NROTC U OF TEXAS 06:00:06. File #1

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1 06:00:06 File #1 06:00:29 ROB: John, thanks for joining us this morning. I wonder if we could begin by you introducing yourself and what your role is here at the University of Texas, NROTC and perhaps a little bit about yourself in terms of where you re from and what your program of study is here? 06:00:47 JOHN: Of course, my name is John Goodrich and my position at UT is that I m the battalion commanding officer of the Navy ROTC Unit which means that I m the head of the student staff. I m from Georgetown, Texas which is about 40 miles away from the university and my study here is Physics. ROB: And in Georgetown, as a town is it you know, is there a military connection to Georgetown at all? Or is it you know, sort of a typical central Texas town which everybody s supposed to play football all the time and that kind of stuff? I mean, that s sort of what we know about Texas. 06:01:22 JOHN: Georgetown is about 35,000 people. There s no military base there but you army bases to the north and to the south so there s a lot of people who commute. You ll go to the grocery store and there will be someone in uniform on their way home from work, so you do see it. At the high school there s a junior ROTC program just like the college one but more intended to build people as leaders and students than to train people for the military, so you would see that going to school. Georgetown is about 35,000 people so a lot of its people living in the suburbs commuting to Austin for work. 06:01:56 ROB: And did you have any previous military experience? I mean, were your parents in the military or what attracted you to the military career? JOHN: Well, neither of my parents were in the military but all of my grandparents served in World War II so I had a distinguished list of careers to look at from a Navy doctor and submarine officer to an Army air corps pilot who flew several different planes in World War II. So I always had that to look at. My father never pushed me into anything with the military but he always said look at these men serving in uniform and what they do, this is what they stand for and it always resonated with me so when I had the chance to come to college and participate in the Navy ROTC, I signed up. 1

2 06:02:43 ROB: And what do you I mean, do you have a particular area of service that you re intending to go into? The Navy has lots of career paths, what do you how do you see your career progressing even further down the road past the Navy? 06:02:56 JOHN: Well, I just found out about two weeks ago that I got accepted to flight school so I ll be headed to Pensacola, Florida to begin flight training to be a pilot in the Navy so, still excited about that. That s about a two year long training path before you actually get out to flying off of ships and things like that. ROB: And do you have I mean, what does a tell me a little bit about the experience here as an NROTC officer candidate. What do you go through in sort of your years, have you been exposed to the aviation world before? Have you been exposed to sailing on ships? What here in land locked Texas, so how does the Navy connect here with 06:03:35 JOHN: Right. So during the school year our training program is focussed in Austin. We do things on campus, we march, we wear our uniforms, we conduct classes, military training to get us prepared for the real training evolution which is every summer which we spend somewhere with the Navy we spend a month every single summer training. In my personal experience, my first summer, we all go to the same program then. It s called Cortromin (sp) and what it is is, it s kind of a sampler of all what the Navy has to offer. You spend a week with Naval aviation, a week with submarines, a week with surface ships and a week with the Marine Corps and through those four weeks you get to see everything we do, participate the main rule is, if you want to do something, just ask and someone can probably make it happen. 06:04:24 JOHN: So you d get to see the big guns shoot off the ships, fly around in helicopters, go hike and shoot guns with the marines, it s a lot of fun that first month and if someone wasn t sure what they wanted to do then, it definitely is a good chance to help them make up their mind. I thought I wanted to be on submarines and I got to fly up in one of the military aircraft and after that I knew I wanted to be a naval aviator. ROB: Sounds like a sort of a smorgasbord or a buffet table of things that they re trying to sell you on joining their service. 06:04:57 JOHN: Right, everyone s trying to pitch their service as the best, show you everything that they do, so it s great, you get to see all of the really fun parts of the whatever community you re with without having to deal with all the long periods of boredom in between. 2

