HUC to Distribute ROTC Facts; Debate on Credit Set for Monday

The Harvard Undergraduate Council will distribute a fact-sheet on ROTC at Harvard in the Houses this evening. The fact-sheet, which the HUC hopes will provide "an objective foundation for meaningful discussion" of ROTC, is accompanied by a letter from Col. Robert H. Pell, professor of Military Science and head of the Army ROTC unit here.

Also accompanying the fact-sheet is an invitation to all Harvard students to attend a meeting of the HUC Monday night. The HUC is expected to adopt a resolution at that meeting calling on Harvard to withdraw academic standing of ROTC courses, the funding of ROTC programs, the use of classified material and other restrictive practices, and the status of ROTC scholarship recipients if credit were to be withdrawn from the ROTC programs here.

The HUC fact-sheet raises the question of security clearance for ROTC courses, this time in connection with the Air Force program. Last spring, Harvard's Navy ROTC unit ceased teaching classified material in two courses, thus opening these courses to non-ROTC students without a security clearance after a Harvard faculty committee requested that it do so. The HUC fact sheet states that although no classified material is included in Air Force ROTC courses, these courses are informally closed to non-ROTC students for security reasons.

Frivolous Game

In his letter supporting academic credit for ROTC at Harvard, Col. Pell expressed the hope that discrediting ROTC "will not become a frivolous game on college campuses across the nation."

"If it does," he continued, "the hardcore national interest--survival of the nation in a cruel world through the maintenance of adequate deterrent strength--will be seriously jeopardized." Pell said that he hoped "that the ROTC concept will be fostered and enhanced on our college campuses rather than derogated and reduced to the level of an extracurricular college game."