Columbia U. Senate
Votes Against Return of R.O.T.C.
By KAREEM FAHIM,
NYTimes on the Web, May 7, 2005
New York City -- A Columbia
University body that helps set policy voted yesterday to reject a resolution
calling for reinstatement of the R.O.T.C., which has been banned from the campus
since 1969.
Columbia students who want to enroll in the Reserve Officers Training Corps must
continue to do so at nearby universities, including the Bronx campus of Fordham
University.
The vote is a setback for a group of students, professors and alumni who have
been campaigning on campus to change the perception of the military and build
momentum for the return of the R.O.T.C. Susan Brown, a spokeswoman for the
university, said in a statement that the administration respected the decision
by the university's senate, a body made up mostly of faculty members, students
and administrators. The decision is nonbinding.
The vote, which followed a two-hour debate that centered on discrimination by
the military against people who are openly gay, was 51 to 11. Several
participants called it surprisingly lopsided.
Alan Brinkley, Columbia's provost, said that he and the university's president,
Lee C. Bollinger, had sought a decision to "get a sense of the community."
Mr. Brinkley said he had abstained from voting, while Mr. Bollinger voted
against the resolution, according to Thomas M. Mathewson, the senate's manager.
Michael Adler, a professor at Columbia's business school and one of the senators
who voted for returning the R.O.T.C., said of the vote: "I thought it was
disappointing. I found my own military service to be maturing. The
military offers students the taste of command before they're 21."
Those who supported reinstatement of the program said they believed a vote in
2003, in which a majority of polled students opposed the ban, lent weight to
their campaign.
One supporter of the R.O.T.C. said yesterday that the Sept. 11 attacks may have
softened attitudes toward the military. The R.O.T.C. program at Columbia
was ended at a time when opposition to the Vietnam War was churning on campus.
Although most students are taking final exams, the auditorium where the senators
voted yesterday was filled by students holding signs, most of them opposing the
military program's return. Outside the building, supporters had hung their
own signs, including several that read, "A Vote for R.O.T.C. is a Vote for the
Heroes of Our Generation."
The debate also included arguments over a case before the United States Supreme
Court involving the Solomon Amendment, which requires universities that receive
federal financing to give the military access to campuses. Several
senators said they feared that continuing to bar the R.O.T.C. could provoke
retribution from the government.
But the most passionate arguments against the R.O.T.C.'s return were based on
the link between the military's policy on gays and Columbia's nondiscrimination
policy.
"Would we agree to an organization on campus," Mr. Brinkley said, that allowed
"African-Americans to join this organization only if they pass for white?"
"Is there a difference?" he asked. "Does the moral weight of the demands
by gays and lesbians have less moral weight than demands by any other minority?"
His words were received with sustained applause.
Scott Stewart, a student in the School of General Studies, said he supported the
R.O.T.C.'s return to Columbia. A former Army infantryman, Mr. Stewart, who
is gay, said he had been open about his sexuality while in the military, and had
worked to change that institution "from the inside." He supported the
R.O.T.C., he said, because he wants Columbia to influence the debate over the
"Don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Despite his position on the issue, Mr. Stewart said he was going out after the
vote with the victors.
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