative of how there is a lot more popular support for the military and what we do. JH: I would say while I didn’t have a negative experience with anyone at Princeton because of being in ROTC, I also was frankly quite quiet about it, and like George says, we didn’t wear out uniforms on campus. It was a pretty large program — we had over 80 folks in army ROTC — but we didn’t go out of our way to advertise it. DP: Mr. Hurley, you earned a degree in history — how did your studies inform your experience as a cadet and officer? JH: President Eisgruber gave a great speech at the commissioning last year. If you read that speech, it is a mini history lesson with some really great points in it. He makes two really important points. One is that, unlike in the military of other nations, in our nation when you swear your oath of allegiance, you swear your oath to the constitution of the United States. You don’t swear to any individual, no party, not even to the nation of the land. Instead it is to the constitution of the United States. It makes it different in terms of America’s history. He also makes the point that one of the greatest gifts that George Washington gave to the country was his willingness to step down. He was the head of an army, and the war came to an end. Rather than take it over he retired to his farm, which doesn’t happen that often in history. And after his second term as president, he relinquished his power and went back to his farm again. Both of those things were great gifts to us. I was very much aware of those sacrifices and the decisions historically that have given us this great country as I was studying history and as

I entered the military. DP: George, how do your studies inform your experience as a cadet? GH: I am most likely studying history. I visited the Air Force academy when I was a sophomore in high school, just starting to look at the college process. We were there for a service for the change of the history department. We were there to see my grandfather’s successor retire. I toured the school and visited the history department, and an officer there pointed out that studying history is studying leadership. Leadership is a huge part of what we do for army ROTC. At the end of the day, our primary role once we graduate is to be leaders in the US army. I think history is the best way to prepare yourself for that. DP: Mr. Hurley, can you tell me about your service and career since graduation? JH: In the army, I served for two years in South Korea and I also fought during the first Gulf War. I was an artillery officer. After the first Gulf War, I went to Stanford Business School. I worked at fidelity investments and then I started an investment firm that I run today called Cavalry Asset Management. We are based in San Francisco and Hong Kong. We invest in technology companies. DP: How did your service impact what you wanted to pursue professionally? JH: When I arrived at Stanford Business School, I knew a lot less than my classmates who had worked in banking and consulting about finance, accounting, and business. But I had much more direct management experience, having led soldiers in South Korea and then in Iraq and Kuwait. That experience is invaluable. I could learn the finance and accounting in the classroom pretty quickly, but the leadership experience could only be gained by actually doing it. So when I think about things I learned in the military: how to deal with real stress, not mild stress, how to make important decisions with only limited information, how to build elite teams, commitment to mission. I also served with some truly amazing people, many of whom I am still close with. So when I was both analyzing companies as an analyst and investing as a portfolio manager and then ultimately building my own company, all of those experiences were extraordinarily helpful. DP: George, how does your dad’s experience in the military shape what you want to do after graduation? GH: I am not sure. I may end up on the same path, but to be honest, there are a lot of factors that go into what I’ll do after graduating and commissioning. The number one thing that decides where we’re sent and what role we are doing is the needs of the army. After getting out of the army, maybe I will go down the same path, but it is really hard to say at this point. JH: And we will see, you know, it is a great source of pride for me and for other folks who were in Princeton ROTC in the ’80s that General Mark Milley, who is Class of ’80, is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General

