By Pauline Gutierrez, Dec 10, 2024
Despite the ongoing war in Gaza and many protests on campuses in the United States and around the world that condemn the war, Cal Poly Pomona is among many universities engaged in widespread recruitment campaigns hosted by weapon manufactures like Lockheed Martin and Northrop-Grumman, according to the Chicago-based monthly magazine In These Times.
Weapon manufacturers, also referred to as defense contractors, are a regular presence at campus career fairs and are among significant donors to CPP. Lockheed Martin has sponsored the 2023 undergraduate engineering time that first in the Friends of Amateur Rocketry Competition, while Northop-Grumman is a CPP partner in the Cyber Collaborative project.
Both companies have been recruiting CPP students at the career fairs held on campus.
A Poly Post aricle from March depicts student demonstrations against Lockheed Martin’s influence on campus. The SJP account, for instance, depicts a reel of students questioning representatives at a Lockheed Martin workshop.”
Despite some student activism to remove the weapon manufacturers from the list of CPP donors and recruiters, after the March protest against Lockheed Martin, Cynthia Peters, the interim associate director of media relations, said CPP partnership with those companies is valuable to both students and the university.
“Lockheed Martin has generously donated the time and expertise of its executives to serve as industry advisors, on-campus speakers, advisors for career readiness workshops and recruiters at on-campus job fairs,” Peters said. “The company has also been a donor to the university. Their support has made, and continues to make, a difference in the lives of students and alumni.”
The College of Engineering’s list of corporate donors includes Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Atomics. From 2019 to 2022, the college. However, the majority of documented contributions from defense contractors are from Northrop Grumman, which has made regular, and increasing, contributions to CPP since 2009.
Clark Rucker, the director of the Bronco Mentorship Excellence Program, is an engineering technology graduate and a former Boeing executive. Rucker commented on contractors’ interest in CPP graduates.
“ Cal Poly Pomona is recognized as a polytechnic university, the students have a lot of hands-on experience in different areas.” Rucker said. “For example, a mechanical engineer might have had the opportunity to work on electronics or avionics. An aerospace engineer might have delved deeply into things like robotics or rocket systems working with mechanical engineers, industrial engineers and manufacturing engineers. Civil engineers have the opportunity to interface with all of the above through different projects and activities.”
Elliot Summers, a psychology student and a co-chair of the Bronco YDSA, has advocated banning defense contractors from campus and is currently involved in a petition to remove them.
“Our engineering department gets a lot of money from companies such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, I believe,” said Summers. They’re just very involved in the department, and in return for the money and the funding that they get from these weapons corporations, they are able to be on our campus, hosting workshops and pulling from our students to work for those companies.”
CPP is a partner university of, among many other companies, defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
These partnerships include research grants and internship opportunities where students work on projects for these companies. These internships are highly compensated as is employment with these companies.
The College of Engineering’s list of corporate donors includes NorthropGrumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Atomics . From 2019 to 2022, the college. However, the majority of documented contributions from defense contractors are from Northrop Grumman, which has made regular, and increasing, contributions to CPP since 2009.
Ziggy Leiva, an electrical engineering student, said he is keenly aware of the influence of these companies within the engineering department and how students may be enticed into careers in these industries or have any ethical conflicts placated.
“Oftentimes what they’ll do is (say), ‘Oh, yeah, I worked here for a couple of years, the benefits were good, blah, blah, blah, blah,’” Leiva said.
According to Leiva, professors sometimes try to persuade students by telling them they can work in a capacity where they are not manufacturing the weapons themselves.
“Typically, what they’ll do is they’ll be like, ‘For some of you that have moral implications involved, try looking at it from a different perspective.” Leiva said “Not necessarily are you always working in the sector that is dealing with armed weapons.”
Marwa, a computer engineering student and fellow co-chair of the Bronco YDSA alongside Summers, said she is constantly faced with recruitment efforts by defense contractors.
“Specifically for engineering students, we’re getting a constant stream of emails from professors,” Marwa said. “And it’s like helping these weapons manufacturers with UAV research or drone research. I’ve received so many emails. You literally have to do the work of constantly deleting them.”
From 2015 to 2020, Northrop Grumman contributed the highest amount listed to date of $195,000 for “Investigations into Operations with Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles.” All of the listed grants from Northrop Grumman are for research into UAVs and UGVs. The recent contributions from Lockheed Martin are for UASs.
Hellfire missiles , which are being used in the conflict in Gaza, can be carried by UAVs, specifically the various MQ drones such as the MQ-1 Predator, the MQ-9 Reaper, and the MQ-1C Gray Eagle manufactured by General Atomics.
This is what students are protesting; this is the meaning behind their messages. When a student holds up a poster board that reads, in great bold letters, “Lockheed Martin” surrounded by bloody handprints
The university partnership with defense contractors bothers students like Summers because of the implications it has in other parts of the world.
“I think it is so important because you don’t need to be an engineering major to see the impact of these companies around the world,” Summers said. “I think it goes beyond even the engineering department. A lot of students around our campus are understanding what’s going on in Gaza right now. And I think it’s important, even if you’re not an engineering major, to be aware of military industrial complex and these companies being on our campus anyways.”
Feature image courtesy of Mawra