Harvard brings back ROTC to campus
Associated Press reports that Harvard University and the Navy Secretary will sign an agreement to formally acknowledge the Navy’s presence on campus.
As part of the agreement, a director of Naval ROTC at Harvard will be appointed, and the university will resume funding the program. Harvard cadets will still train at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as they have for years
Harvard and several other prominent schools, including Stanford, Yale and Columbia, had kept the Vietnam-era ban in place following the war because of what they viewed as a discriminatory military policy forbidding gays from serving openly.
Yeah, big damn deal. For decades Harvard has taken GI Bill money while not “formally” recognizing the presence of an ROTC detachment on campus. So what’s changed besides the University acting magnanimous and the Navy kowtowing.
And that bullshit about keeping the ban in place because of the military’s (Congress’) policies against gays – I was teaching ROTC when universities decided to use the gay issue as an excuse – 14 years after Saigon fell. Do you seriously think that anyone cared about gays in the military in 1975? No, I remember when that light bulb came on in the late eighties.
Harvard banned ROTC in 1969, then defunded the program in 1995, saying “don’t ask, don’t tell” violated its non-discrimination policies.
Yeah, so why had they kept ROTC off-campus between 1975 and 1995?
Screw Harvard. Who needs them.Arrogant, pompous shitbags. Making the services grovel for them is unforgivable. I’m sure they’ll think up another excuse to blackmail Cadet Command soon enough. However student reaction to this announcement should be priceless.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Schools, Shitbags, Society
Are those Hardvardites every going to be pissed when they realize the Navy isn’t a yachting club!
I can’t wait to hear what good ol’ Sandy Korn has to say about this. Probably some sort of whiny bitching about how she can’t sleep until noon anymore because those mean old cadets and middies are drilling outside her dorm.
The military loves to trot the Ivy League guys out for the interviews, especially the 2LT through MAJ ranks. It gives them an air of inclusiveness and faux legitimacy. Just scan the last few years of the WSJ or the NYT and see how many times “1LT Jones, who graduated from Ivy X,” is mentioned. And we are always reminded that P4 got his PhD from Princeton. From personal experience, they are just like every other officer, except that they have more of a tendency to think that their art history degree from Dartmouth makes them smarter than the BDE and BN commanders.