COURTESY OF STANFORD BUSINESS SCHOOL

John K. Hurley ‘86

Chris Cavoli commands a U.S. Army Europe and was a year behind me in ROTC. So hopefully some of the folks in the current program, including George, 35 years from now will be doing that kind of service. DP: Mr. Hurley, what aspect of ROTC challenged you the most? JH: I would say the bigger challenge was actually being an officer. As I described, the ROTC program was very supportive and we had great leadership, two different colonels here who were very supportive and did a great job of getting us ready. The real challenge, you know — you show up in a unit where you are 22 or 23 years old and some of the people who work for you are as old as 40 and have been in the military 15 or 20 years. You have only been in the military just a couple of months, and you are supposed to be in charge. You have to learn how to listen to them and how to earn their respect and then ultimately build a team. That was a huge challenge, but it was exciting. It was not easy for the first year or so being the young officer. It was pretty intimidating, but once you get the hang of it it’s wonderful. DP: George, what aspect of ROTC challenges you the most? GH: Balancing it with a Princeton workload. ROTC is a big commitment. Particularly waking up at 5:30 a lot of days of the week. Between going to classes, getting all of the work done, and then getting enough sleep to continue the next day, I think you will find that most of us have pretty crippling caffeine additions. But who doesn’t by the end of Princeton? So that has been the trickiest part for me, but our leadership has done a great job at trying to be understanding that Princeton is not an easy school and doing everything they can to help us balance out our lifestyle. DP: Mr. Hurley, what is the single greatest thing military service has taught you? JH: Well, I’d say that I was really lucky. I had some great commanders that I served with and I mentioned some great NCOs that I served with. I think it was the understanding that first and foremost, your mission as an officer is to take care of soldiers. You get up each morning thinking, “am

I doing everything that I can to make sure that these young men and women that I am responsible for are prepared in case we get the call to go to combat?” That example of sort of a selfless approach to management, which I learned from people who were great leaders in the military, has probably been the most important thing. If you start with that and think about what is best for the people who work for you, it is hard to go wrong. DP: George, what about you? GH: There is no substitute for hard work. At the end of the day, everyone at Princeton is incredibly talented. Everyone in ROTC is incredibly talented. But talent can only carry you so far. There is no substitute for putting your head down and moving forwards. DP: How do you think that Princeton ROTC and general military service fits into the University’s motto of “in the nation’s service and the service of humanity?” JH: I think it’s central to it. Princeton has a proud tradition of ROTC with the army program having its 100-year anniversary. I think it’s great for the country, it’s great for the army, and it’s also great for Princeton. If you believe, as I do, in the importance of civilian control of the military, then Princeton has been able to produce great leaders like General Willey and General Cavoli and has been able to influence them. General Petraeus got his Ph.D. at Princeton. I think Princeton should actively seek to be able to educate future leaders of the military, and for 100 years we have done a great job of that. GH: My mom is a refugee from Eastern Europe. One of my mom’s earliest memories is foriegn tanks rolling down the streets of her hometown. She eventually ended up moving to England and then to the U.S. because of that, and I think that serving the nation and joining the U.S. military really is a service to the whole world. It is not just about U.S. interests. As a country and as an organization, we are a global force for good. That is actually a Navy recruiting motto, but I believe it is relevant to all branches of the military. It expands a lot beyond the United States and beyond serving our country on its own.

Opinion

Friday November 15, 2019

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The promise and peril of Princeton’s service to the nation Jon Ort

Managing Editor

The Nov. 21, 2001, issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly lauded Donald Rumsfeld ’54 as a “wrestler, pilot, and organizer extraordinaire … lead[ing] the U.S. defense department into perhaps its toughest fight ever.” After his courageous actions on Sept. 11, 2001, which included helping to carry a stretcher from the Pentagon’s smoldering ruins, Rumsfeld basked in the country’s esteem. On cue, his alma mater celebrated its virtuous son: Secretary of Defense to a nation under attack. Yet, when Rumsfeld left the Pentagon in 2006, he was disgraced and despised. Gone was the public adoration that had won him, at the age of 70, the title of “sexiest Cabinet member.” Instead, in the intervening five years, Rumsfeld had attained his most ambitious military fantasy: the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime. Confident in his command and convinced of his superior intelligence, Rumsfeld never questioned the neoconservative orthodoxies that compelled the U.S. to illegally invade Iraq. He never anticipated the grave atrocities, astronomical costs, and destructive counterinsurgency that inexorably followed. After five years of abuses and lies, Rumsfeld rightly garnered America’s contempt. Though he accepted responsibility for certain shortcomings, Rumsfeld has never expressed remorse for the disastrous invasion he

