I haven't asked national ROTC commanders as to the reason for the national one-week caution on wearing ROTC uniforms on campus, but I'm told it was based on very specific information. I don't know what that was, but one can imagine that if there was concern that the National Guard would be called up to deal with the campus protests, stud…
I haven't asked national ROTC commanders as to the reason for the national one-week caution on wearing ROTC uniforms on campus, but I'm told it was based on very specific information. I don't know what that was, but one can imagine that if there was concern that the National Guard would be called up to deal with the campus protests, students might have mistaken other students in ROTC for National Guard troops.
I don’t claim that there can’t be some benefits to educating military on civilian campuses, but I think there are real potential downsides to that which can outweigh the benefits.
Some of the other URLs at https://advocatesforrotc.org/issues/ address other possible objections, though the first URL in my original reply addressed what seemed to be the most common and serious objection.
One additional objection to ROTC is the vague notion that having ROTC students will "militarize" the campus. We didn't write an article about that, but we did email around a photo of a female ROTC student moving into a dorm with the comment "When people said having ROTC students would militarize the campus, I bet they didn't picture them arriving in pink running shoes".
I'd be interested in learning about other objections to ROTC not covered above.
I haven't asked national ROTC commanders as to the reason for the national one-week caution on wearing ROTC uniforms on campus, but I'm told it was based on very specific information. I don't know what that was, but one can imagine that if there was concern that the National Guard would be called up to deal with the campus protests, students might have mistaken other students in ROTC for National Guard troops.
As for doing ROTC instead of a military academy, one key argument is that training on a civilian campus does a lot to reduce the civil-military divide. There is a good discussion of this at https://advocatesforrotc.org/issues/compatible/ and https://advocatesforrotc.org/issues/ocs/
Michael Segal '76 MD PhD
National Coordinator, Advocates for ROTC
advocatesforrotc.org
I don’t claim that there can’t be some benefits to educating military on civilian campuses, but I think there are real potential downsides to that which can outweigh the benefits.
Some of the other URLs at https://advocatesforrotc.org/issues/ address other possible objections, though the first URL in my original reply addressed what seemed to be the most common and serious objection.
One additional objection to ROTC is the vague notion that having ROTC students will "militarize" the campus. We didn't write an article about that, but we did email around a photo of a female ROTC student moving into a dorm with the comment "When people said having ROTC students would militarize the campus, I bet they didn't picture them arriving in pink running shoes".
I'd be interested in learning about other objections to ROTC not covered above.
I don't think having ROTC students would militarize a campus, unless perhaps they were to represent a major portion of the students.
What do you think are those downsides?