Jan. 14, 2011 - Before President Obama signed a law repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy in December, a number of elite colleges and universities around the country cited the policy as a significant reason for why they opposed having a Reserve Officer Training Corps program on campus.
Now that the policy's end is near, will we see a rush to reinstate ROTC in the halls of America's most vaunted educational institutions? Columbia, Harvard and Stanford universities have commissioned committees to consider reinstatement.
At Stanford University, a committee decided to study the ROTC question last spring and has approached the subject with the academic inquiry of a university seminar.
The 10-member committee has read two books and watched a documentary on the mindset of the American soldier, explored archival documents from when Stanford first banned ROTC in the 1960s, and read five dozen letters from students and others in the campus community, according to the Stanford Report.
Committee chair and Psychology Professor Ewart Thomas told the Stanford Report that while "don't ask, don't tell" featured prominently in some people's objections to ROTC on campus, many other arguments have been presented that the committee will consider.
In fact, Thomas said he believes the debate will focus most heavily on the question of whether the courses included in a potential ROTC program would meet Stanford's standards of academic "worthiness," he told Stanford Report.
We imagine, although we haven't gotten to the stage of drafting a recommendation, that if we were to attempt to reinstate ROTC, it would have to pass muster as a set of courses that, if they were to get credit deserve credit.
Stanford gutted its ROTC program in 1970 in the wake of anti-war protests and strikes, stripping the ROTC courses of academic credit, eliminating faculty rank for military instructors and removing the program's departmental status in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Although current Stanford students can participate in ROTC through agreements with other universities, several of the courses are taught off-campus at UC Berkeley, San Jose State University and Santa Clara University. Stanford ROTC students don't get credit toward their degrees for these classes, and the courses don't count toward full-time status.
As they prepare to consider reinstating a formal ROTC program on Stanford's campus, the ad hoc committee members have steeped themselves in the history of the issue and the mind of the soldier.
The committee members read, for example, "The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers," by Nancy Sherman. The author interviewed veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Vietnam and World Wars I and II.
Sherman's book examines how soldiers learn to kill and to leave the killing behind, as well as how civilians become soldiers:
The grueling experience 'denudes,' as one observer puts is: It strips civilian and personal identity and socializes individuals into members of a cadre. It cuts down in order to build up. At the Naval Academy, the cutting down begins at the barbershop near Bancroft Hall, the world's largest dorm, by some accounts. Masses of hair tumble onto the floor as buzz cuts emerge to go with uniforms and standard-issue underwear, eyeglasses, and shoes.
Committee members also read Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, by David Lipsky. Lipsky, a Rolling Stone reporter, got unprecedented access to shadow West Point's cadets, the book's jacket says:
Lipsky followed one cadet class into mess halls, barracks, classrooms, bars and training exercises, from arrival through graduation. By telling their stories, he also examines the Academy as a reflection of our society: Are its principles of equality, patriotism, and honor quaint anachronisms, or is it still, as Theodore Roosevelt called it, the most 'absolutely American' institution?
They watched a documentary, "Restrepo: One Platoon, One Valley, One Year," which chronicles the deployment of 15 U.S. soldiers in a remote outpost in Afghanistan.
They reviewed documents from when Stanford's faculty senate first ousted ROTC, including this 1969 report [PDF].
One issue of particular concern at the time was a punitive clause in individual student contracts, David Kennedy, professor emeritus of history, said at a March faculty senate meeting [PDF].
The clause stated that a student who left ROTC before the end of the term could be conscripted immediately – a concern that, at the height of the Vietnam War, played a large role in Stanford's ultimate decision to eliminate the program. That concern is moot in an era of all-volunteer service, Kennedy said.
The committee has also received dozens of letters from the Stanford community after soliciting input in a November 2010 letter [PDF].
The ROTC committee meets this week and plans to present its report to the faculty senate in May.
