National Overview of ROTC at Elite Universities
Ivy League:
Brown: (Off-campus
ROTC)
Cornell: (On-campus Army, Navy
and Air Force ROTC)
- 28 September 1973 Harvard Crimson article "A
Survey of ROTC's Status in the Ivies".
- 29 April 1989 Harvard Crimson article "Other
Campuses". Note: A summary of the status
of ROTC at several elite universities.
- 16 September 2002 Cornell Daily sun article "Spotlight
On: 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'"
-
7 April 2003 Cornell Daily Sun article "ROTC Confronts The War on Iraq:
Cadets relate experiences". Comment: A cadet at
one of the four Ivy League colleges with campus-based ROTC describes student
attitudes.
-
12 April 2003 Ithaca Journal article "ROTC
trains at Cornell".
-
23 November 2004 Ithaca Journal article "On
the Iraq war and Cornell's ROTC program". Note:
Applications to the ROTC programs have remained strong despite the war in
-
1 December 2004 Cornell Daily Sun editorial "Solomon's
Revenge". Note: The editors ponder the implications of
FAIR vs. Rumsfeld
-
5 April 2005 FrontPage column "The
Campus Left's War on ROTC" by Jamie Weinstein. Note:
The author is uncomfortable with the "Don't ask, don't tell" law
but notes "There are reasons why men and women do not share barracks today,
and it is the same reason -- or at least a major part of the reason -- for
the reluctance to allow gays into the service. " He goes on to call
for modification of "Don't ask don't tell" to exclude soldiers for which
-
20 April 2005 Cornell Daily Sun column "DADT:
Facing Facts and Summing Up" by Jamie Weinstein. Note:
The author asks whether it would have been right to exclude the US military
-
8 March 2006 Cornell Daily Sun article "ROTC
".
-
14 March 2007 Cornell Daily Sun column "Orgies,
Adultery and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" by Bill McMorris. Note:
McMorris argues that homosexuality is but one of many areas in which the
tolerance of the university and the military are, and should be different.
"In July 1998, 10 United States naval personnel, seven male and three
female, participated in an orgy in a Hong Kong hotel room. Every sailor,
regardless of their sexual orientation, was charged, indicted and found
guilty of “adultery, sodomy and fraternization.” No one had any problem with
"
-
14 February 2008 Cornell Daily Sun column "'Dont
Ask, Don't Tell' Hurts ROTC, Too" by Gabriel Arana. Note:
Arana notes that many universities shun ROTC because the "Don't Ask, Don't
Tell" law discriminates against people who are openly homosexual, and calls
upon ROTC officers to reject the military's "insularity" and address whether
the law is reasonable. See
19 February response by the ROTC officers.
-
19 February 2008 Cornell Daily Sun Op-Ed "ROTC Officers
Address ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’". The Cornell Army ROTC officers
asked in a 14 February column
to address whether the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law is reasonable
points out that the law was passed by Congress and it "cannot be changed by
the military internally". "Cornell’s discrimination policy (updated
Jan. 25 2008), “assists the university to comply with federal, state and
local legal mandates in relation to such misconduct.” As of now, the “Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is a matter of federal law. We are obligated to
adhere to it and we are prohibited to commission a person who openly
violates this law." They did not discuss the merits of the law, and
alluded to the fact that active-duty officers are expected to avoid taking
stands on political issues. They raise the possibility that the "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell" law can be overruled by executive order, which is far from
certain.
-
6 March 2008 Cornell Daily Sun column "Colonels
and Campus Don't Mix: Are ROTC and Academia Compatible?" by Munier
Salem. Note: Salem argues that the search for truth at a
university is "self correcting", while in the military "rank determines who
is right and wrong — not the merit of someone’s ideas". Yet he notes
that "ROTC friends tell me that criticism of former military endeavors
(Vietnam) and talks of ethics and proper leadership pervade all classroom
discussions". He criticizes military officers for failing to sign up
openly gay students, arguing that "The “it was against the law” argument
doesn’t carry much weight in my book".
-
6 March 2008 Cornell Daily Sun op-ed "A
Cadet Defends ROTC" by Jennifer Speeckaert '08. Note:
A cadet in Cornell Army ROTC writes "How can we allow homosexuals to shower
together when we don’t allow heterosexual men and women to shower together?
Personally, I would not feel comfortable showering in front of men."
