Diversity Thursday

If your Army is getting smaller, you will need fewer officers. As a result, it makes sense that you would reduce the number of ROTC units here and there.

One would think that you would be practical about it; what is the size of the units; cost per commissioned officer; retention rate of officers commissioned; ect.

No, it won't be that easy. The important question will always be, what criteria are you using?

"The decision to close the 13 ROTC programs is not a reflection on the quality of those academic institutions or the outstanding officers produced at those schools," said Karl F. Schneider, acting assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. "These closures are necessary changes that allow for more efficient use of available resources within the command, while maintaining a presence in all 50 states. The Army will continue to be good stewards of its resources through prudent transformation of the institutional Army."

Well, that is the Army's take. What is really going on here?

The Army selected the universities after a review found that the programs were typically yielding fewer than 15 commissioned officers annually, although the military acknowledged it granted exceptions to dozens of schools because they met other standards.

Other standards? What, pray tell would those be?

Maj. Gen. Jefforey A. Smith, the commander of the Cadet Command, said the move was not part of a major shift from rural settings to urban ones. Still, he added: “It makes sense that we would move toward where the population is where we think we have a recruiting population to go after.”

The changes will come amid a push by the Army to diversify its officer corps, a large portion of which comes from the R.O.T.C. In 2011, about 28 percent of active duty Army officers were minorities, up from 23 percent a decade earlier.

That makes it pretty clear - but they are still hedging.

General Smith said, though, that each school “was applied against a set of criteria.”

I think we would all like to see what the set of criteria were. Yes, and it would nice to see a FOIA for all emails, minutes, and guidance issued to the selection personnel.

That is what needs to be done if you want to fight this. As with most of the discrimination done by the Diversity Industry - it cannot stand up to the light of day.

“I don’t believe in shifting, just to get more people of different backgrounds, at the expense of these R.O.T.C. programs that are well-established and are producing outstanding officers,” said Carl W. Stiner, a retired four-star general who is an alumnus of the program at Tennessee Tech. “You will deny people who want to be commissioned through the R.O.T.C. program and serve their country.”

General Stiner - you need to do more than that.

If you want to push back - expecially those in TN, then you need to play their game. Get the metrics - get the demographics - and then get the right legal and statistical advisors.

We all know what is going on here - the Army is actively discriminating on the basis of race - red in tooth and claw.

Tech's Army ROTC program is one of 13 across the nation and three in Tennessee identified by the U.S. Department of Defense for closure.

Tech received notification this week of the Army’s intentions. The move to close programs appears to be linked to budget decisions and the Army’s desire to have more diverse ROTC participants.

President Phil Oldham and many concerned university supporters say it is a bewildering decision they will fight to reverse.

“We don’t understand why the Army would try to balance the budget on the backs of TTU students,” Oldham stated.

“And we have to question why a disproportionate number of programs in Tennessee are being targeted,” Oldham emphasized. “If there is a concern about establishing diversity, I assert that our first-generation college students from rural areas who participate in our state’s ROTC programs represent a special population."

Being that we don't have any FOIA information on the criteria, let's see what 'ole Sal can find out. Heck, as you can read in the press reports, they aren't being shy about it.

Southern Miss only commissioned eight officers in 2013 and has generated an average of 10.8 annually since 2009.

However, the joint program of Jackson State University and Mississippi Valley State University has produced only 66 commissioned officers since 2009 (an average of 13.2 officers annually.)

Alcorn State University has fared even worse, not once meeting the standard of producing 15 commissioners annually and only generating 48 commissioned officers since 2009 (9.6 yearly.)

Army Cadet Command spokesman Paul Haverstick said the Army used different criteria in preserving Alcorn State’s program and the JSU-MSVU joint program, while closing Southern Miss’.

He said the three programs were among more than 40 nationwide programs that did not meet the commissioned officer grade, when examining their three-year, five-year and 10-year averages.

“We then looked up at all these programs and applied follow-up criteria,” Haverstick said.

The Army preserved the JSU-MSVU joint program because it met a DOD standard of commissioning more than 6.5 officers annually who are engineers.

Haverstick said it would have been preserved anyway for the same reason that Alcorn State’s was saved: a 2010 executive order issued by President Barack Obama to promote excellence in historically black colleges and universities, including strengthening the capacity of HBCUs to participate in federal programs.

“That was one of the criteria that was used,” Haverstick said.

Let's just see what the rough percentages are for the White Devil in the closed institutions.

The ROTC programs selected for closure are:

University of South Dakota: 87.54% White.
Northern Michigan University: 91% White.
North Dakota State University: 80.74% White, but with 7.53% counted as "non-resident alien" as a "race" and 4.03% not selecting (making a 11.56% Fudge Factor: Ff. Ff is probably more as "White Hispanics" are not broken out), probably closer to 85-90%
University of Wisconsin--La Crosse: 88% White with a 4% Ff; call it 90%.
Arkansas State University: 72% with an 8% Ff, closer to 80%.
University of Tennessee at Martin: 84.6% White with a small single-digit Ff. We'll call it 85%.
University of North Alabama: 69.9% White which what looks to be close to a 10% Ff. We'll call it 75%.
Georgia Regents (Augusta State) University: Couldn't find information.
University of Southern Mississippi: 59% with a Ff of 5%. We'll call it 63%.
East Tennessee State University: 84.81% with a 4% Ff. Call it 88%.
Morehead State University: 92.8% White with a very small Ff.
Tennessee Technological University: 88% White with a very small Ff.
University of California--Santa Barbara: 49.4% White with a almost 10% Ff ... but it has a large, 15% Asian population.

I guess that USM and UC-SB didn't quite get their (D)iversity story out. I think the story pretty much tells itself.

There is a side-story here - this isn't unexpected. The window of acceptability for quotas and separate admissions criteria is getting narrower in both public opinion and in the legal system. If you want to move the needle, you have to find a way to decrease the number of whites who come in. By limiting accessions from sources who draw from predominately white student bodies, you increase the odds of giving openings to non-white students.

I wish there were a greater appreciation of why some of one culture seems to serve more than others. Former Senator Webb (D-VA) has a book that helps, for instance, to explain why COMISAF went from a McNeill, to a McKiernan, to a McChrystal while SOF was being run by a McRaven - but that would be a little ethnically self-serving on my part. 

TN (3),  southern MS,  AK, northern AL, KY. Yea ... I can see that pattern. Speaking of diversity ... I see a distinct lack of it. Map it.

... or ... 

Let me help you out a bit.

DiversityArmyStyle.pdf by CDR Salamander

Seems like the Army has changed a lot since General Colin Powell, USA (Ret.) was a 2LT;

What the Army essentially said to me when I entered was: "Look, Powell, we don't care about your color. We don't care about the fact that you are a poor kid from the tenement section of New York. Don't give us any hard-luck stories. We don't care about your immigrant background. The only thing we care about is performance. If you perform, then you will move up. If you don't perform, you won't. Performance is all that counts."

Not for the better either.

Wait ... I think General Casey, USA (Ret) wants to weigh in.