The United States Army will need to add 6,000 active-duty members by October in accordance with an executive order from President Donald Trump. On Main Campus, members of the Army ROTC, a college program that prepares college students to become military officers, will not be put on active duty, though.
“Yes, we get a lot of students from Temple that are interested because of the benefits, but I don’t think the law will affect anything,” said Sgt. 1st Class Gilberto Irizarry, a U.S. Army recruiter. “Our mission, more or less, has stayed the same so it’s more or less the same amount of push.”
“There’s really a lot of positives to [the law] and it’s started already in the form of increased scholarships for students,” said Marc Young, a recruiting operation officer at Temple’s ROTC office. “Which means we’re bringing more students to Temple.”
He added that he didn’t yet know exactly when the scholarship increase would take place, nor did he know how much scholarship money would be added.
Currently, members of Temple’s Army ROTC may be eligible for two-, three- or 3.5-year scholarships. Benefits from these scholarships include full paid tuition, a $350 to 500 monthly stipend and room and board.
About 60 to 70 students out of 120 ROTC cadets at Temple are on a scholarship from the ROTC office, Young estimated.
Most members of the active-duty military do not come from ROTC programs at universities, so the country-wide increase in active members wouldn’t affect Temple’s ROTC, Irizarry said.
“Students from Temple do come into the Army Reserves because they’re looking for the extra money to pay for their education,” he said. “But most of the active-duty members are high-schoolers who just got out of school and are looking to join the army as active members.”
Amanda Lien can be reached at amanda.lien@temple.edu or on Twitter @amdandajlien.
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