The debate about ROTC’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on campus flares up and dies down periodically, and is basically the same each time. The arguments are typically orthogonal: military service is noble, provides students with funding for college and teaches valuable lessons; discrimination is bad and should not be tolerated here. While most of Cornell’s peer institutions have done away with on-campus ROTC, the University is in a unique position given its land-grant status; it cannot simply ban ROTC unless it forfeits crucial State funding. Thus, the fact that Cornell professes a commitment to inclusiveness and the flagrant exception to this in ROTC policy is a consistent source of tension.
A year ago the a Sun editorial lamented ROTC’s discriminatory policies but praised the program for educating military leaders, iterating the long history of military service at Cornell. (This was followed, a month later, by Billy McMorris’s smug and ridiculous column comparing openly gay military service to orgies.) It has almost become a rhetorical tic to preface criticism of the military with inflated praise about soldiers and the military’s contribution to society, a habit in part inured by the accusation that those who oppose “don’t ask, don’t tell” oppose the military. But how noble soldiers are or how long ROTC has been at Cornell is beside the point.
Much of the criticism focuses on how “don’t ask, don’t tell” hurts gay and lesbian students at Cornell, but the Sun editorial did not mention the fact that it hurts ROTC itself. Because of the policy, ROTC does not have ready access to many of the nation’s top students. With no real benefit, “don’t ask, don’t tell” pits ROTC programs against educational institutions and student organizations, as well as the public (upwards of 60 percent of Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military). At Yale, students must enroll in the ROTC program at the University of Connecticut, 60 miles upstate in Storrs. At Harvard, they must enroll in MIT’s program.
It is also harmful to students who serve — or might consider serving — in ROTC, who may feel conflicted about participating in an organization that actively discriminates against their gay friends and family members. And those who depend on scholarships from ROTC must betray their values in order to attend a school like Cornell. As a member of Cornell’s linguistics department, I know many of my colleagues would not serve in ROTC knowing that I would be prohibited from doing so. The policy not only keeps out gay and lesbian students, but also deters those who value inclusiveness from joining.
As the humanities have become politicized and dedicated to social justice over the past 50 years — for better or worse — the rift between academia and the armed forces has widened. Some of this is due to the quixotic belief among some academics that war is altogether unnecessary and that all international problems can be solved via diplomacy. But this aside, there is no principled reason why military training cannot complement a liberal education and teach respect for social justice. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is at heart contradictory to the values and freedoms the military professes to defend; while defending a multi-cultural nation, the military denies its own members the rights it purports to uphold.
Most of the debates about ROTC on campus go nowhere because they focus on the national debate. But the Sun editorial exonerated Cornell’s ROTC, calling it “unrealistic … to expect our ROTC officials to buck this national legislation.” This is precisely the problem. Perhaps it is unrealistic to expect campus ROTC to violate “don’t ask, don’t tell,” but it is another thing for members to speak out against it, to be engaged in the intellectual community here. If ROTC is really suitable for bright, thinking and socially conscious students, one would not expect all the criticism to be external. But the responsibility of doing so falls on ROTC leaders at Cornell such as Prof. Lt. Brian Page, military science, as well as Majors Bryan Miller and Richard Brown, who thus far have said nothing in response to any of the campus debates. It is in part the military’s insularity that has allowed “don’t ask, don’t tell” to last as long as it has. I’m not asking ROTC to leave, I’m asking them to come to the table.