April 29, 10:18 a.m. | Vote Results After two hours of debate, the Stanford faculty senate voted to bring ROTC back on campus: 28 members voted for its return, 9 voted against it and 3 abstained. During the faculty senate meeting, Former Secretary of Defense William Perry discussed how bringing ROTC back to Stanford could help the military by providing better trained and educated leaders. Much of the debate was centered on the military’s posture toward transgendered people and also on whether academic credit would be granted to ROTC courses. An amendment to the resolution of bringing ROTC back to campus was added that stated the faculty senate’s objection concerning the military’s treatment towards transgender people.
Since Congress voted to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, several “elite” universities, including Harvard and Columbia, have decided to reinstate R.O.T.C. programs. Stanford might be next. Last week, an ad hoc R.O.T.C. committee at the university unanimously recommended that President John L. Hennessy invite the program back on campus. Today, the Stanford Faculty Senate is expected to support the idea as well.
R.O.T.C., the Reserve Officers Training Corps, is a program for college students. R.O.T.C. cadets supplement their undergraduate academic curriculum with military and leadership training. Upon graduating and successfully completing the program, college seniors are commissioned as second lieutenants. Roughly 60 percent of newly commissioned officers in the Army come from R.O.T.C. programs, and more than 40 percent of general officers in the Army are R.O.T.C. graduates. The military pays for many cadets’ entire undergraduate education.
The attitude at Stanford toward reinstating R.O.T.C. has generally been positive. In this year’s student elections, 44 percent of voters supported a return of R.O.T.C. while 17 percent opposed it. Also, both of the school’s student-run newspapers supported bringing the program back.
Though R.O.T.C. has been away from Stanford for decades, the military is no stranger to the campus. Throughout this academic year, there have been military-themed lecture events. For example, a Military 101 seminar series was started by R.O.T.C. cadets and veterans to share with the greater Stanford community what military service entails. The speakers at these events have been senior active-duty officers from the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Hoover Institution. Furthermore, Stanford is a veteran-friendly campus, with a vibrant veteran community at its graduate schools and a generous Post-9/11 G.I. Bill Yellow Ribbon Program. There are more student veterans on campus — upwards of 50 — than there are R.O.T.C. cadets. Perhaps as a result, the debate here has been civil and thought-provoking.
Now that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is ending, the military’s rules prohibiting transgender people from serving and granting academic credit for R.O.T.C. courses are the two main obstacles to inviting R.O.T.C. back on campus. A law school classmate of mine, Jon Margolick, penned an essay to one of the school’s newspapers, contending that although the concerns of transgender people were valid, the benefits associated with R.O.T.C. and public service outweighed the negatives.
The debate is not whether students can participate in R.O.T.C. but rather on whether the military can have R.O.T.C. cadres conducting training on Stanford’s campus. There are currently 14 Stanford students who are R.O.T.C. cadets. But because Stanford does not openly allow R.O.T.C. instructors and training on campus, these cadets have to travel off campus to complete their training. The travel can be onerous. One Marine cadet remarked that he had spent countless hours on the road driving to the University of California at Berkeley to fulfill his R.O.T.C. training. He found it odd that Berkeley never eliminated its program even though it is considered one of the most liberal schools in the nation.
One of the greatest challenges to bringing R.O.T.C. back to universities like Stanford and Harvard is the cost of education at these schools. Given that taxpayers finance R.O.T.C. training, the military could probably produce two to three R.O.T.C. graduates from a less expensive school for the cost of every Stanford cadet. Although some proponents say that quality is more important than quantity, my experience has been that there is little difference in quality among commissioning sources. I believe this stems from the success of the military’s officer basic training programs which establish a solid baseline for all R.O.T.C. graduates.
Both of my company commanders on active duty were R.O.T.C. graduates from small schools (Seattle University and Norwich). Both were considered among the best midlevel officers in the brigade, better than West Point graduates of the same year group or R.O.T.C. officers who had graduated from better-known schools. Moreover, unlike many of their peers, they are giving taxpayers a better return on their investment, because both officers plan on making the military a career.
With the federal government and military facing a constrained budget, the military will be looking to cut costs in all areas. Thus, the armed services may not immediately jump at an invitation to return to Stanford. And even if R.O.T.C. programs decide to return to elite campuses, there will be an issue of scale. Given the small number of R.O.T.C. cadets likely to be produced at a place like Stanford or Columbia, it might make little sense for the military to establish a large presence at those campuses.
Lacking sufficient instructors and resources on site, however, will only continue to dissuade prospective cadets from joining R.O.T.C. because the stresses associated with coordinating training and driving off campus for hours to attend mandatory training elsewhere. One Stanford cadet confided that he had contemplated transferring to West Point partly because of the stress associated with commuting to all of his military training requirements.
If the military really wants to grow its cadet population at elite schools, it will have to tailor its recruiting message. Some students will be interested in studying counterinsurgency, while others will be interested in the leadership training and still others in learning about weapons. Regardless, the military should develop a plan to single out talented college students who have options beyond the military, such as finance or consulting. The military should also focus on retaining these graduates once they become junior officers, where attrition rates have been high.
Despite any difficulties that might be associated with bringing R.O.T.C. back to campus, student veterans are optimistic that a move in this direction will help bridge a perceived civil-military divide between so-called elites and members of the military. Several Stanford cadets have told me that they deliberately conceal where they attend school during military training to avoid unnecessary attention. In an organization that emphasizes humility and teamwork, being a Stanford cadet could be difficult if fellow soldiers view him or her as pretentious.
In 1968, arsonists burned down Stanford’s Navy R.O.T.C. building. More than 40 years later, the pendulum of history has shifted, and the notion of having R.O.T.C. on campus no longer seems foreign. Thus far, the R.O.T.C. debate on campus has been framed through the narrow prism of faculty and student opinions about the military. The bigger takeaway that many Vietnam veterans point to, though, is how American society has come to embrace the military since the Vietnam War.
This Memorial Day, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business is hosting Paul Bucha at an event. Many students are looking forward to meeting Mr. Bucha, an alumnus of the Stanford business school and a Medal of Honor recipient for service in Vietnam. In a few years, a Stanford R.O.T.C. graduate, educated and trained on the Stanford campus, might be able to do the same for a new batch of young cadets.
Tim Hsia was the first soldier to contribute to the At War blog, after a chance meeting with the New York Times correspondent Stephen Farrell in 2008 in the Iraqi province of Diyala. A 2004 graduate of West Point and former Army infantry captain, he is now studying law at Stanford and is an R.O.T.C. instructor at Santa Clara University, which offers training for Stanford cadets.
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