Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Oct. 28, 1959, edition 1 / Page 2
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PaGI TWO THE DAILY TAR HEEL WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1959 inn wmWM Compulsory ROTC In Colleges Our rilitoii.il nr this mniuing is basic.ll Iv lrMtv(l to the changing oiu epts if the Kimiu Oil iter Training Programs now in llr t on the n ii ions university and college .iiiij.iist s tlnottghont the United States. F.s- i 1 1 1 . v tall vour attention to the case l I -letlriiiL L. Mooit at tlie University of I .ililoi ni.. .tt Bctkeley. Moon is a freshman .student at UCLA who Ins M.ittd that pupating lor the military is i epugiiguaut to his petsun.il beliefs and tli.lt their air many other students such as he .Iim i.miiMt teconeile themsehes to military i i is 1 1 in tit'ii. I hey object to "killing and any ..tioii aiding war or the puiose of war." At tu.illy. the case in fxiint is not whether Mooie is t onst irntoiis oljcclt)r or not. We ..it mmI pit .ai(d to defend .such a position. We ; e. however, c unreined with some ol the Mthtr itnplit at ions of this and other cases v liii ii Ik (miik- in. milist t late. I his paper is in ihoiougli agreement with the dn laiation of the USNSA which states: From The Nation' ' 1 he I'SNSA is opposed to the compulsoiy t.itii ul basic ROIC programs oil the na tion's tollcge and university c ;iinpuses." Ex tept in times ol national emergency when so dc.i'.Mi.ited hy the Ptcsident and the Con-yje-s. tlcie i.im be no conceivable reason for ruh.iird inilit.iis training in universities o iMll t. It max be argued by the military that the existing sen ice academies cannot p.-siblv supply mi aimed fortes with still i e'ent ollucs to maintain and execute the mi.iI mi ices. That uiav lie quite true. Hut it is not the duty nor obligation of an institute ol higher learning to reconstruct its t in ; uliiiii to the extent , of pervasion merely lor the sake of casting military careers in a mole appealing light. This must be the responsibility til the services themselves. Our tommy is overly militant as. is. We belies e that educational institution - should by tlieli ety natuie instruct the strident, lust and Ion-most, in the sciences and the humanities, letting him discover for himself', a, l.-r as opssible. what it means lo be a hu man being in a society which itself is tnter dt pt nib ni with other societies its primary cont'ri n tan never be the instruction of what it means to be a" militant human being. Should stub a philosophy ever arise in this ountt y whefcin military defense preempts p.. mini otlencc. our sot ietal' .destruction will be assured. A careful investigation of the win Id's history establishes this point mik lusiw Iv for any intelligent person. We believe that' the ROTC program on this tampus is being handled effectively and intelligtntU and might serve as a' good ex ample to other institutions. The morale is leasonablv high. The program of instruction ii a .supplement - and a voluntary one - to i-niseiMiv fliuation. not an equal or separate brant h. And. we might add, the University 4,1 North (..uolina's ROTC. program is well iesntted by the professional military as be ing sensible, competent and liberal. We toiulude with another warning. I he militaty branch of this government is. in its tontcption. under the direction ol the administrative branch of the govern ment. It must, in its designated capacity, sme the civilian. It must not be allowed to betome a political entity of autonomy- We would do well to tenieipber that the stiength of this country lies -not in our capacity for human understanding among peoples. 1 1 f i n A Ctowther What About This? rht nation U T . th nlioA it IM- Inq the Wr. " ' ! ; The offit'.jl stuiient publication of the -Publication Bo. d of Mie University of North Carolina where it U published daily except Mrnlay and examination periods id summer terms f'n'er t is secoml ti3'is matter in the post office in Chapel Hill. N C. under tr nr' of Marrh 3. IT70 .-inscription t"v 4 W per e Tufer. ()() per fi ar Tn Pnilv Tar Heel is printed hv the News Inc.. farrbo ", N. C. lfl?i ; Of 5 1 1 1 1 1 Erf.tor Assistant T.ditor As.oeute Kditor F.ititrirtal Asst. Managing Ldilors DAVIS B. YOUNG ..77 RON SHUMATE FRANK CROWTHER VIRGINIA ALDIGE M'LOlf REDDEN .... CHUCK ROSS LARRY SMITH Gene M. Lyons (This is reprinted from "The Nation") There are units of the Army, Navy and Air Force Reserve Of ficers Training Corps on ' more than three hundred college and eniversity campuses across the country. At least once a week. 250.000 undergraduates put on uni forms to march, manuever and take instruction in weaponry, tac-, tics and military administration. This is a sizable commitment- in terms of student effort. It is also of little practical value.' What the students learn in ROTC bores them, gives them a 'dim view' of what their military service holds in store, and has so little affect that almost all they ' learn has to be learned over again bnce the oting officers enter on active duty. The trouble is that while the armed forces want to attract some o! the best students into the ser vice as career officers, they treat them as if they were immature high school sophomores. Young officers bound for duty on nuclear powered submarines and superson ic aircraft need instruction' in mathematics and physics. Instead, they are forced to give up academ ic time to the nuts-and-bolts of preatomic warfare. College and university administrators, even though they maintain that ROTC units are a genuine contribution to national defense, often give the program less attention than the Junior Prom. This being the situation, it would seem that things could work out if everyone just gave more time and thought to ROTC. and the program made more truly a part of the student's education al experience. Such a program would include completely volun tary participation, less military training on the campus, and in in creased number of specialized and liberal courses useful