By Kara Petrovic
"Joining the military is flushing your education down the toilet," Nick Rosenthal wrote in a column for the Columbia Spectator, Columbia University's daily newspaper. "Anyone in uniform is just as guilty of enforcing the will of the United States via the use of force as the soldier who actually pulls the trigger."
If you think these beliefs are uncommon on elite college campuses, think again.
Students Against War led 300 University of California-Santa Cruz students in protest last April to a job fair where armed forces booths were set up. Protestors surrounded recruiting tables, chanting "Whose Campus? Our Campus!" and waving signs that read "[expletive deleted] the Army."
Also that month, the Air Force ROTC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison canceled its information day after the student organization Stop the War made threats against representatives. Two hundred students and community members then camped out near the chancellor's office, demanding a meeting to kick the military off campus. The chancellor said "there's not a chance" he would remove them.
Indeed, campus protests are making it hard for the Army to increase ROTC enrollment. In the past two school years, it has fallen 16%, according to the Washington Post, causing the program to have the smallest participation in nearly a decade.
ROTC allows students to participate in weekend and summer military training and commit to post-graduation service in return for college scholarships. It also produces more than 60% of all armed forces officers.
Advocates at several elite schools--Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Brown and Yale--are urging ROTC's return. Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton have small Army ROTC programs; Cornell has all branches represented.
Harvard's President Lawrence Summers called military service "noble" in October 2001 during an Undergraduate Council meeting. He also told the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, that the university and the surrounding community needed to start supporting military efforts.
"We need to be careful about adopting any policy on campus of non-support for those involved in defending the country," Summers said. "[The university] should be proud that we have in our midst students who make the commitment to ROTC."
Hypocrisy at Columbia
Schools opposed to ROTC on campus, such as Columbia, cite the Department of Defense "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy as their No. 1 reason. DADT prevents homosexuals in the military from being public about their sexual preferences.
In a city directly affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, you would think the Columbia administration would favor ROTC's return, but President Lee Bollinger told the New York Daily News that he allows recruitment "with regret."
Columbia's 14 current ROTC students must travel to nearby Fordham University or Manhattan College for training. But unlike other ROTC students who receive regular course credit for ROTC classes, Columbia refuses to grant credits.
Although an ROTC Task Force suggested "boycotting" ROTC, co-chairman and astronomy professor Jim Applegate disagreed. "You cannot affect change without engaging an issue," he said. "Shunning the military is a choice that a private university is free to make. It is not a choice that Americans collectively are free to make. It is a choice that Columbia should not make."
The majority of students agree: 65% of those polled in 2003 favored ROTC's return to Columbia.
Bollinger reportedly was concerned that the government would "force institutions to compromise their principles."
But according to a New York Daily News article, "Columbia accepted $200,000 toward endowing a chair in the Mideast studies" from the United Arab Emirates, and "according to the State Department ... [UAE] condemns homosexual activity as a crime."
Bollinger never returned the money and explained, "It's a tricky question for universities: Should you accept donations only from individuals with whom you share values? I don't think so." So much for principles.
ROTC Advocates on a Mission
Enter Advocates for ROTC, whose mission is to "promote an atmosphere supportive of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps on college campuses."
ROTC student and Advocates founder Sean Wilkes fought to have the program reinstated. "I have a strong desire to serve," Wilkes told the New York Post. "I think the military is a noble profession."
Wilkes later stated: "Columbia is a flagship university, as President Bollinger has put it. It's known for producing leaders in all areas of studies. And yet it's noticeably absent in the area of military leadership, particularly when compared to many of the other great universities of this nation. ... Columbia used to produce [military leaders]. ... There's one point in Columbia's history where it produced more naval midshipmen than even the Naval Academy."
After the Columbia senate voted against ROTC in May 2005, Advocates member Eric Chen said: "As educators tasked with preparing generations of leaders, Columbia University's senators betrayed their responsibility to our society. Rather than upholding their duty, they opted instead to define Columbia as an insular 'Ivory Tower' and to widen the civil-military divide.
Intellectual Elitism
Columbia also supposedly opposes ROTC on grounds of racism and the loss of intellectual elitism.
Opponent Nick Rosenthal dealt with these issues in his column, "ROTC, You Are (Still) Not Wanted Here." He wrote: "Even if this does increase the amount of diversity here, this is not how the diversity should be created, white students being doctors and lawyers, and blacks and Latinos being soldiers. I'm not really sure how the core curriculum is going to come in handy when you've been ordered to stack a group of naked Iraqi prisoners in a human pyramid."
Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, a Harvard graduate, said his alma mater regards the military "as some kind of disease to be avoided to show how intellectually superior you are."
Through a proposal presented to Columbia administrators, Wilkes proved that the military has been a strong proponent of affirmative action. Also that military officers are professionals, most of whom have obtained at least one, if not multiple, degrees.
WWII veteran and author Herman Obermayer said military-related attitudes have changed because of the educational system's lack of support.
"[The difference today is] that I don't think anybody cares, and I think this had to do with our elite colleges that I think are demeaning military service when they refuse to have an ROTC," Obermayer told the Washington Times. "If the people who run our elite universities believe that this is a noble calling, we'd be better off."
Anti-ROTC feelings persist at other schools, too. University of Wisconsin-Stout's chancellor reversed his decision last April to allow ROTC on campus. He originally rejected the request, citing DADT, but back-pedaled after local legislators learned that $16 million in federal funds were in jeopardy.
Yet Columbia Professor T.W. Graske, Jr., said universities like the University of Wisconsin and Columbia must value the military. "In the next several decades, America will face unimaginable challenges," he said. "Columbia needs to change the math. It should be in what ways this university can strive to provide leaderships resources not only for civilian enterprise, but for national security."
Perhaps the best argument for ROTC was made by Army Lt. Vincent Tuohey, a Harvard graduate and platoon leader in Iraq.
"I've learned more in Iraq than I learned during four years at Harvard," he told the Wall Street Journal. "There's no greater honor than leading men in defense of your country."
E-mail: kpetrovic@vfw.org
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