The J.D. Williams Library will be hosting a panel of female veterans in the Faulkner Room on the third floor this Friday from 11 a.m. to noon.
In conjunction with this year’s Common Reading Experience, “The Unforgiving Minute” by Craig Mullaney, the panel members will talk freely about their experiences in the United States military.
The panelists will include Amie Irwin, Jessi Hotakeinen and Jennifer Moore, all of whom either work at The University of Mississippi or are current graduate students.
Melissa Dennis, a member of the Common Reading Experience Committee, helps coordinate events to support the selected text each fall.
“Because of the absence of women in the military in Craig Mullaney’s book, the committee wanted to make sure we had an event where woman veterans could talk about their experiences,” Dennis said.
Moore will be discussing overall issues females experience and overcome during deployments. She considers military experience from a female perspective as “a very rewarding and challenging experience.”
Moore first enlisted in 2004 and deployed with the 1230th Transportation Company in 2007 to Iraq. In 2009, she attended the Alabama Military Academy Officer Candidate School and received her commission as a second lieutenant. She deployed again as part of the 1165th Military Police Company to Kabul, Afghanistan.
“For all women, no matter what field you are embarking on, understand we are different than our male counterparts,” she said. “We are more than capable of performing roles, but we do not need to embody the typical male persona.”
Hotakainen, current vice president of the Ole Miss Student Veterans of America chapter and an assistant to the university’s Veteran and Military Services, served as an aviation electrician technician in the Navy for four years on active duty while deployed to Iraq during that time.
When asked to describe what it is to truly be a service member, Hotakainen said that conversation would be too long to type in words, but she will elaborate on the issue to the best of her ability on Friday.
To women looking at the military for a possible career, Hotakainen would give advice about the “boys’ club” mentality, as well as the ways to simultaneously avoid and embrace the mentality in order to succeed.
“I was a sailor, but for me it was a very positive experience and I would do it again,” she said. “I’m considering going back in as an Air Force officer upon graduation.”
She urges all females interested in the military to watch “The Invisible War,” available on Netflix, to get another angle on women in the military.
As a follow-up to the book “The Unforgiving Minute” and author Craig Mullaney’s speech to the Ole Miss community as well as the Army ROTC program, the women on the panel admire the book’s qualities, yet Moore feels like the woman’s story was missing.
“He told a genuine story about himself for no other reason than to tell it,” she said. “He wasn’t selling a military persona.”
— Amina Al Sherif
