Columbia University’s faculty senate passed a pro-ROTC resolution Friday. The Army is interested in restoring ties with Columbia. A Navy unit also is a possibility.
Navy ROTC is returning to Harvard.
Stanford’s faculty is reviewing the issue. A student group is rallying opposition to bringing ROTC back on campus on grounds the military discriminates against transgendered people.
Dickinson College in Pennsylvania may expand its ROTC curriculum, if the Army agrees, to include four years of foreign language, cultural immersion, a semester or year’s worth of study abroad and a concentration in global security studies, reports Inside Higher Ed.
The move was inspired by an e-mail from a Dickinson ROTC graduate who majored in Middle Eastern history and now leads an infantry platoon in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan. Talking with village elders, he recited the first chapter of the Koran, which he’d learned in a class.
Soon after, one of the men handed over five small papers which appeared to be “night letters,” or notes left by the Taliban on local mosques or the doors of homes. Typically, such letters urge resistance or threaten violence to those who cooperate with American forces. These, however, were asking for help. “The three letters this man gave to me thus signaled a major shift in Taliban morale in our area of operations, and at the end of the day became very valuable intelligence information,” the unnamed lieutenant wrote.
University president William Durden, a 1971 graduate of Dickinson’s ROTC program, believes officers need more than training in operations and tactics. “We have young lieutenants running cities.”
The Mellon Foundation is funding partnerships between liberal arts colleges and military institutions of higher education. Dickinson will collaborate with the nearby U.S. Army War College, Bard, Union and Vassar colleges with the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, St. John’s College with the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, and Colorado College with the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Bard and West Point have shared an “odd-couple relationship” for years, said Jonathan Becker, Bard’s vice president for international affairs and civic engagement.
. . . students sometimes attend classes at each other’s institutions, faculty travel to deliver guest lectures, and students and professors from both colleges mix sides to debate political issues.
West Pointers and Bard students have no trouble getting along, Becker said. “Twenty-year-olds enjoy meeting and learning with other 20-year-olds.”
-->Filed Under: College Tagged With: Bard, Columbia, Dickinson, global studies, liberal arts, military, ROTC, West Point
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Richard Aubrey says: April 2, 2011 at 6:48 amI considered ROTC as having a sore toe for four years when I should be having a great time. So I decided to go to OCS instead. But I had a lot of friends who did the ROTC thing.
IMO, ROTC is unnecessary. You can get a college graduate commissioned through OCS, as I was, along with a couple of hundred guys a week (1969).
OCS at the time seemed like a combination of Hell Week at a very tough fraternity, pre-season football practice, and finals week and it went on for six months. We were both trained as officers and trained in the Infantry. ROTC guys already commissioned got their Infantry Officers Basic Course under considerably less pressure.
Today, iirc, they get a shorter course to be commissioned as officers and then the Infantry Officers Basic Course.
If there is any benefit to ROTC, it’s exposing the academic community to the military culture. Presuming the academic community thinks this is a benefit, I suppose. Considering that fewer and fewer Americans have parents, or even grandparents, who are veterans, know soldiers, or even lay eyes on one, having some exposure to the phenomenon at college would be a good idea. They aren’t going to get it elsewhere. See Frank Shaffer’s book (Keeping Faith) about his reactions and those of his precious friends when the younger Shaffer decided to join the Marines.
The military doesn’t need ROTC. The civilian world needs ROTC.
Crimson Wife says: April 2, 2011 at 8:41 amAllowing ROTC students to spend a semester abroad would be a great thing. My DH did Army ROTC and he tried to get permission to do a semester abroad program in Germany and just drill at one of the bases there. But the Army turned him down flat. I always thought that was stupid as there wasn’t anything he was doing in ROTC that couldn’t have easily been done with some unit in Germany.
Walter E. Wallis says: April 3, 2011 at 8:53 amHow many transgender students play football?
Richard Aubrey says: April 3, 2011 at 11:49 amWalter. NOT ENOUGH!!! WE NEED PROGRAMS!!!!
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