ROTC students favor Bush re-election

By Andrea Barrack

With the war in Iraq at the center of the upcoming November election, many members of the Santa Clara Reserve Officers' Training Corps will vote for President Bush while keeping in mind their own futures and those of their comrades overseas.

"I'm voting for Bush because I think his military policies are more supportive to the lifestyle I want to live." said Andrew Jenkins, who's in his third year of the military science program.

Cadets made it clear that their views do not reflect the official opinion of the ROTC program.

President Bush received 73 percent of a sample group of 4,165 subscribers to the publication Army Times, that publication reported. Presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., received 18 percent of the vote.

National Guard members, reserves and those serving on active duty comprised the sample group. The results of the survey are not representative of the military as a whole.

"I need to look at which president has the best plan for me and the way I view the Iraqi situation," said junior Veronica Lowman, a junior ROTC cadet.

Lowman anticipates that she will go to Iraq. She said that when people ask her when she will be deployed, she feels nervous and tries not to think about it.

"I don't want to do it. I'm really scared. I don't want to go to Iraq because I don't want to die and also don't want to kill people," she said.

"But this is the decision I chose to make and I don't think I'd want to put somebody else in my place if I wouldn't do it."

Lowman still plans to research the candidates more before voting but feels Kerry doesn't give straight answers for his plans in Iraq.

"He just kind of says whatever everybody wants to hear," she said. This will be Lowman's first chance to vote in a presidential election.

Geoffery Lin, a spokesman for the ROTC program, followed the debates closely and remembers Kerry claiming he would quickly remove troops from Iraq if he were elected to office.

"I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but I think he's saying this to play up to the crowd and not necessarily because he has a plan to do so," he said.

Lin said that he is not wholly for or against the war, but an important question is how to best protect American troops.

"It's personal for me in that I have a lot of friends that are overseas right now," Lin said. "When I do fill out my absentee ballot, the first thing I'm going think about is them, not necessarily myself, but friends overseas who I get occasional letters and e-mails and IM messages from in that time zone."

"I kind of see it as an issue of protecting those overseas. Does it ensure that, not only can they do their job effectively, but do so in a way that they can come home soon," he said.

Lin says that Bush is sincere in his dealings with the war in Iraq and American military.

"I really have the same political views that I had before I was involved in the military," said ROTC staff member Maj. Scott Yakoubek, a recruiting officer. "People in the military have all different political views."

Second Lt. Nathan Iglesias agrees.

"I don't think any two cadets in this program are similar in their opinions," he said.

Iglesias, who graduated from Santa Clara in the spring, has been in the ROTC program since he was a freshman. His older brother, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was deployed to Iraq for several months last year and may return for duty.

"I don't want him to go, but at the same time, you don't always get to do what you want," Iglesias said. "It's part of the compromise. You want to join, but soldiers sacrifice the luxury of choosing their battles."

He says this election has become "messy" and it's hard to determine what information is legitimate.

Senior Camille Johnson knows that the future depends on the next president. Col. Shari Corbett, Johnson's professor of military science, emphasized this point by coordinating class time so cadets could watch the presidential and vice-presidential debates.

"It's incredibly important that we understand who we're voting for no matter who we are," Johnson said. "And she never influenced us. She never really gave us her opinion on any of the topics because she expects us to form our own opinions. That's how it should be."

Johnson, who's undecided, realizes that she must also focus on domestic issues. But she has already determined her own fate.

"I know I'm going to go," she said. "No matter which president is elected, I will end up in Iraq. It's not good, but it's something that I've accepted."

While ROTC members like Corbett are conscious of keeping their political views outside the classroom, they still have partisanship.

"I'm more inclined to go with Bush's campaign because he's a no-nonsense leader," Sgt. Raymond Trujillo said. "I know some people might not like the decisions he's made with the war in Iraq. No one likes to see our soldiers dying overseas."

Truijillo points out that no one has been drafted for the war in Iraq. "We're doing the job America is paying us to do," he said.

* ààContact Andrea Barrack at (408) 554-4546 or abarrack@scu.edu.