designed, for the torture he all but condoned at Abu Ghraib, or for his hubris, which cost the lives of nearly 4,500 U.S. service members and untold numbers of Iraqis. We often hear, and repeat, the platitude, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” We are taught that being at Princeton obligates and enables us to serve the United States, as Woodrow Wilson enjoined more than a century ago. But are we prepared to do what that pledge asks of us? At first blush, it seems that Rumsfeld, a Navy ROTC cadet at University, fulfilled the motto. He held many of the most powerful positions in the U.S. government, and he presided over the Pentagon at a critical time. Rumsfeld’s good-faith efforts to serve his nation cannot be discounted. But his story does not end — or even begin — there. Princeton propelled Rumsfeld’s entry into politics. In 1963, he launched a long-shot congressional bid in an affluent district near Chicago. He drafted half a dozen Princeton classmates to his modest campaign, and he invoked Princeton football to gain essential endorsements. Against the odds, he won. Two decades later, in an Alumni Day address, Rumsfeld reminisced, “That campaign was like a Princeton reunion.” Though Rumsfeld had grown up in a family of limited means, Princeton’s elite milieu helped catapult him to Washington’s halls of power. In the career that followed,

Rumsfeld pursued his own ambitions with unrelenting resolve. In the Nixon administration, he clashed with many rivals, while also inculcating deep loyalty in his protégé, Dick Cheney. By seeking a diplomatic posting in Europe, Rumsfeld survived Watergate’s political fallout. Untainted by scandal, he returned to the White House as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff. In the so-called Halloween Massacre of 1975, Rumsfeld brilliantly undercut his rivals, including George H.W. Bush, to become the youngest Secretary of Defense in the nation’s history. When he returned to the private sector in 1977, Rumsfeld had become a national celebrity, prominent enough to launch his own presidential campaign. As Rumsfeld’s national repute reached its zenith, the University understood his “service” in a transactional light. Through his political celebrity, Rumsfeld, a repeat lecturer at Whig-Clio and the Wilson School, upheld his side of the public-service equation. The University reciprocated in kind. In 1985, Rumsfeld received the Woodrow Wilson Award — the University’s highest honor — conferred upon alumni who “exemplify Woodrow Wilson’s memorable phrase ‘Princeton in the nation’s service.’” Several years later, he became a Trustee. Rumsfeld is far from the only Princetonian politician to have enjoyed such an expedient relationship with his alma mater. Adlai Stevenson, Class of 1922,

George F. Kennan ’25, George P. Shultz ’42, Frank Carlucci ’52, and James Baker ’52 — all of whom received the Woodrow Wilson Award — shaped decades of U.S. foreign policy and military strategy. Undoubtedly, they served the nation. But that truism should not shield such figures from scrutiny. Indeed, as Rumsfeld concluded in his Princeton senior thesis, “Let us be thankful that we live in a land where we can demand of those in authority, ‘Give us an account of thy stewardship.’” As we commemorate a century of ROTC at Princeton — and recall the enormous sacrifices we ask of our service members — we should remember that public service can go awry. Power can corrupt its practitioners. The achievements that marked Rumsfeld’s contentious career — reaching the highest echelons of political influence, ascending the chain of command, even receiving the Woodrow Wilson Award — do not constitute public service in themselves. Public service calls us to do something less soaring than Rumsfeld’s station, but all the more meaningful for its humility. Serving the nation means harnessing the privilege of our Princeton education — not for political power or personal profit, but to the benefit of our fellow Americans. Jon Ort is a Managing Editor of The Daily Princetonian. This piece represents the views of the Managing Editor only. He can be reached at jaort@princeton.edu.

Give ROTC some credit Brent Kibbey

Contributing Columnist

In the 1970s, after the University reexamined its relationship with ROTC, it decided to get rid of credit for ROTC courses. Since then, Princeton has been one of the very few schools that do not offer credit to ROTC students. This accreditation problem has been revisited over the years, and nothing has changed. I write this column today asking for change to be made, not as a representative of ROTC, but as one of the many students in the ROTC program who have had to deal with this unfair policy. We take eight ROTC classes over the course of our time at Princeton. We do not get a single credit for them. Princeton ROTC cadets do the same work as every other ROTC cadet elsewhere in the country, but this policy puts them at a unique disadvantage compared to those other students. There is no good reason that Princeton cannot stay true

to its motto, “In the nation’s service and in the service of humanity,” and integrate ROTC, as it has been elsewhere. At almost any other university, credits for ROTC courses count towards graduation requirements. Implementing this change at Princeton would allow ROTC cadets to have more time to participate in the other opportunities available here. Few cadets are able to be as present in clubs and programs as other students, due to the program’s time commitment. Accrediting ROTC classes means that cadets would gain an average of eight extra hours weekly, which cadets at almost all other universities now enjoy. Doing so would remove the impediment that Princeton unfairly places on its ROTC cadets: preventing them from competing equally with their peers in the job market, both currently and in the years to come. All Princeton students find themselves swamped with work and responsibilities. For Army ROTC cadets, this work-

