Dominic Minadeo is a reporter with Community News Service, a collaboration with the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.
JERICHO — The Army Mountain Warfare School’s new building will be able to host twice as many students each year at the Camp Ethan Allen training center, according to Vermont National Guard officials.
The $27 million facility covers more than 80,000 square feet and includes an educational space, a dining facility and a four-story indoor climbing wall. The new structure can accommodate up to 174 staff and students at a time and will host its first students this summer.
At the formal opening of the new center April 22, Maj. Gen. Greg Knight said it would be able to host up to 1,500 students a year, more than twice the capacity of the previous building.
“It didn’t have the proper ability to support our students and their needs,” said Knight, Vermont’s adjutant general, “and it didn’t have the space that we have here.”
Knight and other Guard officials were joined at the April 22 ribbon cutting by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who played a key role in obtaining funding for the project.
Through his work as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Vermont’s senior senator oversaw the allocation of $30 million toward the project, as outlined in the conference report for the National Defense Authorization Act for FY20.
“I know you’re facing the challenge of an ever changing global security environment,” Leahy told the gathering. “You have to have a military that can train and act in some of the most difficult environments.”
The building may be new, but the school is not. The Vermont Army National Guard has operated the only mountain warfare school in the nation out of Jericho since its founding in 1983.
Construction of the new school grew in part out of concerns about the inefficiency of the previous building that housed the school, Knight said, but he emphasized that the new structure also would provide private hygiene facilities to each soldier without disrupting the group.
“When you’re creating an environment like this, unit cohesion is very important,” he said. “So you can say, ‘women, you’re gonna go over here and men you’re gonna go here.’ Well, that’s really not the future of the army.”
The army prohibits gender identity discrimination and protects the privacy of all service members, according to the 2021 army transgender policy.
“I don’t care what your gender identity is; soldiers are soldiers,” Lt. Col. Steven Gagner said.
Sherman Patrick, military legislative assistant to Leahy, said the project addresses many of the issues that the Vermont senator considers important.
“It’s stuff that’s good for Vermont, stuff that’s good for the nation, and stuff that helps the men and women who serve,” Patrick said.
Soldiers enrolled in the school’s Basic Military Mountaineer Course learn such tactics as land navigation, high-angle marksmanship, first aid, casualty evacuation, and ascending and descending techniques, according to the National Guard.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Steven Gagner’s title.
