Groups Fundraise for Troops

Student political groups on campus have tirelessly debated the war in Iraq since its onset in 2003, but this week those groups set their contentions aside in a bipartisan drive to collect donations for American troops.

The Support Our Troops drive has worked this week to procure donations of money and goods, which will be used to assemble care packages for U.S. troops through the Adopt a Platoon program.

The effort, coordinated by the Harvard College Democrats, the Harvard Republican Club (HRC), and the Harvard Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program, was designed to raise awareness of the sacrifice of American soldiers and their continued presence abroad. The drive ends today.

“We do acknowledge that there are people that are fighting—men and women just like us—and we thought it would be nice if we could have a joint initiative and show that we care about them,” said Elisha W. Rivera ’10, a member of the Dems’ political committee.

Rather than focusing on the intense debate that has come to surround the war, the project’s organizers wanted to focus their efforts on the troops.

“We didn’t think the troops were getting the attention in the war,” said HRC member Colin J. Motley ’10. “Sometimes they are forgotten, and we wanted to show our support for them.”

Volunteers from each of the student groups collected the donations in various campus dining halls. Karl J. Kmiecik ’10, the advocacy chair of the Harvard ROTC program, said the group did not “want to do anything overtly political” with the drive.

“No matter what your opinion is on the war, we have troops over there and they deserve our support,” he said. “The thing with the care packages is that they do wonders for morale...They show that we support them no matter what we believe about the way the war is handled.”

Although Rivera said that the Dems “don’t really believe in the cause of the war,” she stressed that “it would be nice to transcend political boundaries for once, but not provide an endorsement by any means of the war. We just care about the people fighting.”

On the eve of the final day of the drive, Motley estimated that the program had raised “a couple hundred dollars” in monetary donations. The drive also received some in-kind donations, which Motley said he expects to pick up as the program concludes.

“I have to say I’m kind of disappointed with what we have yielded,” Rivera said. “I think we went into this thinking it was going to be entirely fruitful, and I would walk home with a heaping box of donations. But people don’t remember to bring things to the dining hall.”

Kmiecik speculated that the limited campus participation was due to the busy time of year, when “volunteer-wise everyone is stretched thin.”

But he said the drive’s message has broad appeal.

“You’ll find very few people that will say ‘I don’t support the troops,’” he said. “They won’t support specific agendas and decisions but there are few that don’t support troops.”