load is larger — equivalent to taking a fifth class. Three days a week, we wake up to be at physical training at 6:30 a.m. Once a week, we have a two-hour class, usually in the morning around the same time, and then we have a five-hour lab on Fridays. We also engage in various other weekly tasks and events. We do work and exams for these classes, like any other course. In short, ROTC takes up a lot of time; this is especially true for cadets who are on the B.S.E. track and, therefore, taking five classes a semester, bringing their workload to six classes. Navy and Air Force ROTC cadets have an even larger burden, as they must go to Rutgers, often waking up at 4:30 a.m. to arrive in time. These classes teach us leadership, military science, and public speaking, among other things. They are no different from other courses here. Regularly, the contract between the University and the Army is revalidated. The time has come for it to be updated again. As such, I call on the ad-

ministration and the faculty to accredit ROTC courses — to remove the vestiges of policy made in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when the military was scorned. While it is true that anti-military sentiments still exist on campus, support for ROTC has increased since the 1970s, regardless of how students may feel about the military at large. Princeton continues to send its students to important policy-making positions after graduation, and the military is no exception. Just look to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley ’80. He is one of the many highranking officials representing Princeton. The University should want to send more of its students off to the nation’s service — the current course credit policy is acting against that goal. Brent Kibbey is a junior in the Woodrow Wilson School from Portland, Tennessee. He can be reached at bkibbey@princeton. edu.

vol. cxliii

editor-in-chief

Chris Murphy ’20 business manager

Taylor Jean-Jacques’20 BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 trustees Francesca Barber David Baumgarten ’06 Kathleen Crown Gabriel Debenedetti ’12 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Michael Grabell ’03 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Kavita Saini ’09 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Abigail Williams ’14 trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 William R. Elfers ’71 Kathleen Kiely ’77 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73 trustees ex officio Chris Murphy ’20 Taylor Jean-Jacques’20

143RD MANAGING BOARD managing editors Samuel Aftel ’20 Ariel Chen ’20 Jon Ort ’21 head news editors Benjamin Ball ’21 Ivy Truong ’21 associate news editors Linh Nguyen ’21 Claire Silberman ’22 Katja Stroke-Adolphe ’20 head opinion editor Cy Watsky ’21 associate opinion editors Rachel Kennedy ’21 Ethan Li ’22 head sports editor Jack Graham ’20 associate sports editors Tom Salotti ’21 Alissa Selover ’21 features editors Samantha Shapiro ’21 Jo de la Bruyere ’22 head prospect editor Dora Zhao ’21 associate prospect editor Noa Wollstein ’21 chief copy editors Lydia Choi ’21 Elizabeth Parker ’21 associate copy editors Anna McGee ’22 Sydney Peng ’22 head design editor Charlotte Adamo ’21 associate design editor Harsimran Makkad ’22 head video editor Sarah Warman Hirschfield ’20 associate video editor Mark Dodici ’22 digital operations manager Sarah Bowen ’20

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Opinion

Friday November 15, 2019

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The first World War’s legacy at Princeton Juan José López Haddad

Contributing Columnist

“… They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.” As the last words of “For the Fallen,” by Laurence Binyon, reverberated across cold stone walls and faded, I couldn’t help but feel awed yet mystified. Standing in the empty, cavernous University Chapel, my friend had decided to hold his own impromptu Remembrance Day service, with myself as the sole lucky attendant. It was his first Remembrance Day — known here as Veteran’s Day — away from his native England, and despite all of the tradition and commemoration, it did not feel the same to him. The American way of celebrating it was surely different, with no lapel poppies in sight, and the tune of “I Vow to Thee, My Country” nowhere to be heard. While these cultural caveats were part of our motivation, I believe there was a deeper, underlying reason for this perceived difference. While our American peers celebrated the honor and merit of veterans, they often failed to

