Here's an update with my school in it. If you want to see more the website's here. Talen is a friend of mine and he is also the president of GSA (Gay Straight Alliance).
The San Francisco Board of Education is scheduled to vote... On the stairway, Stephen Schwenka, the commander of JROTC... Talen Lee, a junior who is commander of Echo Company of t... Cadets from the JROTC at Galileo High march in the Italia... More...
Talen Lee rushed into the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps basement classroom at San Francisco's Galileo High School minutes before the day's last class started.
"At ease!" he yelled from behind a lectern, his high-pitched voice descending half an octave. Another cadet repeated the order as Talen eyed the noisy students, waiting for their silence.
"Attention!" he said, and the students stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Then Talen, the battalion officer, took attendance. It was a Tuesday -- uniform day. In his crisp green uniform, seven medals and 18 ribbons pinned to his left breast pocket, the high school junior called each name and waited for a "Here, Sir!"
Talen, whose life is filled with family and personal problems, has earned respect and prizes it. In JROTC, Talen says, he finds stability, acceptance and happiness.
Yet in eight days, the San Francisco Board of Education is expected to kill off the long-standing and enormously popular course, a politically motivated expulsion that Army officials believe is rare if not unprecedented among the nation's high schools in recent decades.
A majority of board members say the benefits of the 90-year-old program are not worth the association with the U.S. military, an institution they consider discriminatory, homophobic and at odds with the mission of public education.
Nearly 1,600 San Francisco cadets go through JROTC roll call each day. These students are 4-foot-10 to 6-foot-4. Athletic and disabled. College-bound and barely graduating. Gay and straight. White, black and brown. Some leave school for large homes with ocean views. Others board buses for Bayview-Hunters Point.
Dressed in $200 Army-issue uniforms, they look alike, conforming to a rigid structure borrowed from military traditions. For decades, JROTC cadets like Talen have walked through the halls of San Francisco's high schools.
The city's JROTC cadets don't want to lose the sense of purpose and place they say they find there now. They show up dutifully and stay late after school, attending leadership meetings or organizing food drives. Practicing marching, drums or drills. Becoming, they say, leaders, teachers and teammates.
Despite the program's name and the military funding it receives, JROTC does not urge students to be soldiers, nor does it follow federal "don't ask, don't tell" rules regarding homosexuality. The program requires no future commitment of cadets and the vast majority of the students say they have no intention of entering the armed forces.
Board members acknowledge that replacing the program wouldn't be easy.
The cadets say what they find within the walls of the program is a family. For Talen and many of the others, JROTC is their home.
The commander
Talen doesn't spend much time at his family's sixth-floor apartment in the Tenderloin. Some days, he doesn't spend much time at school. He was a stellar student but his grades now suffer from unexcused absences and missed homework assignments. Yet he nearly always attends his last class.
He is the Echo Company commander, the top cadet in sixth period, with a promotion to first or second lieutenant expected soon. He is also gay.
"I came out to my mom when I was 12," he said during after-school drills on his 16th birthday last month. He thought the last four years would have given his family time to adjust. Full acceptance never came. His relationships with his mother and stepfather are tense. He was trying to build a relationship with his birth dad when he recently dropped out of sight, his phone disconnected, his whereabouts unknown, Talen said.
"I joined ROTC to make my family proud," Talen said, as the JROTC drum corps sent snare and bass riffs echoing across the inner courtyard of his high school. But his parents have shown little interest, he said. His family declined to comment for this story.
This year, he worked his way up to a top leadership position in his battalion and won a spot on the unit's drill team -- normally consisting only of girls.
"If I cannot make my parents proud," he said, "I might as well make myself proud."
The sarge
In the back of the JROTC classroom, Steve Hardee stood in the doorway to an adjoining office and watched Talen take Echo Company attendance. The Galileo instructor, a retired Army sergeant first class, is a formidable-looking man at 6-foot-3, with a stare that stops students from doing whatever they weren't supposed to be doing.
The students call him "Sarge."
Scanning the students in Echo Company, Hardee caught a student's eye.
"You owe me," he said to the student in a quiet voice. The boy nodded.
Talen continued calling out names.
"You know why?" Hardee asked. The boy nodded again.
The conversation ended there. The boy, a second-year JROTC cadet, was chewing gum.
He would have to pay 20 jumping jacks for the offense. The sergeant didn't write the debt down. He didn't have to. The student would pay during "PT" -- physical training -- three days later.
There are a lot of regulations and routines for JROTC cadets to memorize. They must learn how to march: left face, right face, about face, keeping step regardless of the length of their legs.
Cadets must show respect to superior officers with proper greetings and replies to commands. Uniform care is also a skill: patches in the proper place and shiny black shoes. Ribbons and medals -- earned by participating in events or drill competitions or mastering skills -- must be appropriately pinned to jackets.
Some students sport dozens of ribbons and medals.
The cadets quickly learn the daily routines of roll call, marching and uniform care. By the second month of school, they stand in formation in the courtyard of the five-story building, looking like a well-oiled machine.
JROTC borrows heavily from military structures, including the chain of command and respect for authority. Hardee has a few of his own rules.
"We don't use 'I can't' here," he told cadets one afternoon in class. "We don't say stupid and we don't swear here."