3 ROB: We ve had an opportunity to go up and speak with one of the professors at Annapolis US Naval Academy and have you had any interaction with the people from that aspect of of you know, interaction with them and why would you have chosen to do NROTC over Annapolis if there is even a question there? 06:05:34 JOHN: Well, our summer training programs coincide. They re a little bit out of order and they do them for longer but in the ROB: When you say they, cause we don t know who they is so if you could just the US Naval Academy guys. 06:05:45 JOHN: So the US Naval Academy guys, they re on the same training scheme as us, just out of order and the Naval Academy s training length is longer. We go out for a month, they ll go out for the same month as us to the same ships and everything and come back to Annapolis and do another month of training there. That s something we don t do at the NROTC program. But my personal experience with the Naval Academy mid shipmen, I believe, a year and a half ago my summer training in 2010 my summer training, I went out, there were about six of us from the Naval or from the Naval ROTC and another six from the Academy who are all out together. We were attached to a ship and that s where we stayed for our training for the entire month. We did the same jobs as them, talked to the same people. So, when it comes down to it, the actual professional training in the summers is the same, it s just what goes on during the school year that differs. 06:06:42 ROB: And obviously as battalion commander you re responsible for maybe you could mention the numbers of people who are part of here but how do you sort of amplify or try to give the same sort of bonding experience that people will always get from the service academies or I understand people will get from the service academies. Is that something that you re responsible for that the NROTC actually tries to tries to develop? 06:07:11 JOHN: The Navy ROTC UT is about 70 people right now so very small compared to say the Naval Academy which I believe has 1,100 people. I might just be making that up but very small program and different commitments of time. At the Naval Academy, you re living that life 24/7 for the entire four years that you re going to the academy. With Navy ROTC you have your own apartment, you re responsible for cooking your own meals, doing your own laundry, you come in for the Navy ROTC activities which are pretty tough but it s not that 24/7 commitment and it s hard to get the same bond between people as the academy guys get. So what we have to do is make sure that the time we do spend 3

4 together is constructive and helps to build that unity and help fill in for the gaps when people are just living the part of their lives that s a civilian college student, rather than the military part of their lives because as ROTC mid shipmen, we have both of that. 06:08:12 ROB: And how is the how is the weight in terms of your scholastic year? I mean, you ve got this commitment, you ve got classes that do it, and you re also taking physics classes which must be a pretty tough course just for regular students? 06:08:28 JOHN: Well, with the academic course load, we re expected to graduate with a technical degree, so engineering, science, something like that. It s a very difficult course of study, the Navy wants us to get out in four years, so we re held to the same standards or sometimes a tougher standard than our classmates who can sometimes stretch it out to five years or six. So we have to get it done in a set amount of time with a technical difficult degree and that makes it hard for some people who aren t prepared for that level of difficulty in school but that s our expectation for what we graduate with. And on top of all of that, we have workouts, training, marching and all sorts of other activities throughout the semester. 06:09:14 ROB: Do you have any interaction with student vets who ve you know, put in some time in the service and marine corps, Afghanistan, Iraq, do you have connection with those particular kinds of students so that there s a little flavour, a little sort of reality that you might not get from being here as opposed to being at the academy? 06:09:33 JOHN: Well, our closest exposure to student vets is actually within our own program. There s opportunities available for people who have already served to continue serving, get into the ROTC program and serve as either MCAP (sp) or stay 21 student, that s just Marine Corps or Navy Programs, lots of acronyms. But they ll take a break from their duties in the military, come to the university, do the same program as us, they ll commission as officers in the Navy and Marine Corps and start there but they already have a lot of experience on us because I came here straight out of high school. Some of my classmates have 10 or 12 years of service in the Marine Corps, three deployments under their belt in Afghanistan, just things that I ve never done, couldn t imagine, they ve already done and it s very useful having that experience close to home in our program because they can share from their experiences. 4

