The Assault on ROTC

...If we are going to have a university, let it be staffed with . those of us who seek truth, and rid us of those cloying chauvinists who care more for the national defense than for the free exchange of ideas...

...The argument so far is intended to show that putting ROTC off the best campuses would be dangerous for the country because it would divorce the army from the intellectual centers of the public it is supposed to serve...

...Of twenty officers in and out of the company over a two or three year period, three were ROTC graduates of prestige schools (Harvard or Yale), another eight had gone to middle-rank schools (Davidson, Penn State, UCLA, Notre Dame, etc...

...ROTC is the only one of the four sources of officers which sends its graduates directly into staff and management branches...

...Students at The Claremont Colleges, for instance, have gotten, or can get credit for field trips to digs, for doing their own thing in the desert for six weeks, for living and working in the ghetto, for voice lessons, for drama workshop, for nursery class, for children's art, children's literature, ceramics, College Bowl and Black Arts...

...It draws in people like William Calley and Ernest Medina, who know how to fight but cannot handle intellectual challenges beyond the high school level...

...The free exchange of ideas does depend on the national defense, and it depends very directly on a national defense which has not been purposely segregated from the universities and thereby left entirely to its own devices...

...We cannot afford to ignore something which consumes half the national budget and has at its disposal the means to destroy the world many times over...

...Cutting off the influx of well- educated lieutenants like Bryan and Welsh would have a far more serious effect in isolating the army from the intellectual world (and vice versa) than the modest numbers of such cadet graduates of good schools would suggest...

...This notion is twisted...

...The prevalence of military government in the underdeveloped world is well-known...

...This is wrong, not so much because the cadets need the modest credit they get for ROTC as because in present context it tells our students that we think they are "niggers" if they train for war, but white men if they study Seeds of Liberation...

...The reader can test this assertion, if he wishes, by assessing the status of everyone who came to his last party and contrasting it, say, with a square dance in any small community forty years ago...

...OCS is geared to produce small-unit leaders in the combat arms...

...six had three low...

...George C. Marshall For people annoyed with the military but not willing to risk dropping ROTC, there is another line of attack: keeping ROTC, but in a second-class status with no academic credit...

...Russia has always had one but controlled it with a dispotic central government...

...The last three have never had a large standing army...

...The argument for dropping ROTC runs something like this: "Of course we need educated officers, but do we have to train them here...

...It would continue the "undemocratic" special treatment for college students so odious to most opponents of ROTC, but without the control, the concern, nor the protection of the colleges...

...France and Germany have had large standing armies, as we do today, but they have also had unhappy histories of military interference with the processes of civil government...

...The United States has been one of the few exceptions to this rule for many years, for two reasons: we have not until recently had a large standing army, and we have heavily relied on non-professional soldiers for our larger military undertakings...

...Would it not be more democratic if everyone got their commissions at an off-campus Officer Candidate School (OCS...

...Would it not be more in keeping with the untrammeled search for truth to get those flags and uniforms out of our groves...

...Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Columbia, among others, have already dropped ROTC, and it is under heavy attack in all but a handful of campuses where it exists...

...When one of the Claremont Colleges appointed a committee to examine the content of ROTC instruction, all but two of the most vocal opponents of ROTC credit refused to serve on the committee, and those two resigned on discovering that the committee was actually going to evaluate what ROTC had to offer one of them threatening to punch the chairman in the mouth for wasting his time...

...France, Germany and most of the underdeveloped countries have followed this pattern...

...Almost without exception, the lieutenants from prestige schools had greater access to the high command than the other officers with less prepossessing academic credentials, even those of higher military rank...

...and nine were from obscure schools or had had no college education...

...so have Russia, England, Switzerland and Israel...

...Bryan's military intelligence company, described in his semi-autobiographical novel, P.S...

...There are strong self-segregating tendencies in all professions, including the military, but the military, of all professions, is the one we can least afford to segregate...

...National Guard, or direct appointees...

...We have recognized for more than a hundred years the need for active sponsorship of military studies on college campuses, following the understanding of Thomas Paine that those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it, and the wisdom of John Milton who said, "I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war...

...They can get credit for weekend "experiential workshops" and by sincerely asking "How shall I live my life...

...Great American Series Diplomatic action without the backing of military strength in the present world can lead only to appeasement...

...We are supposed to take a special pride in educating leaders in the world of affairs...

...ROTC answers to the special needs of a country which sends the top third of its young people to college (v...

...young people and old people, blacks and whites, different occupational groups live in a world which is already mutually exclusive and is fast becoming more so...

...There is little harm in most of these, and some good in many...

...Army ROTC puts out better officers than OCS, and it is much cheaper to run...

...In practical terms, the answer to these questions is no...

...Most of us would prefer an army of non-professionals as long as we non-professionals need have nothing to do with it...

...There are enough of us around nowadays that we can live comfortably in our own large subgroups with only a modest and ill-informed concern with other subgroups...

...Cutting credit for ROTC would do nothing to preserve academic standards (if anything, it would debase them by tying them to the latest fad), but it would, under present circumstances, go a long way toward endorsing the concept of cadet-as-nigger now popular in many quarters...