Same goes for gum-chewing.
A long-term instructor
Michael Thore has been a JROTC instructor at Galileo for 15 years, watching class after class of cadets pass through. Before that, he spent 25 years in the Army -- a stint that started with his "welcome letter" in the 1968 draft.
He served a year in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot, something he doesn't often tell the kids, unless they press him on it. This is the third time he's faced the prospect of the program's elimination.
His voice fills with emotion when he speaks of students. There's Charles, who is autistic. The boy marches in every parade, slightly off-step, but he's there.
The former lieutenant colonel sat in the "Range," a cavernous, cement-walled room that used to be a firing range. Students like to point to holes in the ceiling that they said were the result of poorly aimed shots.
Guns of any kind are no longer allowed on campus or in the JROTC program -- even fake wooden ones. Students now use poles to perform drills.
As Thore described the JROTC program at Galileo, a boy named Sean walked into the Range.
"Colonel, sir?" the student said. "I have to go to a doctor's appointment."
"OK," Thore responded. "See you tomorrow."
Watching the boy leave, Thore explained that Sean, like Charles, is in special education with a developmental disability. The boy is in his fourth year in JROTC.
"I'm not sure what Sean will do someday," Thore said, pride filling his voice as his eyes turned a watery red. "He's a decent, good kid."
Student is a teacher
Talen usually wears pale pink or kelly green polo shirts on nonuniform days, the collar flipped up in a preppie style harking back to the 1980s. He stands out. The school is filled with students wearing black, gray or white.
On a recent uniform day in sixth period, Talen went through the routine in Echo Company. After taking attendance, Talen told the 35 students to stop talking. He was about to start a quiz.
Hardee watched from his chair in the back office.
This is Talen's third year in JROTC. Not only is he a leader, but he is also a teacher. Top-level cadets control classes most days. Hardee steps in when necessary and to teach particular topics.
The quiz included 50 multiple-choice questions -- with topics including first aid, civics and Army rank and protocol -- each projected onto a large screen from a laptop computer. Students used remote controls to mark their answers.
They had 30 seconds for each question. One question asked the definition of latitude; others required recognition of rank insignia or the official date for Flag Day.
Then came this: "JROTC is designed to enlist cadets into the Armed Forces. A) True. B) False."
Four students answered A, and 34 chose B -- the correct answer.
A few questions later, students started to twitter. Talen yelled, "At ease." He challenged a student he believed was cheating. The boy said it was not true, but classmates contradicted him.
"Outside," Talen told the boy, and followed him to the hall.
Their conversation was inaudible inside the classroom. They returned a minute later, having missed a couple of questions, and continued taking the quiz. Later, Talen said he told his classmate that cheating was against school rules and the boy would get an "F" for the day.
Camaraderie
On a Friday a few weeks into the school year, classes were over for the day and Galileo's five floors were nearly empty. Hardee was in his office, looking at a bulletin board covered with student photos -- prom pictures, graduation pictures, goofy pictures of kids hanging out -- nearly all former cadets.
"City College, City College, State," he said, pointing at one student after another, identifying where they are now. "I can tell you none of these guys up here are in the military."
The career military man sat back down in his chair and stared at the dozen or so students meeting in the adjacent classroom. The students were discussing changes to the program's system of merits and demerits.
Hardee shook his head.
"What day is it?" he yelled to the students. "I have a life. I have a date tonight. Go home."
The students glanced at him and smirked, but didn't move.
Some students enroll in JROTC to get out of running laps in gym class. Other students leave when they realize JROTC can be harder than running laps around the school. Most students stay. They like the structure, the unconditional acceptance regardless of physical ability, and the sense that they are part of a team, even if they can't or don't play sports.
They say they feel safe there.
As the students discussed the program's structure of discipline and rewards, Hardee got up and walked out into the basement hallway. His eyes widened as he heard the muffled sound of drums. Approaching the courtyard, the sound got louder.
Boom. Boom. Rat-a-tat-tat. Boom, boom, boom.
The students had pulled the instruments from the JROTC drum corps closet to practice. It wasn't a practice day, but tryouts were coming up.
More than 50 students were scattered across the inner courtyard. There were snare drums and large bass drums. Students huddled around individual instruments, with experienced students teaching younger peers how to play.
Rat-a-tat-tat-a-tat-tat. Pause. Boom. Boom. Boom.
The students didn't want to leave. Hardee shook his head and walked back to his office.
Struggle to keep up
Six weeks into the school year, Talen knew he'd missed too many classes and assignments. He wasn't sure what his grade-point average was -- probably somewhere below a 2.0.
School officials are keeping a close eye, urging him to attend all his classes.
But cutting class has become a problem. He doesn't offer excuses or further explanation. He doesn't blame his home life or personal problems.
"I'm going to fix my grades," he said. "I'm working it out."
He doesn't want to be on probation, perhaps losing his spot on the drill team or his leadership position. He realizes he's setting a bad example.
He believes JROTC needs him and he needs JROTC.
"People are counting on me," he said. "I hate pulling people down with me."
They are the reason the navy doesn't have their ships invaded, and they are known to throw a squid over for good luck too.
army women were just dirty...almost as dirty as navy women