to men m their military service. This, of course, Ls easier said than done. It has, moreover, lit tle meaning unless seen against the purposes the ROTC is sup posed to serve. The ROTC was originally established and long maintained as part of a system ol citizen reservists that lay at the heart of American military poli cies. Today, however, it is a vast recruiting device for the profess ional officer corps. This is no ac cident of time or history. Factors that once made the reserve system practical no longer exist. A larce. standing military force is now in existence which requires a greai number of well-trained profession als of intelligence and skill. To day, our colleges and universi ties are the largest repos:tories of the talented manpower the ser vices need and the ROTC is the source through which they hope to get their share. Any effort to improve the ROTC program in terms of making it more attrac tive and stimulating for college students, therefore, presupposes that civilian colleges and univers ities should, in fact, be recruiting grounds for the professional, offi cer corps. Here we run into troub le. Traditionally at least in the popular image , the professional oflicer came from the service academies. The ROTC. in the last ten years, has offered college stu dents as alternative to being draft ed as privates or seamen, but was obviously never thought of as a substitute for West Point and Aannapolis. Yet the "fact is that the service academies are no long er able to furnish all the young officers needed to lead a profess ional military force of 2,500.000 men. One solution, of course, would be to expand the service-academy sys tem. But do we really want to? There are at least two compelling reasons for not doing so. First, there is the grave possibility of developing an inbread elite of siiable proportions in an import ant professional group a vital consideration in a society where diversity and social mobility un- dergird many basic liberties. And second, only through an expansion program that wculd, at best, dup licate the civilian system of higher education, or, at worst, be an in ferior substitute, could the aca demies offer the broad euca'ional An alternate situation would be to force the military to choose the " ii 1. 1 ni. m . ijm mjaWMMjf i mm -i i , M i"; rs . - -2 :f v d?tll i jw v" ri ' lM ASTn J 4 tisr additional o.'ficers tiicy need from among those young men who do not attend college. In this connec tion, we must remember that we are seeking, through private and public scholarship and stuient-ai.i programs, to eliminate economic barriers to higher education. Do we want to deprive the military of the same kind of opportunity to attract young men of ta!ent and promise into the ranks of its lead ership as we give General Motors. B.B.D.&O., and Colgate-Palmolive? If, therefore, we view the prob lem faced by the armed forces with serious concern, we have to begin to figure out how to make more college graduates look for ward to careers with the military. Despite steps already taken by the military departments. ROTC trained officers are not staying in the service in large or even ade quate numbers. Some of the rea sons lie in the services them selves: low pay, a discouraging promotion system, difficult family conditions, and the discipline and callousness to individual problems implicit in the nature and size of the military establishment. But beyond these, an important rea son is that, for the most part, these young officers never intend ed to make the military a career when they entered the KOTC in the first place. The fundamental transforma.ion of the ItOTC to a source of professional officers has simply not gotten across to the most important people involved: the students. No change in the ilOTC program fu! students. is by itself going to remedy this fundamental failing. Military life, from the point of view of pay, pro motion, intellectual satisf action, L mily security and social accept ance, will simply have to be made more attractive. This is a task for the President,' Congress, public leaders and opinion-makers -at all levels, and the military themsel ves But in this process, a ood deal can also be done with ROTC campus activities to stimulate.tu dents' interest in the military as:..3 career. ' The ItOTC programs now offer ed on college campuses fail ser iously in this regard. For the most part, the courses are voca tionally - oriented, particularly in the Army and Navy prgrams. The curriculum is fragmentized and has little intellectual content; re lief from technical instruction comes only in courses in military and naval history. The Air Force goes farther than, the other ser vices in the area of social scienc es, including in its curriculum courses in international relations, geography, psychology and admin istration. In all three services, however, the instruction in social-science-type courses i.s usually way belo'w par. Not only are the military instructors not prepared to teach the social sciences, but they are forced to rely on inade quate, service-prepared texts that are neither very objective nor ery exciting. The results oftrall these efforts are frustrated offi cers, angry faculty, and disdain- itself is the judge of what are "fit" substitute courses; and for another, few college instructors are anxious to get involved in the - V-t1U i & ' their own work and the regard of their professional colleagues. In most colleges and universi ties; therefore, the question re mains to be answered: How can we meet the responsibility of pre paring young men for military careers? Leaving aside the doubt ful probability of a complete me tamorphosis of attitudes and val ues, the formula can now be stat ed in some detail: 1 Hi A ' 1 1 The military officers now on y, i " cfimrjus are therp tn threp t'V , 10 1cdi.11 leiiiimai 1 iiniiiai y ti?4&- ....... . . . ... suojects: to give a special mili tary "twist" to non-technical sub jects included in the ROTC cur riculum; and. through counseling, observation and their very pre sence in uniform, to recruit the most highly motivated students into the career service. The third function is the only legitimate one the military have in the college community, and even this should be carried out in conjunction with ar over-all program on career opportunities. Technical subjects should be left to summer training and post-commissioning service schools ; non - technical subjects should be left to the college. 