UW-Madison students serving among troops deployed for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort spent the first two weeks of their semester performing security operations in New Orleans rather than going to class.
Gov. Jim Doyle sent Wisconsin National Guard units to Louisiana Sept. 1, just three days after the hurricane struck, to transport supplies, rescue victims and pets and aid night search missions.
The City of Madison sent both ground and air units to Louisiana.
According to Wisconsin National Guard Public Affairs Officer Lt. Col. Tim Donovan, \packages of capabilities"" included an aviation unit, which provided two Black Hawk helicopters that transported over 300 passengers and three tons of supplies, and a military police unit, which secured an operating base at the Naval Air Station in New Orleans.
Additionally, the Air National Guard 115th Operations Group, a small unit from Madison, flew a reconnaissance RC-26 aircraft with infrared night vision equipment to help search and rescue missions when the city of New Orleans was without power.
The operations were successful and approximately 300 Wisconsin National Guard troops returned early. Some missions were abridged due to the high contingent of enrolled soldiers missing the first few weeks of the semester.
""I know some of the units that did go, the majority of them were college students,"" said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Vincent, a UW-Madison National Guard Recruiter.
""One of the reasons why we ended the mission,"" said Norman Lenburg, a civilian in the Public Affairs Office of the Wisconsin National Guard, ""was that we had a lot of students.""
Lenburg said the need in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas will remain for ""some time"" but that there were other people to replace the students.
At the peak of the hurricane relief effort there were 50,087 National Guard troops from throughout the United States stationed in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. The number was high enough that college students in the Wisconsin Guard could be spared to continue their studies.
""I know there were quite a few people that did want to volunteer that got turned down just because they already had the personnel to complete the mission they were assigned to do,"" Vincent said.
Enlisting in the Wisconsin National Guard as a college student poses a number of challenges like the potential to miss school. Mandatory time commitments include an eight-week basic training, usually completed in the summer, as well as drill training one weekend a month. Benefits like tuition reimbursement options, however, still entice many to join up.
""It's not a huge commitment to make considering what you get in return,"" Vincent said. ""The job training, the discipline, the self-confidence, all that kind of stuff, as well as college benefits. The only downside to it ... is if you get activated or deployed.""
According to Donovan, the chance that a college student in the Wisconsin National Guard would be activated for any reason-a state emergency like Hurricane Katrina or a federal mission-is fairly high.
""You could be mobilized to go to Iraq for a year, that could happen. And it has happened, many times. We've got 2,800 men and women currently serving on active duty for federal missions,"" Donovan said. ""We've had pretty close to 70 percent. Seven out of every 10 of our members have been mobilized in the last four years.\
