ROTC grad, discharged for poor health, given tab for her scholarships

By Kyle Odegard, Gazette-Times reporter

After the 9/11 attack, Jaimee Colbert dreamed of becoming a fighter pilot. She wanted to defend her country, so she joined the Naval ROTC program at Oregon State University.

She graduated from OSU last June, but was devastated when she was discharged from the military for medical reasons. “It was really hard,” she said. But when the Navy sent Colbert a letter in November informing her that she would have to repay nearly $20,000 in scholarships, she started a fight of her own.

Monday, after appealing the tuition demand — and with lobbying from the local Naval ROTC program, OSU President Ed Ray, Mayor Charlie Tomlinson and others — the 24-year-old received a letter from Sen. Gordon Smith informing her that the Navy would waive the tuition bill.

Colbert, however, isn’t finished. She still wants to appeal her medical discharge and serve in the military.

“I’ve been working as a professional for a year and haven’t had any problems,” she said. “I would love to serve today, and I’m going to fight for that.” Even if it’s a Navy desk job.

For now, Colbert has a desk job inside Gill Coliseum, as OSU’s assistant manager of operations for the men’s basketball team.

Colbert was discharged from the military for endometriosis, an abnormal growth of tissue that resembles the endometrium, which lines the uterus. The condition, found in about one out of five women, often causes pelvic pain but can affect other parts of the body. Colbert also has thyroid problems.

She endured these conditions while at OSU. During her first ROTC training run shortly before her freshman year started in 2002, she collapsed from the pain of endometriosis.

Colbert had six surgeries because of the condition, and took a year off from her studies, but she remained in the ROTC program. She rejected the option of having her uterus removed because she planned some day to have children.

Despite her struggles with her health, Colbert became the Memorial Union Program Council president her senior year, earned a political science degree and spoke at her commencement in 2007. She saw a military doctor a few weeks later, still holding out hope she’d be able to attend flight school.

After all, she’d already logged time in F-18s and other planes and stayed on an aircraft carrier during summer programs. But the doctor quickly told Colbert that her military career was done.

“I was definitely devastated to learn that my hard work and perseverance had been put to rest,” she wrote, in her August 2007 disenrollment report.

In the same report, Capt. James R. Sullivan of the OSU Naval ROTC urged the government not to charge her the tuition expenses. “She has pursued her commissioning in good faith and determination and now through no fault of her own she is no longer eligible to join the officer ranks,” he wrote.

So what is the Navy’s official policy in such cases? The answer to that is pending.

The Navy Chief of Information’s office did not return an e-mail on Thursday regarding the branch’s policy. Sullivan was not available to answer that question, and a person at the OSU Naval ROTC office declined to forward the request Thursday to anyone else.

Naval ROTC students usually have an eight-year commitment, with at least four years of active duty.

Colbert said her ideal job if she was reinstated would still be on the OSU campus, working for the Naval ROTC office. “There’s a place right now that needs me, and I’m a block away and I’m not able to help.”

Kyle Odegard can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523. For more information, go to his blog at www.gazettetimes.com.