"I have a working relationship with my comrades," Poon said. "I do what they ask. They do what I ask. No hostility, but no intimacy."

Poon's experience is typical among cadets in the Northeast, where ROTC programs are few and far between. New York City is home to nearly 600,000 students and 80 colleges. The city's population of 8 million is equivalent to Virginia's, yet the city has only four ROTC programs on college campuses, compared with Virginia's 11.



Many New York schools severed their ties with the ROTC during the 1960s, when anti-war protests broke out across campuses in the Northeast. When the draft ended, the military slipped even further into the background, where it has remained ever since. In response, the Armed Forces have stopped making much of an effort to recruit in the area. Even City University of New York, the third-largest public university system in America and the one that commissioned General Colin Powell, no longer has an ROTC program.

With so few programs available, cadets must undergo long commutes simply to take part in the program. Poon, for instance, lives in Newkirk Plaza, Brooklyn, a 1-hour-and-40-minute ride to St. John's via public transportation. He wanted to be a part of ROTC, and St. John's was the closest school to his home that offered it.

"It's at the bottom of their inbox. They're not necessarily prejudiced; they just don't have the time to think about it."

Therefore, much of his life takes place on the subway. Cadets have physical training three times a week and one day of military science class, as well as "lab," where they run practice drills wherever they can find some open space. This means that Poon must make it to campus at least four times a week.

"It's physical training in itself just to get here and back," Poon said. Train schedules float through his brain as often as checklists of homework he has to finish. For him, ROTC is a series of weekly tasks. He appears for classes, eats, shows up for physical training, and often sits doing homework in D'Angelo Hall, the campus's flagship building, until the early hours of the morning.

When there's simply too much to get done, rather than go home, Poon will walk across campus from D'Angelo, pull out a sleeping bag and change of clothes from his locker, and set up camp by one of the many couches spread throughout the main floor. He has few friends at St. John's. Some he met through other classes, some through different organizations he belongs to, but mostly he hangs out with people back home.

In contrast, for on-campus cadets at St. John's, life revolves much more around ROTC. They roll out of bed in the early morning, knowing that in rooms down the hall their buddies are doing the same. They go to class together, study together, drink together, drill together. ROTC programs are meant to be this way to instill a sense of belonging, to bind a group of individuals into an "Army of One." In Southern and Western regions of the country, they do this well. But for Northern city dwellers like Poon -- who make up half of the ROTC program at St. John's -- that kind of camaraderie can be hard to achieve.