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Take the money and run ... and still no ROTC
The amount of money that Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia and the University of Chicago receive in grants and contracts from the federal government each year, over and above federal scholarship money that their students bring, is in the billions. Harvard alone received $558.7 million last year. Yet regarding 10 U.S.C. 983, popularly known as the Solomon Amendment, the response of these institutions to the provisions of the law is less than robust—it might even be called non-compliance: No funds described in subsection (d)(1) may be provided by contract or by grant to an institution of higher education (including any subelement of such institution) if the Secretary of Defense determines that that institution (or any subelement of that institution) has a policy or practice (regardless of when implemented) that either prohibits, or in effect prevents - (1) the Secretary of a military department from maintaining, establishing, or operating a unit of the Senior Reserve Officer Training Corps...at that institution. Harvard President Drew Faust recently announced that she would like to "regularize our relationship" with the military. She contended, however, that Harvard's exclusion of ROTC (which actually dates back to 1969—long before gays in the military was a political issue) is "entirely linked to 'don't ask, don't tell.'" But as ACTA president Anne Neal made clear in her recent presentation at Columbia University's Service & Society Conference, the existence of DADT is not a reason for trustees to sit still. Now is the time for trustees to recognize ROTC as an on-campus student activity—even while disagreeing with current policy concerning gays in the military—and then to ask faculty and administrators to study and report on how the integration of ROTC into academic life might best be accomplished. Despite recent progress that the Secretary of Defense acknowledges, the damage to military presence on these elite campuses has been very real, and their accommodations of ROTC insufficient. Stanford students, for example, who wish to participate in ROTC have only the option of a hellacious commute to Santa Clara. Not surprisingly their participation is minimal. ACTA's message to higher education concerning ROTC has been clear and consistent: ROTC is an invaluable opportunity for students and it needs to be restored quickly and fully to its proper place on campus. http://www.goacta.org/press/PressReleases/2008PressReleases/08-10-07PR.cfm; http://goacta.org/print.cfm?page=/press/PressReleases/2010PressReleases/10-03-26PR.cfm
Posted by Michael Poliakoff on October 12, 2010 at October 12, 2010 04:16 PM
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