...Our annoyance with the war and the draft merely aggravates our disposition to isolate ourselves from the rest of society...

...They have the courage to sweat their way through arduous military training and risk their necks after graduation...

...ROTC is well-accepted in these schools...

...Of seventy-one recently appointed brigadier generals, thirty-four were ROTC graduates, eighteen West Point and nineteen OCS...

...Rationales for dropping credit come readily to hand: ROTC is "necessarilv nationalistic" while we are "cosmopolitan...

...The number two slot had one prestige school officer and two middle...

...policemen go bowling with other policemen...

...Number three had three low...

...It dissociates military education from other forms of education at a time when military education should be of paramount concern to the rest of the country...

...We cannot send the military back to Africa, as so many would like to do, but we can at least express our displeasure by treating them as second-class citizens while others of less academic merit continue to go first class...

...Lieutenant Wilkinson/ Bryan regarded his unit as a cultural wasteland, but he derived a certain satisfaction from telling the generals and colonels what to do-how to avert international crises, etc by strategic application of his Yale-developed mind and credentials...

...The correlation of elite school credentials and strategic functions in Bryan's and Welsh's company was very high...

...When we stop encouraging intellectual leaders to serve as officers, we cut off the brains and perspective that keep the army from making stupid, shortsighted, self-centered decisions...

...Most colleges, for instance, regularly grant credit for courses they do not control...

...Today, however, we have a large standing army, and there is strong sentiment in the best schools for professionalizing the army by abolishing ROTC, the draft and the war, or at least by getting rid of ROTC, since we do not directly control the draft and the war...

...Most of those who deplore ROTC's "nationalistic" orientation seem less concerned with ridding ourselves of nationalism per se than with ridding ourselves of the wrong kind of nationalism (the stars and stripes kind) while embracing more modish varieties, such as black nationalism or the various Liberation movements...

...The credit issue is a symbolic issue...

...They are more likely to know how to think...

...The rich neither live, nor work with the poor...

...If relevance is the touchstone for academic credit, we should give double credit for ROTC...

...Other things equal, most of us would rather have leaders like Ronald Ridenhour (who brought the My Lai massacre to public attention) than leaders like William Calley and Ernest Medina, principal participants at My Lai...

...ROTC lacks academic content...

...There is in most professions a strong impulse toward "self-definition," which in older and blunter language means self-segregation...

...The "just off-campus" option is unpalatable for the army, unpalatable for the cadets, palatable only to those who want to get rid of ROTC altogether, because the "just off-campus" option is merely a devious way to drop ROTC altogether without admitting, it...

...The saving clause for this apparent contradiction is the false belief that off-campus training could be a viable substitute for ROTC in this country...

...War is not a problem to be dealt with from ignorance...

...One may raise legitimate questions about the academic-content of ROTC in four years of animated discussion of ROTC at Harvard and The Claremont Colleges, that those most anxious to cut academic credit for ROTC have a violent antipathy toward any attempt to consider ROTC's actual strengths and weaknesses as a curricular offering...

...But there is serious harm in an allegedly "hardnosed" credit policy which discredits only ROTC, for two reasons: it is not a principled or consistent policy, and its inconsistency cuts the wrong way...

...here such self-imposed incompetence is still considered a flaw...

...Ward Elliott Most people accept the need for an officer training program which puts educated people in leadership, positions...

...ROTC is inconsistent with a liberal arts education...

...Lawyers dine with other lawyers...

...Noam Chomsky surprised everybody when he argued that chemical and biological warfare research should be conducted on campus so that student and faculty members could keep track of what was going on, but he was stating what would be obvious were it not for our own self-segregation: that chastising the military on campus does not stop it nor control it...

...ROTC develops a much better range of talent-perhaps because the colleges have succeeded in cornering most of the talent-and the army has acknowledged that no source of officers compares with ROTC in the quality of lieutenants produced...

...professors and students live in a world of other professors and students...

...The army would face the choice between buying and building new facilities at prohibitive cost or using existing off-campus facilities, such as reserve training centers, which wouldplaceprohibitive commuting burdens on the modest number of students hardy enough to take ROTC in the first place...

...we also cut off the military experience that permits intellectuals to make informed, effective appraisals of the military...

...Unlike Milton, Socrates, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison we are hooked on the notion that the national defense is incompatible with the free exchange of ideas and that proper policy should therefore be aimed at segregating the two concerns...

...Such schools produce only a tiny fraction, perhaps a few hundred out of the fifteen to twenty thousand lieutenants commissioned each year, but the officers from good schools are far more important in quality than in quantity, for a number of reasons...

...army officers live in a world of other army officers...

...No one knows quite what a liberal education is, though we regularly use the term for our own purposes, but surely such an education should give us perspective and penetration which we might otherwise have lacked...

...A crude illustration of this last point might be made with reference to Court-land D.B...

...nevertheless, there is strong pressure on most campuses, and very strong pressure on the most prestigious campuses, to get rid of ROTC, which is the mainstay of our efforts to procure educated army officers...

...Most of us would prefer having more educated persons calling the shots...

