Q&A WITH
CODY MITCHELL ’11 From ROTC Battalion Commander to Student Body President to Board of Trustee Member
“I don’t think I would be where I am today without PC. I don’t think that I would have probably made it into law school as quickly as I did. PC provided me the opportunity to be SGA president, KA president, battalion commander of ROTC, but more importantly, it provided me great friendships.” – Cody Mitchell ’11
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ody Mitchell graduated cum laude from PC and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Army in 2011. Mitchell served as student body president, ROTC battalion commander, and president of Kappa Alpha Order before earning a law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. Today, Mitchell serves as an attorney at Lucas, Warr, White, & Mitchell in Hartsville, S.C., and as a judge advocate in the S.C. Army National Guard. He also serves as the municipal judge for the town of Bethune and city of Hartsville, both located in S.C. Mitchell talks about how ROTC and PC prepared him for law school and his career.
Q. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO BE IN ROTC? A. ROTC is one of the main reasons that I ended up at
Presbyterian College. Prior to probably the early spring semester of my senior year in high school and seeing the sign on I-26, I didn’t know anything about Presbyterian College. One of my high school classmates, Jeff Brown, who’s also a graduate of PC, had already applied to PC and had been accepted. He received an ROTC scholarship, and he talked to Mike Smith about me. Mr. Smith was the professor of military science at the time and reached out to me.
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My mom and I went to Clinton the Monday after to visit PC on a rainy, dreary Clinton day, and we loved it. She loved it because it reminded her of a bigger version of Tusculum, which is located in her hometown. Also, we were welcomed like none other by the people of PC. ROTC is the whole reason that the Cody Mitchell / Presbyterian College story even exists.
Q. DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU WERE PUT IN A LEADERSHIP POSITION IN THE ROTC PROGRAM? A. It was my sophomore year. We won the Ranger Challenge
for the Southeast ROTC program, which was a big deal. The Ranger Challenge is a weekend competition at Fort Jackson. We competed against 13 or 15 other schools, and we won. I think it’s about eight or 10 events over a weekend afternoon and ending Sunday mid-morning. And we were able to win, which was a big deal for little PC to be able to beat the big schools. And I think that was probably the first time that people like Taylor Duren ’08, Corey Wynn ’08 and I were actually put in leadership roles. You trained, and you practiced, and you did different things all the time. We were doing this all while competing against senior cadets.
