Yale and Dartmouth Vote To Drop Credit for ROTC

Both Yale and Dartmouth voted last week to reduce the status of ROTC on campus, and five of the other Ivy League universities have recently set up committees to consider the issue.

Last Thursday the Yale faculty voted to deny academic credit to ROTC courses. In addition, the faculty report states that the ROTC faculty at Yale will lose the "academic authority usually associated with a professorship." The faculty passed resolution that the president of the university should appoint an ad hoc committee, representing all "interested groups" to continue studying ROTC's activities at Yale.

Yale's contract with the Department of the Army stipulates that no changes may be made in the ROTC program without one year's notice. Consequently, there will be no changes made this year.

The Dartmouth faculty endorsed last Friday the recommendation of a faculty committee to limit ROTC credit to two courses. The faculty also votes that, if Congress did not shift the military instruction in the ROTC program to summer camp periods within the next three years, Dartmouth would entirely eliminate degree credit for ROTC. The Dartmouth resolutions limit faculty membership to the senior officer of each ROTC detachment.

Penn Removes Credit

Earlier this year, the faculty senate at the University of Pennsylvania's college of Arts and Sciences voted to abolish ROTC course credit, starting in two years, with the class of 1974. The university's Engineering and Business schools are now considering how they should deal with the problem.

Committees to determine what should be done about ROTC are currently meeting at three of the other Ivy League colleges. The Cornell faculty of Arts and Sciences voted last year not to give credit for ROTC courses; however a student-faculty-administration commission is now recommending even greater university sanctions against academic credit for standardized ROTC courses.

Joint Committee at Princeton

At Princeton, a coordinating administration-faculty committee is now investigating ROTC's position. A similar committee, at Brown, including the dean of the college, a ROTC professor, and two students, has been studying the questions since last year. Both committees should issue reports in about two weeks.