-
7 March 2008 Cornell Daily Sun column "Another
Side of ROTC" by Mike Wacker. Note: Wacker concludes:
"Cornell ROTC has just as much right to be here as homosexuals, and the
values of our university have room for both groups. But if anyone has to be
given the boot, it’s the anti-ROTC activists. There is no place at Cornell
for their disgraceful attitude towards the military or their hypocritical
intolerance."
-
7 March 2008 Cornell Daily Sun article "Digging
Below the Stereotypes of ROTC". Note: The article describes
the daily life of ROTC students.
-
14 April 2009 Boston Globe letter "Low
blow, and misfire, directed at elite institutions" by Scott Lajoie.
Note: Responding to Frank Schaeffer's 9 April
op-ed, Lajoie notes that other Ivies such as
Cornell have ROTC (though Schaffer mentions the low overall
participation of Ivies in the
longer version of his exposition on the Huffington Post).
Columbia: (Off-campus ROTC)
Dartmouth: (Army ROTC: on
campus, officially through "an extension school for Norwich University",
but the Professors of Military Science have Dartmouth faculty appointments)
Harvard: (Off-campus ROTC detailing available course credit "Specific naval seminars courses can be taken by cross-registration and count toward a student's undergraduate degree" and units: Army
(Paul Revere Battalion), Navy (Old
Ironsides Battalion) and Air
Force (Doolittle's Raiders))
Penn: (On-campus Navy ROTC)
Princeton: (On-campus Army ROTC.
Air Force ROTC is officially
through Rutgers, but program courses are taught at Princeton)
Yale: (Off-campus ROTC)
Other colleges:
Georgetown: (On-campus Army
ROTC and Navy ROTC, and
off-campus Air Force
ROTC)
Johns Hopkins: (On-campus Army ROTC)
- 13 February 1995 Johns Hopkins press release "Hopkins
Survey Respondents Oppose Both Gay Ban and ROTC Abolition".
- May 2003 Johns Hopkins University "Policy
on the Reserve Officer Training Corps". Note: The
university, which has an Army ROTC
program, has a disclaimer that "Johns Hopkins University does not
discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, age, sexual
orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability, marital status or
veteran status in any student program or activity administered by the
university or with regard to admission or employment. Defense Department
discrimination in ROTC programs on the basis of sexual orientation conflicts
with this university policy. The university is committed to encouraging a
change in the Defense Department policy." One should note, however,
that "Don't
ask, don't tell" is a federal law, not merely a Defense Department
policy.
-
14 April 2005 Johns Hopkins News-Letter article "ROTC
offers cadets unique education".
-
14 April 2005 Johns Hopkins News-Letter column "ROTC
policy incongruent with 'tolerant' university" by Blake Trettien.
Note: The author notes that the ROTC program does not follow
the university's nondiscrimination policy for sexual orientation, but does
not mention that it doesn't follow provisions on age, gender, veteran status
or disability either.
MIT: (On-campus Army ROTC, Naval
ROTC, and Air
and MIT Admissions ROTC Blog)
New York City
UC Berkeley: (On-campus Army
ROTC, Naval ROTC)
- 28 October 2002 San Francisco Chronicle article "Cal's
ROTC program is on the rise: Students in uniform feel more at home".
- 15 January 2008 SFGate Politics Blog item "Live
Blogging Dem Debate: How They Lost the Berkeley Vote". Note:
"Interesting question: Would you enforce a law that requires colleges to
have an ROTC program and allow military recruiters on campus? This is a BIG
deal in the Bay Area -- at least in the Berkeley/San Francisco/Oakland/Santa
Cruz parts of it -- where "counter-recruting" efforts goes on campus and
high school students and families regularly elect to NOT be contacted by
recruiters. Start painting the picket signs: All three of them said
they will enforce the law."
- 16 January 2008 Wall Street Journal Best of the Web Today item "Too
Patriotic for Berkeley" by James Taranto. Note:
Taranto notes how the opposition to ROTC at Berkeley puts it outside the
mainstream defined by all the Democratic presidential candidates.
University of Chicago: (Off campus
Army ROTC and Air Force ROTC)
Stanford: (Off-campus Navy,
Army and
Air Force ROTC, no university-sponsored ROTC Web page)
Military Studies in England:
Reserve Officers Association representing
Officers of the seven United States Uniformed Services
Other links:
Wikipedia article about ROTC
HOOAH.com military community site
Young America's Foundation
ROTC page
Links for ROTC programs nationally:
Please contact us if
you have more links to add.