2. Compulsory ROTC, as prac ticed in most land-grant and state universities during the freshman and sophomore years, should be dropped. As college enrollments increase, compulsory ROTC will become an increasingly unecon omical affair. The factor of com pulsion will, moreover, always tend to negate any efforts to point cut to students the comparative advantages of a military career. 3. The problems involved in de veloping a pre-professional pro gram for a military career need study by joint administration and faculty committees wherever ROTC units are located. This does not mean that Brown and Iowa State should try to duplicate the curricula at service academies. It is more and better education that officers need, not more military training. Indeed, recent curricu lum changes at West Point and Annapolis have been in this di rection. Where, after study, it nevertheless seems clear that a worthwhile program, from the viewpoint of the students and the career service, is not possible, the steps should be taken to drop ROTC. In some institutions, this unhap py s 'liation has been avoided. At the Massachusetts Institute of Teclmc logy, for example, the Navy has a special program in which it generally keeps out of the stu dent's way except to remind him that he is, in fact, going into the Navy, and that there are a few basic things about being a naval . officer he had better know. The interests in such a program are mutual; the Navy is anxious to have M.I.T .-trained engineers in its ranks, and M.I.T. is profession ally interested in the problems of the Navy and wants to offer its graduates the oppc'unities in nu clear propulsion and electronics that naval service opens up. Nev ertheless, M.I.T. was not ready to accept the prescribed naval ROTC program and the Navy was sufficiently covetous of the M.I.T. product to know when to stop in sisting. At Princeton, too, the faculty and administration put their minds to the task and developed a num ber of courses within academic departments to replace military developed Army courses. Similar efforts, on a less ambitious scale, have been made at Harvard, Yale, and Ohio State University. The Air Force has invited all colleges and universities with Air Force ROTC units to substitute academic courses where possible, or to staff the regular Air Firce course with dviban instructors. Few colleges have taken up the challenge, how ever. For one thing, the Air Force ROTC Letter Editor: .1 The following is an excerpt from an As-' pocia'ted Press dispatch published in the Washington Post, Tuesday, October 31: "An Air Force Colonel's son has started a seven day fast in protest against compul sory enrollment in the Reserve Officers Training Corps at the University of Cali fornia at Berkeley. "The freshman mrthematits student cir culated a petition and said he objected to rkilling and any action aiding war or the purpose of war.' "The petiton says, 'We feel that students who cannot participate in military train ins due to their religious beliefs and con scientious beliefs should not be required to take ROTC." As vtm are probably are aware, the United States National Student Association is firm ly opposed to compulsory ROTC on campus es throughout the country and such schools r-3 the University of Wisconsin have recent ly taken action to try to relieve themselves of compulsory ROTC at their campuses. It is my hope that through writing editori als in your campus newspaper, through gen erating a similar petition, through student government resolution, through informing other colleges in your area, and through sending editorials, petitions, stuiient govern ment resolutions, and perhaps letters of sup port lor the student, Frederick L. Moore, to the University Administration at Berke ley, perhaps his right may be won without starvation. I hope you will find the time and energy to cooperate in this endeavor. Very truly yours, Curtis B. Cans National Affairs Vice President U. S. National Student Association NSA Resolution FACT. The Morrill Iind Grant Act of i8(i2 made funds available to all state uni versities and colleges that would offer, but not necessarily compel, a Reserve Officers Training Program. Today, many state uni versities and independent or private insti tutions compel their male students to take two years of basic ROTC training because of additional action taken by the state legis latures andor by the administration of the institutions. 'I ft 1 Pi ox MM i -.,.-. ' ' , . Mr tK ODJiM Nf v mmrm ,m i,Ui,,ih - . 2 feMAwtt wjtftf.aM-aw -urim.. . r- "ii in ii ii " ' t Pf'pSf VVg I THINK I r, CAV, I "VTT fmsm mm W&m w2 fllltlfl 4fAMWM FU IWHV DON'T WE ET TWE WZW , sWZ TOGETHER AND 60 OUT PRINCIPLE: I'SNSA believes that com pulsoiy ROTC is: 1. An infringement upon the academic freedom of the American college student; 2. Of questionable academic value in a student's education; ?. A great waste of some students' time, in the cases of universities facilities and of federal funds. USNSA fuither believes that a voluntary ROTC program would result in more, bet ter qualified ROTC graduates at a marked reduction in cost. DECLARATION: The USNSA is oppos ed to the compulsory status of basic ROTC programs on the nation's college and univer sity campuses. ACTION: The USNSA urges all student governments, college and university admin istrations, and state legislatures to work to ward the elimination of the compulsory status of basic ROTC Programs on their campuses. 5 W'r .IF -7 Yif"- "if -t X If v.,
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Oct. 28, 1959, edition 1
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