President Obama had a clear message for elite colleges in Tuesday’s State of the Union address: Bring back ROTC.
Following the December repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, Obama called on schools to allow ROTC and military recruiters on campus:
“Our troops come from every corner of this country–they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.”
The president has supported the return of ROTC to elite campuses in the past; during the 2008 campaign, Obama expressed disapproval for Columbia University’s ban on the program.
Four Ivy League schools — Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Brown — as well as a handful of other elite universities, like Stanford, do not currently have ROTC programs on campus. But rumblings about ROTC’s return have already begun on several campuses.
A Columbia University senate task force will conduct a student survey this semester about the potential return of ROTC to the school. A vote is expected on the issue in April, according to the Columbia Spectator.
At Yale, a similar survey revealed nearly 70 percent of students supported the return of ROTC, conditional on the repeal of the DADT policy. Only 16.5 percent of students opposed the return of the program to Yale’s campus.
“I’m very hopeful that we can work out arrangements with the military that are satisfactory to our community and we’ll be able to bring ROTC back to campus,” University President Richard Levin told the Yale Daily News earlier this month. Levin said he had met with military officials about ROTC already.
Of the four Ivy League schools without ROTC, Harvard President Drew Faust has been the most vocal in her support for the program’s return to campus.
“I look forward to pursuing discussions with military officials and others to achieve Harvard’s full and formal recognition of ROTC,’’ she said in a written statement after the DADT repeal. “I am very pleased that more students will now have the opportunity to serve their country.’’
Despite non-committal statements on a potential return of ROTC, the Stanford administration has used discretionary spending to pay for ROTC student transportation to their regional programs at Santa Clara, San Jose State and Cal-Berkeley. Since the DADT repeal, however, Stanford has conducted a series of panel discussions and townhall forums on the issue. Topics have ranged from academics — a point of contention for elite schools because the Department of Defense oversees ROTC courses — to discrimination against transgender individuals.
Whether ROTC programs will actually be established on these campuses, however, is unclear.
Currently, students at schools without on-campus ROTC participate in regional programs; Harvard ROTC cadets, for instance, go to MIT for their classes and exercises. In the fall, Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said the current infrastructure produced a sufficient number of recruits.
“It is premature to speculate,’’ Lainez told the Boston Globe earlier this month. “Services must maintain a delicate balance of units, cadre manpower, and officer production in light of fiscal constraints and competing wartime requirements.’’
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