Longtime lurker here, but I decided to register hoping that someone here will have the knowledge to help my friend. Here’s the story:
My friend joined the army in order to pay for his law school and get in a guaranteed spot in the JAG corps upon graduation. To get this, he had to commute 40 minutes to go to ROTC at 6am every morning before classes, and go on weekend training sessions once a month. He jumps through all the hoops when they tell him they don’t have room for him in the Army, and he’ll have to go into the reserves. This doesn’t affect him that much because he’d be going into JAG eventually anyway. The only thing is that he has to go to basic training all summer instead of an abbreviated training for those who are only going to be officers (like him).
Well, he jumps through more hoops to get cleared for basic training and he goes to MEPS to finalize the date he leaves, when they discover his information has been lost. They have all his records, his paperwork, etc., but it appears someone has deleted his reserved spot at boot camp. It looks like he can’t go, even though this summer is the only time he will be able to.
So, what does this mean? 1. His yearlong ROTC/law school balancing act is all for naught. 2. He has already paid for one year of law school with the promise that the Army will pay for the rest. 3. He won’t be allowed in the army so he has to pay for the rest of school out of his pocket. 4. He no longer has a job in the JAG corps. and will have to find a job outside of his area of interest. Basically everything he hoped for may be lost.
I’m posting this because I’m hoping someone here will know who to contact or what we might be able to do about this. He’s talked to his recruiter and a couple other people he knows, but we don’t know what else there is to do. Are we hopeless?
Welcome to life in the army. If his recruiter can’t do anything for him there is probably nothing to be done.
It is hard to know for sure without knowing lots of little details, but if your friend was going to BCT then chances are his recruiter was getting credit for him as a recruit. This would make the recruiter highly motivated to get your friend shipped out, since an army recruiter’s life pretty much revolves around meeting his monthly quota.
I am not sure how ROTC works, but if your friend had any sort of contract guaranteeing that the army would pay for the rest of his tuition a trip to a lawyer may be in order, given that he is going to law school though I would imaging that any he has already considered pursuing any breach of contract type claims against the Army.
The only other thing I can think of is to complain to his congressional representatives. You never know what strings they may be willing to pull for you to influence your vote in the next election.
We figured it was pretty much hopeless. He says he never signed any contracts, so he can’t even sue over it. He just wants to be a lawyer, and he’s been through so much just to have it all end due to some clerical error. It just seems so wrong…
Our looong shot hope is that he can get into a later session of training, but that would mean an entirely new mess of crap. If he could get into one of those sessions, then he would have to take a semester off school because he would miss too much otherwise. Plus we don’t even know if they will even let him take a semester off.
Find the congressman who represents the guy’s district. Write a snail-mail letter to his office, laying out the problem in specific detail. (Make it all-business, don’t get emotional and don’t make it sound like it’s coming from a kook.)
CC the letter to any other congressmen from your state who sit on any military oversight committees, as well as your two senators. You can find the members of the House Armed Services committee on Wikipedia.
1: - How can he have a “guaranteed spot” in the JAG corp if he hasn’t signed anything resembling a contract outlining this? Can recruiter actually “guarantee” this?
2: Don’t you have to finish a tour of duty or something before GI educational benefits kick in? Your description makes it sound like he going to school at the same time he’s in the Army right out of boot camp.
Tens of thousands of people a year go through law school without the GI Bill. Just tell him to get student loans like all of the other law students. One can argue about the value of loans vs. education in general, but for doctors, lawyers, and the like, there’s little doubt he’ll come out ahead eventually.
Yeah, I told him that being a traditional law student wouldn’t be so bad because people do it all the time. But he was denied student loans and obviously can’t afford law school out of pocket, so he would have to drop out all together. In fact, right now it looks like he might have to drop out, actually join the army and do just army stuff for a year, and then re-enter school or even start law school over again.
And yes, with ROTC and basic and whatnot, he would have gotten out of basic this summer as an E3 or E4 officer (I don’t know what this actually means).
In regards to the “guaranteed” JAG position. It was and oversimplifcation. OF course, it wasn’t technically guaranteed, but the recruiter did tell my friend that he worked with several law students doing exactly what my friend was doing and never had a problem getting into JAG because that is their preferred method of recruiting lawyers. JAG positions are highly competitive for people who want to just jump in from the outside with no army experience.
Let this be a warning to anyone- if your recruiter promises you something, you absolutely have to get it in writing or it’s nothing. If it’s not written down, you won’t get it. People get screwed by this time and time again.
That said, something in the story isn’t adding up. Why was he denied student loans? Usually you can only be denied for having really huge credit problems. I think there is probably more to this story than we are getting.
I don’t know why he was denied loans. Probably because he is already in the hole >$40,000 for undergrad and he is just a shade over 23 years old. By the way, had he been able to join the army, the government would have granted him loan forgiveness on his federal loans.
We are trying to figure out ways he can work around not going to basic, but can we agree that he, in all fairness, should have been able to get into basic training and no one should have to go through this because of a clerical mistake?
If it means anything to you, he suspects that some bureaucratic monkey saw that he was in ROTC, and knew that people don’t have to go to ROTC to simply join the reserves, assumed it was an error – misplaced information or something – and hit delete (remember, he was going to ROTC to be in the army, but they said they were out of openings).
I can try to fill the the blanks as best I can whenever you try to poke holes, but this is really the whole story*.
(*If it matters at all, after they ran out of openings for the army, he decided to go into into the reserves, but continued going to ROTC every morning just in case, per his recruiter’s advice. Then, at the last minute, he was offered a slot in LTC, which again is the abbreviated training specifically for army officers. By then, however, he was already planning on basic anyway, wanted to get in shape for ROTC int he fall, had nothing planned this summer, and was looking forward to the pay raise, so he turned this down. But this hardly changes anything and is more of a cruel joke than anything.)
Yes, if you end up needing to console him about having to drop out of law school, just send him to http://www.jdunderground.com where there are a bunch of incredibly bitter unemployed lawyers.
Law is not all it’s cracked up to be anymore (neither is medicine, but that’s a story for another day).
E-3 or E-4 is an enlisted grade, not an officer grade. Something sounds fishy in all this, and a case may be made against the recruiter if he was lied to. There are enlisted legal specialists in the armed forces, but they are not JAG officers, they’re clerks. JAG officers are already degreed lawyers, recruited to be military lawyers.
Oh no, he wouldn’t be in the JAG upon completion of basic, he’s only just finished his first year of law school. Sorry if my explanations are confusing-- this is as he explained it to me and I don’t know much about the army. After basic, he would be enlisted with and his “duty” would be to go to ROTC and law school, and they would reimburse his tuition, gradually forgive his student loans and give him a pretty decent monthly stipend. When he graduated, he could have gone to JAG.
Apparently, and I don’t know much about law or the army, JAG is a pretty sweet gig. You get to actually do litigation and the kind of stuff that lawyers actually enjoy.
He never signed any contracts because he was never “in” the army. He was just in ROTC to be able to enlist as an officer(?). Upon completion basic, he would have been officially enlisted. He has emails and correspondences and records, but no contracts because you don’t need a contract to simply be in ROTC.
It’s very, very complicated, I know. I was just wondering if there was anything we could do about a small administrative error that has a very big impact on someone’s life. Apparently not. If you know someone who might know something about this, I would appreciate it if you would ask them if there is anything to do.
If he didn’t sign any contracts than it’s doubtful he’s in ROTC either. There is just no way all this stuff happened and he attended ROTC classes and there’s nothing on paper.
This guy is lying to you. Maybe he made up a story about going to law school, and now he’s made up a new story about why he can’t go to law school.
