Word: rotcs
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...four years, cadets and midshipmen wake up obscenely early in order to trek to MIT and get yelled at by their instructors. That’s an indignity that Harvard usually reserves for accounting students. If you want to know what visceral discomfort looks like, watch a Harvard ROTC student shuffle across campus in his military uniform. Banished by the Faculty in 1969 amid a rising tide of anti-war sentiment on Harvard’s campus, ROTC has more recently been relegated to its pariah status because of the military’s mindless discrimination against homosexuals. Forget...
...This year, University President Drew G. Faust will attend the ROTC commissioning, but with an asterisk. Proof to the aged adage—beware geeks bearing gifts—Faust will harness the symbolism of her appearance by criticizing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” (DADT) the federal law that bars openly gay Americans from serving in the military. While she will recognize the value of military service, Faust will also express her wish that, “every Harvard student had the opportunity to serve in the military...
...ROTC graduates’ happiness is, unfortunately, not the issue. On June 4, they will be commissioned in a military ceremony in Harvard Yard, despite the fact that the military explicitly violates Harvard’s non-discrimination code by forbidding gays and lesbians to serve...
...President Faust should absolutely use the occasion to express this community’s moral outrage at DADT. It would be offensive to our values for Harvard’s ROTC graduates not to begin their service in the shadow of the Pentagon’s repugnant discrimination. (These values are, incidentally, not just President Faust’s—there is no shortage of Harvard ROTC students who oppose DADT, but who are forced to keep their silence because of the military’s restrictions on their free speech...
...Some will object, of course, that mine is a deeply political, even partisan view. Paul E. Mawn ’63, who chairs the pressure group Advocates for Harvard ROTC, declared this week that, “it’s not appropriate to talk politics at a military service.” Joseph M. Kristol ’09, a Marine ROTC midshipman, despaired that Faust’s comments would “radicalize” the ceremony...