Room for Expansion

When a through of draft-wary upperclassmen besieged Shannon Hall this fall to join up in one of Harvard's R.O.T.C. units, the Army unit's cycle of popularity reached another peak. It had happened in 1914 and again before the last war, when R.O.T.C. enrollments jumped 50 percent. But this time there was a joker only 46 freshmen showed up.

Under existing customs and regulations, the Army unit would allow only first-term freshmen to enter the program, and stuck to that requirement until a Student Council Committee on R.O.T.C. made its report two weeks ago. In that report, the committee noted increased R.O.T.C interest at Harvard and the prospect of a large drop in the College's tuition income next year, and made several recommendations to expand Army R.O.T.C. here.

1. Immediately enlarge the basic course enrollment as far as present facilities permit (this would open up 100 to 200 new vacancies).

2. Allow sophomores and second-term freshmen to enter the program, and make this easier by giving all Military Science courses as half courses.

3. Eventually enlarge the program to make room for every qualified undergraduate who wanted to enter.

The Army unit was the primary target of the report since Navy and Air Force budgets are smaller and less flexible at present.

There was little time to act on these proposals, as the spring term had already opened and final study cards were coming due. But the Army unit, still skeptical of freshman interest in the whole thing, promptly opened up fifty places in the second half of Military Science 1. The turnout was large and insistent; many applicants came armed with anxious mothers and fathers. An Administration-R.O.T.C. committee then looked into the problem, and another fifty openings were offered to the freshmen.

Though this action helps ease the situation for the present, it is no permanent solution. First, the University and the Army must still decide whether to allow upperclassmen to enter the program. Up to now, the Army has barred them by preventing people from taking more than one R.O.T.C. course at a time. But unless the Army can keep together the hundred new freshmen--and its teaching staff--this summer, it will have to give them two Military Science courses in the fall. And if freshmen can do it, why not sophomores?

On the second issue--how far permanent expansion of the Army unit should go--University and Army officials are holding off until a draft bill emerges from Congress. If that bill defers all college students, or if the Defense Department freezes R.O.T.C. allotments, expansion may became a dead issue. But if neither of these happens, a bigger R.O.T.C. unit would help carry the University through the first lean years of partial mobilization.