Female ROTC Member Challenges Stereotypes

Although most Wednesdays are reserved for leadership training, today is inspection day at the MIT Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Unit and time for ROTC cadets to take the grueling Combat Fitness Test.

It’s an uncharacteristically warm November morning, but the cadets’ breath still shows in the crisp air.

The midshipmen (the common title for any ROTC cadet who is still in college) fall in line and stand at attention. They move their arms out and back repeatedly until they are standing at what seems a perfectly measured and uniform distance from one another. None of them shake; none yawn. One of the inspectors coughs in the cold air, but the expression on his face quickly returns to its prior, stony look.

Catherine A. Brown ’14 stands at least a foot shorter than every man on the field this morning and at least six inches shorter than most of the women. But she doesn’t seem intimidated in the slightest as one of her fellow midshipmen looks her up and down, assessing the uniform she hasn’t worn in weeks. Her face doesn’t change much, but she says something quietly that makes the inspector break into a short laugh. He looks her up and down and, at the last moment, picks a single piece of lint off her hat.

After the rest of the cadets are inspected they are told to “fall out,” and they all let out an easier breath.

Brown helps set up the football field for the day’s test, and Pat Cassidy, the battalion’s commanding officer and a senior at Tufts, assesses who is missing. This day, the ROTC cadets will be tested in their ability to run 880 yards, lift and carry ammo, and move during battle by participating in a complex obstacle course. The maximum times and number of lifts are more grueling for the male cadets than the females. Historically, physical fitness tests such as these and ideas about women’s physical abilities have served as hurdles to their full participation in the military.

According to a report released by the Women’s Memorial Foundation in 2010, women make up 16 percent Navy personnel, 13.5 percent of the Army, and only 7.5 percent of the Marine Corps. Women remain prohibited from serving in combat roles in the U.S. military, though they have made some gains and are allowed to serve, for example, on submarines and as fighter pilots.

Despite these restrictions, the line between men and women in uniform has begun to increasingly blur as women soldiers have fought and died in significant numbers in both Iraq and Afghanistan. According to iCasualties, an independent group that tracks military casualties, 30 American female service members have died in Afghanistan. Of those, 19 died as a result of hostile action. In Iraq, 108 women have died. Of those, 63 died in hostilities.

According to ROTC’s website, women have been “an integral part of the Army ROTC since school year 1972,” but during that time less has been expected of them. The CFT, Combat Fitness Test, is an excellent example of this. The times for a “perfect score” are lower for female cadets than male ones, and each is measured based on what the expected “best” for their gender is.

Brown, however, consistently blows these scores out of the water, scoring closer to the men’s top scores than what is expected for female cadets. In this, she is an exemplar for what military women can do.

A VERY LOCKED DOWN MIDSHIPMAN

The Combat Fitness Test begins with a run.

“Y’all ready for the worst 8 minutes of your life?” Major Craig Giorgis adds under his breath to one of the sergeants.

“We will be timing you and recording those numbers,” a sergeant says with a smile. “So run quickly.”

When the run begins Brown is at the back, but in short order she has darted to the front of the pack.

On the field, the midshipmen cheer one another on as they run, making the intimidating setup seem more like track practice than boot camp. “Oh you look good!” one cadet yells. “You are flyin‘!”

Men are expected to finish the 800-yard run in under 2:45, the perfect score for male cadets. For those who do not finish in time, a sergeant walks swiftly to the side of the track and yells, “You are a male, you didn’t cross the finish line. You do not have 100 points.”

At 5’2” it’s surprising to see how agile Brown is on the field, easily keeping up with most of the men. She finishes with a time of 3:01, 22 seconds faster than the 3:23 perfect score for women.

Brown and others cheer on the women who do not hit the maximum time until they reach the finish line. They finish their run exhausted and red-faced.

“As long as—as a female—you work hard and show you aren’t trying to get out of anything [because you’re a girl] then [men] are definitely all for you being in the military and doing PT with them,” Brown says, “It’s pretty great.”

Brown credits her ease in a male dominated field simply to her “personality.”

“I’ve always had a lot of guy friends, ever since I was little I’d always keep up with the boys.”

As the boys grew up and got “stronger and faster,” Brown says, she kept trying to keep up—clearly she figured out how.

“A very locked down midshipman,” Lieutenant Jeff Ransom says of Brown, speaking in a clipped military tone. “One of our top performing sophomores. Consistently shows it in everything she does.”

Both Ransom and Giorgin comment on how impressive Brown is academically and physically, impressed with how she can keep herself on track. Yet, Brown doesn’t seem completely satisfied with her run.

“Wasn’t my best time,” she says. The boots add a few pounds.

AMMO LIFTS

The second part of the Combat Fitness Test involves the midshipmen lifting a 30 to 35 lb. ammo box above their heads as many times as possible in two minutes.

Brown seems easily at home here on the field, picking up one of the ammo boxes it and handing it—without a hint of sarcasm—to the sergeant in charge, “This one feels light,” she says.

She is fully in her element hoisting the weight above her head, barely shaking though many of those around her are. It’s hard to believe that Brown did not grow up wanting to be a Marine.

Brown says that she never considered the military until her sophomore year of high school after taking a field trip to West Point.

“The whole idea of serving my country and the leadership training and opportunities, really appealed to me.”

She kept the idea in the back of her mind until the end of her junior year of high school. Then, when she was more convinced that she wanted to join the military, she began to broach the subject with her parents.

“Mom said, ‘no.’ And my dad was really surprised.”

She then spent the better part of a year trying to convince them of her decision.

“I didn’t grow up in a military family,” Brown says, so the idea just “never occurred” to her.

During high school, Brown spent nearly a semester convincing them that she wanted to be in the military and, more recently, a year and a half convincing them that she wanted to be a Marine.

After a spending a year in Harvard’s ROTC program and a summer program that allowed her to explore options within the Navy, Brown decided to transfer from the Navy option to the Marine option in her unit at Harvard.

“My mom said definitely no Army but started feeling okay with Navy [before I came to Harvard] ... then I came here and decided I wanted to join the Marine Corps. So my mom says I cheated.”

Brown is quick to defend her parents’ reaction to her decision, “They have nothing against the military, they’re just concerned for my safety.”

During the ammo lift, Brown reaches her max ammo lifts after about a minute and takes a break sometime in her two-minute test. Afterward, she modestly says, “I got 88. That’s the max for girls so...”

“Sixty was the max for girls,” Sergeant Evans corrects her proudly.

CATHERINE BROWN, MIDSHIPMAN

The final event of the test is an obstacle course.

“It’s a lot of effort in a short period of time,” Giorgis says of it, recalling his last test a month ago.

Each midshipman starts on the ground, jumps up and runs to the first cone, crawls to the next cone, zig-zags across the second half of the football field. Then, the midshipman picks up a soldier, dead drags him halfway across the field, and throws him over his shoulder for the second half of the run. Then, they go back across the football field with two ammo boxes, chuck a grenade, do a few push ups, and run back.

“It does not get easier as you get older,” Giorgis says.

Before stating that her goal for this round of the test is to hit the maximum time for male midshipmen, Brown, who is also a varsity lacrosse player at Harvard, explains her ease on the field with the preparation that her experience playing lacrosse has given her.

She doesn’t quite hit the 2:14 time, but at 2:26 her run easily beats the female maximum of 3:01.

Brown talks easily and happily about her life and plans, seemingly unaware at how impossible her life looks from the outside. In her eyes she is not a 5’2” female lacrosse player and student about to join the 7.5 percent of women in the Marine Corps.

She is a ROTC cadet on her way to becoming a Marine, plain and simple.