Students, Police Face Prospect of Military Duty

As the nation girds itself for war, Harvard’s “few good men” are readying for possible battle.

Last week’s announcement by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that he wanted to activate 50,000 National Guard and reserve troops has affected a number of lives across campus.

Ruben Marinelarena ’02-’03, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve, was awoken last Tuesday by a friend who told him, “Ruben, I think you’re going to war.”

A former finance director for the Harvard Democrats and a resident of Lowell House, Marinelarena took off a year after his sophomore year to go through infantry training, and since then has trained one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer with his New Hampshire unit.

While acknowledging that a year in the Marines is not a typical break from Harvard, Marinelarena says that as the son of two immigrants, he wanted to give something back to America.

“I just wanted to serve,” he says.

However, Marinelarena certainly did not think war would come during his second week back at school.

“The only problem is the uncertainty I have to live with right now. Starting all these classes and work seem sort of pointless since I may have to leave sometime,” he says.

But Marinelarena says that he’s ready to report for duty if the nation calls.

“It’s always been something that I wanted to do. I know it sounds silly, but I had a sense of duty and honor to serve my country,” he says.

If activated by the Marines in the initial round of call-ups, Marinelarena will be one of 7,500 Marines affected under the Defense Department’s plan. The Army will also supply 10,000 troops, the Air Force 13,000, the Navy 3,000 and the Coast Guard 2,000.

According to a Pentagon statement, the reservists “are being called upon to provide port operations, medical support, engineer support, general civil support and homeland defense.”

Harvard students in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) are unlikely to be affected in the coming activations. The military has only rarely called up officers-in-training, either ROTC or students at the nation’s militaryy academies.

Although last week’s events have caused the ROTC program to ask its students to not wear their uniforms as a security precaution, everything else is “business-as-usual,” according to ROTC student Brian Smith ’02.

To Protect and Serve

Harvard’s men in blue may also be called upon in the current round of activations.

Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) Officer Scott Green serves in the Marines active reserves and Officer Chuck Marren—otherwise known as Marine Master Sergeant Charles Marren (Ret.)—might also be reactivated depending on how the coming weeks and months unfold.

“If the country calls us, especially as Marines, we’re ready,” says Marren, who spent 20 years in the military police—including a three-year stint at the Pentagon’s Navy annex where he overlooked the part of the building destroyed in last week’s attack.

However, Marren says that if he, Green or Marinelarena are activated and forced to leave Harvard’s gates for battles unknown, they would only be the latest link in a long line of Harvard warriors stretching back to the nation’s beginnings at Lexington and Concord.

“Harvard’s got a real proud history of service,” he says.

—Staff writer Garrett M. Graff can be reached at ggraff@fas.harvard.edu.