When Will the Caissons Go Rolling Along?

Harvard should return ROTC to campus now

By Michael W. McLean

For centuries, Harvard has played a role in the defense of our country. During the American Revolution, Washington stationed his raggedy band of New England citizen-soldiers on Harvard Yard. Throughout the Civil War, the Twentieth Massachusetts Regiment bore the moniker the “Harvard Regiment” because many of its soldiers were Harvard men. And in the midst of World War I, Harvard established one of the first Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs in the country. More than 1,000 students joined, and as they marched through the streets of Boston, they served as a visible reminder that the men of Harvard knew quite well the inscription on Dexter Gate: “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.” 

Over fifty years after our university welcomed ROTC onto campus, Harvard buckled to anti-war pressure during another conflict—Vietnam—and sent ROTC packing. It was April 1969—forty years ago this month—when a mob of students stormed University Hall and a dastardly Harvard administration chose appeasement over fortitude by succumbing to the students’ demands. The Harvard chapter of Students for a Democratic Society won in the spring of 1969. And unfortunately, forty years later they are still winning, for Harvard refuses to recognize ROTC.

Today’s reason—or excuse—for this obstinacy is far from the political reasons that pushed the program off campus forty years ago. The reason now is the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which bars open homosexuals from serving in the armed forces. The university contends that the policy is discriminatory and, therefore, in conflict with the university’s values. As a result, Harvard ROTC students must travel to MIT, where their battalion is stationed, for weekly training and classes. Harvard refuses to pay the costs for these aspiring military officers to take ROTC courses, and the hours ROTC cadets spend in class and on the field are absent from their official transcripts. Harvard doesn’t allow ROTC courses to be used for credit.

In the Harvard Class of 1956, fifteen percent of students were in ROTC. Today, less than one percent of the student body participates. In fact, only 29 cadets and midshipmen can be found at Harvard across all four classes. As General David Petraeus prepares to commission Harvard’s few officers in June, it seems that University policy regarding ROTC recognition hinges on four words: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” After meeting recently with ROTC cadets and midshipmen, President Faust privately praised these students and publicly stated her hope that ROTC return to campus one day. President Faust is waiting for a move by another president: Barack Obama. President Obama has stated a desire to repeal President Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and welcome openly gay soldiers into the military. But no one knows for certain if or when this may happen. 

Harvard cannot afford to wait a week longer for a policy rewording from Washington to fix a forty-year-old error in judgment. Instead, it should do what is right and welcome ROTC back with open arms. One group on campus, the Harvard Republican Club (HRC), is hoping to lead the Faculty down this course. Through a series of articles in various campus publications and the planning of an ROTC awareness week later this month, the HRC will once again attempt to shed light on Harvard’s unfair ROTC policy. “If you talk to an average Harvard student, I think you’ll find they’re pretty open to and supportive of the idea of officially recognizing ROTC at Harvard. Most of us on campus know of at least one cadet or midshipman, and it’s easy to see the negative consequences of Harvard’s policy on them. Our goal is to meaningfully demonstrate student support for ROTC, especially contrasted against the backwards views of the Faculty,” explained HRC President Colin Motley ’10. 

The views of the Faculty are out-of-touch with those of the mainstream student body at Harvard and other elite universities. For example, in a 2003 vote at Columbia, students favored fully recognizing ROTC and allowing it on campus by a margin of 973 to 530. So let democracy work and hold a vote at Harvard.

But the University may change policy only after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” While President Faust may be content waiting for President Obama to act, the student body is not. The HRC is spearheading an effort to ask President Obama to keep his promise from the 2008 campaign and support returning ROTC programs to elite college campuses like Harvard. When speaking on his alma mater’s ROTC policy, President Obama confessed, “I recognize that there are students here who have differences in terms of military policy, but the notion that young people here at Columbia or anywhere, in any university, aren’t offered the choice, the option of participating in military service, I think is a mistake.”

President Obama, we agree that it is a mistake, and hope that you will join us in translating words into action. ROTC recognition at Harvard is long overdue. As Harvard ROTC seniors, Joseph Kristol and Daniel West, wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “ROTC should be fully and unequivocally welcomed back to Harvard.” Speaking on behalf of the silent majority, I couldn’t agree more.