5 06:10:31 ROB: And what do you think the university benefits from having the NROTC here? I mean, we ve talked about the benefits that might but what about the university, do you think the university benefits from having this program here? 06:10:42 JOHN: I think so. The Navy looks for a very specific kind of person and I believe the selection process is sometimes more stringent with some than some university processes. So, they re looking for students who, since they re paying for their education, who are going to do well in school, who are going to be good leaders, who are going to contribute to the Navy but while they re here they ll also be contributing to the University. So you have being pooled in with Navy ROTC mid shipmen is a group of students who are highly motivated, good at academics who are going to succeed in school and who are also going to be involved in whatever organization or event that they participate in. So I think it s great to have a group of people like that, even if it s only 70 right now, pooled into the University. 06:11:32 ROB: And your guys are getting a new building next year, I understand. I mean, is this something you might not get to but is this something the unit s looking forward to? 06:11:42 JOHN: Yes, we had a we ve been in the same building before the past two years, since, I believe the 50s when it was constructed, Russell A. Steinham Hall. It had big granite blocks at the top that said ROTC and it was a purpose built building for the Army, Navy and Air Force ROTCs to use. They tore it down a year and a half ago, put us into the Sanchez building which is a great building, it s a lot more modern than RAS Hall was but it s a temporary home and being able to move over to the new building where we ll actually have the top floor reserved for the ROTC Units, special design for our needs, it s very exciting and I m disappointed I m going to miss it because as the Navy we do navigation classes and for that we need large navigation tables to put the charts out on and just different spaces than most civilian programs need. 06:12:37 ROB: And you ve had a chance to judge, I guess, this is one of the criticisms that we ve heard you know, that s levelled against ROTC programs back in the 60s anyways, was that they weren t as academically rigorous or that the staff weren t as academically qualified as other academic programs. You re a student, you ve had four years, what s your judgment on that? Have you felt that that s been a problem or is that something that is in the past? 06:13:01 JOHN: Well, I never appreciated my Naval Science Curriculum until this last summer s crews. I ve applied for foreign exchange crews which meant I went down to Chile and served as a member of the Chilean Navy for a month down 5

6 there in Patagonia and when they put me up there they re like, alright, you know how to navigate, right? Yeah, a little bit, okay, here s the chart. And in Spanish I had to navigate the ship, chart it out and that was a class I had just finished the last semester and I was thanking my teacher, Lieutenant Rivera for teaching me so well on how to navigate because if I hadn t had that training and preparation, I would have been completely lost during my time there. So that s been the most remarkable example of it. 06:13:45 JOHN: But the other classes that we take, we have to learn naval history because the history of the navy is what determines our traditions and also the actions that we re going to take in the future and most of the other classes are things on either leadership and development or on just general navy knowledge things that we need to know day one when we get out to the fleet. 06:14:05 ROB: There was certainly, Dr. Mark speaking yesterday, it was a wonderful opportunity to get someone so distinguished. But he was talking about the future, the future, the strategic future that you re going to face as a leader in the US Navy. Is this something that gets you worried a little bit? I mean conflicts in the future, potential, you know, action, potential tsunamis that you mentioned. Chinese are building up their response capability in order to further their own foreign policy goals. Got any thoughts about that at all in terms of what risks and challenges you re going to face in the future? 06:14:47 JOHN: Well, I think we re going to have to interact with other countries at some point and in my career as a naval aviator, I ll especially be out there because our pilots are the ones who are flying over other countries, doing reconnaissance, things like that. The whole point of the Navy though, isn t to start wars or conflicts though. It s to prevent them. We re out there as a deterrent force so if they see, wow, that s a pretty big aircraft carrier with who knows how many planes on it, we don t want to start this battle, we don t want to invade Taiwan or invade such and such place, because that capability is out there and that s the whole point of the Navy is to be a deterrent force and to keep other people from starting conflicts. That s the way I see it, at least. 06:15:36 JOHN: I think there may be conflicts in the future and the Navy will be an integral part of that because we have the capability to be forward deployed anywhere in the world that has water. ROB: So you personally will be challenged and welcome that challenge and what s your thought about that? 6

