fbpx
Breaking Campus News. Launching Media Careers.
Big weekend for ROTC at the elites

Columbia University announced Friday that, after a four decade absence, ROTC will be recognized on its campus. The university reached a formal agreement with Naval ROTC and will reinstate program at the school.

Earlier this month, the Columbia University Senate, comprised of administrators, faculty, students, voted to recognize ROTC. The vote followed a townhall and survey process that began after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed in the fall.

Also on Friday, the ad hoc committee formed at Stanford to assess recognition and reinstatement of ROTC announced its endorsement of ROTC’s return to the campus.

Thursday, a Yale faculty committee on ROTC recommended that Yale amend resolutions approved in 1969, which effectively banned ROTC at the school.

Prior to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, four Ivies (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown) and Stanford were among the handful of elite universities that did not recognize ROTC either as an academic program or as a student organization. Harvard became the first of the schools to lift their ban on the program last month; the school has also entered into an agreement with Naval ROTC.

The full text of the Columbia University President Lee Bollinger’s statement to students and faculty is below:

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

After many months of campus discussion, open forums, and a strongly favorable vote in the University Senate, together with consultation with the University’s Council of Deans, it is clear that the time has come for Columbia to reengage with the military program of ROTC, subject to certain conditions and with ongoing review.  Accordingly, I am announcing today that after four decades Columbia again will recognize ROTC on campus through an agreement to reinstate a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) program at the University.

Formal recognition of Naval ROTC by Columbia will resume after the effective date, expected later this year, of the repeal of the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” law that disqualified openly gay men and lesbians from military service.  Under the agreement, Columbia’s Navy and Marine Corps-option midshipmen then will participate in Naval ROTC through the NROTC unit hosted at the SUNY Maritime College in Throgs Neck, Queens.  They will join Columbia’s Army and Air Force ROTC members who will continue to train, as they do currently, with other New York area students at consortium units at Fordham University and Manhattan College.  Provost Claude Steele will establish a committee of faculty, students, and administrators to oversee implementation of the ROTC program consistent with Columbia’s academic standards and policies of non-discrimination.

Columbia’s long and honorable history of engagement with the military includes major training programs for naval officers and medical personnel during World War II, and the founding of our School of General Studies in the aftermath of the war in part to provide a Columbia undergraduate education to returning veterans.   During both of last century’s world wars, Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons created and staffed hospital facilities in Europe for wounded combat troops, in some cases operating in the field of battle.  In recent years, hundreds of talented veterans welcomed here as undergraduate, graduate, and professional students have added to the diversity of experience and perspectives essential to making our University a place of intellectual discovery and open debate.  In recognition of those efforts, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen last spring came to our campus for a day of discussion of issues facing the military and our society.

I have confidence that, with the return of ROTC, Columbia will be an even more valuable forum for enhancing the relationship between our military and civil society in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter

Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.