Campus Effort Donates Books to Troops Overseas

California State University, Dominguez Hills is participating in the “Books for the Troops” program, in collaboration with the Malaga Cove and Peninsula Center libraries in Palos Verdes, Calif. This is the third year that the campus has participated, providing hundreds of books for the men and women serving overseas.

Six Dominguez Hills ROTC cadets have served overseas since the beginning of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nichole Rader, a ROTC cadet at Dominguez Hills, was stationed in the south of Iraq from 2004 to 2005, helping to provide communications for the troops. She says that she and her fellow soldiers greatly appreciated care packages from home, especially those containing hometown specialties and books.

“It helps to get nice things from home that you can’t get when you’re overseas to just remind you of home and keep your mind off everything else,” she says. “The PXs that they have on most installations in Iraq are equal to the ones you see on a military base in the United States, but a lot smaller. They might only have three or four books and it might take months before they get more in stock.”

Maj. Joe Adams, professor of military science, was deployed to Ramadi, Iraq, from 2005 to 2006 as a fire support officer. He says that any care packages from home, whether from family, friends or even total strangers do a lot for boosting the soldiers’ morale.

“Being in a war zone is almost like being locked up,” he says. “You don’t have a lot of access to things, you’re not around your friends and family. You’re with a lot of people you care about, but you’re also isolated. Families would get the names of people in a unit and they’d send packages with books and different items, CDs, DVDs, a lot of good stuff. People go out of their way to support the troops. When people send things, it gives [the soldiers] the perception when they’re over there, that somebody respects them.”

The final deadline for donating books is Wednesday, Dec. 5. For more information, contact Patricia Hamilton, director of the Institute for the Study of Cultural Diversity and Internationalization at (310) 243-2589.

- Joanie Harmon

Photo above: The Dominguez Hills community prepares to donate books to troops overseas. Pictured are (standing, L-R) Maj. Ted Arlauskas, enrollment and scholarship officer, ROTC; Cadet Chidi Uzomah, junior, business administration; Maj. Joe Adams, assistant professor of military science; and Patricia Hamilton, director, Institute for the Study of Cultural Diversity and Internationalization. (seated) Cadet Nichole Rader, senior, psychology and Cadet Amaro Moreno, junior, physics. Photo by Joanie Harmon