7 06:15:56 JOHN: It ll definitely be a challenge having to go out there and do whatever the mission may be. That s what I ve signed up for as a Naval officer however and I ll welcome the challenge and the ability to go out there to use my training and to support the Navy of the United States. File #2 ROB: Thanks, John. JOHN: Thank you. End of file#1 06:16:18 (B Roll of building/bells chiming/statutes/grounds/) 06:19:59 ROB: If we could start just with a brief introduction of your name, your background in terms of why you re here at the NROTC at U of Texas and what s your core group of study and what s your start from that. 06:20:14 VETERAN: Alright, sounds good. I m not a Texas native by birth. I was born in Washington State but my family moved to Texas back in 96 and in 2007 I decided to enlist in the Marine Corps. So I did that until, actually June of this year was when I first transferred over here to the University of Texas Naval ROTC program and once a year the Marine Corps has a selection process where enlisted marines will apply for a commissioning program and if selected they get to go to the university of their choice, provided they re accepted at the university. So this is my first semester here at the University of Texas and currently I am studying History. I haven t really declared a specific study field, probably using maybe Spanish as my minor right now. 06:20:54 ROB: And is there a period of study that you have to commit yourself to, I mean, is this a four year program, is this a four year undergraduate kind of program or do you have a lesser period of time that you have to focus on? 06:21:06 VETERAN: The only real specific requirements I have, other than some Naval science classes that we re required to take while we re here, is I just have to have a four year degree. The Marine Corps does not even specifically require me to have like, a technical major or they really don t give any specific guidance to my field of study so I have a lot of liberty in the academic field. But I transferred in with about 44 credits and I should be graduating out of here in about two, maybe two and a half years, so that s the plan. 7

8 06:21:33 ROB: Does the I mean does the corps have a sort of a dictum that they want all officers to have university degrees? Is this what they re trying to encourage? I mean, obviously you did some other study when you were as a Sergeant or other things, you built up some credits from somewhere so is the corps itself encouraging an educational process amongst its members? 06:21:54 VETERAN: I think it encourages education in general. Specifically to be a officer in any branch in the US Military, you have to have at least a four year degree. Some of the branches encourage that in different ways. A lot even on the enlisted side they encourage that through tuition assistance and one of the things you can do to help make yourself stand out when you re applying for an officer program is if you already have shown success in the college environment. That kind of helps you to stand out from all your peers. But in general I believe the military encourages education, obviously amongst its officers but more and more amongst the enlisted as well. There s a lot of opportunities. 06:22:27 ROB: Now, just a little background on your enlistment. Obviously you ve done some tours VETERAN: Sure. ROB: how are what s your experience as a veteran here on campus that 60,000 people, most of whom haven t had any military experience. 06:22:41 VETERAN: What has my experience, I guess, been interacting with the individuals on campus or like, in the Austin area? ROB: Well, just give me a little bit of flavour about what your tours, you know, your tours or your experience in the military was VETERAN: I understand. ROB: and you know, as a veteran, how is how is your experience here in Austin? 06:23:00 VETERAN: In 2009 I deployed with my battalion out of Camp Pendleton, California. We deployed to Iraq for 7 months. We came back for, I want to say, about three and a half, maybe four months and then from February, 2010 to February this year, I was over in Afghanistan and coming back from that I already knew before I came back from Afghanistan that I d be accepted for this program and in June I actually transferred over here to the Naval ROTC Unit here at the University of Texas and so far this is my first semester obviously here. This is the 8

9 first time I ve lived in Austin as well but the reception on campus has been overwhelmingly positive. There are actually several student organizations that I ve been made aware of so far that specifically cater to veterans. There s a new Student Veteran s Association, I believe, that they just opened up. 06:23:48 VETERAN: And it looks like there s a lot of organizations and opportunities for people with a military background and I ve been more and more surprised about the individuals that I have met who either were prior enlisted or prior service who aren t directly affiliated with an ROTC program. And in several of my classes so far, I ve met people who are prior service Navy, prior service Army and kind of that common bond. Once they they see the haircut, they see the uniform, sometimes we wear it around campus. I think that starts conversations and I think the veteran population here is actually probably larger than most people would think. They re just not all affiliated with the ROTC Unit or program. 06:24:23 ROB: And so, I mean our documentary is really about civil military relations and your here experiencing civil military relations in the sense that you know, previously your career was really all enveloped within the marine corps, how is you re studying civil military relations. What s your take on the issue if I can ask? 06:24:45 VETERAN: Can I ask for a little bit more specific clarity asking that question. Are you asking like, in my experience? ROB: Well, sure, your experience. VETERAN: How people have interacted with me being a service member or kind of what I think the role is? I just want to get more specific guidance on what you re looking for. 06:24:58 ROB: Sure. Well, as the film is on civil military relations and we re asking for your personal experiences, that s where we re going to start from but you know, civil military relations, one of the things we re studying is the gap between the military and civilians and how ROTC and NROTC can actually help to bridge that gap. So personally, have you had any experience, I mean, what made you join the military in the first place? Was it driven by family members or 06:25:27 VETERAN: I guess, in a small degree I do come from a military family. That was never an expectation that was put upon me. My grandfather served in the Navy during World War II. On my mom s side of the family, several of my uncles served during Vietnam and my mom also did a couple of years in the Air Force in her life. But that was never a path that my parents kind of specifically suggested 9

