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Samy Abdoun agrees, but he thinks being exposed to military values and discipline helped him. Abdoun says he entered Mission High in 2002 with a thirst for the armed services based on hours playing Call of Duty and Metal Gear videogames. He was placed in JROTC by his counselor (students must now proactively select the elective) and loathed it. He hated the uniform — "that tacky thing" — and regularly had to run laps or do push-ups for refusing to wear it. He hated his instructor, Michael Collier: While he says every other teacher just gave up and flunked him, he couldn't break Collier's pristine reserve. Abdoun even flipped him off once. No quiver of anger, just an order from Collier to sweep every JROTC room.
By sophomore year, Abdoun donned his uniform voluntarily and warmed up to Collier. By his junior year, Abdoun craved the even greater discipline he thought he'd find in the Army, and approached a visiting recruiter giving a presentation at the school. In his senior year, he enlisted to be an Arabic translator, against Collier's advice that he graduate first, planning to earn his GED while in the military.
Abdoun personifies the chicken-and-egg debate — does JROTC steer kids toward the military, or do kids who are already attracted to the military join JROTC? Some anecdotal, highly unscientific evidence to the latter: A junior at Balboa who said he was considering the military also had an N.R.A. patch sewn to his student sweater. Armando Frias, who reported to basic training after graduating from Galileo last year, said he'd believed since childhood that the Army pays to get you into shape and makes you a "superstar," and his four years in JROTC didn't challenge that belief. Lowell alumnus Daniel Le, who will graduate a second lieutenant from the United States Military Academy at West Point in May, said he'd always wanted to give back to the country that offered opportunities to his immigrant parents.
Citing sobering statistics on discrimination and combat injuries, what the JROTC opponents rarely say but often insinuate is that the military is an evil institution that only the brainwashed would sign up for. Abdoun says that's selling kids short: "I think it's wrong to say the military doesn't exist and we shouldn't even put Army posters up. If you want to put up a banking poster and a construction poster, that's fine. Give the kids the idea and let them choose their own career."
Some opponents say they're not against graduates joining the military — they just don't think the alleged recruiting should be happening in the public schools. Hit up the private schools, or start an after school program off-site, Sanchez says: "If this is a market-driven thing and the kids want it, and don't have to decide between that and French, then let them."
There are, of course, students whose experience in JROTC plays a part in persuading them to choose a military future. One Lowell student we'll call George (he didn't want his name published because of the school board controversy) says JROTC "definitely made me more open-minded" to a military career, mostly through the people he met. He talked to a former instructor at the school about his Army experience, and recalls being told something to the effect of, "'Basically, some days I think they cannot pay me enough to get out of bed, and other days when you're blowing shit up and stuff like that, it's like I can't believe they pay me to do this.' I pretty much agreed."
But what George says really sealed the deal was talking to another cadet: George was thinking of joining ROTC at college, from which you graduate a military officer, but a West Point–bound senior convinced him he'd have more control over the Army branch he was assigned to if he graduated from the academy instead. George will be the sixth student from Lowell to head to West Point in the last 12 years.
George isn't a guy who seems easily brainwashed. The 17-year-old has a 3.2 GPA in San Francisco's most rigorous public high school, he faces resistance from his parents who don't want him in the military, and he says he seriously reconsidered West Point after reading a scathing Web site review. But after weighing it all, George wants to give it a shot.
Bullard supports his decision, even if George's parents do not. On a recent Saturday afternoon, Bullard drove his student out to Travis Air Force Base to get the boots West Point cadets wear each day. George wants to break them in over the summer.
As this story goes to print, the JROTC teeters in limbo. Last week, Assemblywoman Ma's bill passed in the assembly's education committee, along with a related bill by Assemblywoman Mary Salas that would return PE credit to the program. Current school board members warn that the bill sets a dangerous precedent for the state to step on a local board's authority, but it has one potential fiscal benefit: The legislature's appropriations committee will mull whether the state would foot the bill for certain costs, since the program would be reinstated by state mandate.
Commissioner Norman Yee, meanwhile, has been considered a swing vote on the issue locally. He was one of only two commissioners voting to support JROTC in 2006, but also voted to take away the PE credit last summer. He says he remains consistent: "If nothing changes, I haven't changed my view." But the JROTC instructors are crossing their fingers. "It's San Francisco, and you never know until the last vote is passed," Balboa instructor Gerry Paratore says. "I've got to see him vote before I believe it."
If JROTC loses, what will take its place? The district is developing other leadership programs, such as four-year training for students to become first responders to earthquakes or natural disasters in conjunction with the city's Department of Emergency Management, yet only a nine-week pilot course would be available for just three or four schools next fall. Military critics say that kids will be initially resistant to any program that's not JROTC. "It's like shitty vending machines," counterrecruiter Paredes says. "It's not that they're good for you, but they'll still be pissed when they take them out."
