Photo Courtesy of Todd Ferguson U.S. Marine Corps veteran
Todd Ferguson (center) is shown here in a C-130
airplane traveling from Big Island in Hawaii to Oahu.
By Dexter Gauntlett
Daily Bruin Staff
Socratic discussions, game theory and anti-war rallies may
provide all the preparation necessary for many UCLA students before
entering the world outside the UCLA bubble.
But for some students who have served in the armed forces, these
experiences hold little real-world value.
Two UCLA students share their criticisms and experiences of how
serving in the military prior to attending UCLA makes them soldiers
among students.
Listening to a class discussion between students about the
events surrounding the Gulf War was frustrating for second-year
history student Todd Ferguson, who did nine years of
intelligence work in the Marine Corps before coming to UCLA.
“The hardest part is when people make judgments based on
emotion only,” he said.
“The problem is not students expressing their opinion,
it’s just that they’re not being shot down or being
educated to what the facts are.”
During his service Ferguson handled several classified documents
that analyzed sensitive political, economic and military aspects of
a country.
“We would concentrate on an enemy’s order of battle,
what resources they have at their disposal; we were trying to do
the work that the CIA would do to resolve a geopolitical
problem,” he said.
Ferguson said too often people protest any type of war,
something
 NICOLE MILLER/ Daily Bruin Todd Ferguson
did nine years of intelligence work for the U.S. Marine Corps
before coming to UCLA.
Ferguson refers to as the “post-Vietnam syndrome,”
which he considers a completely emotion-based response among people
who lack the innards to fight.
“The academic elite that are in college look to the armed
forces to protect them, but they want to separate themselves
because they don’t have the ability or moral
courage.”
Chris Johnson, a psychology graduate student, served nine years
with the military before coming to UCLA.
He considered the 2,500 anti-war protesters that marched through
Westwood in late September a “knee-jerk” response
indicative of how little protesters actually knew about the
situation.
“We hadn’t even begun to pull bodies out of the
World Trade Center and they were protesting action we hadn’t
yet taken,” Johnson said.
For Johnson, the War on Terror has elucidated two concepts that
were previously unobserved in our society: absolute evil does exist
and talking doesn’t solve everything.
“It took us nearly destroying the Japanese and Nazis to
secure peace, and in the Cold War the U.S. had to beat the Soviets
before there was peace,” Johnson said.
 Photo Courtesy of Todd Ferguson Todd Ferguson’s battalion
is pictured here participating in a field exercise in Oahu.
Johnson served for the U.S. Coast Guard in Key West as a
counter-narcotic officer in Colombia. As part of the search and
rescue in the Alaskan high seas, he intercepted immigrants from
Thailand, Cambodia and China in addition to being stationed in Cuba
and Haiti.
He said his return to academia has revealed the lack of
real-world knowledge and contradictory beliefs that some college
students, in his opinion, are prone to.
He said the perfect example came from his work in Cuba where he
spoke with many civilians living there.
“Some students here think Che Guevara is a hero, but if
you ask people from Cuba, they’ll tell you he’s a
bloody dictator,” Johnson said.
“At UCLA it’s a cool and trendy thing to have a Che
Guevara T-shirt, and that’s just from a lack of knowledge or
understanding of what happened in reality,” Johnson said.
The already-patriotic Johnson, who was 17 when he enlisted,
became consumed in a deep sense of service to his country and
respect for the uniqueness of the United States and the benefits of
military service.
“I have been amazed at what makes this country unique, but
academia is increasingly predictable and decreasingly credible in
the eyes of the community. Academia is so far gone and so far off
to the left that many people want to do away with it,” he
said.
For Ferguson, these problems extend beyond the confines of Bruin
Walk and the political science department in Bunche Hall, all the
way through what he called the sometimes ineffective and naïve
U.S. policy making of the State Department.
“People spend their whole life sheltered and then go to
graduate school and then directly to the State Department and they
don’t see that things on paper don’t necessarily work
in practice,” he said.
“Naïve theories come from people without any
real-world experience.”
Professor of military science Philip Barnette enlisted in the
Army directly after high school and said the Army provided him with
a means to expand his horizons and become a more responsible
individual. He recommends that students do the same even if they
still want to pursue a college education.
“If you get out on your own and learn what responsibility
is in the real world, you get a better appreciation for your
responsibility as an American and as a future leader when pursuing
a college education,” he said.
Though his view is a minority on campus, Ferguson holds a high
respect for education and believes that people are better off for
going to college. He simply holds an appreciation for real-life
experience whether it be serving as a waiter in a restaurant or
joining in the military.
Ferguson himself is a physical trainer and can quote as well as
vouch for the plot validity (or lack there of) for almost every war
movie from the last decade. He also maintains that one of the most
perspective-gaining experiences of his life has been living with
his girlfriend.
Attending UCLA for Ferguson has provided the opportunity to add
perspective to his experience in the marines, contributing to his
philosophy of keeping an open mind.
“There’s an innate need to believe one side or the
other, and holding that position even if it doesn’t make
sense anymore, but there’s something to be said for the
middle,” he said.