While other graduate students eagerly await the arrival of offers from lucrative investment banks or renowned hospitals, first-year public policy graduate student Joe Ingemi dreads opening his mailbox. A letter may come that forces him to leave the University and return to active military duty.
While other graduate students eagerly await the arrival of offers from lucrative investment banks or renowned hospitals, first-year public policy graduate student Joe Ingemi dreads opening his mailbox.
A letter may come that forces him to leave the University and return to active military duty.
Ingemi was committed to eight years of mandatory service obligation after he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1997. His duties expire this spring, but he has been stop-lossed—prohibited from leaving the Army even after his has fulfilled his commitments. About six weeks ago he received a letter that mandated two more years of active service.
He said he does not wish to be an active member of the Army again and is now petitioning for an exemption from service.
“I don’t know when I will hear back,” said Ingemi, a captain in the Army when he left active duty in 2003. “I’m in limbo.”
Ingemi said he is frustrated because he has already fulfilled his service in the Army and now is being asked to go beyond the call of duty.
Ingemi also cited personal reasons and his opposition to the current military action in Iraq when discussing his reluctance to return to active service.
“I am very much opposed to the tone of our foreign policy,” he said.
Ingemi served in various capacities in the Middle East, including the most recent Operation Enduring Freedom in Kuwait in 2001 and 2002. After serving actively for five and a half years, he joined the Individual Ready Reserves, which does not require members to drill on a regular basis.
When stationed abroad, Ingemi said he supported the war in Afghanistan, but he has been against the war in Iraq from the very beginning. Since returning from the Middle East, Ingemi has written op-ed pieces, letters to the editor and worked on political campaigns to express his opposition the current military engagements.
Despite these demonstrations, Ingemi said he gained valuable lessons while in the Army.
“My military service has always been a source of pride. It’s something that I’ve learned a lot about myself and about management and leadership,” he said. “But this whole situation has turned it into almost a nightmarish scenario. Now I’m almost at this point where I recommend people to not go into the military.”
On the other hand, he noted that he is worried about personnel shortages in the military. He said the military is not getting enough new enlistments.
“I just can’t see how the military can continue to be stretched this thin for this amount of time. It’s going to come to the point where we’re going to have to pull back some of our commitments or look at expanding the draft in some way,” Ingemi said. “There are just not enough warm bodies to go around.”
Despite the diminishing number of recruits, Ingemi knows he does not want to serve again. “This is a volunteer army, and I took the initiative to de-volunteer,” he said.
He said he recognizes that his critics will accuse him of neglecting his responsibility to the Army. But he believes the stop-loss procedures, though legal, are unfair and wrong.
After completing his active duty, Ingemi said he never imagined he would be called back.
“When I got out [of active duty], I asked the woman who was processing my paperwork, ‘What are the odds of getting called up?’ She said, ‘I’ve been working here for 25 years, and I’ve never seen the IRR get called up,’” he said. “That was at the end of 2002, and now a lot of people are getting called up.”
Ingemi said he is not thinking about what he will do if his request for exemption from service is denied.
“There is an appeals process, but I haven’t been thinking that far into the future yet,” he says. “I’m not optimistic, I’m just waiting.”
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