By Victoria Figueroa

Every Wednesday they suit up.  With ribbons and medals decorating their uniforms they mean business.  They arrive at Lane before the sun is up and work behind the scenes. Lane is the only selective enrollment high school home to them. They are the JROTC cadets.

But how exactly does the JROTC program run and who leads the cadets? Unlike most programs at Lane, the JROTC relies on students to run smoothly. A chain of command exists and at the top sits the Battalion Commander.

Fidel Trejo, Div. 255, is this year’s Battalion Commander. When asked to describe his position to someone not in JROTC he simply describes himself as “the top dog of the RO kids.” Trejo takes great pride in Lane’s uniqueness among the other CPS high schools because it is the only JROTC program that is run primarily by the students. Trejo joined JROTC as a freshmen after his brother, a graduate of Curie High School, was also involved in the program. Now in his final year at Lane, he holds its highest rank. But Trejo was not always in the limelight. When he tried to convince incoming freshmen to join RO, his transformation from a shy freshman private to the leader of 290 cadets at Lane was clear.

“I’d always give them my whole emotional spiel where I was like ‘I was that freshmen who sat in the corner of the room, that no one knew my name, no one even knew I existed, but now look at me.’ I would have never expected to be here,” Trejo said.

But even with his high ranking position, he doesn’t feel he holds much importance.

“I’m just a cadet who Colonel thought would be more fit for the position,” Trejo said.

For that reason Trejo says he always tries to give the other cadets their opportunities to lead. When participating in teams or competitions he becomes any other team member. He does not feel the need to micromanage. It is that trust within the battalion that makes it run efficiently says Trejo’s right hand man and successor for next year Quintin Manjarrez, Div. 357.

Now the Command Sergeant Major, Manjarrez sees firsthand how the efficacy of the battalion depends on the cadets – something that has always impressed him.

Some the jobs RO students do around school. include the dispensing of The Mash newspapers in the lunchroom, the daily playing of the school song before division begins, and the daily rasing and lowering of the American flag. The success of the battalion in completing its tasks depend on the network of people Manjarrez controls.

“I don’t actually go to the company and look ‘oh what’s happening here?’ I’ll ask the company commander…it’s all about communication,” Manjarrez said.

Manjarrez does not always help when asked to because he expects all the cadets to pull their own weight. He takes responsibility if work does not get done, but he knows the cadets can do it without his help.

Only in extreme circumstances will he help the cadets. He recalls an incident during the winter when the company in charge of raising the flag in the morning could not do so because the weather had frozen the crank. Manjarrez, predicting the situation, headed out to see if they needed help only to find them on their way back inside the building. Manjarrez, determined to raise the flag, made the cadets turn around and with his own breath thawed the crank. He was proud to say the flag was raised that day. After school he went back to help to bring it down.  His tough love attitude, as he calls it, may compound the common misconception that the RO program recruits students for the army. He says that their motto “To motivate young people to be better citizens” represents what they strive for.

“I myself want to enlist. Not to go out and kill someone. But what I love to do is going out and helping people,” Manjarrez said. “I don’t want to just be a citizen. I want to be an enlightened citizen.”

Trejo, however, plans to study engineering and business in college. The two are pursuing much different paths, but they both plan to set out with the confidence they attribute to their participation in RO. These leaders embody what they want the JROTC program to be. A leader is subject to the expectations and pressures of their followers, the people that look up to them. What does a leader then have to do?

“You have to be the influence, you have to be the role model,” Manjarrez said.