http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/23/ousted-rotc-may-go-back-to-school/
Stanford rethinks 40-year ban
March 23, 2010
By Monica Martinez
It's college-application season, and GI Joe is hoping for an
acceptance letter from Stanford.
Nearly 40 years after the U.S. military's Reserve Officers' Training
Corps (ROTC) scholarship program was banished from the elite
California school, Stanford's faculty Senate earlier this month heard
the case for bringing it back.
"Institutions like Stanford have an obligation to uphold this
200-year-old [tradition] of the citizen-soldier," said Pulitzer
Prize-winning historian and Stanford professor David Kennedy. Mr.
Kennedy has teamed up with Clinton administration Defense Secretary
William Perry, another Stanford professor, in the drive to restore
ROTC 40 years after protests of the Vietnam War helped drive it off
the campus.
"We fear the implications of having a distant military, and a modest
way to bring about civil societies is through ROTC programs," Mr.
Kennedy said. "That is part of our argument."
The passions of the 1960s anti-war movement are a distant memory, but
it's not clear whether other Ivy League universities including
Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Brown will follow Stanford's lead in
bringing back banished ROTC programs.
Federal law, enacted in the 1990s, prohibits colleges and
universities from receiving federal funding if they don't allow
military recruiters or ROTC units on campus.
One modern complication is the clash between university
nondiscrimination codes and the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell"
policy, which bans openly gay men and women from serving in the ranks.
Harvard students now can participate in ROTC through the regional
program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with students
from six other Boston-area schools, but not on the Cambridge campus,
John Longbrake, media director at Harvard, said in an e-mail.
"There are not currently any plans to modify the arrangement," Mr.
Longbrake wrote. "We will, of course, follow any federal policy
changes with interest."
Yale's ROTC program is hosted by the University of Connecticut at
Storrs, while California Institute of Technology students interested
in ROTC courses must go to the University of California at Los
Angeles. Similar off-campus arrangements have been set up for schools
such as the University of Chicago and Columbia.
Barack Obama, who attended Columbia, criticized his alma mater's
decision not to reinstate the ROTC program during the presidential
campaign in 2008. The program was dropped in 1969 amid fierce
anti-war demonstrations.
"The notion that young people here at Columbia or anywhere, in any
university, aren't offered the choice, the option of participating in
military service, I think, is a mistake," Mr. Obama said.
The school last considered and rejected the idea of restoring
ROTC on campus in 2005. Columbia President Lee Bollinger in 2008
cited the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and the fact that Columbia's
openly gay students would be barred from participating as the
"predominant reason" for the school's stance.
"That is inconsistent with the fundamental values of the university,"
Mr. Bollinger said.
But Stanford's decision to reconsider the ROTC question is part of a
larger upswing for the program, whose Army, Navy and Air Force units
typically offer full tuition scholarships in exchange for several
years of military service upon graduation.
Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said there has been an
upward trend in ROTC unit enrollment over the past few years.
Army ROTC participation has increased from 25,180 in 2007 to 33,555
for 2010. Naval and Marine ROTC has increased from 6,299 to 7,724 in
2010. The Air Force ROTC has jumped to 15,478 from 13,144 in 2007.
ROTC programs are also prime training grounds for the nation's next
generation of military leaders. Pentagon figures show that ROTC
graduates constitute 56 percent of all Army officers, 41 percent of
Air Force officers, 20 percent of Navy officers and 11 percent of
U.S. Marine Corps officers.
There are 327 higher-education schools hosting ROTC programs, and
many have more than one service unit. Cornell, for example, has Army,
Navy, and Air Force host units.
Princeton, with 40 students in its program, is a host university that
has kept its program intact. The ROTC program is not an academic
department, but falls under the "residential life" department.
Other schools offer students an opportunity to take ROTC courses at a
host university. Ms. Lainez said that nearly 1,800 schools have
affiliations with the primary host schools. For example, Stanford's
11 students on ROTC scholarships take their military courses at Santa
Clara University, the University of California at Berkeley and San
Jose State University.
The return of ROTC to Stanford would carry a particular symbolism
because of the fiery way in which the military/academic program left.
Anti-war demonstrators burned down the Navy ROTC building on campus
in 1968. Two years later, Stanford stopped giving credit for ROTC
curriculum courses, citing what administrators said was the low
academic rigor of the classes. The ROTC program was banished from the
campus in 1973.
Mr. Kennedy said that politics and academic standards both played a
role in the decision to boot ROTC. "The protest against ROTC became a
protest of war," he said.
The faculty committee studying reinstatement will be in charge of
evaluating academic quality. Mr. Kennedy said that Stanford probably
will want a role in the faculty appointments of those who teach the
ROTC courses.
The Pentagon's Ms. Lainez said the military services have not
approached a large number of schools in the post-Vietnam era to open
new ROTC programs.
"The current infrastructure is sufficient to both produce the desired
number of commissionees, and … there is abundant opportunity for
interested students to participate," she said.
Mr. Kennedy said the "don't ask, don't tell" issue still could prove
a hurdle for Stanford, but is considering action by the Obama
administration to end the policy in the near future. Sen. Joe
Lieberman, Connecticut independent, earlier this month introduced a
bill to end "don't ask, don't tell," citing in part what he says is
its negative effect on ROTC programs.
"If ROTC can't recruit on campus, we do not have the opportunity to
get other kinds of people on campus into the military …," Mr.
Lieberman told reporters March 3. "They tie together."
Mr. Kennedy agreed that the elimination of "don't ask, don't tell"
would help the reinstatement cause at Stanford.
"The premise on which Perry and I are operating was that 'don't ask,
don't tell' was going to go away," Mr. Kennedy said. "My guess is
that nothing will happen if it [doesn't] go away or is modified."
.
0 comments:
Post a Comment