No. 15: Joseph K. Cooper, '07

Lounging just outside the Currier House fishbowl, a young man clad in a blue sweater and worn jeans browses through an intimidating stack of required reading. Joseph K. Cooper ’07 barely notices other students as they occasionally pass by. He looks like any other student, smoking cigarettes over his sourcepacks as he worries about getting that problem set in on time. However, a few years ago, Cooper, now 26, was more concerned with sandstorms and army officers than TFs and due dates.

Back in 1998, Cooper received his high school diploma with a 2.2 grade point average. He had no plans to apply to college. Instead, he ditched his books in exchange for some fatigues, and enlisted in the United States Army. He began his four-year career as an American solider in Korea, where he was stationed for about a year. From there, he was shipped off for another six months, this time to Egypt. He was a sergeant by the time he got back to the States in 2000.

Upon returning home to the south side of Tampa Bay, Fla., Cooper enrolled in Manatee Community College.

“In the winter of 1998 I was a young soldier, serving on the DMZ in South Korea,” he said in his graduation speech, now available for viewing on Manatee’s website. “In a field exercise one night, I found myself bedded down without so much as a poncho to protect me from the elements. I woke for guard duty at about 3 a.m., stiff and shivering, to find the sky had opened up and was snowing on my face.”

Such difficulties wouldn’t follow him to school, but Cooper says adjusting to an academic atmosphere wasn’t easy.

“I felt that I needed to re-learn how to learn,” he says. At Manatee, he quickly became involved in assorted extracurricular activities, and discovered a passion for politics. The once average high school student found a new appreciation for academics at community college—he even joined the Academic Bowl Team.

While still attending Manatee, Cooper met Sam Bell, the former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. Bell encouraged the young Democrat to pursue his interest in politics. Cooper took the advice to heart, and he eventually nabbed a job as the assistant fundraising director with the Democratic National Committee.

Cooper worked on campaigns across the country, from Milwaukee to eastern Tennessee, before arriving back in Florida for a chance to re-take the SATs.

“I did better than I could have possibly imagined,” says Cooper, who then applied to Harvard as a transfer student. Not an easy task, according to Marlene Verega Rotner, head of the transfer admissions office on campus. “We had a six percent admission rate for the ’02-’03 year,” Rotner says. Cooper got in.

These days, as he reads in Currier and takes shifts at the welcome desk, Cooper prefers to keep a low profile. He doesn’t wear his past on his sleeve, and whenever anyone asks him how he’s doing, he answers, with mechanical conviction: “Just happy to be here.”

As far as student attitudes towards the Army are concerned, Cooper mostly shrugs—literally and intellectually. While law students stage demonstrations against military recruiting on campus, Cooper says he prefers to stay uninvolved. “I certainly respect the protests,” he says. “But I don’t see myself joining in.”

Of course, if his interest in politics endures, he won’t be staying quiet forever.