Word: rotcs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Some Harvard ROTC alumni and cadets have criticized Faust’s decision to address the issue, saying the event should only focus on the students being commissioned...
...Regardless of whether one deems DADT defensible or odious, President Faust and these conscientious objectors miss the crucial point. Faust, and indeed the whole Harvard community, should be able to recognize and to honor ROTC seniors without qualifying their praise with political slogans...
...Goldenberg insinuated—since the ROTC students’ “happiness is . . . not the issue”—some activists hold that the cadets and midshipmen do not deserve a decorous ceremony free from political controversy and ideological harangues as long as some among their peers are excluded from their ranks. Yet, despite Goldenberg’s and others’ well-intentioned crusade, how is this a fair and fitting reward to the students who have chosen, not immediately to pursue career ambitions or vain whim, but to serve their country...
...ROTC students, conforming to military restrictions on their free speech, must refrain from political statements while in uniform despite the position they may otherwise hold on DADT, the Iraq war, or any other issue. President Faust, encouraged and emboldened by Harvard’s own prejudice for leftist activism, will not extend the students this same courtesy by observing at the ceremony an honorable silence on DADT—which, as everyone already well knows, she and the administration staunchly oppose...
...Removing the dark pall of political controversy and polemics from the ROTC ceremony will not impugn the progressive credentials of the President or her University. Rather, it will permit, if only for a moment, the ROTC students a much-deserved yet seldom-granted spotlight...