Englewood High School Students Host Debate on Military Enlistment
On Wednesday, March 28th at Englewood High School in the Chicago Public Schools, an unusual thing happened, instructors in the schools ROTC (Army Reserve Officer Training Corps) agreed to debate Vietnam and Iraqi war veterans about the benefits and disadvantages of military enlistment.
Participants in the March 28, 2007 debate on military recruitment and the war at Englewood High School. Left to right: Yusufu Mosley (of Critical Resistance); Barry Romo (of VVAW, Vietnam Veterans Against War); an active duty soldier in Iraq who asked that his name not be used; Aaron Hughes (Iraq Vets Against the War); and Englewood High School student Andrea Hendricks. Not pictured are Sergeant Maurice Flowers (Englewood ROTC instructor) and Major Harry McEwen (Englewood ROTC instructor). When Majoy McEwen tried to compare the dangers of life in the military to the dangers of driving an automobile and getting into an accident, Romo pointed out that the biggest danger facing military people is that they have to go and kill other people. A student asked McEwen whether he had ever faced the life-and-death situations of combat, and he told them that he hadn’t. (Substance photo by Jackson Potter).As part of a service project for the Constitutional Rights Foundation on the pros and cons of the draft, Englewood students constructed a debate format for the panelists to struggle out a myriad of issues pertaining to the War in Iraq.
The panelists included: Barry Romo, President of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Sergeant Maurice Flowers, ROTC instructor, Aaron Hughes, founding member of Iraqi War Vets against the War, Major Harry McEwen, ROTC instructor, and an active duty soldier in Iraq against the war who will remain anonymous in this piece. Five Englewood students sat adjacent to the panelists and fielded a series of questions for the guests to answer. Some of the questions asked included: “Do you think enlisting in the military is a good idea, why or why not?” and “What do you think about the 3,000 plus soldiers who have died in the war so far?”
The most important exchange occurred after Major McEwen commented that every decision in life involves a calculated risk. He then proceeded to assert that driving a car was one of the most dangerous things a person can do, and many more die doing that than serving in Iraq
In a passionate and angry response, VVAW’s Barry Romo disputed that logic challenging the Major. “To compare dying in an auto accident to intentionally killing someone for no good reason is a terrible comparison,” Romo said. Students were fixated on this moment and began to ask pointed questions directed at the ROTC instructors in the little time that remained. Senior Andrea Hendricks, who has been heavily recruited by the Navy, asked the Major: “Did you serve in combat like these other men.”
In a very prosaic manner, the Major answered, “No, I didn’t.” The questions were then beginning to accumulate as another young lady in the audience followed up with “well don’t you think these other men might be right, being that they’ve seen what actual combat is really like?”
By that point the Major had no choice but to concede the obvious.
As a teacher of predominantly low income, African American youth, I can confidently say that on this day we dealt a powerful blow to the military recruitment machine. More discussions and forums like this one in our public schools would go a long way to counter the war propaganda being parceled out daily by ROTC programs across America.
