The campus becomes eerily empty every afternoon as classes wind down and students return to their concrete caves to recuperate and work on tomorrow’s hangover. The Reserve Officer Training Corp takes advantage of this and every Tuesday and Thursday they stand in neat little rows out in academic circle. They don grim faces and march behind their flags while a young man pretending to be R. Lee Ermey barks orders.
I ride my bike faster, now that the weight of classes has fallen from my shoulders. The approaching weekend shines past Friday’s remaining classes; they might as well not exist. Rock music in my ears, sun on my skin, and wind clutching at my clothes are the principle components of that exhilarating sensation known as freedom. But seeing those prospective soldier standing in formation with their cute matching uniforms makes me feel freer then a Friday afternoon ever could.No, this isn’t some misguided sense of patriotic freedom, where the reverberations of ancient globe-spanning conflicts are used to color modern aggressions. It’s the feeling I get when I realize I can choose which clothes to wear, where I get to be at 1500 hours Tuesdays and Thursdays, and most importantly, what I spend my life doing after I graduate.
I can hear the angry dissent right now. Do not these brave students sacrifice themselves to protect my freedom to be young and disrespectful? I don’t hate freedom; I just don’t think we need so many guns and spies to have it. If I felt more threatened by a foreign power then the domestic one, it might be a different story. Perhaps I’ll write a well-researched essay on why militaries inevitably threaten freedom, compete with quotes from famous people everyone respects, but Working Man just started playing on my iPod, and there’s only a few more hours of sunlight left to enjoy. Hey, somebody has to have fun!
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