hear the voices of the fallen. “… The opening of this new academic year … presents to our minds a striking contrast: the peaceful setting of this assembly against the dark background of the terrible European war.” On Sept. 24, 1914, in that same spot where we had just finished our two minutes of silence, different students stood in a different chapel hearing the address of President John G. Hibben to the incoming first-year class. The conflict now known as World War I had just broken out a month before, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Students returned to a campus that, unbeknownst to them, would be changed forever by this seemingly distant struggle of squabbling European states. At that moment, Hibben’s words reverberated among the walls and pillars of old Marquand Chapel, and with them, the thoughts, anxieties and expectations of many that would not live to see the war’s end. Despite the chapel’s destruction by fire in 1920, these echoes still danced past pointed arches into ornate walls, harmonizing with the solemn words recited by my friend as perfect counterpoint between the living and the dead.

And that’s what this was. It was a rare moment where I was clearly able to hear the ever present voices of our campus history. Among the numerous events that celebrated the military heroes of today — church services, barbecues, and even discount sales at stores — we felt that the actions of the living were overshadowing the sacrifices of the fallen. I do not believe it is wrong to honor those who work for our defense out of duty and love, but I do believe there is a special power and value to the contemplation of those who long ago gave their lives so we could enjoy our imperfect but more peaceful world. I don’t blame the public for forgetting the importance of these sacrifices, as the century that separates us from those people seems to impose an immense and unrelatable distance. Yet this perceived distance is no more than fiction, as voices spoken a hundred years ago are still audible among these hallowed halls, especially in moments like that little late-night service at the chapel. As we ventured out of the chapel into the chilly November night, we decided to make our way to Campus Club. My friend had told me of a commemorative plaque honoring those members of the defunct

eating club that lost their lives in WWI. Thinking it could be useful for this article, I followed his lead and went along. While walking through the dimly lit pathways, we noticed a sight that I’m sure many students are familiar with: star-shaped plaques on the exterior of many of the older campus buildings, each honoring a Princetonian fallen in battle. As I saw them, I thought of the moment the names engraved in these tokens were not affixed to a piece of metal, but to real, living people who used to roam around campus as we did. These students used to rush down the stairwell after finishing their morning lecture in McCosh 10. These students used to venture into the library, struggling to find sources for papers due the day after. These students sat on the steps by the sundial as they enjoyed the pleasant, mild weather while reading. They contemplated in awe the incredible history of Nassau Hall. They ate at the dining hall, telling stories of their days and worrying about which club they would bicker. They lived in our dorms, shared our anxieties, hopes, dreams. Yet they did something very few of us will ever do — they left home to never return but as etchings in hundreds of stars that now live among us.

These and many other relics preserve the memories of those who have fallen. The next time you see a star, a plaque at an eating club or, if you’re lucky, one in your own dorm, try to hear the voice of that soldier, and thank him in return. This act of remembrance not only honors those who died, but also reminds us of the costly price of peace, and how much there’s still to do to achieve it. Please remember them, maybe even wear a poppy, as our hearts are worthier vessels of their memory than a thousand rusting scraps. “And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago, Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know; We may not count her armies, we may not see her King; Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering; And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase, And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.” –Urbs Dei, by Sir Cecil Spring Rice. Juan José López Haddad is a sophomore from Caracas, Venezuela. He can be reached at jhaddad@ princeton.edu.

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Sports

Friday November 15, 2019

page 16

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } ROTC

“Preparing for the battlefield”: Athletics and leadership in ROTC By Josephine de La Bruyère Head Features Editor

