AMERICA
ROTC Remains AWOL at Ivies
Elite colleges have banned
Reserve Offi cer Training
since Vietnam. Our armed
services suffer as a result.
By Dave Eberhart
T
HE IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS’ RIFT
with Reserve Offi cer Training
Corps programs, tracing to the
bitter days of the Vietnam War, con-
tinues to take a toll on the nation’s
armed forces.
All eight Ivy League schools boot-
ed ROTC programs off campus at
the height of Vietnam protests in the
1960s. Only Princeton, Dartmouth,
Cornell, and the University of
Pennsylvania have since allowed
ROTC to return.
If students at Columbia, Harvard,
Yale, and Brown want to participate
in offi cer training, they must travel
to a nearby university, and forgo col- ROTC commissionee from the City In 1969, at the height of Vietnam
lege credit. University of New York, was named protests, Princeton offi cials voted to
Army ROTC traditionally com- chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff drop academic credit for the course
missions about 70 percent of the in 1989 and went on to serve as U.S. and reduced the status of ROTC pro-
second lieutenants who join secretary of state. fessors to that of visiting lecturers.
the active Army, the Army Ivy League schools, even those Then, in reaction to the Cambodian
National Guard, and the that do admit ROTC, barely con- invasion and a university-wide anti-
U.S. Army Reserve, accord- tribute to this honorable and heroic war strike, the faculty voted in 1971 to
ing to Defense Department effort, however. abolish ROTC altogether.
fi gures. More than half of Frank Schaeffer, co-author of
the Army’s active general AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of
offi cers are ROTC products. America’s Upper Classes from Military S
chaeffer points out that, even
with ROTC’s formal return to
.
C
OM
GE
And that’s just the Army. Service — and How It Hurts Our Princeton, the program retains a
Frank Schaeffer
The Navy and the Air Force Country, notes that, in 1956, Princeton shadow of its former martial gran-
have ROTC programs, too. graduated 400 students who later deur. The same is true on other
In 1993, Gen. J.H. Binford served in uniform. By 2004, just campuses.
Peay III, an ROTC commissionee nine of the school’s graduating class Part of the split was exposed
at Virginia Military Institute, was entered the military, he says. recently in an editorial in The
ALEXANDRA WYMAN/WIREIMA
named new vice chief of staff of the Princeton’s rocky ROTC history Cornell Daily Sun. The missive, titled
Army. His appointment marked the is not dissimilar from the other Ivy “Colonels and Campus Don’t Mix,”
fi rst time that the chairman of the League institutions. tries to defi ne a fundamental intellec-
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff ROTC was established at tual incongruity that transcends war
of the Army, and vice chief of staff Princeton in 1919, and by 1939, 350 or even “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
AP IMAGES / SCHAEFFER/
ON/
of the Army all have been ROTC students had enrolled in preparation The Sun’s editors wrote, “Cornell
grads. Gen. Colin Powell, himself an for World War II. military science professors admit- PRINCET
26 NEWSMAX / DECEMBER 2008
0026_AM_IvyLeagueROTC.indd 2626_AM_IvyLeagueROTC.indd 26 111/7/08 3:53:33 PM1/7/08 3:53:33 PM
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