In Defense of ROTC: Diversifying Our Nation’s Military

In an op-ed to the New York Times, William Broyles Jr. writes of allowing “other people’s children” to fight our wars. Noting the scarcity of politicians’ family members fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, Broyles ends his column by advocating the return of the draft; only then “chance, not connection or clever manipulation, would determine who serves.” Charles B. Rangel, a representative from New York and another supporter of the draft, echoed this sentiment in his remarks to the House of Representatives on February 13, 2003. Invoking a Vietnam-era speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, he voiced his desire for a more “equitable representation of all classes of Americans” in the armed services. Broyles and Rangel claim that a war’s worth can be judged by the willingness of all members of society to bear the consequences of war. However, rather than focusing on reviving the draft, perhaps they should look at ways to captivate the attention of “children of our nation’s elite” and work to revive the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or ROTC, at our country’s most selective colleges and universities.

At Brown University students choosing to join ROTC must take classes at Providence College. Harvard has a similar arrangement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The inconvenience of going to another campus coupled with the fact that some schools do not offer students credit for military science courses suggests these schools are either indifferent or hostile to the program. Cornell University is the only school in the Ivy League that offers ROTC for the Navy, Marines, Army, and Air Force. Even outside the Ivy League, the dominant symbol of New England elitism, students at Stanford University interested in the program are forced to take classes at nearby schools like Santa Clara University.

Most Ivy League schools abolished their ROTC programs as a result of the protest movement during the Vietnam War, when many student activists aimed their energy at eradicating the program. At Dartmouth College, students took over Parkhurst Hall in 1969 to protest the program, feeling that their university should not support the “morally reprehensible” activities of the United States military. Although many of these students were arrested and sent to jail, by 1970 ROTC was no longer part of campus life. The program was eventually restored in 1985. Brown University has a similar history, with a less-happy ending. In March of 1969, the faculty voted to deprive the naval and air force units of their departmental status. The faculty also ensured students would not receive academic credit from their classes and deprived officers of the professorial status. The navy and air force units soon left campus. In 1972, the last on-campus cadets were commissioned. Like at most other schools, the removal of the ROTC from campus was seen as the direct result of student disproval of the U.S.’s policies in Vietnam.