Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Stanford considers reinstating ROTC



Last month, before receiving the James Madison Medal, General David Petraeus GS ’87 expressed his pride in Princeton’s decision to maintain its ROTC program after other schools had abandoned theirs. Looks like Stanford just got the memo.

At a meeting of the Faculty Senate last week, Stanford discussed reinstating its ROTC program, which was disbanded in the 1970s. Though no decisions have been made, the school took a page out of Princeton’s book when they decided to start a committee to investigate the possibility. The question was part of a larger discussion about preparing Stanford students for military leadership opportunities, which the committee will mainly address, and is partially a response to the expected repeal of current military restrictions on gays in the military.

In the words of Stanford history professor emeritus David Kennedy, who spoke before the senate in favor of returning the ROTC program to campus, "the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, which has been a serious impediment to reopening this discussion at all, will probably go away within the next year or two, and the field will be open to have a reasonable discussion on this.”

Yeah, former AP US-ers. That David Kennedy.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah. give THIS government a few more pieces of cannon fodder to play with.

Anonymous said...

Under the plan announced by the Obama administration, no decision on reform of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law would be taken until after the November elections, after which the votes for reform may have disappeared.

An approach to moving faster on this issue is outlined at
http://www.securenation.org/a-centrist-approach-to-reform-of-%E2%80%9Cdon%E2%80%99t-ask-don%E2%80%99t-tell%E2%80%9D/