...But it would be particularly unfortunate for the schools' current struggle to achieve "relevance" - to offer, to students who want it, training for know -ledgeable leadership in dealing with the concrete problems of modern society...

...Its sudden appearance and its exclusive , application to ROTC reflect a desire to chastise the military for the Vietnam war, not a concern with academic standards, because the stated standards are not consistently applied...

...This option should satisfy no one...

...Where student interest, or college image, or "relevance" is claimed, they grant credit for courses of substantially less academic content than ROTC...

...Instead, because we fear the military and do not quite understand it, we try to isolate ROTC, which can only compound the strains of mutual igorance and fear which already exist between the military and the intellectual world...

...They are more likely to have been exposed to the intellectual mainstream...

...The nearest army reserve armory is usually accessible only to the few students who have cars...

...There is very little evidence today to challenge C. Wright Mills' observation that military control in history -  has been far more the rule than the exception...

...it merely cuts it loose from intelligent appraisal, concern, and restraint...

...Welsh is now a senior editor of Ramparts and is one of the very few opponents of the war who knows enough about order of battle to criticize it intelligently...

...It is only the elite schools with the greatest concentration of talent that seem most bent on shutting it off from access to army leadership positions...

...Wilkinson, which won the Harper Prize in 1965...

...The next step down from the OCS option, which is attractive neither to students nor the army, is a replicated ROTC handy to campus, but not on it...

...from the time of Frederick the Great to the time of Hitler's Germany, foreign and domestic policy was dominated by the Army General Staff and the Junkers...

...This is not likely...

...They grant credit for other colleges' courses, they grant credit for Washington Semester, for study abroad, for transfer students, and for "study voyages" around the world...

...Ridenhour had had two years of college, while Calley had flunked out of Palm Beach Junior College in his first year and Medina had not made it past high school...

...Surely not because they want a professional army per se...

...The company had six main operational slots, which could be ranked in order of importance on the basis of their degree of exposure to the generals and other policy-makers...

...If we are going to have an army, according to this line of thought, let it be staffed with people who like that kind of thing, not us sensitive and humane intellectuals...

...We tell our students that we can give them the broad, practical, intellectual background they will need to survive and succeed in the world of affairs, yet in practice those of us who call most boldly for relevance are the first to shrink from relevance which exposes us to matters we would rather not think about...

...A recent study comparing ROTC scholarship winners with West Point cadets, on the basis of high school class rank, membership in national honor societies and holding of class office and varsity letters, indicated that the overall achievement of the ROTC cadets was notably higher than that of the West Point cadets...

...five percent for England, France and Germany, ten percent for the USSR) and has long feared and avoided a large professional army...

...Graduates of the good schools have already been more carefully screened for admission than graduates of less elite schools...

...few students will sweat their way through to ROTC commissions in an institution which tells them by its acts that others' sweat is to be rewarded while theirs is only to be tolerated...

...And they have enough credentials to make the professionals think they might know what they are talking about...

...If the prestige schools insist op off-campus training, the army will not redesign its off-campus options to make them more attractive to students from schools without ROTC...

...Number four had one middle and three low...

...His Harvard-trained company-mate, D. P. Welsh, likewise enjoyed and used a strategic position for encouraging the army not to make stupid shortsighted decisions...

...It made no such concession to Harvard and Yale, and it is not likely to make one for other prestige schools, because it can get along without the small number of cadets produced by the elite schools...

...We teach our students to grapple with problems, not shun them, and to grapple with them from knowledge, and not from ignorance...

...The country is not soon going to scrap a system that produces well-educated and capable officers for $5,000 in favor of a system which produces officers of limited talents for $12,000...

...They have no ROTC but rely exclusively on promotion from the ranks, OCS and service academies...

...Most other countries do not send a broad spectrum of their youth to college...

...Why do people feel this way...

...ROTC is controlled by external elements...

...The First, Second, Third and Fourth French Republics succumbed to men on horseback...

...Nobody likes being a second-class citizen...

...Number five had three middles...

...We profit today from professional specialization and com-partmentalization, but we also suffer from it...

...It teaches them rudimentary military skills and discipline, and sends them out to be given a platoon, at a cost of $12,000 apiece...

...We should have the courage to support them.he courage to support them...

...Other countries may be content, and even proud to turn out graduates who can only bawl by the side of rough roads they have never learned to travel...

...The number one slot was occupied during the period by two lieutenants from the prestige group and two from the middle group...

...Instead, it will forget such schools and get its lieutenants from more co-operative schools like Texas A&M or some of the many schools on the waiting list to get an ROTC unit...

...ROTC lieutenants cost $5,000 apiece to train...

...Our cadets are part of our tradition of education for leadership...

...War is one of the problems we must face, perhaps the greatest one, and ROTC is one way of facing it...

...Today we are comfortably wedded to the false notion that every profession and group should be encouraged to do its own thing...

...in a course on Seeds of Liberation-with the applause of the people most gravely concerned that courses on military history and tactics lacked academic content...

...An educated person should know what problems exist, how they relate to one another, which ones are most important and how to go about solving, or at least facing them...