It’s a Wednesday morning, 06:47 a.m., 27 degrees outside. Kanye West’s “Stronger” blasts over the Jadwin Gymnasium speakers. Twenty-five runners — with mostly matching uniforms, mostly matching crewcuts, mostly matching gaits — have settled into a rhythm. They woke up as first-years and seniors, history majors and engineers, Oklahomans and Connecticut natives. They pulled on standard-issue shirts, shorts, socks, strapped on their running watches. Some of them doublechecked to make sure their shaves were clean. And somewhere in the walk from each of their dorms to Jadwin Gym, a group of individual students became something else entirely: a platoon of Army cadets. For the next 43 minutes, they round the indoor track—again, and again, and again. They sweat. They curse. They cheer each other on. “Stronger” gives way to a medley of other songs of West’s. The women’s basketball team files into practice; dribbles start to echo through the hall. ROTC meets thrice weekly for Personal Training (PT) sessions: hour-long circuits of physical exercises tailored to developing fitness skills specific to the all-important Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). A diagnostic version of the test is administered monthly; a recorded one administered once per semester. The APFT entails a timed twomile run, two minutes of pushups, and two of sit-ups. Cadets are evaluated on a rubric that takes into account their age and gender. The resulting score has pressing implications. Repeated failure to pass a PT test results in a cadet’s expulsion from the ROTC program, and the ensuing revocation of his Army scholarship. And in tandem with his GPA, a cadet’s PT score determines his national ranking. That, in turn, will determine his active-duty branch after graduation and commissioning. In the coming months, Tiger Company will begin phasing out the APFT, the bedrock of its physical training program, for the Army’s new chosen metric of physical fitness: The Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT). The test features six tasks: a deadlift, standing power throw, hand-release pushups, sprint-drag and-carry, leg-tuck, and two-mile run. Notably, it will also abandon the gender and agebased rubric. To someone like Cadet Staff Sergeant Savannah Hampton ’22, that news is bittersweet. Hampton currently has a perfect PT score of 300: more than 42 pushups in two minutes, more than 78 sit-ups in two minutes, and a two-mile run in a time faster than 15:36. “As a small female, it’s easy for me to max the test by working on pushups and sit-ups, and naturally running,” she said. “Training for the new test has a lot more difficult for me. I’m a little bit sad to see the APFT and my perfect score go, but I know that this is a positive step for the Army. It ensures combat readiness. On the battlefield, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a male or female, a 50-year-old general, or it’s your first combat deployment.” Regardless of whether it comes from the APFT or the ACFT, a cadet’s PT score reigns supreme over his ROTC experience. “The result of a PT test is a measure of physical fitness, and physical fitness is a measure of how

dedicated and committed you are,” said Lieutenant Colonel Courtney Jones, Director of the Army Education Program. “How accountable are you to yourself and those around you? How well can you motivate yourself?” He pauses, then laughs. “Here’s an example. In my time in the Army, I’ve always gotten 100 percent in every category of PT. That demonstrates that I’m motivated, I’m serious about my physical fitness. And I can use that to motivate the cadets, too. I mean, they’re half my age. You can’t beat a 43-year-old?” PT involves activities ranging from swimming to sprint intervals to 10-mile ruck marches to stadiums to, on special occasions, dodgeball. It’s grueling. “Damn,” gasped one sweating cadet, bent double after finishing his ninth 400-meter interval. “God. Damn.” Cadets come from a variety of athletic backgrounds. Past Companies have seen varsity athletes populate their ranks, but as Division I commitments have ramped up in recent years, more cadets have opted to participate in club sports instead. For those with athletic backgrounds, passing — and excelling at — the APFT comes easily. For some, though, the APFT marks the first time they’ve pushed themselves to their physical limits. A struggling cadet who scores below 70 percent on any event is sent to “remedial PT,” a series of extra PT sessions in an effort to curtail the gap. To hold him accountable, the Company also pairs him with a more experienced, better-performing cadet. Cadets relegated to remedial PT aren’t the only ones expected to work out on their own time. “The goal is to reach and exceed the Army standard,” said Cadet Sergeant First Class Jason Kim ’21. “I put in ten to twelve hours in the gym a week,” said Cadet Second Lieutenant Jacob Rob ’21. “Every time I go, a see a couple of other ROTC guys in there.” And while PT aims to increase and maintain cadets’ physical fitness, it amounts as much to an exercise in leadership as it does to one in athletic performance: it is an entirely cadet-let endeavor. Company leadership — Cadet Captain Caleb Visser ’20, Cadet First Sergeant Eliza Ewing ’20, and Cadet First Lieutenant Kasey Bersh ’20 — determine an overarching plan. They disseminate it to the next tier of leadership: the platoon level. Two teams of two cadets each run Tiger Company’s two platoons. Rob and Cadet Second Lieutenant Seyitcan Ucin ’20 serve as platoon leaders; Kim and Cadet Sergeant First Class Ethan Katz ’21 serve as platoon sergeants. The platoon leadership coordinates a schedule which allows each lower-level cadet to lead a PT session. “It gives the younger cadets an opportunity to develop their command presence and their comfort level of being in front of a formation and leading an exercise,” Visser explained. “They have to be able to promote cohesion and to promote the goals and aspirations of the Army. Sometimes that means pushing the cadets you’re commanding; sometimes that means sacrificing the most intense workout so one of your cadets can gain confidence.” “We equate physical fitness with leadership potential,” Jones said. “But sometimes you can’t help what happens — you know the

