Debating ROTC...

PRESIDENT Bok said last week that his opinion on ROTC "would not be formed on the basis of a referendum." Bok, as anyone else, is entitled to choose whatever criteria he likes to judge the legitimacy, morality, or effectiveness of on-campus military training. But the Faculty, and the University, is entitled to know whether the students--the largest sector of the Harvard community--want the U.S. military to train its junior officers here.

Like Bok's, our opinion will not be formed by the referendum. Solid arguments exist against reinstituting Harvard ROTC regardless of popular demand. But a referendum will raise the issue of ROTC in public -- more effectively than Bok raised it last June in his Commencement speech to alumni.

In 1969, while the Faculty debated ROTC, protest against the Vietnam war dramatized the University's role in supporting the U.S. military. Napalm was invented in Harvard's labs. Much of the anti-personnel technology used on the electronic battlefield was developed from projects conducted by Harvard's Division of Engineering and Applied Physics.

But the end of the bombing has diverted our attention from Harvard's role in support of U.S. imperialism. A discussion of ROTC can bring these issues to the fore again. A referendum can only broaden people's awareness of Harvard's continuing complicity in anti-democratic movements at home and abroad.

Students should sign the New American Movement petition which calls for the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life to conduct a referendum on ROTC. The petition does not commit its signers to vote for or against Harvard ROTC, but it may serve to raise issues that should be discussed. Students are entitled to debate Harvard's proper relation to the military, and the University deserves to know if the opinion of its President, its most visible spokesman, in any way represents the sentiments of the Harvard community.