Fighting ROTC bans post-DADT

I am gay. I am in the military. I go to an elite university. These are not contradictory things. With “don’t ask, don’t tell” finally repealed, America’s elite universities no longer have any excuse to perpetuate the 40-year-old injustice of banning military organizations on their campuses. Just as DADT robbed service members like me of essential person liberties and freedoms, the archaic Vietnam-era policy of banning military organizations at America’s most prestigious universities denies students these same rights.

Today, universities such as Stanford, Princeton, Columbia and Yale are debating the place of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps programs on their campuses in a post-DADT world. DADT allowed them to continue to ban ROTC on campus under the aegis of protecting vital freedoms of self-expression and choice. However, today that is a moot point. With new service-wide programs that promote respect and understanding for gay brothers and sisters in arms, the military is no longer the bastion of ignorance and intolerance many purport it to be. By continuing the ban on ROTC, these universities will perpetuate divisions between academia and the military and simultaneously deny their students the opportunity to investigate military life and pursue a career as an officer.

As a gay ROTC student at Duke, I strongly support universities reinstating their ROTC programs. There is no divide between my classmates and me. The military has not made me a drone. ROTC has made me an officer. My fellow service members and I think independently and retain our identities, which allows us to take our exceptional education and experiences from Duke into the military at large. ROTC programs at the most revered universities allow the best minds in the country to develop a grounded, informed worldview before they begin working for one of the most influential institutions in the world. With so much power and responsibility, the military needs empathetic, rational leaders capable of handling America’s Armed Forces effectively in light of global realities.

The entire debate on these campuses stems from ignorance—the misguided beliefs that everyone in the military fits a similar mold, that the military is only a destabilizing force bent on destruction, and that bigoted neoconservatives fill all ranks. Regrettably, this ignorance is entirely understandable, as the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in his September 29 speech here at Duke, “With each passing decade fewer and fewer Americans know someone with military experience in their family or social circle.” Essentially, the all-volunteer force has reinforced certain demographic trends that unfortunately have alienated more and more Americans from their military.

I am not militaristic and have no family members in the military. I disagree with many of the America’s defense policies. However, the military thrives on such diversity of opinion. Drones cannot win a counter-insurgency.

I’m liberal, gay, in ROTC and proud of all three. The ability to freely be all three, beginning this semester, has been one of the most amazing times of my life. For any university to deny its students the same freedom is reprehensible.

Many elite schools—Duke, Northwestern, UPenn, and Vanderbilt—support ROTC programs on campus, but this is not enough. The Ivy League and its peer institutions all need to open their doors to the military. ROTC disturbs no one and commits no wrongs, nor does it promote militarism on campus. It simply allows those of us who would like to serve to do so. We are neither a menacing presence nor a recruiting machine.

Let’s not make this some partisan issue. I am a gay, liberal service member, and I am calling for elite universities to cast aside their reservations about the military, just as the military cast aside its reservations about gays. Intolerance exists on both sides of the political spectrum. Truly opening a dialogue on these campuses is the first step in coming to terms with this intolerance.