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Cadet Eliza Ewing ’20

damn Spiegl twins.” Cadet Sterling Spiegl ’21 was midway through a six-mile ruck march last October when he took a bad step. It wasn’t until hours later, when he peeled off his combat boots and socks to reveal a blackened right foot, that he realized something was wrong. McCosh took an x-ray. It was clean; they told him to rest for six weeks. He did. A month and a half later, intense pain in his right ankle prevented his full-fledged return to running. Back he went to McCosh, where they told him to rest a little longer. He followed their advice. The pain kept coming. Home in Atlanta that spring break, a longtime doctor of Spiegl’s diagnosed him with a tibial stress fracture. He rested again until June when, upon his return to running, his leg refractured. Spiegl was presented with two options. He could let himself heal naturally by taking a year off from running. Or he could have major surgery to install a rod in his leg. The natural healing appealed, but with it came a caveat. His scholarship was, in theory, good for four years – and it was dependent on his performance in PT. A year without running would wreak havoc on his scholarship. His timing couldn’t have been worse. Also last October, Cadet Staff Sergeant Jarrett Spiegl ’21 – Sterling’s twin, and one of three triplets – was sprinting up the field in a club rugby match against Columbia University. He headed for a

tackle, and it didn’t go his way. “I thought I was fine,” he said. “I got up, kind of jogged around. After a few weeks, my left knee was still really swollen. I went to the rugby team doctor, and he told me I’d torn my ACL.” He needed surgery, and fast. But as there had been for Sterling, there existed a problem for Jarrett. In order for his Army scholarship to be validated, he had to take the fall semester’s PT test. If he opted to have surgery, he wouldn’t be able to take the test until July; his scholarship would be gone. It seemed he had to take the APFT without an ACL. This story has a happy ending: Lieutenant Colonel Jones, who vowed in an interview to “take care of whatever [his] cadets need,” did precisely that. He procured medical waivers for the two, now-contracted Spiegls. As long as Jarrett manages to pass his PT test this fall with a brace and Sterling manages to pass his this spring, the Spiegls’ service will continue as planned. The Spiegls’ story, though – an injury, medical confusion, and then a seemingly dichotomous choice between medical care and the Army’s money – illustrates a palpable difference between the experience of varsity athletes at the University and the experience of ROTC Cadets. “These are student athletes from our perspective,” said Jones. “Their scholarships are tied 100% to their physical condition.” ROTC Cadets practice in Jadwin Gymnasium, the hub of the University’s varsity athletics. Cadets

have access to a nutritionist and, when cadre leadership deems it necessary, access to varsity doctors. But unlike the vast majority of varsity athletic programs, Tiger Company has no trainer, no designated doctor, no designated physical therapist, and no designated academic advisors. That’s not to say that all is hopeless for injured cadets. They have access to a wide support network and, always, the University’s general health services. Typically, an injured cadet is placed on “profile” – a form of alternate, injury-friendly PT – until they’re healed. And once they are, it’s back to business; back to the familiar routine of preparing for combat. It’s a Wednesday morning, 7:28 a.m., 33 degrees outside. Twentyfive runners — with mostly matching uniforms, mostly matching crewcuts, mostly matching gaits — finish their 12th 400-meter interval. They catch their breath, stretch in formation, stand at attention. They are dismissed. A palpable stiffness slips from their shoulders. Jackets cover uniforms, and a rumble of chatter spreads as firstyears and seniors, history majors and engineers, Oklahomans and Connecticut natives thread their way from Jadwin to WuCox. The cadets gather for omelets, cereal, a debrief. Their day lies ahead of them. The cadets are ready.

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While playing for the men’s hockey team, General Mark Milley ’80 racked up 28 minutes in the penalty box.

Currently, two Princeton ROTC graduates hold senior military positions.

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