Facebook
From Campus Progress, a heartbreaking story about Sara Isaacson, an ROTC student who's now facing $80,000 in unexpected debt for following the values that the ROTC taught her:
For those who don't know, could you tell us about what happened?Read the full article.
I had been on an ROTC scholarship at the UNC–Chapel Hill that I had received at the very beginning of my college career. I had initially received financial aid from the university and then was able to get my ROTC scholarship. At the point when I came in to ROTC I had identified as straight. I had not really come out to myself or to anyone else as lesbian yet.
Then in about November I started really coming out to myself as lesbian and in that process spent a lot of time considering what I wanted to do with ROTC just because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and law. What it came down to for me is that I felt I needed to come out to my commander because of integrity. Integrity is one of the seven Army values and is something that they train us to live by every day, every second, whether someone's watching or not. … Without realizing it, the policy really asks people to lie, to lie about who they are, to tell small lies about what they did or didn't do. It's something that I wasn't willing to do because if I don't have my values to fall back on, I have nothing.
In January, two days before the State of the Union address, I walked into my commander's office and handed him a memo saying that I had recently come to identify as lesbian. In that memo I also talked about what has drawn me to the Army and what I loved about it and how much it meant to me—how much pride I had in being part of that organization and how serving was something I had wanted to do for so many years. But then I went on to say that because of these values of honor and integrity that the Army teaches … that I was no longer comfortable lying about who I was.
How did your commander [Lt. Col. Monte Yoder] react?
In that conversation, he told me that "don't ask, don't tell" does not prohibit gay or lesbian people from serving; however it prohibits them from doing so openly. … I don't think that the policy is working because when we don't allow people to serve openly we're forcing them to lie and to break those values that are supposed to drive everything. He told me that because I had come in and handed him this letter that I would be dropped from the ROTC program and that he would make the recommendation that he had to repay all the scholarship money that I received.
Comments
[Add New Comment]
Homophobia is seriously harming this country. People like Sara, who are passionate about serving, are kicked out just because they're honest about their sexual orientation. We're hearing more and more stories, almost every day, about how DADT is a bad policy. How many more stories like this do we have to hear until the federal government starts taking the integrity of our soldiers seriously?
# Posted By AFY_Samantha
| 5/14/10 12:23 PM
| Reply
This comment has been removed by site administrators. (It has been flagged as spam or violates our Terms of Use.)
Pretty good post. I just found your site and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!I was driving a manual transmission vehicle successfully, and there to share in my glory and success were my beautiful purple UGG Schuhe ,uggs deutschland sale ,uggs sale ,ugg shoes ,ugg boots .
# Posted By henen1010
| 6/17/10 05:15 AM
| Reply
[Add New Comment]
Get email updates and action alerts:
by AFY_Abby
by AFY_Samantha
by AFY_Samantha
by AFY_Samantha