10 or even necessarily recommended to me. It was kind of a decision that I came to on my own. 06:25:53 VETERAN: I think growing up, especially being in a Southern State in the Texas area, a lot of my friends and I were military minded growing up. We saw the culture of maybe the videos and the movies of US service members serving around the world and I think, to me, when I approached the age, you know, just past high once I graduated high school, for me I just I always had a heart to basically serve other people and for me, not necessarily for any political reason but I saw the military as a way of being able to stand up for people who couldn t stand up for themselves. 06:26:23 VETERAN: So that was kind of my motivation in joining the service back in 07. As far as the relationship between the civilian population and the military, I think part of the biggest thing that I ve noticed is that civilians in general, at least at a glance, don t necessarily realize everything the military is involved in. They kind of see the images of Iraq or Afghanistan and they have a very violent image of you know, one of our responsibilities which is, you know, one of our unfortunate things we have to deal with but there s a lot more than we re involved in. 06:26:54 VETERAN: And they re just either in peacekeeping or humanitarian aid or just in developing people in general in society and one of the goals of the military is, eventually an individual has to get out and one of their stated goals is to make sure they return to society the highest calibre of individuals. So they put a lot of emphasis on that. The fact that, as much as you may enjoy the military, ultimately one day that will end and you have to kind of re integrate into the society and you you kind of reflect on whatever service you served in. You know, however you act out in the back in the civilian community reflects back on that. But ultimately we re here to protect the Nation so we want to reintroduce the most the highest calibre of individuals back into that society, you know, that we believe in so much. 06:27:33 ROB: The Marine Corps is a little unique in it doesn t have a service academy, per se VETERAN: Yes, sir. ROB: so they really do put a lot of emphasis on on the interaction of their educating their officers through public diversity VETERAN: Yes, sir. 10

11 ROB: As I said, the earlier question was, you know, obviously they re very interested in making their officers have a university degree and I think you answered the question, there was no particular course of study that they were forcing you into. VETERAN: That s right. ROB: Is this a benefit being do you think the Marine Corps is benefiting from not having a service academy and therefore putting people like yourself through private university, public university? 06:28:17 VETERAN: Well, I think, in partial answer to your question, as a department of the Navy, the Marine Corps does send a lot of its officers through the Naval Academy and more other military universities are a large number of marine officers that come through there. I think they do benefit from the diversity in that, as I m here on other marine options that go through maybe other state schools, other universities that aren t directly affiliated with the military academy, they re kind of exposed to just regular people a little bit. 06:28:46 VETERAN: My older brother went through the Air Force Academy so I get to compare his experience to what I m going through right now and one of the benefits is, you know, after my time during the days that I m on duty or after some activity is I can kind of step back, at least for a second, I m never really taking off being a Marine but remind myself that, you know, these people around me, they come from different backgrounds, especially being out in Austin, you know, there are people from all over the world and all other cultures and it s really awesome to be able to take advantage of that to realize that to realize the diversity that kind of is here and what else is out there. 06:29:18 VETERAN: And I think that I would prefer that kind of experience to go into a military academy. Not necessarily that I have anything against a military academy obviously, but I think the experience here is more well more well rounded and you just get exposed to a large majority of the world around you. There s a lot of focus on you know, military specific training and it s really important for the mid shipmen and some of the other ones who don t have the background in the military but coming from four and a half years on the enlisted side, it s kind of nice to have both kind of the best of both of those worlds here. 06:29:48 VETERAN: So, my entire life isn t at a military academy. I still get to step back and realize hey, this is the country that I love, this is why I do it and for me that makes it a little bit easier on you, I think and I appreciate that a little bit more. 11

12 ROB: Thank you very much. VETERAN: No problem. End of tape 6. 12